vol5-no3

TRI-QUARTERLY VOLUME

5

NUMBER

THREE

NORTHWESTERN

UNIVERSITY

SPRING.

1963

Adlai E. Stevenson

Foreign Affairs and the United Nations

,

3

.

Stephen Spender The Self-Unfeigning

7

Thomas H. Arthur

Very Short Stories Jeff Corydon III The Other Side of Saigon

8

12

Edward S. Petersen

Age, Medicine and Money

16

Wilbert Seidel The More Things Seem to Change

.....

20

B. Forrest Shearon The South from

a

Distance

26

Barry G. Brissman The Pond

30

Yohma Gray

The Poetry of Louis Simpson

33

Gary L. Blonston

Wedding Knot

40

Austin Stoll The Caste

44

System

Poems, THE TRI-QUARTERLY is a magazine de­ voted to fiction, poetry, and articles of

Susan Allen

47

Thomas H. Arthur

32

general interest, published in the fall, winter, and spring quarters at Northwestern Univer­ sity, Evanston, Illinois. Subscription rates: $2.00 yearly within the United States; $2.15, Canada; $2.25, foreign. Single copies will

Malcolm McCollum

be sold

Michael Dalzell

Blake Leach

15

John Stewart Carter

locally for $.70. Contributions, cor­ respondence, and subscriptions should be addressed to THE TRI-QUARTERLY, care of the Northwestern University Press, 1840 Sheridan Road, Evanston, Illinois. Contribu­ tions unaccompanied by II self-addressed en­ velope and return postage will not be re­ turned. Except by invitation, contributors

19. 47 ..

11

'"

15. 19

Tri-Quarter ly NORTHWESTERN

limited to persons who have some con­ nection with the University. Copyright, 1963,

by Northwestern University. All rights re­ served.

UNIVERSITY

are

Volume 5

SPRING

Number Three

Views expressed in the articles published are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the editors.

EDITORIAL BOARD: The editor is EDWARD B. HUNGERFORD. Senior members of the advisory board are Professor RAY A. BILLINGTON of the College of Liberal Arts, Dean JAMES H. MC­ BURNEY of the School of Speech, Dr. WILLIAM B. WARTMAN of the School of Medicine, and Mr. JAMES M. BARKER of the Board of Trustees.

UNDERGRADUATE EDITORS: G.

ROBERTSON,

HERBERT M.

SUSAN

ATHERTON, and

F.

MC ILVAINE,

CAROLYN

FORREST

BURROWS.

THE TRI-QUARTERLY is distributed by Northwestern Uni­ versity Press, and is under the business management of the Press. Design, layout, and production are by the University Publications Office.

Art Editor jor this issue is Lauretta Akkeron.

Herb Comess.

Photographs oy

and Affairs Foreign the United Nations ADLAI E. STEVENSON

An Address Delivered Before the

Chicago Council on Foreign Relations

I

.

foreign

suppose you want

affairs

and

the

me

U.N.

to talk

about

there

have

Well,

been many long days and nights in New York when I wished I was in Chicago. I am reminded of the young

When the United States' Ambassador to the United Na­ tions came to Chicago to deliver an address, on Febru­

ary 19th, at a luncheon marking the fortieth anniversary of the Chicago Council on Relations, he was

Foreign kind enough to permit us to print the address in this Spring issue of The Tri-Quarterly. The copy below, taken from his manuscript, omits at his suggestion the intro­

ductory portions, which were spoken with pleasant in­ formality merely to the members of the society and

mother who told

was

being

transferred

the

news

reached

her

small

the

me

her husband

New

York

and when

children

she

overheard

to

daughter saying her prayers: "God Bless Mummy, God Bless Daddy and Freddy, and now, God, I must say good bye; we are moving to New York." And I could add that moving to New York and the U.N., merits even more divine sympathy. I have heard a psychia­ trist say that a diplomat at the U.N. should have a healthy split personality; he should be an idealist but also· practical; stubborn but com­ promising; spiritual but down to earth; dynamic but reflective. Well, I've concluded that he's right, and that to deal with diplomats from 110 countries representing every culture, race, lan­ interest and prejudice simultaneously guage, and on every question political, economic and social quickly presents one with a choice be­ tween galloping frustration, ulcers, or a sense of humor. I've chosen the latter, plus a little per­ spective and a lot of patience, I hope!

-

-

.

their guests.

Since the name Adlai E. Stevenson is known to all possible readers, even to the youngest visiting stu­ dent from the farthest part of the world, we note here �nly �n item which gives us an especial pride in print­ '"g h,s words the fact that he is an alumnus of North­ our

-

western, having graduated from the Law School in 1926.

I am

indebted

to Mr. Adlai E.

stevenson III for his

help, �t a busy time, in obtaining his father's permission and his

There have been many changes since my pre­ service at the U.N. The membership has

vious

manuscript.

Spring, 1963

doubled

-

country is

the first to

sovereign

act

of

every

new

apply for membership. The annual

agenda of the General Assembly has mounted to and the U.S is involved directly 100 questions in virtually everyone. The old, more or less kin­ dred and democratic nations, have lost their ma­ jority to the Afro-Asians and can no longer easily dominate the scene. The cold war struggle for in­ fluence and allegiance among the newer na-

3

is

tions

much

marching on to the stage. If their delegates still so a lingering distrust of the West which to the recently ruled over them, they also look

intense, and neutrality or non-alignment vastly increased. Peace and development, not cold war politics, are the first interest of the new nations. No, there is only one priority, national independence for all; anti­ colonialism and equality of status generate a passion that is sometimes irresponsible, but al­

West for help in pursuing their two great aims of

ways understandable.

to

Evidently it has been something of a shock to many Americans to realize how rapidly the world has changed; that others don't always see things exactly as we do; that the U.N. is not a panacea or a wing of the State Department. A lot of people in the U.N., for example, find it hard to under­ stand why the Russians should not have troops in Cuba while we have even more in Turkey.

But in spite of our worries, frustrations and

sweeping over Latin America and to divert these vast new energies into channels of violence and hatred. The Alliance for Progress aims to put

more

has

fears the U.N.

and

remains

an

security

of

incalculable asset to

peace

me

in my limited time take you on a short guided

tour of the

our

So

let

the

country.

stormy horizon as I see it from my of­

fice overlooking the U.N. in New York.

First, by every measure, the United States con­ tinues the leading power of the world, of

our

as

a

result

military power, the abundance and great of

reserve

our

economic power,

the world-wide

extent of our

alliances, and the talents of our peo­ ple. Yet we have no monopoly of power, nor even of nuclear weapons:

and

we

could not force

will upon the rest of the world to

even

our

if we wanted

which we don't.

-

Second, the new imperialist powers, the Soviet despite their pro­

Union and Communist China

found internal conflicts

-

both see America as the

-

chief obstacle to world domination.

bury

the

us,

Chinese

by

by peaceful means, the

Russians

violence.

Both would

both

But

are

in

favor

of

the funeral. And both strive to extend their power elsewhere.

They sharpen

every

quarrel and in­

flame every point of friction between the United States and any other non-communist nation­ and

thereby strive to strip one nation

at

a

time

of our friendship and our protective power.

But

they're

not

doing

very

well.

None of the

defeats in Africa, Asia and the Middle East which the

pessimists were confidently predicting not long ago has come to pass. The U.N. frustrated Communist designs to penetrate Central Africa from the Congo. In Asia the Chinese have acutely embarrassed Moscow by attacking India. And instead of taking over the Middle East the Com­ munists are now fleeing headlong from Iraq, and much of the Communist investment there is now

down the drain.

Gaulle has

Meanwhile if General

De

embarrassed the West the divisions

in

the

Communist

are

far worse.

ranks

throughout

the

world

Third, empires vanishing. This huge transformation had its roots in

the

free

4

independence and economic

social

and

develop­

ment.

Fourth, the Communists are trying desperately capture the great social revolution which is

these energies to work to create

more

a

prosper­

and egalitarian society in the Western Hemi­ sphere. Our challenging task now is to make sure

ous

again parlay the tyran­ a Castro; and to see to it that a community of freedom in this hemisphere is flourishing long after the Castroism has passed into history. And the challenge in that Moscow will

ny of

a

never

Batista into the tyranny of

Latin America may be the most critical and dif­ ficult we have to face anywhere.

Finally, the free nations of Europe, with our help, have not only recovered from the ruin of the war and turned back the rising tide of domes­ tic communism, but are building a new economic and political community in Europe to replace the old rivalries and civil wars. of

All

you

are

familiar

with

the

situation

brought about by France's exclusion of Britain from the European economic community and France's rejection of a multi-national nuclear defense. The headlines have been black, but I think it may be the better part of wisdom to wait and

see

if the results

lines. Few finalities

are

as

black

final

as

the head­

they seem at first. And this is not the final blow to European unity, to the grand alliance or the Atlantic com­ munity.

President Kennedy has reacted with restraint, and I think that is a good cue for all of us, You may recall the universal despair just 10 years ago when France derailed the proposed European de­ fense community. It drove John Foster Dulles to talk of an agonizing reappraisal. But it was not the end of hope for a united Europe and out of are

as

as

that disaster the present day European economic community emerged.

Victor Hugo once said: "There is nothing in all the world so powerful as an idea whose time has come." I believe the time has

come

if not

-

for not only a surely tomorrow European community, but a larger Atlantic com­ munity. And it should not be hard for us to under­ stand why General De Gaulle with his views of

today

-

then

-

the historic position of France should want to

say

about

when

and

by

whom

the

more

nuclear

weapon is fired. Nor should it be hard for

the great western colonial institutions

themselves, So today

have

a

of

the

colonial

are

powers

billion human beings

are

to understand

Europe why we expect it to bear a larger

share of the defense burden which has been

for

ours

long.

Now, against this horizon, let us examine how so

NORTH WESTERN

TRI -QU ARTERL Y

More than external

the decision to join the United Nations has served

effort

aid,

of

nation­

a

developing the ad­

national self-interest as few other decisions in

building

our

history.

ministrative fiber to train the national army, get the fiscal system under control, and construct a

United

the

What

States

wants

for

itself

-

u

world free of fear, free of want, free of prejudice, a

world made safe by universal adherence to the

is what free men the principles of the Charter world over want. That they do has been demon­ strated these past seventeen years by their ac­ tions at the U.N., actions which never once have impaired the vital interests of the United States.

To frustrate the majority view, the Soviet Union -

depends

success

our

on

political system featuring a strong executive. If these prerequisites can be met, the Congo should not be a burden to its friends in a few years' time.

As

for

when

Cuba,

that

crisis

the

erupted,

United States left no doubt about its intention to

protect itself and this hemisphere. But acted

in

strict

accordance

with

the

also

we

Rio

Pact

has cast 100 vetoes. The U.S. has yet to cast its

through the Organization of American

first.

and in strict accordance with the charter of the U.N. through the Security Council. The U.N.

Nonetheless, we have, as I say, skeptics who decry our support of the United Nations. Latterly they point to the Congo and Cuba.

In the Congo, the U. N. for more than two of and with the help years many nations, es­ has protected the infant republic pecially ours from internal chaos, reconquest and communist subversion. Like the previous secessions in Kasai and Orientale, the secession of Katanga has end­ ed, and with it the danger of a great power con­ frontation in the heart of Africa, with all its omi­ nous implications, has been averted. There was -

-

never

valid

any

issue

of

in

self-determination

Katanga Province under Tshombe any more than in Orientale Province under Gizenga.

The United States' objective in the Congo was to help establish conditions under which the Congolese people could work out peacefully their own future. And that is precisely what the U.N. has made possible under incredibly difficult cir­ cumstances and amid widespread and vocal op­ position. This has been the U.N.'s most complex and dangerous peace-keeping mission and its most costly by far. But civil war and the danger of great power intervention has been averted, and a grave threat to the peace removed.

I

would

been no

a

like

to

victories

for the

Americans

of law

still

and

have

this

has

not

their

doubts

about

it,

I

political system which country's needs.

cannot yet deal with the

expensive military establishment of dubi­ effectiveness and uncertain discipline.

An

A financial administration which collects much less revenue than it could, disburses funds care­

lessly, and is subject to more pressure than it can

handle.

Spring, 1963

and in our subsequent negotiations with the Rus­

sians the most dangerous crisis since the War was resolved without resort to military measures and nuclear war.

And I'd like to

bring

to

your

attention

some

observations by an old friend, Lester Pearson of Canada, who had this to say about our handling of the Cuban crisis:

"When back

to

you

it,

have

stand

a

good

firm:

case,

without

with

strength provocation or

panic. When action in defense of that case has to be taken quickly, and by yourself, bring that action

before

the

United

Nations

at

once

-

as

the United States did on this occasion.

"The United

Nations, once again, became the indispensable agency through which the Parties could find a way out of a crisis, without war. I know the United Nations

can't force

a

solution

great power which doesn't want it. But you can't exaggerate its importance as a means for a

That, I think, just about sums it up.

country:

ous

provided conciliation and media­

finding and for supervising a solution."

one

underdeveloped

and it

notable victory of peace. And if any a

that American soldiers do the

An

opinion,

tion services. In that showdown of last October

on

question: would they have preferred job?

Now that the military phase is over the nation­ building phase begins, and, if anything, it will be an even harder job. The Congo now faces three key obstacles to progress and survival as a united would ask them

peace-keeping machinery functioned just as the charter contemplated: it provided a forum for discussion of our complaint against the Soviet Union; it provided a means of marshaling world

for the U.N. seeks

-

but it has been

-

rule

that

emphasize

victory for the U.N.

States,

But now, despite our success in effecting the peaceful removal of the really dangerous weapons from Cuba, some politicians and columnists are suggesting that long range missiles may still be hidden in Cuba and that the remaining Russian forces are a dire danger and should be with­ drawn. Of course they don't say how. But I agree emphatically that Khrushchev should take his men home, not just because he said he intended to, but because the presence of any foreign forces in this hemisphere is bound to add to the tension and sharpen the East-West conflict and

therefore the hazards in another vast world.

And I would not be

area

of the

surprised if he did

them, unless we make it too embarrass­ ing for him to back down again. remove

However, having spent a couple of months in constant negotiation with the Russians

almost

5

about Cuba this

gest to

Fall,

you that we

bold enough to sug­ ought to bear two facts in I

am

mind.

lieu of the present voluntary contributions, which would save us money. A special session of the General Assembly will probably follow in May. And, of course, much will depend on the attitude of our Congress as to the extent and effective­

First, as President Kennedy pointed out, in the unlikely event that any missiles remain hidden in Cuba, they could not be brought out into the open, placed on launching pads, and made op­ erational, without quick detection by the United

ness

States.

be in

cut

Cuba

keeping operations lin's designs, as in the Congo. But no matter how

And neither Cuba

any doubt about how

we

Russia

nor

can

would respond.

Second, the present military complex in

does not pose a threat of armed aggression. has no logistical capacity for any seaborne

tracks

adventure from

any

Cuba

-

with,

since Castro unmasked his

we

com­

munism. The danger is not attack but subversion,

penetration and organized violence. And the dan­ ger is not to this country but to Latin America.

Venezuela is, of course, the first target. But all Latin America is in the target, and it is

all vulnerable.

I

am

far

more

virtually

concerned

about

the hundreds of Latin Americans flocking to Cuba for

training in communist theory and techniques they can do to subvert the universal

and what

revolution

social

than I

am

about the

So

the Communist

off

entirely its

strong

or

we

reduce

or

financial

support for peace­ that interfere with the Krem­

are,

the United States cannot

though, unhappily, only security

many of the smaller nations whose

is

U.N., and many of our larger friends gladly leave to us most of the responsi­

the

would

bility and most of the burden.

I had hoped to talk to you about the indispen­ sable role of the U.N. in nation-building, which is the first priority of the newer, poorer nations.

Pushed to the first outskirts of modernity by western investment and trade, emancipated be­ fore they had received either the training or the of wealth-creation needed

powers

for

a

modern

between two worlds­

caught powerful, affluent, expanding world of the developed "North," and the traditional, pre-tech­ nological, largely poor world of the underde­

society, they

are

the

veloped "South."

As the rich get richer and the poor poorer this society is a great obstacle to

Russian

division in world

troops. let's

not

And it

trees.

serve

or

the support of the OAS. No, the danger from Cuba is not the military build-up of the past year. The danger is what ever

nothing would

rich

can be sure,

it has been

course

purpose better than to have America

be the policeman of the world,

stop in

States has made it clear that it would

of this vital aspect of the U. N.'s functions.

It

airborne aggression. And even if it did the United its

Of

coln told

lose sight of the forest for the might be well to recall what Lin­

the

expansion

of

confidence

community in

and

the world.

I know there is much dissatisfaction about

Congress at another critical time:

aid,

times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be

much feeling that it is wasted and never achieves

responsible through time and

thousands of unspecified drains and ratholes. Yet

"In

in

eternity."

But enough of Cuba and the Congo. In the past year we must add other items to the long list of U.N. peace-keeping activities: West New Thailand and Cambodia; Rwanda and Guinea; Burundi. And Yemen, Borneo and the Malaysian Federation may not be far behind, with more trouble

With

spots a

on

the horizon.

record of

successes

going back

to the

just

of financial

support to make the organization

even

vital force for peace. But that is not

the

more

case.

an

Some countries that promptly pay their

assessments for the regular budget have not sup­ ported all the recent peace-keeping operations, notably the Soviet Union, for obvious reasons, and now France. Many smaller countries are hard put to it and feel that peace-keeping is peculiarly the responsibility of the great powers.

So a serious financial crisis is threatening. It will become acute when the proceeds of last year's bond issue are exhausted in June. A com­ mittee is now considering alternatives. It may recommend a special scale of assessments in

6

dribbles

away

down

did the Victorians talk about tax money

so

devoted to lifting the standards of the very poor in early industrial society. But over a couple of

generations, it

raising of all this unfor­ humanity that turned western so­ into social order in history in which the first ciety could everyone expect something of an equal

tunate

mass

the

was

of

chance.

withdrawal of the Russians from Iran in 1946 one would imagine that there would be little problem

and

"breakth"rough,"

a

And,

who

can

say,

in

and

the

long run perhaps dignity for the vast

equal chance equal emerging masses may have more to do with peace and security for all than the cold war today or the unification of Western Europe tomorrow.

To conclude these desultory remarks: The U.N. is

not

the

never

was

whole

the War. It is not

mittedly the can

answer

from the

unable

a

to

world

peace,

and

day the world divided after World Government. It is ad­

impose any settlement on great powers against their will, though it on occasion exercise a potent persuasive

force.

It is

which

we

a

to

reflection of the divided world in

live, but the consensus of its members represents a moral force that cannot be lightly ignored.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

We should not think of it

just as a convenient repository for insoluble problems, but rather as an

instrument

of

use

to further

our

policy which objectives.

U.S.

a

complicated instrument, of

cause

it

is

policy

of 109 other countries.

It is

It

is

also

also

instrument

an

limited

a

of

instrument:

should

we

course,

the

if

be­

foreign

we

want

Europe, the U.N. is largely irrelevant and Nato is essential; if we want to relate our­ selves to the less developed countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, the U.N. is essential

to defend

and Nato is irrelevant.

Let me has

up in this way. The United States an aim to build a com­

sum

aim in this world,

an

munity of nations, diverse, tolerant and genu­ but bound together by a inely independent sense of common humanity and by a common

We

successful at it, for both the spirit and

are

the method are second nature to Democracy.

if Democracy is to be nurtured in new countries, as well as preserved in the old, if the But

U. N. is to

succeed,

must all have time

we

-

a

time of peace. For it is peace which generates the factors most favorable to the growth of

Democracy: prosperity, stability, education, free­ dom of

thought, and the mutual trust which en­ free

courages

fruitful

communication

be­

therefore,

with those who

are

and

tween nations.

I cannot agree,

disdainful and

with world

impatient

opinion

as

it is reflected in the United Nations. From its be­

ginnings

country has had

our

"decent respect

a

for the opinions of mankind." Our Declaration of

Independence

was

not

proclaimed

the act of

as

-

interest in peace and progress. In such a com­ munity every nation and every man, strong or

weak, will have the greatest chance to develop the unlimited possibilities of freedom. In such a community we Americans ourselves will have the greatest chance to hand down our freedom and prosperity to future generations. The growth of such

a

for

orous

community, too coherent and too vig­ Communism to undermine, therefore,

is as vital future

-

a

as

factor in

our

security

-

and for

our

armed power.

our

magic lamp. Perhaps it is But its spirit is that of community, tolerance, give and take­ is the U.N. It is not a

candle

a

the window.

in

without which there

can

be no peace. Its method

is

parliamentary diplomacy, debating, voting, the writing and rewriting of resolutions, days and nights of discussion and careful listening

why

Opinion"

had

we

taken

this

momentous

step.

Indeed, in the new era the greatness of a na­ by its might but And its whatever exertions by magnanimity. by and whatever endurance history may require of

tion may yet be measured not

intend to pursue the vision of a free world

us,

we

at

peace,

and

and

to

provide

other nations

an

ex­

to which "the Wise and

leadership to borrow a phrase from repair" whose birth we celebrate at George Washington, ample

a

Good may

this

To build this community one of the instruments

only

separation but in order to make clear to "World

-

season.

So, if you conclude from all this that I believe our membership in the U.N. serves us well, you are right. Indeed, I feel a little like the Irish peasant who said to the poet Yeats: "Sure, I be­ lieve in fairies. Never

seen

any, but it stands to

reason."

.

.

"��

"if?\. .

�t,; '

'Ilf "

.

STEPHEN SPENDER

'i:

THE SELF UNFEIGNING -

He thought of the white paper as Where he should be what he

The

Up The Tri-Quarterly is pleased to be the first to print this new poem

by Mr. Stephen Spender, both for the poem itself and because he gave it to us while he was teaching at the University. What Mr. Spender says in the poem about "the white paper" might well be said by all of us about his teaching. His presence at Northwestern was a happy translation of himself into the minds and lives of his students.

Spring, 1963

was.

the sap that grows writing the stem to be the rose. was

If in the heart the blood was song Words from the heart could not be wrung.

All he had to do was be His

own

truth

flaming on a tree.

So he wrote without pretence His

youth, his truth, his own sentence.

What it Showed was him indeed, Judgement there for all to read.

7

very shol't stol'ies

Thomas H. Al'thul'

Thomas H. Arthur, Speech '59, is currently studying part­ time for a master's degree in the expectation of teach­ ing. He is a native Chicagoan, was raised on the North Shore, and now lives in Hyde Park. He has worked for several Chicago area advertising magazines and has been active in University of Chicago theater and other local groups, and in Channel Eleven's Festival Series.

He likes to write short

below

are

recent

trip to Europe.

examples,

sketches, of which the pieces

some

of which resulted from

a

Nuremberg to Zurich I

train riding from Nuremberg to companions, American soldiers on furlough whom I met at the station, and I have am

Zurich.

on

a

Two

seated ourselves

side of

second class

talk about the structure and heritage of

our

tem. One of my soldier friends has been

a

in

worker

New

York

account of big

he

and

gives

a

sys­

party

colorful

The sailor watches us

get them? The sailor, who is blond, rosy cheeked,

city politics. quietly as we speak with pride and affection about our country. Our elections are not fixed, we say, and if they seem undignified and even funny to the rest of the world, it is because our govern­ ment actually belongs to the people and is the people. It is a big country with a lot of individuals in it, and we all have the right at any time to sound off and do something about what concerns

and very young, is flattered at their interest but

us.

he knows no English and they know little German.

election time

on

one

a

compartment. A German sailor and an attractive but somewhat faded

looking woman sit opposite

us.

My friends are curious about the German navy and try to ask the sailor questions. What is his rank

and how

how

long

The

are

woman

much

do

his leaves

his

uniforms

something

says

cost

and

and how often does he

their language and then turns to

in

sailor

the

to

and in slow, She is

us

very correct English, offers to translate. about fifty years old and she has the

of

air

bittersweet inner exhaustion that I have noticed among so many of the people of her age that I have met in Germany.

The conversation the

next

and

I

proceeds from one subject to with great interest. My

listen

but

she

shakes her head and will not talk about it.

To

friends

change itics

in

ask the

woman

the

subject which, she

about the

war

she asks about American pol­ says,

she has

always

had

a

great interest. Our elections

are

and to her eyes,

undignified,

and she has heard

that the results

are

The

soldiers

and

tumultuous

fixed in advance.

I

become

thusiastic. We all three

8

so

excited

begin to talk

at

and

en­

once.

I

This is what the rest of the world hears at

exists is ica

...

so

.

.

and the fact that the noise

.

great strength and beauty of Amer­

a

we

say.

pull into a station along the way and the sailor gathers his things together. One of the sol­ diers leans out of the window and buys a sausage We

and

He starts to throw the empty

beer.

a

con­

tainers out of the train but I stop him and put the refuse under my seat. Everything in Germany is

so

clean that I cannot bear to

see

him do it.

sailor

The

stands up and pulls a paper bag from the roll on his back. He hands it to me with

a

stiff little bow.

woman

and points under my

the waste," the

The

bag and find

two

says,

"For

I

open

seat.

large apples inside. The

sailor smiles

and indicates that they are to be split between my two friends and myself. We try to thank him but he

and leaves

flushes with embarrassment

hurriedly.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

'f.·uill to Berlin

I

alone in

am

the compartment

the

as

train

lurches and sways through the night. From my window the only lights that I can see come from

factories, which seem to be going full blast­ and from regularly spaced spotlights on poles which

aimed down at the tracks. Occasion­

are

ally I catch a glimpse of the barbed wire which runs along next to the train. Strange gloomy country. There is no light from houses if there nor from cars if there are roads. are houses, From time to time we pull into more

stops which are

like dim fortresses than stations. We wait

while soldiers climb down and march away and are

replaced by other soldiers.

Each

I

partments, pulling open washroom doors. They are absolutely silent.

The passengers too are quiet. The whole grim seems to take place of its own accord as

ritual

if an invisible presence is

my terrible German to

try in

am

a

tourist

sheet of paper and takes looks

at

It is not His

as

I

leans

smiling. My

to

nothing

see,

again and,

as

there

is

I drowse.

I am shaken awake by

toward

It dawns

suddenly slams it shut and puts it in his and goes quickly pocket. He looks hard at me

then

-

out the

door.

on

a

are

am

a

at

the

faced and

my door is opened and the soldier leading another soldier and a civilian.

in

I

that

guard is stationed outside in the passageway. Without any preliminaries whatso­ see

ever

a

the civilian shouts at me and keeps shouting.

I am terrified. I try to

explain that I don't under­ his commands but he questions keeps shouting as if he cannot hear me. stand

his

-

-

I am pulled out of my seat and searched.

Spring, 1963

Every-

that I must do this

be

.

.

.

I

am

ex­

and I

we

both howl.

top of his

at the

literally screams

soldier and then turns to

shaking with fury. He

again I reach for it. and

fright­ laugh.

begin to laughter too and

runs

me

the

.

.

soldiers

red­

and bel­

rages

out of breath.

.

and

and

over

more

Then he thrusts the passport under my look away from him and reach for it .

nose. .

I

Again

.

have

have my passport, I fall asleep

gone,

and

I

very soundly asleep, and I do not wake up again until the train stops with a jolt. We have pulled up next to a

rounded

Finally

pulls it back.

Again he

passport in his

my

lows and threatens until he

brilliantly

comes

can

The civilian

done to me? Where has my passport been taken?

-

me

moment

a gap in my own expe­ moving across a void rience and something is wrong. What will be -

little.

grows.

One of the soldiers breaks into

When he

bad moment. I wonder if my papers in order. What is it that I have done? I It is

with

me

terror

..... and it is too much.

over

lungs

soldier. Automatically I hand him my passport and tell him that I can­ not speak his language. He thumbs through it, a

a

tended hand. Again I reach for it and again he pulls it back.

for off

relax

about to touch it he

am

is still

there. moves

pleasant smile but I

a

smile grows broader and he leans toward and holds out my passport. I reach for it but

just He

and smiles.

me

ened than I

train

money. He tucks

some

the paper into my passport and shuts it. Then he

moving marionettes. It is a pantomime unrelated co flesh or sound, suf­ fered by all participants as if they were not really The

explain that I going to Berlin to see the city,

-

and that is all. Abruptly he pushes me down and sits opposite me. He scribbles something on a

me

group spreads out through the train for refugees, shining lights into com­

new

searching

thing in my pockets is laid out on the seat next to mine. My luggage is pulled open and scat­ tered. All the while the civilian is screaming questions at me.

...

lighted building and platform, sur­ by barbed wire. There are soldiers everywhere.

When the last East German is off the train

begin slowly were one

in my

to

move.

I

see

we

the two soldiers who

compartment, walking together. The

who laughed looks up toward my window and

I stick out my tongue at him.

He

laughs again

obscene gesture which I can see until the train curves into the woods that mark and makes

an

the border of Berlin.

9

New York Bus I

am

on

shuttle bus from the airport into the pulled off the expressway and are

a

We have

city. moving along the outside lane way. It is close to

Queens High­ midnight but the traffic is still on

heavy and we must swerve this way and that to avoid it. Suddenly the driver stops in the middle of the lane and pulls on his emergency brake.

He swings around in his seat.

"Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your at­ tention

please?"

in

other

We

confusion.

look

What

him

at

has

will he say? This is obviously

and

at

each

happened? What

some

sort of crisis.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he says, "look around.

One of you is sitting next to a louse!" He lets this sink in for a moment and then he says "There

thirty-five of you aboard count only thirty-four paid fares." We all

solemnly, I

but

are

begin to feel uncomfortable.

first

Madam,

"The rest of you case as the may

are

nice

pauses

but

does not take his

shift in

our

seats and sneak

each other.

It is

uneasy

an

pretty kids." He eyes

off

suspicious moment.

us.

We

looks at

"After we pull depot I'll have to get the dough together and take it to the company office. I'd appreciate it if the person who cheated would slip me the He clears his throat and says,

into the

money up to

as

see

he gets off the bus. I won't

look

even

who it is. If I don't get it back I'll have

to make it up out of my

own

pocket and I ain't

got it to spare."

He glares at each of us, one after the other, a last time. "C'mon!" he says. "I done my job, you take

now

releases

the

care

of

yours!" He turns around,

and

brake,

the

starts

ride the rest of the way into the steeped in mutual guilt.

engine. We city in silence

...

At the bus terminal I stay in my seat to avoid

"I would like to talk to that thirty-fifth person,"

he says.

birthday. They

can

tune out.

Sir

or

be, before this trip carefully packed every­

the crush when the other passengers file out. I watch three of them slip money to the driver as

city started, body's luggage in the back of the bus. I tried to

they go by. He counts thirty-five fares out after they have passed him and puts this money into a

collect money for tickets at the same time but one of you snuck onto the bus anyhow."

satchel which he snaps shut. He counts the re­ maining cash, three [ares, out loud to himself,

continues, "I got a wife and three kids to support. My oldest boy is seven, my second is five, and I got a little girl who just passed her

then

into the

I

He

stuffs this

it in his back

money into his wallet

he leaves the

as

and puts

pocket. He is humming to himself bus.

In Munich I

night club in Munich. My date and I supposed to be the best jazz in Bavaria. It is a lovely place laid out in two stories with flowers and huge green plants everywhere. A spiral staircase winds from behind am

have

in

a

to hear what is

come

the dance

area

plaid

dinner

with

a

and

songs

up to the second tier.

clean-cut, handsome fellow in a jacket and tight ivy-league trousers buckle on the back. He sings German

The singer is

a

a

few American

numbers

with

Ger­

man words. His finale is the famous "Mack, the Knife," probably Germany's most famous popu­ lar song. He does it in English it la Louis Arm­

The singer sits down and his group takes off a sort on "j azz." It is very pleasant to listen to -

rag-time done to a strict four-four tempo. It like what might happen if you crossed Goodman with Wayne King and McNam­ Benny ara's band jazz, but sweet and bouncy. of

sounds

...

The jazz ends and the combo

our

10

plays dance mu­

My date and I get out on the dance floor and

when

we

ready to leave, we get up and go Several couples block our path. They see us coming but make no move to

do the jitterbug,

version

is

people stare at us, for somewhat different from theirs.

are

the

door.

get out of the way, even though there is no other exit. I think of the grown men and women who have pushed in front of me in lines at airports

and restaurants, and looked pleased with them­ selves for having done so and I get angry.

This is the way Germans get along with each ...

other.

They

not

polite. They are aggressive.

They push jostle. Up till now I have given I have wanted to be a "good for way quietly, and ambassador" not an "ugly American." Now are

and

I

strong.

sic.

When we

towards

am

mad.

We walk toward the

bump into the boy

.

.

nearest

couple .

hard!

The

us

and I

couple gets

out of

our way, and we march toward the next human blockade. Just before we reach them they move

aside.

We

keep going

and

a

path

opens

all the way to the door.

I begin to feel ashamed of myself, and before

for

us

we

leave I look

The

guiltily back at the dance floor.

boy whom I bumped winks.

catches

NORTHWESTERN

my

eye

and

TRI-QU ARTERL Y

Over East Gerlnany I

am

on

plane flying

a

From my seat

the aisle I

on

ground. The gentleman

the

smiles and asks

over

me

in

a

am

East Germany.

has lived there all his life. He is attractive, warm,

straining to see

urbane

next to the window

combination of English

and German if I would like to exchange seats with him. He assures me that he doesn't mind, as

he has made the

his

and

I accept

flight many times. in

combina­

offer, talking tion of English, German, and French. soon

we

are

a

fully in the double-breasted continental style. He tells me that he is an official of the West German He is

a

native of Berlin

and

.

.

and I

wonder to myself what

he

doing during the war.

I tell him that I admire his city for its beautiful.

churches, its office buildings, its wide lovely parks.

streets

and

"All of that is new," he says. "You should have seen

He is thin and gray haired and dressed beauti­

Customs Bureau.

was

.

it

right after the end of the war. It was a a junkyard." His voice is sharp almost accusing.

heap of rubble now

...

I keep

-

quiet but I think to myself, I am a Jew.

Would you like to talk?

Uptown New York I

standing in line at an uptown movie have been told by a friend that a sneak preview of a movie that I want to see is to be shown here tonight. However, I am evi­ dently not the only one who knows it. There is am

theater.

I

in addition to the

crowd that has

come

to

see

the

gangster picture being featured, a sizable group of couples who are dressed in the style of

the Village. All of them

Inside,

are

first. It is

males.

regularly scheduled movie is shown about the Mafia and its methods of

the

operation. At the climax of the film all of the killers are gathered together to draw cards for the privilege of executing the hero. The winner in a rather grim ritual is then kissed on the mouth by each of his brothers in crime.

Once, twice, three times he is kissed and this Village. Just before a fourth embrace is completed, someone leaps out up into a standing position on his chair.

Arms waving and long hair flying he shouts ex­ citedly, "We've won! We've won!" is too much for the group from the

ROMA The Via Veneto

Immaculate with

is

hyacinthine hair, he fingers sun

wide, the chocolate

ice-cream dark at the trattoria Doney

above the molded

where Hadrian's boy sits,

plastic table top, and quiet waits

new

muscled now

from naked marble

in depths of haunted glance

into insolence of flesh

antique regard that yields

contained

to life

in faded blue-jeans.

lost imperial eyes.

JOHN STEWART

Spring, 1963

CARTER,

L.A

..

'31

11

THE OTHER SIDE OF SAIGON

by leff Corydon III Jeff Corydon III, born in Chicago, is a Foreign Service officer now serving with the U.S. Embassy in Rabat, Morocco. The present article stems from experiences and observations at his previous post of Saigon, South Viet Nam, from 1957 to 1959. Before two years as a U.S. Air Force officer launched him on a career of govern­ ment service, he had prepared for a journalistic career at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism (B.S.J., 1950, M.S.J., 1953). As an undergraduate, he was Presi­ dent of the Northwestern University Class of 1950 and was elected to the Medill chapter of Sigma Delta Chi Professional Journalistic Society. He received the latter's Harrington Memorial Citation as Medill's outstanding student in his graduate class. Between 1950 and 1952, while completing studies for his M.S.J., he worked as Assistant to the Coordinator of the Northwestern Cen­ tennial Celebration.

Mr. Corydon has been located in Rabat since October

1961,

when

study

at

he finished

Georgetown

year of Arabic language University in Washington, D.C. a

days when the mysterious East seemed impos­ sibly remote, and before Febris Tourismus in­ fected the American species, most world-voyag­ ers were content to plumb the pleasures of the other Paris and let it go at that. But Saigon al­ ready was a favored haven of French administra­ tors and colons, for aside from the prerequisites its to be had serving in an outpost of empire exotic qualities piqued the Frenchman's artistic spirit.

The post-war years saw the Viet Namese in­ dependence movement flare into armed conflict, climaxed by the defeat of France at Dien Bien -

-

Phu which sealed its retreat from Indo-China. But

when Viet Nam

emerged from colonial

resistance forces. In the southern zone, with Sai­ as capital, strongly nationalist and pro-West­

gon ern

Ngo Dinh Diem soon rose to power.

In different circumstances,

N

ow

that the once gainsaid meeting of East and

West has become at least

travel

-

in respect to tourism, reality Saigon's provisional absence from the

circuit must

-

cause

regret.

Only two decades ago, fattened on the brim­ ming rice bowl which is Indo-China's richest re­ source, this Asian city was renowned as "The Paris of the Orient." Of course, in those bygone 12

status in

1954, the Geneva accords carved away the north­ ern half of the country as the prize of Communist

independence might

have opened Saigon to Far East travelers as an­ other port of call like Tokyo, Hong Kong, and -

Bangkok.

But the South Viet Nam

republic

was

born fighting for its life against entrenched gueril­

sponsored by the Communist north, and eight struggle still rages. With the re­ cent neutralization of neighboring Laos, Viet Nam has become the main cold war battleground in las

years later the

Asia.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

Dateline for much of the press's hottest cold war

Saigon

copy,

is

now

familiar in

our

lexicon

Asian names. But most Americans have

come

is

strongly reminiscent

of

Adjacent to the palace grounds, and through­ city, course broad avenues arched by a half-century's growth of towering tamarind, a: rustic touch that sets Saigon off from other Asian capitals. It is several minutes' walk, past govern­

munist aggression, it is today the "Berlin" of the than its

mid-city setting

to

bitter war. A symbol of U.S. resolve to stop Com­ more

its

the White House.

know it solely as the command post in Viet Na ms

Orient much

-

of

"Paris," and while

plateaus and paddies of the only the exceptional tourist is

out the

violence stalks the

ment offices

nation around it

many others of Saigon's large Catholic minority worship, to centre-ville with its inviting open-front

tempted to pay a visit.

Thus Americans who have served in Viet Nam have

reaped

a

double

satisfaction to

offset the

sting of those quiet or ugly epithets that occa­ sionally have been applied to their efforts. Be­ sides seconding a valiant fight against uneven odds, they have had the rare good luck to shake hands with Saigon and size up her non-political merits. Most of them have found her, as I did, still an engaging Oriental lady despite the somber days through which she is living. *

*

*

Saigon's particular charm doesn't lie in

out­

and the cathedral where Diem

shops. Since independence, stocks of colorful na­ wares have been enhanced gradually by a brisk revival of age-old crafts aimed at the ex­ panding world markets for pottery, lacquers, brassware, wickerwork, and other art of Oriental

tive

flavor.

said, 20 years of war and aus­ terity have kept the city's physical profile unpre­ tentious in spite of its growth in population and importance. Moreover, the improvisations worked by successive generations offer no sharp contrast between past and present, or East and West, But when all is

in some former colonial cen­

ward trappings. For reasons of history, the visage

as

of the present city is much more modern than ancient not so different from that of a middle­

ters. Not streets and structures,

-

sized American

or

European

settlement.

village within Cambodian borders, as it counted only a few thousand inhabitants when it fell against almost two million today before Viet N amese expansion southward from Born

as

a

-

-

but the

people they serve, en­ grave Saigon in the Westerner's eye. Indeed, the city's modesty of architectural aspect some­ how magnifies the vitality it exudes as if figures on a can­ -

had

swarmed

from

Hanoi in the late 17th century. It flourished spor­ adically during the turbulent years which fol­

vas

lowed and

intended by the artist.

toward 1800, as even served briefly, imperial residence of the famous Emperor Gia­ Long, who unified Viet Nam within roughly the present frontiers to end three centuries of dynas­ tic war. His descendant of our day, ex-Emperor Bao Dai, was driven into exile in France by President Diem's government.

There are few traces in Saigon of these earlier times except scattered monuments and pagodas reflecting the Viet Namese penchant for ancestor

worship. Only after the French protectorate's es­ tablishment in the 19th century did real impetus to metropolitan evolution come. Saigon's main period of construction, early in the 1900's, be­ queathed the present city a fashionable main street with Parisian flavor and surrounding resi­ dential districts featuring angular, yellow-stuc­ coed villas with gardens walled for privacy and generous eaves and unglassed windows calculated to beat the tropical heat.

A

major landmark dating to that period is sprawling Independence Palace, the President's official residence, which formerly was the seat of the French governor-general in Indo-China.

Ensconced in a park of several acres where deer the and an elephant have been known to play latter a gift to Diem from another Asian dignitary -

Spring, 1963

and

their

frame to fill new dimensions un­

*

*

*

Viet Nam's partition and in­ security of the countryside have

helped write the script for a spectacular of human effervescence in Saigon. For years now refugees stream­ ing in from the Communist north and from outly­ ing areas of the south have been swelling the flow through arteries of a structurally middle-sized city. Today, as the rush hour crowds converge on centers of commerce and administration, the pave­ ments become a vast open-air factory, market place, playground, and waiting room of humanity.

There is none of the perfunctory motorized unison which marks the streets of most metropolises West and East but a splendid hurry and scurry of daily life with the accent on diversity and individuality.

Middle-classmen and the army of functionaries

clothes, but the panorama Saigon is still an object of apparel fascination. Varied clothing of the mass of labor­ ing men ranges from peasant outfits of service­ have taken to Western of other

able calico nair

in

or

khaki separates

culled from

military surplus to sporty Western-style pajamas which in Saigon's climate qualify as the most -

-

13

sensible of street wear. The traditional male garb

of

long white trousers with knee-length tunic of black silk is still to be seen, but mainly the elders of society wear it for everyday, with others reserving it for special family or official occa­ sions.

are irrespressibly traditional dress, and for good reason. Perhaps the most finely-featured and delicately-framed ladies of the Orient, they cling to a national costume which highlights their slender natural beauty. Heads are haloed by wide-brimmed conical hats of dried, pressed palm leaves, often embellished by rib­ bons or embroidery. The role of the Western skirt is filled by billowing trousers of sleek satin or rayon, either black or a dazzling white. As over­ garments, laboring women usually wear short jackets of assorted colors arid fabrics, but those of higher status display superb ao dai graceful gowns of near ankle-length that lick

Saigon's

women

in

the main avenues frequented by Westerners. Spe­ cialists in the hard sell, their determination is

simple "no," and their triumph al­ by a smile or a hint of interest.

Three generations are spanned between the tooth­ less rascal crying boats of buffalo horn and the smudge-nosed princess of peanuts with her in­ exhaustible basket of peanut-filled paper cones and samples for all who glance her way.

With distinctive rings, rattles, and calls that are an important feature of the sidewalk soundtrack, whetted by

a

most assured

ambulant

snack

merchants

a

announce

varied

fare of savory native foods. Favored dishes in­ clude steaming Chinese soup and rice laced with nuoe

fish-oil

a

mam,

Viet Namese

to

the

seasoning revered by the point that some argue its

vintages and "great years." there

For the sweet tooth

candies, succulent sugarcane stalks, pineapple rings, and Oriental cakes and

are

luscious

other

-

fruits

with

which

the

country is lavishly endowed.

A few of these

at their wooden-sandaled feet

with every step. High-collared

serve

from

carts,

roving

restaurateurs

by hand or bicycles. But the

rolled

mated with

once

they modest, as custom dic­ tates, and supremely elegant.

shrewdly majority have less elaborate facilities. a pliant Their trademark is the ganh

Except that nylon and rayon

bamboo yoke poised

have

gained favor over the silk of yesterday, they are

from which swing neatly balanced bas­

the

cacies. Although they tote a man's load,

and long-sleeved,

same

are

at

-

According to a woman's whim, the demands of the a

contrived taboos

few no

-

-

lightly­

*

seduc-

they girl, it's said through floral prints to

tive yellow for the married vary from delicate pastels

brilliant

ao

-

which

eye-filling hues

trum. The pageant of

range

the

spec­

dai passing in ever-shift­

ing configurations is unique to Saigon, where wom­ en form an exclusive sorority of unwitting artists, each splashing her private tint on the mural of the observer's mind. *

*

*

Other actors in the drama of are

as

diverse

Saigon street-life

the hues of these gowns. As in non-affluent society there are the many as

every with no place to go who stand or squat, among

chattering themselves, or trace solitary paths of un­

welcome idleness. But for the crowd

bubbling stakes being

business

is

larger part of the the byword

the

-

piasters which mean the dif­ ference between full and empty stomach. Beggars a

few

remarkably few, for the Oriental concept of "face" is deeply ingrained in Viet Namese think­ ing.

Sidewalk tradesmen abound, seeming to in­ clude a bootblack for every eligible pair of shoes, headline-hawking newsboys by the hundreds, and an army of peddlers dispensing souvenirs along are

14

shoulder,

nearly all are women. One marvels at their crouching, bouncing, yet graceful refined by practice to seemingly gait effortless perfection.

ago.

occasion, and

one

kets, one fore one aft, heaped with deli­

generations

as

on

Curbstones

often

*

*

become

extraneous

bounda­

ries as the pedestrian throng challenges vehicular

competitors on their nome ground. No one doubts that the latter eventually will rule the roads, but today they are still far from bringing Saigon to mechanized

force

order.

Neither

the

traffic

laws

in

multiplying lights and signs have bri­ dled their hubbub, for the only common denomi­ nator of vehicles used is the wheel, and no scrap of paper or scheme of controls could hope to regulate such a potpourri. nor

Automobiles are overwhelmingly outnumbered by smaller vehicles, although registrations are rising and even American makes have been tak­ ing a place gradually beside the French models which echo Viet Nam's colonial lineage. For every car there are some ten bicycles, plus an additional host of bicycle offspring to swell the clan. Carts pushed or pulled by bikes have been contrived ingeniously to transport everything un­ der Saigon's blazing sun, from human cargo bunched

like

bananas

to

precariously-piled

pa­

godas of household effects.

The

pride of Saigon velocipedes is the cyclo­

pousse,

or

pedicab, descendant of the abandoned NORTH WESTERN

TRI -QU ARTERL Y

rickshaw. Its operator pedals from a high tricycle seat behind his

fare,

or

one

several persons de­

pending on their build and baggage. Cyclo driv­ form

ers

a

social

in

class

themselves, sr-vernl

thousand strong, whose home is the saddle lind whose range is the length and breadth of the city.

The main band makes a preserve of the downtown

district, specializing in the short hauls which pay off most handsomely, but even at Saigon's remot­

frontier the call "cyclo!" seldom

est

goes

un­

answered. Between fares they congregate in com­

petitive knots at likely pick-up points or patrol in quest of the weary walker. When the drivers weary in turn, they climb down in a spot of pub­ lic shade and advertise the cushioned comfort of

their canvas-topped cabs by personal example.

During recent years a fleet of motor scooters has

appeared to rival the bicycle brigade. Varia­

tions include scooter-drawn carts, scooter-pushed besides the just carts, and scooter-driven cyclos -

plain

familiar

scooter

to

Western

eyes.

For

many Saigonese this amounts to the "family car,"

the Viet Narnese maiden balanced sidesaddle be­

where they usually toil. But most are pulled by prancing ponies, cockfeather hats aflutter atop bobbing brows. Not quite the festooned headdress of the fierce warhorses of antiquity pictured in

hind her

Viet Namese art, but one wonders if those steeds

and among the younger set it is almost de riguer for dating

or

courting. A common street sight is

beaming beau,

arms

daintily waving

turns and elegant gown trailing in a swirl of color. several tots may be crammed in front of the driver or the flowing If

courting days

are

over,

of yesteryear more

ever

lifted their plumes

of office

proudly,

Even

so

does Saigon

itself face the uncertain

clinging to one another in approximate or­ der of height and fright.

ahead, with chin high, conscious of a past which has known both struggle and splendor.

The quaintest throwbacks still in evidence on are high-wheeled peasant traps which

The modest visage it offers today still vibrates with colorful commotion that is at once the result

gown,

the streets

daily make their

way into town from the rural

dubbed "matchboxes" by the French for their miniature size. The "matches" inside suburbs

are

as

in prayer beneath low-slung

roofs, with

baskets and bags of produce jammed among them or

lashed space-savingly to tops and sides of the are drawn by lumbering, docile

coaches. Some water

and the rebuttal of the war beyond city limits.

The

-

country folk en route to market, conical hats

bowed

road

buffalo

on

leave

from

the

rice

paddies

war

is

incalculably grim, and its sober de­

tails have been advertised widely, so one under­ stands why tourists are not exactly beating a

path to this Oriental crossroads now. Meanwhile, Saigon goes on hoarding the ingredients of an eventual pleasant surprise for Far East travelers including those who thought they had seen everything.

-

AFTER AESCHYLUS

PRAYER Behind is a man

Gather in the harvest:

With a dog on a leash.

Time no longer is,

The dog is

No time for time,

White-muzzled, white-eyed,

No room for time's

turning upward gaze away from aching eartfi's distress.

Pick up the broken apples,

With a hump in his

Back like a pyramid.

When he falls, The man lifts him up with A cane made of bone.

and learn to savor the tasteless taste of ashes:

A second harvest

Kill the dog. The man is

sown

Already dead. Amen.

and reaped from its blighted fruit.

BLAKE LEACH, Speech '63

Spring, 1963

by the first,

MICHAEL

DALZELL,

L.A

..

'63

15

�

Age, Edward Schmidt Petersen holds

a

number of positions

in

e d• lei.,

1960, 53 per cent of those over 65 years had a

in the Northwestern University Medical School-Assistant

total cash income of less than $1,000. Only 13.5 per

Dean, Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine,

cent received an income in excess of $5,000.

Oirector of the Medical School Clinics and of the Gradu­ ate Division, and Coordinator, for the Medical School, of

The

aged are chronically sick. Twice as many over 65, in proportion to the population,

of those

Medical Education for National Defense. He is Chairman of the Committee on Hospitals and Clinics for the II/inois Public Aid Commission.

have one chronic illness; and four times as many have three or more illnesses. Those 65 to 75 are

Born in Chicago, he received both his undergraduate and professional training at Harvard (M.D. 1945). His

bedridden 11 days annually; those 25 to 45, five days. When hospitalized, the aged remain longer,

internship was at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago. After service with the U.S. Medical Corps (1946-8) he became

14 days

as

sicians

more

Assistant Resident in Medicine at the

person

per

cago. He

came

University of Chi­

to Northwestern in 1951. He has held a

number of professional positions, and is a fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Diabetes Association, the American Public Health Association, and the Association of American Medical Colleges.

The article below

It

wriHen for The

was

at the invitation of the

Tri-Quarterly

editor.

may seem puzzling that medication of the aged

should have come to share in these times the cen­ tral political platform,

along with the more tradi­

tional issues of war, bread and circuses. After all, age

is

not

new:

there

was

a

time

when

good

states it to have far exceeded the best

authority

current record.

Nor is medicine: this

profession

has long called attention to its rank as the second

been dispensed contribution of money,

oldest; and medicine has without

reasonable

a

never

whether requested by Hippocrates for the Temple

Treasury

at

Cos,

or

by the Director of Internal

Revenue for the Temple of Research at Bethesda.

But suddenly, in recent years, fission would

seem

to have stirred in the atoms of each of these fac­

tors, and they have fused into a storm blowing candidates from their platforms and legislators from their accustomed

Of the

log-rolling.

aged, there are more. This is incontest­

able. In 1920, the American population numbered 106 million, of whom 4.9 million, or 4.7 per cent,

By 1960, the population had in­ creased to 179 million, including 16.6 million, or 9.2 per cent, over 65. In 1984, 250 million citizens are anticipated, 25 million, or 10 per cent of whom are expected to be over 65. were

The

16

over

65.

aged are poor. This some may contest. But

against 8.6 days. They visit their phy­ often, 6.8 visits versus 5 visits per year.

care is more expensive. Between 1929 1960, the consumers' price index rose 70 per cent for all items, 105 per cent for medical care.

From 1950 to 1960, the rise in the medical care

Medical

and

index

was

twice that of the

overall,

and

more

than that of any other component. In 1940, private

expenditures for medical care amounted to $3.0 billion, public $0.9 billion, totaling $3.9 billion or 4.1 per cent of the gross national product. By 1960, these had increased to $20.3 billion and $6.2 billion respectively, totaling $26.5 billion, now 5.4 per cent of the gross national product. Of this, the senior citizen spends the patriarch's share. In 1958, the per capita gross expenditure for medical care of those over 65 was $177; for those under,

$86.

While the costs of medical

care

are

under con­

sideration, a historical digression may prove en­ lightening. Might it not be appropriate to com­ pare the problem of medicating the aged with that of educating the young? Both activities us­ ually represent the major service effort of a com­ munity. There is scarcely a town in which the school and the hospital are not now the largest and finest structures. Both are expensive activi­ ties, generally considered to benefit the communi­ ty. Both require heavy expenditure for an in­ tangible and never guaranteed result. Both, if in varying degrees and at different stages, fall upon every citizen.

If some resemblance of these problems is con­ ceded, then one may wonder why the public sup­ port of education was a major issue of the early 19th century in the United States, and that of

medical

care

would

seem

to be

one

of the late

20th.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

Ind MODey prior to 1800, education was a church, and of the occasional private academy. So, too, was medicine, though subsequent to the Middle Ages with decreasing emphasis on the monastic hospital, and increasing effort by the individual physician. Then during It is said that

function

the

of

the

early decades of the 19th century, debate this country and most of the western

By EDWARD S. PETERSEN

the number of nurses has grown tenfold, totaling 504,000. In 1873, there were 180 hos­ pitals; now there are 6,876. By 1957-1958, when the mean private gross expenditure for health care for all persons was $94, physicians' services amounted to $31, hospital care $22, drugs $19, years

now

dental

stirred

Perhaps there was less interest in the provision

world, with the result that public school systems

of public medical care than of public education

of various

half ago for reasons quite other than financial. Perhaps the citizen of that day was

types and levels became accepted and

established.

The most that

.

$14, other medical services $8.

care

a

ready hypothesis would

century and

a

seem

half ago medical

to be

care

was

cheap, and education relatively expensive; and that now both are expensive, medical care prob­ ably the moreso. Indeed, reference may easily be found as to how cheap medical care once was.

For example, in 1870 an office visit cost 25 cents, a house call 50 cents, and a complete obstetrical delivery $5.00. Unfortunately, national figures for medical expenditures are not available except for relatively recent years. As regards education, in 1850 the total national expenditure is reported as $16 million; in 1870, $95 million; and in 1910, $560 million. By 1940, educational expenditures had in­ creased to public expenditure of $2.7 billion and private of $0.5 billion, totaling $3.2 billion; but at this time, as noted above, medical expendi­ tures were already $3.9 billion. In 1960, public edu­ cational expeditures were $16 billion and pri­ vate $4.5 billion, totaling $20.5 billion, a striking rise but not as great as that of medical expendi­ tures to $26.5 billion. It may well be that expendi­ tures in these two areas have always been ap­ proximately the same. At least, were one to base an estimate on the number of physicians as con­ trasted to the number of teachers, one might con­ clude that educational expenditures actually have increased relatively more rapidly than medical.

In 1870, there were 221,000 teachers and 62,383 physicians in the United States. Now there are 1,400,000 teachers or more than six times as many, and 256,000 physicians, a fourfold increase.

Of course, it is not accurate to base an estimate of total medical expenditure on the number of

physicians. The percentage of medical expendi­ tures devoted to physicians' services has de­ creased markedly as other areas of health service have increased far more rapidly. Over the past 40

Spring, 1963

century and

too well

only

cians he

a

a

aware

supported

that the were

some

harmless

30,000 physi­ at best, and

quite dangerous at worst. It may be noted that only four remedies of that time were of actual benefit. Those were the prescription of lime juice for scurvey vaccination for smallpox, quinine for fever (if it chanced to be due to malaria), and digitalis for dropsy (if due to heart failure). Es­ sentially all other efforts were useless, or deadly, as was the prevalent custom of massive bleeding, ,

which

helped to kill at least one President. In striking contrast, successful educational efforts would seem to have been undertaken by Socrates and other teachers back to Zinjanthropus.

To

return

from

this

unresolved historical

di­

gression to the medical problems of the currently aged.

The medical care of the aged is currently sup­ ported through a great variety of sources. Gener­ ally, among those supporting themselves, a much greater proportion is paid directly rather than through insurance, as contrasted to the general population. In a recent survey, those under 65 paid out of pocket less than 30 per cent of hospital bills averaging around $300; those over 65 paid more than 50 per cent of bills around $400. The remainder in each instance was paid by insur­ ance.

For those with insufficient resources of their of

support depend on chance, tradi­ scraping up help.

The fortunate citizen who spent at least a short period in the Armed Forces in time of war re­ own,

sources

tion

and individual talent for

ceives the most excellent of

care

at

no

expense.

He who presents an intriguing medical problem, preferably one that is surgically removable, and is

able to reach

is

as

well off

a teaching or research center, technically as the Veteran, if not

17

quite financially. Traditionally, the medical care of the indigent has been provided by the local community or county, supplemented by private charitable

resources.

Public support has usually

been limited to the provision of hospital facilities, with physicians expected to provide their services

adapted to a large and varied nation than supported entirely by the federal government.

better one

It

is

discouraging to

changed,

how

see

attitudes

have

and how the senior citizen now feels that

his problems should be solved. In a recent sur­ vey, individuals over 6'5 were asked to respond

the following question: "Who do you think should provide for the older person who has stop­

without recompense. While there has been an in­ creasing tendency to staff such hospitals with

to

salaried physicians, much of the burden of

ped working, if he needs help?" Their responses are summarized below. (Percentages total more than 100 because respondents mentioned more than one source of assistance.)

care

still falls upon the volunteer attending physician.

The totally Old Age

indigent citizen, supported through Assistance Program, is provided medical care through a combination of federal and state support varying to a great extent in accordance with his state of residence. In Illinois, hospital, nursing home and office medical care are provided by the Program,

the

Since the passage of the Kerr-Mills Amendment of 1960, the citizen need not be totally indigent and receiving Old Age Assistance to be eligible this

combined federai-state sup­ port of his medical care. This program has been implemented in about half the states, and the to receive

new

type of assistance provided varies a great deal, in Illinois being limited essentially to hospital There is

care.

an

inherent

administrative diffi­

in this program due to the

culty necessity of in­ the financial resources when vestigating patient's for on admission to application support is made a hospital. Consequently, by the time the patient's eligibility has been established, he is apt to have died, recovered and paid his own bill, or recov­ €:red and vanished, leaving the hospital to collect best it

as

can.

Still another

resource

remains for the talented

and persistent citizen. All he need do is convince

the Federal or State Office of Vocational Rehabili­ tation that given

leg,

or a new

a

wig,

certain amount of care,

a new

he is certain to regain employ­

all

medical expenses involved in his habilitation will then be paid.

ment;

It would be pleasant to conclude

re­

presentation problems customary suggestion that given another $20 bil­ lion or so for research, a healthy and carefree senior citizenship will become available for all at medical

of

the

a

of

the

no

expense to anyone. A somewhat different out­

aged with the

likely. Consider in the future a landscape giant institutions, anyone of them the size of the collected pyramids of Egypt.

There, attached to his artificial heart-lung-kidney, the aging citizen will be sustained in unconscious­ ness forever, or until the last of his descendants joins him in exhaustion. look seems

more

of

In that

ways, it may well prove regrettable the problem of public support of medical

care

was

some

not raised at the time of its resolution

in the field of education. Our present educational

system, based upon multiple sources of support, local, state, federal and private, would Seem far 18

In taking

In meeting

of

his medical

care

his problems

expenses

The federal government The company he worked for

53%

49%

45

36

Each state government His family

34

35 42

His union

33 17

The local government

15

21

Community agencies

11

18

18

The very complexity of the problem leads to hope for an easy solution through bills and amendments in Washington in place of seeking and experi­ menting with solutions at home. Unfortunately, various national health services have been devised

since the first in Germany in 1883, and none has provided more than a temporary and partial solu­ tion. All have stumbled

against the hard but in­ especially when feeling under par, prefers to be cared for hand and foot; and nowhere is a totally comfortable environment provided at no cost to the individual save in the hospital of a national health service.

It is usually assumed that access to the univer­ sally desired, but unfortunately limited and ex­ pensive environment of the hospital, can be con­ trolled successfully by the admitting physician.

It is too much to expect of a profession dedi­ cated to enhancing the welfare and comfort of mankind to undertake so vicious a task as to deny the patient his one desire. In the first place, the physician himself prefers to have his patient in the well-controlled environment of the hospital; it is much easier for him to care for the patient neatly placed in a hospital bed rather than in­ conveniently appearing at the office or demand­ ingly calling from his home. In the second place, it may be physically hazardous for the physician to deny to the patient what he considers his ab­ solute right. The life of at least one physician in a government hospital was saved only when the pistol of a patient demanding admission failed to escapable fact that every person,

fire.

A new universal law has been recognized to the

effect that a hospital will fill to capacity no matter how

beds

available

in

community. been felt for some States, years that four general hospital beds per thou­ sand people is the most desirable number. In most many

In the United

are

a

it has

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

parts of the country,

these

are

now

available,

grams

continually, and adapt them

to local

con­

and almost everyone is filled. The West Germans have built beds even faster, and have eleve-n P('I"

ditions. Canada, likewise, achieves its health ef­ fort primarily through its provinces, and benefits

available; these are all filled, and there are long lists of national health service partici­ pants waiting to be admitted. Hitherto, the only successful solution has been that of the British, which simply has been to provide no new hospi­ tals at all. The existing ones, many built early in the 19th century, apparently are sufficiently un­ comfortable to permit those requiring emergency

from

thousand

admission at least to be accommodated.

successful outcome should the national program under consideration in this country be adopted.

While the patient is expected to make a modest

contribution, the amount is not such clude the hospital from remaining

to

as

the

ex­

best

"travel

bargain" available to the elderly patient change. It is most unfortunate that a national health plan has been proposed and sec­ in need of a

onded in this country when proper attention has not been paid to studying the excellent arrange­

in

turmoil

Saskatchewan

will

attest.

It

does not speak well for the strength of the indi­ vidual

American

state,

community and citizen

that their counterparts from the Swiss canton to the Australian state should show so much more of a

forceful, imaginative and adaptive approach problems of medical care.

to the financial

Sweden,

began in 1955, has not been as fortunate, and already there are complaints of 40 patients dying while on the wait­ ing list of a hospital.

There is nothing whatever to indicate a more where the national health service

vigorous provincial experimentation, as the

recent

The difficulties care

for

the

inherent in financing medical aged, and for all, are not to be

ignored, and will

not resolve themselves. They by an antiquated patchwork; of federal amendments, hastily conceived and po­ htically balanced. There is abundant time for thorough study and a search for new approaches at every level, individual, organizational, local, state and national. If we must display immediate political vigor, let it be to dig cellars to fend off the Horseman of War, and fill the holes with grain to drive away Famine. Death and the Devil should be riding with us leisurely for a sufficiently' long time to permit ample planning for their un­ likely departure.

will not be cured

ments devised in Australia and Switzerland; there

federal support for those in need is

combined

with strong local and voluntary programs.

avoided

Having

fixed national pattern, both countries have been able to evolve and improve their proa

Acknowledgement. Factual data in this report are taken pri­ marily from "Financing Health Care of the Aged, Part I: A study of the dimensions of the problem." This was prepared by

a

joint

American

task

-

of

Blue

the

Association

Associations in October,

and

Cross

and

Association

published jointly by these

1962.

BEACH IN WINTER

LAZARUS All that

force

Hospital

The secret

the joy so close

snow

is

falling

upon the lonely beach;

To horror in the sisters' eyes,

The joy of it: to realize The awful meaning of repose

Blanketing the life-guard chair, a summer object of long ago,

With ending of it; the force

The fragile flakes compact,

Beneath the instant earth, churning,

icing smooth rough sand;

Terribly alive, the fearful force Of life, beyond all learning ; All that, the glory of it-

The dune grass grows

stiff, erect with cold.

Seagulls leave their crying;

We know the story of it.

a

We know the story, but never

hush entombs the beach­

A stillness ruffled only

Know the end of the endeavour.

by the mourning of the surf.

Tell me: did that man sever MICHAEL DALZELL,

From the earth's behaviour

L.A

..

'63

To deny again his saviour,

Jesus, who deprived him of forever ?

MALCOLM McCOLLUM,

Spring, 1963

L.A., '64

19

the more

things seem to change

•

•

•

by WILBERT SEIDEL

It is a temptation for us to describe almost everything we do today in terms of our dramatic break with the past. Our pre­ occupation with our differenoes from our predecessors implies a belief that ever-accelerating change somehow makes our time as well as ourselves unique. We begin to believe that progress and the value of man's acts are proportional to this change.

We forget that the more things look different to us the more they conceal their relationship to the past. For example, in art today everyone observes mostly what is strange, unfamiliar or new, sometimes even to the amazement of the artist who makes it. Occasionally he alone remains aware of his artistic origins when others do not.

Art students in universities naturally reflect the interests and pursuits which characterize the thinking of serious contemporary artists. It is therefore interesting to observe the interaction of

tradition and innovation in their work, and to note how the more

things seem to change, the more they are the same.

The prints reproduced here are from the collection of under­ graduate student work in graphic arts in the Department of Art. 20

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

2§' p_ r> n.,_b",-� ....

Woodcut

-

"Fish"

1 'I s:

(,

(201;4" x 43;4") by Fujiko Nakaya, L.A., 1957

Japanese student draws from her own culture the ancient the fish but the vigorous symbol of youth and courage and free carving reflects the interests of the contemporary woodcutter and produces a feeling unlike that of the traditional Japanese print.

A

-

-

Linocut

-

"Fish"

(8" x 3") by Russell Asala, L.A., 1961

A reminder that everyone who has

cut a

linoleum block

remains indebted to the inventive imagination of the Chinese artists

of the sixth century who were probably the first to print impressions from carved blocks of wood.

Spring, 1963

21

Lithographs are prints made from limestones about 3 inches thick upon which drawings have been made with an oily crayon or liquid tusche. The stone is chemically treated arid kept wet so that, when rolled with an oily ink, the ink will adhere to the drawn parts but not to the clear parts of the stone. The process is unique in allowing printing from a flat surface.

L·tt hograp h

-

"W oman D'" raunng

I: (10" x 14112.")

by David Stuntzner, L.A., 1960 It is probable that nothing is done today that was unknown to the discoverer of lithography 200 years ago. The print below shows a

22

student drawing on a stone.

some

The sense of mystery asso­ ciated with this traditional subject is achieved through technical means

quite different from those

customarily employed several decades ago.

This inclination on the part

of the artist to alter his methods in the interest of expression illustrates one aspect of the contemporary artist's freedom.

"The Burning Bush" (73;.1" x 12") Lithograph

by William Ishmael, L.A., 19.59 -

"The Hospital Bed" Lithograph (8Y2" x 10Y2") by Maren Mouritsen, Speech, 1961 -

Drawing from living models con­ tinues to fascinate the artist as it has

for centuries. This was drawn in a city orphanage hospital. It was later reproduced on the cover of a hospital The Presbyterianpublication -

St. Luke's Review.

Spr.ing, 1963

23

uLthograp h

-

"H ea d"

x 10") 7� (7112"

L son, LA' ., 1956 b y L ynn WOl °

First, a lithographic stone was blackened with crayon.

This head was then drawn by scraping away crayon with a razor

blade. Head drawing can easily deteriorate into

unimaginative, imitative portraiture, but in this instance the choice of scraping tool suggested new effects to the artist and transformed the qualities of the drawing into something unexpected.

24

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

l..

"Tree and Rock" Lithograph (6lj2" x 93/4") by Mary Frankenberger, L.A., 1957 -

commercial

In

the

artists'

work

printing

today

be

trans­

can

ferred photographically to a sheet o] thin metaL, then printed on high­ speed presses. For making the original drawing, however, the artist still needs the special sur­ face and character of the stone to achieve the many unique qualities that distinguish lithography. Thus, although methods change in one shop, in the other they remain the same.

The editors invited Wilbert

Seidel, Professor in the Depart­ Tri-QuarterLy some examples Art, of student work, done in his classes in the graphic arts. These are drawings which, over the years, he has especially re­ ment of

to choose for The

membered.

Spring, 1963

25

tHe

A John Hay fellow at Northwestern this year, B. forrest

Shearon is an English teacher in the Jefferson County School System, Louisville, Kentucky. Born near Bolivar, Tennessee, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree (1956) from Union University, Jackson, Tennessee, and taught in West Tennessee for two years before moving to Louisville. He is one of eighty-seven of the nation's high school teachers chosen for a year's study by the John Hay fellowship Program. (fourteen of the fellows are at Northwestern and the rest are studying in five other universities: California, Chicago, Columbia, Har­ vard, or Yale.) He has also done graduate work at Memphis State University and the University of Louis­

ville.

a prerequisite to the derstanding the racial problem in the South.

-

solution

-

of

FAIR ADVANTAGES

When the distant observer focuses his penetrat­ ing gaze on the South, he has, it seems to me, both fair and unfair

advantages

..

Because of his

position away from the scene, he can often see rights denied the negro which may not be as ap­ parent to the Southerners themselves. This is not to say that many Southerners cannot, or have not,

recognized their own discriminations; it is simply a

statement of the obvious

the outside observer

-

clearly than can oth­ ers who are in the middle of the picture. can

The

more

legal rights denied the negro

simple anecdote which he called a joke. It went something like this: Two farmers were talking

perhaps by the distant witness. He has viewed with disgust the denial of many ne­ groes' voting rights in the South. Only recently

about the moon. One asked if there had been

he read about the

An

old

man

in West Tennessee

once

told

me

a

a

full

the

ones

best

are

seen

joke because I never understood why the old man laughed so loudly when he finished telling it. But

investigation concerning voting procedures in the home county of Mississippi's Senator Eastland, himself the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee! With equal disgust the outside viewer may follow the seemingly slow pace of public school integration in parts of the

there is

South. The fact that after the well-known 1954 Su­

moon

the night before. The other

wasn't

sure

because he had

that he

replied

just seen it "from

a

distance." I have probably remembered this little -

things

some

see

a

bit of folk wisdom in the fact that

cannot be

positive about

hear from

a

many

things we

see

we or

distance.

and

past decade the distance problem has been reflected in the numerous articles

speeches about the South. It has become al­

most axiomatic to discuss the Southern part of the

United

States

there.

Since

remind

in

this

terms

is

of

the

racial

conflicts

true, perhaps it is well to

the outside observer that he has

many

in addition to some limitations, when

advantages, views, from his distant vantage point, the South's negro-white question. By recognizing his advantages and admitting his limitations, the re­ mote viewer may eventually come to a better unhe

26

decision

gan massive negro

In the

often

Court

preme

some

Southern

states

be­

building programs is to almost of treason to the lips cries enough bring of the

school

concerned outsider.

that this

But

he

had to learn

subtle evasion of the orders from the

nation's

highest court was mild when comoared outright defiance of the Faubuses and the Barnetts. The equal use of public parks, public libraries, public transportation, even some public

to the

streets has at

times.

outside

also been denied the Southern negro The

often

conscientious has

observer

from

the

advantage of seeing all these denials of basic legal rights as endangering the very foundations of our legal system. the

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

Unimpeded by strong emotional attitudes, the distant witness may also have the advantage of seeing the human rights being denied the no I� I'll in many parts of the South. In a sectioll of t lu­ country steeped in the Christian tradition or hruth­

erly love, the entire concept has often been lost by many so-called Christians. In 1957 I was asked to present the opening devotional at a teachers' meeting in the small county in West Tennessee where I was teaching at the time. Already a "soft-spoken" integrationist, I decided this was a good chance to teach teachers my beliefs. I chose a

rather strong text from the Bible

.

-

'If anyone

God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar" and invented a "parable" to go along with it. Since I knew my teaching position would be endangered if I directly talked about having love for the negro (and being willing to demon­ says, 'I love

rightful advan­ tag!': he can see the world implications of con­ tinual discrimination against the negro in the South. Once, when I pointed out to a Southern interested

outsider

may

have

a

(ru-nd of mine what the rest of the world was say­

ing and thinking about our treatment of the ne­ replied rather vehemently, "To hell with world opinion! I'm getting sick and tired of this gro, he

talk." He may continue to get "sick and tired" of

hearing about world opinion, but retrogressive

comments

and

the

of

in

-

spite of the

Goldwater's,

the the

the

of

in­ Welches talk an Towers, creasingly smaller world will not subside; indeed, -

it will increase.

-

by, for example, integrating the schools), 1 used a Japanese family on the West Coast during World War II as the heroes of my parable. After carefully showing the prejudice against these "yellow J aps," I fully expected all of the teachers immediately to see the similarity with the South's prejudice against the "black nig­ gers." Unfortunately, this was not the case. The devotional was highly praised; but, as far as 1 could observe by their comments, not a single strate that love

teacher

or

administrator

understood

my

real

point. (I have jokingly thought that this was my time of closest sympathy with the Master Teacher who was so often misunderstood, even when he was infrequently praised.) The distant viewer has the legitimate advantage of immediately recog­ nizing the basic inconsistency in the South's pro­ fessed religious beliefs and its actual practices.

Undoubtedly the outside observer has the right­ also seeing, apart from the reli­ gious implications of racial segregation, the wrong

ful benefit of

that is done to the individual character of the negro because he is discriminated

against.

When

the

Little Rock spectacle was at its height, a rather loud-mouthed, ignorant high school senior in one of my classes came in a bit early and said to the students already there, "Anybody want to go to Little Rock with me to fight them niggers?" His sentiments, expressed in West Tennessee just across the Mississippi River from Arkansas, re­ flect those of far too many (but certainly not all) of the whites in the Deep South. The phrase, "them niggers," is an indication of the total lack of respect for the negro as a human being. Cou­

pled with this lack of respect is the apparent lack of understanding in the South of the importance of

good education for the negro (and for the white, sometimes). It is rather easy for the outside ob­ server

to

see

the human wrong done to

vidual who is neither respected

nor

an

indi­

given proper

educational opportunities.

There is still

Spring, 1963

another

To imply that all Southern whites do not see the wrongs done to the negro

(and to the nation) by would be, of course, completely false. Many Southerners, even those in the Deep South, do recognize their wrongs; but the impartial observer from the outside has a far greater chance of readily detecting those wrongs and their implications. continued

Certain pressures

especially legal ones relat­ ing to the right to vote, the right to equal treat­ ment under the law, the right to equal use of pub­

in

which

the

dis-

-

lic facilities and institutions

should be brought by concerned outsiders.

United States history for the past hundred years has shown, in fact, that unless external pressures are applied, the South will do little to improve the negro's status in many of these areas. Be­ cause, of his unique position, the distant viewer can openly discuss the injustices done to the bear

to

on

the

-

South

Southern negro and can, without fear, press the negro's legal claims. (While he is pushing the negro's legal rights, perhaps the outsider should

leave the moral

suasion to the Southern leaders

themselves; it must ultimately come from them anyway.) The fact of his rightful advantages should be realized by the person away from the southern picture and should be utilized properly to help improve racial relations there.

UNFAIR ADVANTAGES

Quite apart from the many rightful advantages has, the outside critic should recognize that

he

he also has

some

unfair

It may be inevi­

ones.

table that some benefits will be derived by the dis­ -

observer, but he needs to know when he is being unjust in his criticism. The Southerner, it seems to me, has the right to remind the distant viewer about some of these wrongful practices.

tant

When the outside witness' continually

long-fingered glove dirt under his an

unfair

at the South to

he is

nails, advantage. One own

has

points his

cover

up the

certainly taking only to walk

through the streets of certain areas in South Chi­ cago

area

discrimination

or

-

or

observe

the

the Mexican in the

treatment

West,

or

of read

the

Indian

about

the

27

racial

problems

York City

in

Washington, D.C.

the realm of

in New

or

to realize that all is not

-

perfect

in

relations outside of the South

race

either. It is hoped that Mr. Outside Fingerpointer is trying to solve his own racial problems also;

but, if he is not. his disgust with the South may be viewed only as ill-concealed hypocrisy. Recently, at an Evanston, Illinois, service station, an Ev­ anston citizen told

me

he liked the South's atti­

tude toward the negro.

"Down

there," he said, "the nigger knows his place and stays in it."

This man, who was stationed in one of the South­ ern army camps during the Korean conflict, may express the opinion of many more people outside of the South than the distant viewer would

inability, to understand at least three things: the mind of the South; the hardships under which Southern racial moderates and liberals operate; and the changes and improvements being made in the South.

There is really no such a thing as the Southern mind, any more than there is the Northern mind

the democratic mind.

or

South

must

mind (I use this personality) of the

The

in relation to the total

term

generalized greatly in order

be

to

make any concrete statements about it. It is cer­ tainly difficult for the distant viewer to compre­ hend the prejudice many Southerners hold against the negro. In fact, these same Southerners would

care

usually deny that they are prejudiced at all. They

Perhaps the outside observer feels that if he shouts loudly enough about the South's prob­ lems, no one will hear about this Evanston man or about the other respectable citizens who refuse to allow a negro family to move into their neigh­

would merely say that the negro has his rights and his place just as the white has his rights

to admit.

borhood. Is it any wonder that many Southerners look a bit askance at the distant viewer whose actions belie his words of

indignation

about the

South?

Another unfair

advantage

the person outside of

and his place. The fact that the "rights" and the "place" of the negro are on a separate and fre­

quently lower level than those of the white seems to be completely forgotten by the Deep South mind.

Numerous

such as the "low arguments morals" of the negro, his presumed low mentality,

the so-called Biblican injunction against integra­ are glibly pre­ tion, the fear of intermarriage -

the South may take is the gaining of a personal position of power through his finger-pointing ac­

by quently false

tivities. The best

lies

example of this, unfortunately, is often the politician, especially some conserva­ tive Northern and Western Republicans. A few of them, as an aid to election, have loudly pro­ claimed their sympathy with the rights of ne­ groes; then, with the election over, they have frequently voted with Southern Democrats to de­ feat issues which would do so much to help the negroes attain those same rights. Federal aid to education, so desperately needed in the South, has been defeated time and again by this "righteous" coalition. The same group helped to defeat the advancement of Dr. Robert Weaver, a negro, to a cabinet position. The refusal to halt filibuster­ ing on many civil rights bills must also be cred­

sented

a

many Southerners.

outsider, as

a

means

LIMITATIONS The

advantages

-

of the external witness must be

seen

ones­

in proper

often

28

are

scene.

the result of the

as

a

Southern

bus, that he would go to a extremely difficult for a which Southerner to lose this sort of prejudice I would not have called prejudice at all at that time. Perhaps the dispassionate outsider, who has not lived the Southern mind, can get closer to it by somewhat shabby parallels outside the school.

It

is

-

field of of

us

relations. It is very hard for many the adamant stand of the

race

to

understand

American Medical Association against the admin­ Medicare plan. But not many of us to reap the financial harvest of the

AMA's mind. The Catholic church's

opposition to equally incomprehensible to many of us who have not lived the Catholic religion. If the distant viewer really wishes to understand the prejudiced mind of some Southerners, he might look deeply into himself for some secret preju­ birth control is

dice of his

own.

One Northern friend of mine once

asked, "Why

should I try to understand the South's prejudiced mind? If it's wrong, it's wrong; and we ought to my

answers

obvious: the attempt to understand

to him is the a

problem is

the first step toward its solution. Even the recog­ nition

of

Those limitations

Deep

South attitudes toward the negro is better

the

than

blatant condemnation.

perspective with the limitations he has because of his distance from the

un­

sit in the back of the

different

stamp it out." One of

both fair and unfair

arguments

youngster, always assuming that the negro would go to the back door of my house, that he would

politician or not, denounces the of attaining personal power or of achieving certain personal ambitions, he is taking an unfair advantage of his position away from the scene. One hopes that there are few who derive (or desire to derive) unjust benefits from their distant accusations; but they, like the no­ negroes-in-this-neighborhood distant observers, need some gentle reminders about their own hypocrisy. any

half-true

best,

mind. I remember,

produced this

istration's

South

at

derstood. Generations of ingrained prejudice have

have lived

on.

or,

Behind these fre­

mind that almost must be lived to be

When

ited to this coalition. The list could go

-

difficulty,

or

even

the

difficulty

in

comprehending

NORTHWESTERN

some

TRI-QUARTERLY

The second limitation of the remote observer's

lane

are

-

often

recognized for their excellence.

position is his difficulty in

realizing the hardships

It is not surprising that most of these universities

under which

moderate

integrated. (Even athletics seems to be help­ ing to integrate some Southern colleges many alumni would like to see the good negro athletes improving the won-lost record of their alma mater.) The right to vote is being gained, and used, by more and more negroes. Public schools, parks, libraries, and zoos have recently been in­ tegrated, usually without incident. News media naturally highlight the problem areas, thus leav­ ing the outsider without knowledge of the quiet progress being made in many places. The Old South has not, of course, gone with the wind, but it is going with the advent of new ideas, new blood, new industry, and new external and in­ ternal pressures. Perhaps a sincere effort on the

racial

the

or

liberal

in

the Deep South must operate. The economic, phy­ sical, and social pressures have constuntly si­ lenced the voices of many of these inwardly

cour­

ageous souls. Some of those who have

spoken out in favor of the negro's rights have lost their jobs, had their

houses

bombed

those of their families

and

their

endangered,

lives

and

have lost

or

lifetime friends.

Examples are numerous. Repre­ sentative Brooks Hayes was defeated in a spec­ tacular write-in campaign in Little Rock after he merely asked for common sense in the situation.

A Baptist minister, Paul Turner, in Clinton, Ten­ nessee, was cursed, spit upon, even slugged by his fellow townsmen when he dared to walk with a

few

school.

negro children to the newly integrated A number of Southerners newspaper­ -

businessmen, lawyers, professors, ministers and priests have recently spoken out and begged for sanity in the Deep South. They did so knowing full well that their businesses might be boycotted, their homes or offices fired into, or their positions removed. The distant observer might well try to put himself in situations of people like these before he condemns too loudly the si­ lence of others. The Southern racial liberal, of course, does not always walk in continual fear, men,

-

but

examples such as the above do show that fear is justified at least in a few areas of the South. Without consideration of these fears, the outsider is limited in his understanding of the real Southern picture. some

-

relating either directly or problem, in which the ex­

There is a third area,

indirectly to the ternal

witness

race

may

be

limited.

he

Unless

has

carefully studied the South in recent years, he may be unaware of the changes (and often im­ in the economy, in educational provements) standards, in integration, in voting rights­ which are taking place there. The rapid indus­ trial development in many Southern states, which have depended on agriculture since colonial days, is making an impact on the area. New people, -

sometimes with

new

attitudes toward

race

rela­

tions, have moved in; and slowly their influence is being felt. The populations are becoming more urban centered, contrasting sharply with the ear­ lier rural dominance. This too is making a differ­ ence sometimes producing, ironically, racial ghettos similar to those in some Northern and Western cities. Educational standards are gradu­ ally being raised in the South as teachers' sala­ -

ries

(still pitifully low!)

teacher-training

are

programs

increased,

are

as

improved,

versities

such

as

rather than

Spring, 1963

a

university),

stand and overcome, if possible, his limitations would be helpful, not only to himself but also to his

efforts

improving racial relations in the

in

South.

CONTRADICTIONS IN THE SOUTH If there

advantages and limitations to the position outside the South, is there an "ideal" distance? Possibly not. Just as in viewing any other group of complicated indi­ viduals, the ideal observer, if he exists, must rec­ ognize the contradictions that are present. For example, while one church member will talk about the good race relations that used to pre­ vail in his church when "ole Uncle Henry" would back-corner come every Sunday and sit in his

distant

are

viewer's

seat, the young minister of that may be

with his

pleading

and Tu-

to sit in

same

station! At the

Different

of the South also

areas

contradictions.

The

ideal observer of

make the mistake

confusing

point

up the

would

never

racial

problems

in Louisville, Kentucky, for example, with those in Jackson, Mississippi. These two areas, like so many

others,

completely different; yet too lumped into one

are

often the entire South has been

huge mold by some uninformed outside viewers.

The mere passage of time or a provocative dis­ cussion may reveal contradictions within individ­ uals themselves. Several years ago a young Southern to

man

told

me,

"Integration will

Mississippi." Last spring he

"Integration will be

as

church

same

congregation

waiting room with the negro at the bus same time many negroes are ac­ the cepting responsibilities that go along with more rights, others are seizing the rights and shunning the responsibilities. the

and

Vanderbilt, Duke, North Caro­ Southern

part of the concerned distant observer to under­

college

lina, Georgia Tech, Louisville (really a Midwest­ ern

-

come

the need for better education is understood. Uni­ -

are

a

never

told

me,

long time in coming to

Mississippi." Of course he has been proved wrong on both counts. Perhaps he will now begin his sentence was

with

teaching

"complete integration!" in

a

When

I

small town in West Tennessee

29

1957, I asked my students to write personal essays stating why they believed in segregation or integration. After the papers were written, I (under the pretense of being objective) tried to controvert their arguments, regardless of the posi­ tion they took. Needless to say, most of the papers favored segregation, so I had the chance to coun­ ter most of the segregationist arguments. Many of in

these

students

had

argue with

had

never

the

The Pond�

opportunity

integrationist before. At least one of them, an extremely bright sophomore boy, was slightly "enlightened." He first wrote his essay favoring segregation; but on the day after we had discussed the papers in class, he turned in another paper (without my asking for it) stating why he now believed in integration of the races. Undoubtedly this rather hasty reversal had not been clearly thought out, but it does in­

really to

dicate

the

an

contradictions

that

so

often

fill

By Barry G. Brissm.

the

Southern mind.

Although I spent the first twenty-four years of my life in West Tennessee, near the Mississippi state line; and although I left the Deep South nearly five years ago I am certainly not' an ideal observer. My memories of the South swiftly change from those of nostalgia to nausea (es­ pecially when I remember Little Rock or Oxford, Mississippi). Like many other viewers of "far away places," I fluctuate between the highly romantic view and the

sharply critical one. Feel­

ing this way about the South (which I have known personal experience and have also observed from a distance), it is difficult for me to conceive of an ideal witness who has never really had a close-up view. The intricate details almost de­ mand careful scrutiny. Sometimes the Southerner himself can best guide the outside observer in from

his tour of the intricacies there. In

garding

the

critics

of

an

essay

re­

the

modern

poet poetry, critics, if en­ gaged in a bacon-judging contest, would impa­ tiently say �o a pig if it wandered up, "Go away, Pig! What do you know about bacon?" The cri­ tic of the South must not object to a bit of on­ the-scene guidance, especially if he wishes to Randall Jarrell wrote that

some

become that elusive ideal observer.

Even if he only desires to become

an

individual

well informed about the South's racial

the

concerned

outsider

should

problems, do three things:

recognize his just advantages and use them prop­ erly; candidly admit (or seek to overcome) his limitations and not misuse them; and realize that contradictions exist in the South, as they do else­ where.

The South, like the moon when seen "from a distance," presents a perplexing pic­ ture; and the outside observer must be cognizant of this complicated scene if he wishes to help improve racial relations there.

T HE DOOR opened and

puff of wind blew in, followed by Charlie. "Jim is dead," he said. I a

stood there in the middle of the aisle with the feed

bucket in my hand. "He's over to the stud barn

"

"Somebody got him in the chest with pitch fork." I set the bucket down on the dirt

Charlie said. a

floor then and followed Charlie outside. An cover

sky;

of grey clouds moved it was November.

steadily

even

the

across

A

police car was parked in front of the stud barn, a bright piece of city thrown amongst the weathered cluster of buildings and rail fences, framed against pine trees and mountains, sinister and out of place. I didn't go inside to look at Jim, just waited by the door. After a while they came out, two of them, carrying him. Four holes were evenly spaced across his chest, and the blood had dried

his wool shirt. His blond hair

on

was

still

the front locks falling across his brow

as combed, them him into load they always did. Denton helped the car, and then, straightening up, he said, "Duke's gone, all right. He lived up there in the

apartment seen

at

the

over

and

garage,

now

he

ain't

the place. Either of you guys Duke around this morning?" Denton looked

there. He ain't

on

Charlie and I shook

us.

to

me

like he

our

heads.

off," Denton said, "This is the first time Duke has been off the place "Looks

since we hired him

killed him The two

and

on

run

run

here

a

year ago. Duke has

off."

policemen got into the

car

slammed the doors. We stood there

they drove out of the yard and I a

-

-

then and

watching as

Denton and Charlie

and when they had gone Denton stood for

while rubbing the stubble on his chin with a big

hand and

looking vacantly down the road after them, and then he looked at Charlie. "Don't let them

mares

into the south pasture any

more

this

year," he said. "Better put 'em somewheres else."

30

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

8arry G. 8rissman, who comes from Naperville, Illinois, is a junior in the Col/ege of Liberal Arts, majoring in English. Graduate school lies ahead of him, with college teaching as his probable career. Farming and music are his non-curricular specialties. The music is "popular piano," and the farming runs from last summer's work on a thoroughbred farm near Wheaton, lIIinois, back to boyhood summers working on his uncle's farm in North Dakota.

"I think we'd

'em, Denton,

Charlie sat stooped over the table looking at the

being "Dammit, old man, I told you I don't want any

cards in his hand. He never looked at me when he

just

as

well leave

"

as

-

horses in that south pasture and I mean it!"

Charlie looked full into the broad, unshaven

talked, and he- always half muttered, as if he were talking to himself. "He'll have to hire one more than he figures on if he don't quit losing his tem­

face. "Where

per. He's

d'you want 'em?"

"I don't give a rip where you put 'em. Keep 'em

in the barn if you have to, but do what I tell you.

Keep 'em out of that south pasture." and walked away from us, after him.

The police

with two

He turned

and Charlie

glared

back later that day, this time and eight men. They formed a

came

cars

search party and moved off into the foothills to the

west, and it

was

chores

and went

I

fourteen

then, and Charlie nearly sixty. bunkhouse, Charlie and I, which was old but pretty nice.

(It had been the main was

We lived in the

house until Jim and Denton had built the new one up on the hill ten

or

fifteen years

before.) After

supper we generally played cards, played gin rum­ my most often. So we played gin rummy that night too, but disinterestedly. I couldn't stop talk­ ing.

"Jim sure used to curse at Duke something aw­

ful," I said.

"Yeah," Charlie grunted,

"Duke don't like to

work."

"Seemed

was

pretty

used to

seemed to pay any attention to

it.

Never

it, did he?"

"Never seemed."

"Guess Denton will have to hire another man or so now."

Spring, 1963

treat them horses

shuffied the cards.

"Don't know how Jim could get on with that Denton for a partner all these

foul-mouthed

years," Charlie muttered, "and I ain't sure I can put up with Denton now he's gone."

"I liked

Jim,"

I

said.

"He's the only one ever treated me half decent, or

you

either, boy." Charlie dealt the cards.

"Wonder where Duke ran off to," I said.

"He'll stay away from the roads, maybe hide in one

of them cabins in the hills. He's got no place to and they'll get him in a couple days."

run

I won the card game that night, and afterwards I went down to water the horses in the barn before

going to bed. It was a little colder and the wind was down, the sky clouded over solid. I walked from stall to stall, putting the hose through the iron bars, filling the buckets. And then I began thinking about Duke, about the hulking shoulders and the inscrutable face with the stupidly staring black eyes. He was out there somewhere and he'd killed Jim: the idea

night

in my

over

and

wore on my mind, and that sleep Duke's baleful face appeared

over.

The next

Duke

can

"

to

supper.

He

.'

evening and beginning to get

in for

man.

his fool head off at me for no good reason "Gin," I said. We counted points and Charlie

dark before they gave up looking and came walk­

ing back into the yard. Denton came out of the house to talk to them, and they were still standing there talking, the whole group of them, shaking their heads in the dimming light when I finished

wild

a

bad and I don't say too much, but when he bellows

day winter came, suddenly, like the

strike of a snake, and coldness set in the extremi­ ties of the earth. It snowed all day, hard, and the police couldn't go out to look for Duke that day.

Even

finding the buildings around the place was

difficult. By

noon

we

had to

fight through drifts 31

"Believe it's up by the big house."

and wind to get to the barns, Charlie with a scarf

tied over his ears and wearing his hat, I with my parka hood drawn up tight. And always I imag­ ined that Duke would be lurking in the barn, come

So after a bit I slung my skates over my should­

again, up the hill to the house to

and went out

er

there to get out of the cold. And whenever I went

get the shovel. The pond was about three hun­ dred yards into the south pasture, just over a

into the barn I felt it creeping up my back, like an

little

animal, gripping my spine and I knew it

was

with its

icy

claws

...

fear.

when I went out to water the horses

That night

the fear was worse, something filthy and terrible, breathing on my neck. Three dim bulbs above the aisle lit the barn, and everywhere else was black­ I stood

leaning motionless on the iron bars staring into the shadows; and every few moments a thrill came out of the pit of my stomach and shot through my heart and my limbs.

There was the smell of the horses and the hay, ness.

at each stall,

and

the

smell

the

of

cold.

And

there

the

was

crunching sound of horses eating, the gurgle of water in a pail, and outside the wind and the creaking of the barn. When I finished I dropped the hose on the floor without coiling it and went out. The drifts were deep I was running through them and the exertion made the thrills stop shoot­ ing through me. And as I ran I was remembering

It

rise.

what Charlie had said at supper:

find

"He's around

him

tomorrow."

They'll That face, impassionate, blank as the snow, and somewhere.

the black eyes here somewhere .

.

.

around here somewhere

...

.

.

.

And I stumbled through the

drifts toward the bunkhouse.

The

stopped and the cold had come, a steel needle numbing the land and the man. It pierced my parka and my gloves and my boots, and pricked me with its deadening pain.

The day passed slowly, the fear always pervad­ ing, soaking in to my bone like the cold.

About four in the afternoon I trudged back to the bunkhouse to thaw out. Charlie was there, sitting snow

had

in front of the heat vent. He moved his chair over to share the heat with me, and

the

breathing hard by the time I got there: my were already a little cold. And then I was shoveling, whiteness blinding my eyes and wind \ them with and the sound of the tears, blurring For maybe five distant the wind. shovel through minutes only the blur and the cold and the scrape of the shovel, and then, suddenly, I was tired. I dropped the shovel on the cleared ice, straightened up stiffly, and wiped my eyes with the back of my glove. The wind whispered sounds of isolation in was

feet

my

overhead

ears;

moved

steadily

leaden

a

the

across

cover

of greyness

sky.

I looked down at my skates

lying in the snow, patch of ice I had cleared. white and the sky grey, every­

and then at the little

land

The

was

where colorless cold. I decided to go home. As I leaned over to pick up the shovel I thought I

shout my

heard

someone

him

the terrible

And then I

name.

saw

face and the black

impassive staring at me from out the ice, meaning­ less as in life, frozen in an eternal stare, ob­ scured slightly by the frozen thickness between -

eyes,

us.

blocked and again the police didn't come out

from town.

on

-

But they didn't find him the next day. The roads were

knee-deep

-

not deep enough horses when they waded in it for swimming but good for skating in winter. I

-

here

shallow

was

by and by I forgot

about the cold outside. I asked if I could go skat­

ing before supper.

"Can if you want to," he said, "but it's terrible cold."

"Where's the shovel?" I asked. "Have to clear the ice where it's not blown off."

Then I heard the voice

get away You

from

that

again, the shout. "Boy, pond! Go do your work!

" ...

And then he

saw

me

staring into the ice, and

the shout became a scream of rage that shattered the wind. I

Denton standing at the top of the

saw

rise, fumbling in his

pocket; and now a knife was me there motionless,

in his hand. The cold held that

horror

beneath

down

stumbling scenities, and

the

I not

fear.

The greyness

and

the

my

feet

and

Denton

now

ob­ slope shouting where to knowing place my

furious

and the whiteness, the fear horror, the wind and the cold, and I

standing there motionless. And then behind the rage and the knife descending the slope I saw Charlie appear at the top of the rise, the glint of a

rifle barrel in his hands.

LIGHTNING

Lightning When it flashes

Sends staccato chills down my spine Because in my teens

A bolt killed a friend

And because it was the God of my teens That did the killing.

THOMAS H. ARTHUR, Speech

32

'59

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

By Y ohma Gray

The Poetry of LOUIS SIMPSON Yohma Gray, who came to Northwestern as an instruc­ 1960, is teaching here and is a candidate at Yale for her doctor's degree. She is writing a critical analysis of the Negro novelist, Richard Wright. Miss Gray was born in Jamestown, New York, went to school and grew up there, in the beautiful lake country near the old town of Chautauqua, then went to Syracuse University (A.B. 1957). She began her gradu­ ate work at Yale, taking an A.M. in 1958. tor in English in the Fall of

The article below is the twelfth in a series upon con­

temporary American poets, written for The Tri-Quarterly

by members of the English Department. Under the title Poets in Progress the first ten of these were published in book form by the University Press last Spring.

T he paradox inherent

in

objective criticism

of

lyric poetry is nowhere more apparent than in an analysis of Louis Simpson's poetry. Lyric poetry seeks to describe intense but transient sensations and emotions which prose cannot, seeks to suspend primary experience for a mo­ ment

in

time

so

that

it

may

be

savored

and

relished. Many primary experiences are basically incommunicable

ficulty

of

on

any

level.

Consider the dif­

describing, to someone totally igno­ rant of the experience, how a cello sounds, or how sandpaper feels, or how a puppy's mouth smells.

So-called objective or judicial criticism, there­ fore, which is mere explication de texte, is ob­ viously self-defeating because the subject of a lyric poem is, by definition, beyond the ordinary domain of prose. It does not gain its effect through the information it contains but through the feeling it evokes, and the poem exists be­ cause poetry is the only medium through which the experience can be shared.

Louis Simpson published his first book of poems, The Arrivistes, in 1949, Good News of Death in

Spring, 1963

1955, and A Dream of Governors in 1959. Shortly publish a fourth volume of verse, At the End of the Open Road, and he plans an edition of Selected. Poems in 1964. Many of his poems have been published separately in The New Yorker, Hudson Review, American Scholar, Paris Review, Partisan Review and in other journals and anthologies. In addition to his poems he has published one novel, Riverside Drive, in 1962, one record in the YaLe Series of Recorded Poets, one critical study, James Hogg, in 1963. He edited The New Poets of EngLand and America, together with Donald Hall and Robert Pack, in 1957, and he has published critical articles in leading mag­ azines. He is married, has three children, and is currently an associate professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley.

Although anyone of his poems is self-sufficient and self-contained, the relationship between the he will

"Arm in

Arm," "Ballad of the Beery Boys," "Invita­ Quiet Life," "Jamaica," "The Lady Sings," "Over at the Baroque Ryehouse," "Room and Board," (© 1949 Louis Simpson), are reprinted with permission of Fine Editions Press from The Arrivistes (1949) by Louis Simpson. "The Battle," "Early in the Morning," "The Heroes," "Islanders," (© 1955 Louis Simpson), are reprinted with permission of Charles Scribner's Sons from Good News of Death and Other Poems (1955) by Louis Simpson (POETS OF TODAY Ill. "The Boarder," "The Green Shepherd," "Hot Night on Water Street," "I Dreamed that in a City Dark as Paris," "Music in Venice," "Song: 'Rough Winds Do Shake,''' (© 1949, 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959, 1963 Louis Simpson), are reprinted with permission of Wesleyan University Press from A Dream of Governors (1959) and At the End of the Open Road (in press) by Louis Simpson. All poems, in whole or in part, are reprinted with permission of Louis Simp­ son.

Five are printed with permission of magazines tion

to

a

credited in the text.

33

poems, and between his life and the poems, per­ haps deserves some mention. With first-person

In the midst of all that death, the meaning of life

authority he writes primarily about war, love, urbanism, the American dream, and human mor­ tality. He was born in 1923 in Jamaica, British West Indies, of varied national ancestry. He came to New York to study at Columbia College in 1940 but his studies were interrupted by World War II, during which he served in the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, through the invasion of Europe from Normandy to Berchtesgaden.

He emerged from the war with a bronze star, a purple heart, and United States citizenship, not to mention frozen feet and delayed shock. He re­ turned to Columbia to receive bachelor's, mas­ ter's, and doctor's degrees. He was an associate editor with the Bobbs-Merr ill publishing com­ pany until 1955, and since then has been teaching.

The obvious use he has made, therefore, of all this experience, invites the so-called intentional fallacy, or the use of biographical material and explicit intention, and the so-called affective fal­

smoking a cigarette; and in the midst of all those extraordinarily dramatic images, the mundane image becomes extraordinarily intense.

lacy, or the use of emotion and through "objective correlatives."

becomes momentarily clear in the ordinary act of

I

called more

he

not

demonstrate

writes

sometimes senses

Browning

a

in

the

third

the

subjective "I" in the poem, just

often writes in the first person but

objective "he." (His dra­ exception; however, the poems focus of this essay is on the lyrical poems.) In "The Battle," for example, he delays and thereby intensifies the meaning of the experience to the subjective "I": conveys the

matic

sense

are

of

an

no

Helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat Marched through a forest. Somewhere up ahead Guns thudded. Like the circle of a throat The night on every side was turning red.

They halted and they dug. They sank like moles Into the clammy earth between the trees.

And soon the sentries, standing in their holes, Felt the first snow. Their feet began to freeze.

of

some

present, hidden, and internal relationship

means

which can become an effective conspiracy against the His

dehumanizing forces in the modern world. intention becomes explicit in "Room and

Board"; The curtained windows of New York

Conceal her secrets. Walls of stone Muffle the clatter of the fork.

Tomorrow we shall see the bone.

In silence we construct a sect

...

Each of us, comrades, has his own.

Poems that will not take effect, Pictures that never will be known.

The landlord wipes his mouth of pork, Pauses to eavesdrop, disconnect

The water and the telephone; And Death's unmarried daughter crawls Along the thin lath of the walls And knocks, because we live alone.

Despite the tone, however, there is never a sense of the narrowly parochial nor the embarrass­ ingly intimate. This is not merely self-introspec­ tion nor self-analysis. Theodore Hoffman says of

the

".

poetry,

.

.

nor

is

it

the

victim

of

either of the affable

poetic vices of the day, for

it neither attempts

to

buckle its

matter

into

a

self-designed system nor is it engaged in a ca­ pricious quest for conceits." That, I think, is one of its major achievements tury American poetry.

Louis Simpson form

and

never

structure

as

mid-twentieth

cen­

departs from traditional yet he never departs

and

from contemporary themes and concerns. In "The Lady Sings," for example, he handles a modern psychological situation in the delicate cadence of seventeenth century verse; The lady sings her child

Then shells and bullets swept the icy woods.

This lasted many days. The snow was black.

As the world has not known:

The corpses stiffened in their scarlet hoods.

Jesus without tears.

Most clearly of that battle I remember

And as her heart goes wild

Will be such a one

The tiredness in eyes, how hands looked thin

Between gates of bone

Around

He comes into his own,

cigarette, and the bright ember Would pulse with all the life there was within.

34

past, lost, and eternal salvation, but rather to

some

a

At dawn the first shell landed with a crack.

a

that

as

Keats

person,

more

They appeal not to

association

what

or

truth

"negative capability," or what has been recently called aesthetic distance. Although

reader as

does

are

poetry in the first half of the twentieth century.

of the intrusion of the poet's private, inner

He

suggesting that the poems

Simpson is masquerading as all the char­ acters he creates; rather, I mean to call atten­ tion to the re-personalization which these poems represent in the direct relationship between reader and writer. They seek to create a rapport which has not been generally characteristic of

life in the poems rather than the insertion of an invented character from whom the poet is de­ tached.

not

Louis

Formally his poems fall into three general types: short lyrics; longer poems which depend on topical and historical allusions but which are nevertheless more lyrical than academic in tone; and long dramatic poems. His point of view is more subjective than objective; the reader is aware

am

concerned with literal than artistic truth

Having his own ideas.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

The days her lover smiled

tation and continuity, between city and country, between Old World and New World, between

Are as a summer gone.

Over a telephone We talk across the years.

Now she may be beguiled By apricocks, and groan Her secret to the sun.

Shake her and she bears.

feeling of the defeat of a possessive mother through the independence of her son be­ gins with a reference to the Virgin, ends with an oblique reference to the Duchess of Matti, and contains diction as diverse as "apricocks" and "telephone," yet synthesizes the elements grace­ fully.

The central

.

last stanza of "Invitation to a Quiet Simpson demonstrates the precision of his

In the

Life" ear

well

as

as

of his eye

as

he imitates

a

tra­

military and human values, between the Amer­ ican dream and the American actuality; but he neither moralizes nor wails. To him poetry is not the only suitable subject for poetry, nor expres­ sionism the only suitable mode for it. He does indeed juxtapose images which are abstracted from their normal context, creating an apocalyp­ tic quality, but the final effect is to clarify rather than to cloud. If his poems do not always follow an obviously logical progression, the total in­ sight is rational and conscious and the associative progression makes ultimate sense. Throughout his "Jamaica," for example, he relies on meta­ phors of the body until the final stanza when he shifts to prestige symbols of modern culture:

ditional pastoral form:

Life is a winter liner, here history passes Like tourists

on top-decks, seeing the shore through sun-glasses: And death, a delightful life-long disease, Sighs in sideways languor of twisted trees.

Since, Amaryllis, you and I Adore an advertising sky And find happiness to stare At the enchantments of thin air,

The shift from

Let us go in, and not regret

significant

The endings that we never met,

But in security applaud The ecstasies

we

can't afford.

So shall we manage till the day

Death takes the furniture away.

The pastoral form and the urban theme combine

ironically and the irony intensifies and clarifies metropolitan anxieties which are the sub­ ject of the poem. Simpson uses a similar device in "Arm in Arm," a war poem: the

Beside a Church we dug our holes,

By tombstone and by cross.

They were too shallow for our souls When the ground began to toss.

Which were the new, which the old dead It was a sight to ask.

One private found a polished head And took the skull to task For spying on us

Till along Driving the clouds like sheep,

in

organic to mechanistic images is itself and provides an insight into

the values of modern life. The form

and theme

skillfully unified by the unexpected break at the end of the second line, where the word "sun" (the natural light which makes all sight possible) is sharply juxtaposed to the word "glasses" (arti­ ficial devices which alter vision) at the beginning of the third line, with the hyphen intensifying the cleavage. Thus the very abruptness of the shift in associations has a logic of its own to modern man. Simpson is not courting madness in this "multiverse," nor is he insisting that modern man is forever "caught between two worlds, the one dead, the other powerless to be born." In the Romantic tradition he is relying on sensibil­ ity as a basis for orientation and movement in a chaotic world, but his reliance on human vis­ cera and cerebra is neither frightening nor ag­ onizing to him. He is quite explicit in a stanza are

from

"Islanders":

...

Our bombers came in a great throng:

Enough of these images they set the teeth on edge!

Life. if you like, is a metaphor of death The difference is you, a place for the passing of -

And so we fell asleep.

-

The tumultuous chaos of the bombing of a church­

yard and the grisly mingling of old corpses and

breath.

That is what man is. He is the time between,

is the

subject of the poem, but the frag­ mentary senselessness of the experience is en­ hanced by the deliberately measured and regular new

The palpable glass through which all

Nothing. Silence. A syllable. A word.

Everything.

meter, and the strife of the battle is heightened

by the suggestion of sleep and of the calm of the pastoral scene. There is a kind of literary dialec­ tic in these poems thesis, antithesis, syn­ thesis which forms the dynamic process of an "internal colloquy." .

.

.

.

In examining the plight of modern man, Louis Simpson finds all the contemporary tensions be­ tween imagination and reality, between fragmen-

Spring, 1963

things are

seen.

Sensational perception and individual identity his broad concerns. His rhetoric is often

are

ironic; that is, tween

a subtle reversal takes place be­ literally expressed and the implied through naive narration, understate­

the

values, ment, and romantic illusion and disintegration.

His

presentation of these generalities, however, 35

is

always through the animation of particulars. a Vision, a perfect Whole, must see it in its Minute Particulars," accord­ ing to William Blake, and Louis Simpson adheres to that dictum. He sees reality through particu­ lars; he is a kind of "responsible vagrant" who finds meaning in any situation. He has the talent, however, to generalize his experience without dimishing its concreteness. That is why he can be personal but universal in his tone. "Hot Night "He who wishes to see

on

Water Street" is little

than

more

a

series of

particulars but it conveys the whole of an Amer­ ican small town, universally recognizable:

In this poem the shift from the naive buoyancy of pre-World War I America to the sophisticated

despair of post-World War I America conveys, as a prose paraphrase cannot, a sense of the ex­ change of innocence for the knowledge of good and evil. The oblique reference to classical civi­ lization ominously suggests the inevitable con­ sequence of that knowledge, death. Ironically it prophesies World War II. The value of such a talent is inestimable. Every society has areas of gross insensitivity, some of them positively necessary for carrying on the life of

Three hardware stores, a barbershop, a bar A movie playing Westerns

where I went

-

To see a dream of horses called The Star

...

Someday, when this uncertain continent Is marble, and men ask what was the good We lived by, dust may whisper "Hollywood."

At the newsstand in the lobby, a cigar

As she was crossing Main Street, knocked her down."

I was a stranger here myself, I said,

And bought the New York Times, and went to bed.

pacity

in to

Venice" evoke

demonstrates

wholeness

the

subtle

some

a

similar

ca­

through particulars:

of them

nuances

the level of color

Was talkative: "Since I've been in this town I've seen one likely woman, and a car

"Music

and

merely destructive primary experience which comprise human fulfillment, realization, and delight. There are primitive tribes, for ex­ ample, which have only three words to denote color: one term for white, one term for black, and one term for all others. Assuming that lan­ guage and perception are inextricably linked, processes

of

awareness

in these societies is

extremely primitive. Reading the poetry of Louis Simpson makes it obvious that some of our per­ ceptions are equally primitive and undeveloped.

We are daily bombarded with sensations from which the conscious mind extracts only a few functional impressions, leaving a vast aggregate of experience to be dismissed

It's night in the Piazza. Lighted space

inner

Burns like your brandy. Violins and brass

level.

Play waltzes, fox-trots. On a cloud, St. Mark's Winged lion perches; High palaces go sailing to the moon, Which, as advertised, is perfectly clear.

The lovers rise, moon-struck, and whisper their

The

economy

but

buried in the

or

of awareness, below the conscious

of

concentration

it

of

is

often

full

deprives us power responsibilities of that power; it makes us "emotional illiterates," often totally out of touch with our own feelings. Even in the most mundane experience there is a vast area of un­ perceived reality and it is Louis Simpson's kind of poetry which brings it to our notice. It enables us to see things which are ordinarily all about us but which we do not ordinarily see; it adds a new dimension to our sensational perception, making practical

our

and the

Arrivedercis.

Venice, the city built on speculation, Still stands on it. Love sails from India every hanging cloud pours out

And Sweden

recesses

-

A treasure-chest.

It's love on the Rialto, news of love,

That gives Antonio his golden life, Even to Envy, sharpening a knife,

us

His interest.

hear with our eyes and

see

with

our

ears.

His

"F'rogs;"" for example, seems to be a rec­ ollection of details of ordinary experience and yet subtly becomes an implied metaphor so that in the resolution, both the particular and the gen­ eral are sharply impressed on the consciousness: poem

In

"The

serve

Inner

Part"!

a

few

trivial

to characterize American

particulars mentality before

her emergence as a world power into the twentieth

century, and American maturity and deep dis­ illusionment after the safe for

war

to

make the

"world

The storm broke, and it rained,

democracy":

And water rose in the pool, And frogs hopped into the gutter,

When they had won the war,

With their skins of yellow and green, And just their eyes shining above the surface

And for the first time in history Americans were the most important people

-

Of the warm solution of slime.

When the leading citizens no longer lived in their shirt sleeves,

At night, when fireflies trace

Light-lines between the trees and flowers Exhaling perfume,

And their wives did not scratch in public; Just when they'd stopped saying "Gosh!"

-

The frogs speak to each other

When their daughters seemed as sensitive

In rhythm. The sound is monstrous.

As the tip of a fly rod,

And their sons were as smooth

1.

36

as

a

V-8 engine

But their voices are filled with satisfaction.

-

Priests, examining the entrails of birds,

In the city I pine for the country;

Found the heart misplaced, and seeds

In the country I long for conservation

As black as death, emitting a strange odor.

Our happy croaking.

© 1963 The Sixties Magazine.

2.

-

© 1963 Prism Magazine.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

The "shock of recognition" in the final stanza is all the more powerful because of the reader's

A German girl-child Cuckoo, all skin and bones

obtuseness

She sat by the stream and smiled.

-

complacency in the first four subject of the poem is finally an implied obtuseness and com pi a CPJ1(_'y "Birch"3 is another poem which depends ulti­ mately on a metaphor which is really obvious, but only after the reading of the poem: and

stanzas and because the

Then as we splashed in the sun

She laughed at us.

.

We had killed her mechanical brothers, So we forgave her.

Similarly, familiarity with literary history in­ tensifies appreciation of Simpson's ability to imi­ tate faultlessly. "Invitation to a Quiet Life" re­ verberates through three centuries of poetry with

Birch tree, you remind me

Of a room filled with breathing, The sway and whisper of love.

She slips off her shoes;

Unzips her skirt; arms raised, Unclasps an earring, and the other.

its echoes of Marlowe:

Just so the sallow trunk

Come, Amaryllis, let us go To see the moving picture show Where the small people, closely pressed, Walk all together in their best.

Divides, and the branches Are straight and smooth.

In "The

-

Not even enough to make chicken soup.

Boarder," Simpson once again selects particulars of a situation to

the most mundane the

convey

most

profound of human feelings:

"Ballad of the Beery Boys" humorously combines strains of Browning and a familiar popular poem:

The time is after dinner. Cigarettes Glow on the lawn: Glasses begin to tinkle; TV sets Have been turned on.

Up Flotsam, up Jetsam, up Donner and Blitzen!

I galloped, he galloped through barrels of Pilsen To Maidenhead, Munich, Sversk and Vienna, (A landscape of umber, a sky of sienna):

The moon is brimming like a glass of beer Above the town, And love keeps her appointments

-

"Harry's here!"

"I'll be right down."

But the pale stranger in the furnished room

"Over at the of the

style

Baroque Ryehouse" is reminiscent Emily Dickinson:

of

Lies on his back

Looking at paper roses, how they bloom, And ceilings crack.

I've had my cut of sin, A passing glimpse of heaven,

And hope to meet Christ in

The

images of the first two stanzas convey the feeling of conviviality and community, and the images of the last stanza convey the feeling of alienation and separation so powerfully because of the contrast between the dynamic processes implied in the former and the static situation implied in the latter. The contrast depends pri­ marily on the jarring tension between the ad­ jective "paper" and the noun "roses," and the implication of disintegration. Simpson is creating meaning from the raw material of experience and is bringing the reader to a deeper level of

The city after seven.

"Room

and

Board"

is

suggestive

of

Auden's

"Musee des Beaux Arts" in the stanza

The landlord wipes his mouth of pork, Pauses to eavesdrop, disconnect The water and the telephone.

Finally "Song: 'Rough Winds Do Shake the Darling Buds of May'" combines Renaissance conceits

and modern form:

awareness.

In the

same

manner

but

on

a

Rough winds do shake

different level

Simpson vivifies experience which is not a part of everyone's ordinary storehouse but which then becomes as real as frogs or birches or paper In short, some of his subject roses. matter is "raw" and some of it is "cooked"; some depends on common experience and some on special knowledge, but the meaning is always universal. "A Story About Chicken SOUp,"4 for example, depends on some general knowledge of World War II and on some general association

do shake

of matter,

of chicken

soup

with

Jewish

In the ruins of Berchtesgaden A child with yellow hair

Ran out of a doorway.

3. e 1963 Generation Magazine. © 1963 Louis Simpson.

4.

Spring, 1963

customs:

the

darling buds of May

The darling buds

rose-buds the winds do shake That are her breasts.

Those darling buds, dew-tipped, her

sighing moods

do shake.

On several

levels, then, Simpson's poetry has quality which enables us simultane­ to see and to be suddenly aware that we ously are seeing, and thus to double the delight. Some­ times he gives the reader the relief of "what oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed," but more often he intensifies particulars which have never been anything but amorphous, which have never taken on the discipline of form. Who does an

incisive

37

remember the delight of seeing, on a cold, wintry day, snowflakes under a magnifying glass

not

for

the

first

time, and

awe

at

the

illumination

who

has

of the

forgotten the

hitherto

unsus­

pected and unperceived mystery, both as an ex­ ternal phenomenon of nature and as an internal phenomenon of perception? Perhaps Robert Louis Stevenson was aware of that kind of delight said, "The world is so full of a num­ ber of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." Reality, of course, has a dark as well as a light side, and reality in itself is not always delightful to human perception, is often more somber; perceiving and knowing, however, are always an enhancement of human values, whether their objects be beautiful or ugly.

Louis Simpson's poetry imparts new sensibility; the heat of his imagination and the pressure of his experience fuse both the raw materials and organized systems of life into lyrical poems which when he

reflect and refract hum an emotion with the

same

beauty and brilliance that diamonds do physical light.

Mid-twentieth century society is generally un­ sympathetic to knowing for the sake of knowing.

(Even in the realm of science, pure research has as the name we give any project

been defined when

don't

we

know

what

we're

doing).

Use­

less, that is, inapplicable knowledge is a term of opprobrium. The truth of the human heart is, however, that some things are worth knowing for the

of

sake

knowing,

that

somehow

awareness

and

perception are fundamental to the quality of being human. There is a value simply in know­ ing, and Louis Simpson's poetry reflects and re­ fines that value. Descriptions of so-called objec­ tive reality, that is, reality irrelevant to human passion, are very recent developments in human evolution, but very powerful developments for all their newness. Man has always tried to re­ solve the mystery of his environment and himself, but only recently has he sought to do this by discounting and dismissing his own reaction to the world around him, by the so-called scientific method. art

In many ways, of course, science and the same general function, the pene­

serve

tration

and

reality, but science elevates the fact and submerges the emotion, and art elevates the emotion and submerges the fact. The world within, however, is still as im­ portant as the world without, and the publication in the last decade and a half of lyric poetry of the quality of Simpson's is firm testimony to the fact that it is still a lively art whose concern is human feeling and whose instrument is human imagination.

I do not

description

of

suggest, however, that his poetry in­

spires only isolated flashes of dissociated insights.

Poetry in general and his poetry in particular can

38

and does

produce systematic and coherent

organizations of reality which take us deeper into the mystery than we could ever go by ourselves.

Simpson is an intellectually mature and respon­ sible poet who is ultimately committed to making human sense of what is, although he is never unaware of the eternal paradoxes and possibil­ ities of what ought to be. His war poems, for example, intensify particulars but ominously sug­ gest also in a systematic way that war is a sin­ gularly ineffective behavior pattern if the human animal really wants to improve his condition. "1 Dreamed

that

both world

in

a

wars

to

City

Dark

Paris"

as

links

suggest the futility:

I dreamed that in a city dark as Paris I stood alone in a deserted square.

The night was trembling with a violet

Expectancy. At the far edge it moved And rumbled; on that flickering horizon The guns were pumping color in the sky.

These wars have been so great, they are forgotten

Like Egyptian dynasts. My confrere

stood, were you amazed

In whose thick boots I

To wander through my brain four decades later As I have wandered in a dream through yours?

The violence of waking life disrupts The order of our death. Strange dreams occur, For dreams are licensed as they never were.

Simpson also consistently suggests the futility of heroism through war,

as

in "The Heroes":

I dreamed of war-heroes, of wounded war-heroes With just enough of their charms shot away

To make them

more

handsome. The

women

moved

nearer

To touch their brave wounds and their hair

streaked with gray.

A fine dust has settled on all that scrap metal.

The heroes were packaged and sent home in parts To pluck at a poppy and sew on a petal And count the

long night by the stroke of their

hearts.

In the same manner,

Simpson vitalizes the par­ images of love but generalizes about its timeless quality in "The Green Shepherd": ticular

Here sit a shepherd and a shepherdess, He playing on his melancholy flute; The sea wind ruffles up her simple dress And shows the delicacy of her foot.

And there you see Constantinople's wall

With arrows and Greek fire, molten lead; Down from

a

turret

seven

virgins fall,

Hands folded, each one praying on her head.

But the green shepherd travels in her eye

And whispers nothings in his lady's ear,

And sings a little song, that roses die, Carpe diem, which she seems pleased to hear.

The groaning pole had gone more than a mile; These shepherds did not feel it where they loved, For time was sympathetic all the while And on the magic mountain nothing moved.

"The Silent Lover":" is

more

5. © 1962 The New Yorker

Magazine.

fragmentary

NORTHWESTERN

In

its

TRI-QUARTERLY

His drums through the dead.

"Antony, horses!

We'll get away Gather our forces

progression, but it equates love to concrete images which thus

are

in turn associated with

accomplishes the

eternity,

and

end:

same

"

For another day "It's a cold morning," Antony said.

She sighs. What shall I say?

For beauty seems to grow In silence, when the heart is faint and slow.

Sing, sing

...

...

Caesar Augustus Cleared his phlegm.

How shall I sing?

In silent eyes, where clouds and islands gaze,

"Corpses disgust us.

The waves bring Eros in.

Cover them."

I think the rustling of her clothes

Caesar Augustus In his time lay

Is like the sea, and she A wild white bird,

Dying, and just as Cold as they,

And love is like the sighing of the sand.

Similarly, his

poems

on

an

On the cold morning Of a cold day.

urban theme illu­

minate the strange, historic dilemma of aliena­ tion from and integration with the great masses

life just

of people and materials that

of

call

cities; thus Simpson combines his urban concern with his feeling of the failure of the American dream as it was articulated by we

in the poem "In California"?

Walt Whitman:

His tragic sense as

his

intensify the quality of imagination intensifies the quality to

serves

reality.

Simpson's art imposes order from within on chaos without, gives meaning to the apparently meaningless, suggests fresh vantage points from which to probe experience. In "Lines Written

Here I am, troubling the dream coast

Near San Francisco"7 he summarizes the current

With my New York face,

American

Bearing among the realtors And tennis-players my dark preoccupation.

our

There once was an epical clatter

condition with oblique references to military and material madness, and he prof­ fers a possible solution which suggests the proc­

-

Voices and banjos, Tennessee, Ohio, Rising like incense in the sight of heaven.

ess

toward

maturity

as

individual

human

realization

and

defeat of death:

the

Today, there is an angel in the gate.

Lie back, Walt Whitman, There, on the fabulous raft with the King and the Duke!

For the white row of the Marina Faces the Rock. Turn round the wagons here.

Every night, at the end of America We taste our wine, looking at the Pacific.

How sad it is, the end of America!

While we were waiting for the land, with gas drums They'd finished it On the hilltops, cheap housing in the valleys -

Lie back! We cannot bear

The stars any more, those infinite spaces.

Let the realtors divide the mountain,

For they already subdivided the valley.

Rectangular city block astonished Herodotus in Babylon, Cortes in Tenochtitlan, And here's the same old city-planner, death.

We cannot turn or stay.

For though we sleep, and let the reins fall slack,

The great cloud-wagons move Outward still, dreaming of a Pacific.

Finally, while Simpson passionately and graph­ ically describes the ugliness of death in particu­ lars, he generalizes in a more restrained manner about the fact of human mortality in "Early in the Morning":

Where lives are mean and wretched.

But the banks thrive and the realtors Rejoice they have their America.

-

Still, there is something unsettled in the air.

Out there on the Pacific There's no America but the Marines.

Whitman was wrong about the People, But right about himself. The land is within.

At the end of the open road we come to ourselves.

Though mad Columbus follows the sun Into the sea, we cannot follow.

We must remain, to serve the returning sun, And to set tables for death.

For we are the colonists of Death

-

Not, as some think, of the English.

And we are preparing thrones for him to sit, Poems to read, and beds In which it may please him to rest.

Early in the morning The dark Queen said, "The trumpets are warning

This is the Land

There's trouble ahead."

The pioneers looked for, shading their eyes

Spent with carousing With wine-soaked wits,

Against the sun

Antony drowsing

Whispered, "It's Too cold a morning

-

the world of flowers and dreams.

Poetry rarely commands the intensity of reli­ gious belief, but it seeks the same end, that of using the materials of human life senses, to formulate a coher­ emotions, intelligence ent and significant meaning for life. The poetry of Louis Simpson offers us that meaning. .

To get out of bed."

.

The army's retreating, The fleet has fled, Caesar is beating 6. © 1963 Louis Simpson.

Spring, 1963

7. © 1963 Paris

Review

.

.

.

.

Magazine.

39

Wedding Knot Gary

L.

Blonston is

a

senior

He is

presently

Northwestern. Last

summer

the

in

Miami

Herald,

the Medill School of

and newspaper managing editor of the Daily

Journalism, studying political

writing.

in

science

he spent

reporter for Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and as

plans to return to that job this coming summer. Blonston was born in Ohio, but had his schooling in Gainesville, Florida.

S

HE WAS

and

she

felt

day

before

away from

By Gary L. Blonston

sitting too close. She smelled good, good, but she was too close. The had

he

found

it

difficult

to

stay her, to keep his hands from touching

restrain

her,

to

room

to breathe.

himself.

But

now

he

needed

"Hey, doll, would you close the window a little?

It's getting cold in here."

She murmured and leaned

over

to roll up the

window. He bent forward and

wrapped his arms around the steering wheel, grasping it with both hands. She moved back again without looking and bumped his arm.

"Careful.

"

"You moved."

He

didn't say

anything but kept his eyes on dimming with the afternoon. His head ached nowhere in particular. It was over. He sighed in his throat. the road

She put her and

arm

across

the back of the seat

long fingernails across his back.

"Tired, baby?" She looked around his shoulder ran

at him with the

big-eyed-little-girl look that used appealing.

"No. Just relaxing. Big day." He glanced at her and smiled faintly. to be

40

so

much

more

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

She kissed him too hard

back to

study

the

her

ring wheel, and his thumb rubbed the skin under his ring, an enlargement of the gold band she wore.

It had been terrible. He felt suddenly trapped and out of place. The feeling had been growing

hand. He took his

since he

arrived

shiny,

the cheek and sat

on

unworn

on

left hand off the

the

before.

night

After

their

brief kiss at the door, with her parents watching anxiously inside, John had stepped into three of

hours

what

weeks they

apart

were

-

a

had

he

were

lacked

together

and

the

two

month

they

during the

real look at the

girl he

was

to

marry.

He had arrived too late for the wedding re­ hearsal, exhausted after eighteen hours of driv­ ing. It was raining when he pulled up in front

of the house. He combed his hair and rehearsed the

first

awkward

of

moments

conversation

Suddenly he stopped, realizing he had forgotten Helen's step-father's name. He laughed softly and leaned back in the seat. What the hell was his name? Ferris or Hillis or something.

He sat a while longer, becoming a little uneasy.

What if he just wasn't able to remember? "Hap­ ahead.

py to meet you, Mr

In a few minutes, Helen joined them.

"Fred, let Johnny come and sit down in the living room with all of us. After all, he's mine, not yours."

"I guess you're right." Fred again clutched John's shoulder and steered him back toward the "He'll be

seeing a lot of kitchens anyway." laughed uproariously.

"Oh, no, he won't. My Johnny isn't going to set foot in our kitchen except for me to feed him."

She stepped around Fred, outmaneuvered Brenda, and grasped John's free arm as if denying her sister the use of a toy. She nearly spilled his beer, already washing the sides of the glass from the impact of Fred's guiding hand.

For the next hour, the family made small talk about John's school, Fred's poultry business, how much Helen had surprised the family when she returned from vacation with an engagement ring.

John's exhaustion prevented him from keeping up with Fred's hearty beer drinking, but Fred be­ living

room.

from

now on

He

came even more

the

talkative. Since John had missed

Fred

rehearsal,

explained it in loud,

minute

detail.

"Helen might have some trouble with the more Catholic parts of the thing, but I suppose you can

again?"

err, what was that name He smiled and shook his head. What the

hell

his name?

time

was

...

He looked up

at the house.

people in the living room, probably wondering why he didn't come in. Parked in front of his car was a delivery truck, and on the back door, in big white letters, was emblazoned ELLIS POULTRY MART. Ellis. Of course. "Happy to meet you, Mr. Ellis." He got out of the car and trotted through the rain up to the front porch.

Helen met him at the door, kissed him, and There

were

guide her through all right. Bet this'll be the first a

Catholic

bride

ever

had her

step-father

give her away." He laughed at his joke and didn't notice the look Helen flashed her mother.

John had hoped there would be little said about Helen's

conversion. It had seemed

any mention of it affected him like

so

easy that

a

forecast of

difficulty.

"You' should

see

the church.

Just

a

beautiful

then "Come in out of the rain" boomed behind

place. I've always said, 'If there's anybody who knows how to make a church worth going to, it's

her.

the Catholics.'

They did, and her step-father grabbed his

hand.

"Fred,

"Fred Ellis, John. Good to

see

you.

How

was

the trip?" me

and smiled.

"And Helen's younger sister, Brenda."

Brenda smiled coyly through her make-up and slipped her hand through John's arm.

"Hello, brother-to-be. You're as pretty as Helen "

turned to look for Helen. about

"You've had around

given the go

to

bed.

children John

much

must

be

Helen's mother stood up, and

He didn't know why, but he felt suddenly closed in and needed fresh air.

"1 am a little beat. Tomorrow's going to be a busy day."

"Yes sir, boy, I guess you'd better get some rest. No telling when you'll get to sleep tomorrow night."

John smiled to make Fred happy, although he wasn't sure why that should concern him.

They finally got out of the house, and Helen snuggled close to him in the car.

"I'm so glad you and Fred got along so well.

I was afraid maybe you wouldn't. I think so much of him." She paused. "He tries real hard to

"So are you, Brenda." He smiled uneasily and "How

Let's

John followed.

Fred, son. After all, we're almost family." He laughed as loudly as he talked.

"All right, Fred." John smiled.

"The trip wasn't bad. The rain just started."

The rest of the family hovered around them expectantly.

"This is Mrs. Ellis, John." They shook hands

said.

haven't

we

together.

tired from his trip."

"Happy to meet you, Mr. Ellis."

"Call

time

"

a

John's

a beer, son?" Fred long trip." He clapped

shoulder

ward the kitchen. Brenda

Spring, 1963

be

a

father to us, and he's taken the biggest in­ me.

Fred and Mother are al­

terest in you and

and

directed

roared. arm

an

him

clung to his other

to­

arm.

ready talking about how often they'll be able come

and visit

most be like

John

us

when

we

to

get settled. It'll al­

living at home."

opened his mouth

to

speak but changed 41

mind, patted Helen's leg and started the car.

After she had directed him to his hotel, and he had taken her home, John lay awake in bed. For the first time he thought seriously about what his friends at home had said of the wedding. It his

He should get to know her better.

Meet her family. But he didn't want to wait and was

too fast.

neither did Helen. There was

something different

"Hang on." He climbed out of bed and unlocked the door.

"I didn't have to drive up could have stayed in bed, too."

right, all right. Sit down and shut up." really going through with it, huh?"

"Of course. Why not?"

"We've been all through that. How are her "You're

folks?"

in

hard to take."

school

the

among

or

secretaries

he

man­

handled when they came to visit Miami from New Helen had been

on

vacation, too, but it hadn't

She wasn't another easy, She had stood him off, had been

same.

fun-seeking girl.

afraid of him, so he came back the next night and they spent a gentle evening together, unlike any

had

he

ever

known.

She

"Oh, they're all right. Her step-father is a little John doused his face at the

sink, and Charlie

took his tuxedo out of his suitcase. As he dressed,

York and Hartford and Cleveland. worked out the

night. I

all

"All

about her,

something innocent and honest that he had never seen among the wealthy, put-on girls

here

had

stayed two stepped on the

John

didn't

suddenly

Charlie

want

meet

to

Helen's parents, didn't want him to hear the un­ comfortable, forced conversation, didn't want Charlie to know what his friend

was

getting into.

were

standing in

"Ready to go?" Charlie asked.

"Why not?"

Forty-five minutes later they

weeks, and by the time she had train, she had agreed to marry him. His Catholi­ cism didn't matter. She would be anything he

priest

wanted.

church were about twenty of Helen's friends. They

As he lay in bed, he wondered just what it was he wanted. And for the first time, he wondered if

Helen was

really it. The family of caricatures he few hours before had placed her in a new light-one that showed little flaws unnoticed before. At the house, she had seemed to be only a minor character in a badly conceived comic strip. The things she had said were no longer charming and little-girlish but a trifle stupid.

Maybe it was just the situation. No one had performed very well, not even himself. He knew it had met

would

a

be

known,

different.

too.

He

His

friends

remembered

describe

church

listening

to

the

ceremony.

Seated

in

the

the

the

were scattered through the first five rows of the huge church, like reviewers at a play rehearsal.

At the entrance, Fred was marshalling the two ushers, in his out-of-season dinner jacket, looking

like

an

irritated

head-waiter.

motioned

He

ex­

pansively, pointing here and there while the two white-jacketed high school boys, Brenda's friends, watched him vacantly.

The ushers and

John

to

came

Charlie

the front of the church, out, and the girls

marched

home

had

uplifted

eye­

bled

brows when he told them she hadn't been to col­

lege. What would he talk to her about? What did they have in common? Hasn't her family been to school either? He ignored them. He knew there would be no problem. He loved her. They'd get along.

But Mr.

of

sanctuary

began their long walk to the altar. Two four­ year-old ring boys in black velvet shorts stum­

at

the

the

Ellis-Fred-was another matter.

He

down

the

aisle

and

themselves

seated

differently at the priest's feet. the cleric and laughed.

in­

One looked up at

Helen and her attendants reached the altar and the

priest began to speak. John said a quick "I

will" and then lost track of the message of the The ring boys were restless and ceremony. walked

back

and forth behind the

altar.

Their

boy and the girl. Watch them perform. And one of

mother, Helen's aunt, began whispering warnings to sit still that carried loudly over the priest's

them is a gen-u-ine Catholic."

soft intonations.

reminded John of

a

sideshow barker.

"See the

John turned on the light and lit a cigarette. They

hadn't

much

of

for

him.

The

picked plaster was cracking and the bed was worn and uncomfortable. And since he had stepped into the room, the toilet had been running.

He finished the cigarette and turned out the light. A red coal from the cigarette butt glowed beside the bed in an ash tray. By the time it burned out, fatigue had dulled the edge of his mis­ givings and he was asleep. a

room

When he awakened, Charlie was about to break

you

can

man."

42

sure

as

if

you

don't

wake

hell get married without

a

boys paid no attention

to

her,

each of them

so

she left

wrist and

grabbed by pulled them out of the ceremony. One of the ush­ ers laughed, not quite quietly enough. Then Fred whispered to a photographer who walked up behind the priest and snapped a picture.

Charlie shifted on his feet and glared at the photographer.

Then

cession

the was

ceremony

was

a

over,

filing toward the

and

door.

the

pro­

John

and

Helen stood at the front of the church

up,

greeting the crowd of middle-aged women and teary-eyed adolescents who pushed toward them. John pulled

best

himself clear of them and moved over to his best

down the door.

"Goddammit, Johnny,

The

her seat,

man.

Charlie was furious.

NORTHWESTERN

TRI -QU ARTERL Y

"That bitch

shouldn't be

and her little brats

"

allowed in a church. And that photographer "Take it easy.

It's

that bad. How about In

a

over,

around?"

car

half hour, they were all seated around H a motel restaurant. Fred was stand­

big table in

ing with a glass in his hand. "Here's to

perfect

a

wedding."

"Whoopee," Charlie said under his breath. He poured the sweet wine down in one motion. A waitress

came

"What

beside John's

up

get you, Helen? The usual?"

They exchanged familiar smiles. "Sure," Helen

answered.

A moment later the waitress

came

back and

placed in front of Helen a huge glass

of orange

soda with two bright red plastic straws standing it. Helen sipped at the drink absently, her

in

wedding gown more out of place than the drink.

The

spectacle

"Excuse me, the men's John

room

was

too

please,"

much for he

Charlie.

said. He hurried to

and lit a cigarette. In

a

moment,

joined him.

"What

are

you

doing, boy?"

"Johnny, get out of this. These be real. can't people Look, let's just go out the you have to

back and get in the

car

and

" .

.

.

you bitch."

"You crazy bastard. Go ahead. Ruin whatever months.

You'll

of you. I'll give you six then you had listened to

come

wish

"You don't under­

laughed and said,

John had stand.

"

don't," Charlie had snapped back.

"Like hell I

a

lot better than you do. You need

better than her.

She's way out of your league.

"I understand 1

find

mean,

somebody who

talking down to somebody. work, Johnny. It really won't."

John pulled himself back to the dinner. Fred was on his feet again, preparing another toast.

"I want to drink to the best-looking pair of newlyweds I've ever seen. I was afraid our pretty little girl would pick some lunkhead-looking fel­ low, but Johnny, I think you can just about keep up with her."

"I do my best," John answered and

Following the dinner, the wedding party trooped into a little hotel ballroom where a three-piece band was already playing happy Dix­ ieland music. The reception was to last all after­ noon, but John wasn't in the mood for being polite to people he didn't know. He led Helen onto "Darling, let's get out and on our way early.

It's a long drive, and 1 haven't seen you much at all, considering it's our wedding day."

"Whatever you want. everyone better

know

anxious think

meet

to

you're

I wanted you to

get to

though.

They're

all

Mother

and

and

want

you.

wonderful,

1

walked

leave. It's

a

you all he

was

to

the

never

mechanical

was

an

to

to tell

for

John.

worked

up

so

He

much

had

about

anything before. The table conversation grated on him even more, and he thought back to the night he told Charlie of his plans. His friend had listened quietly as he spoke of Helen and the wedding. When he had finished, Charlie had paused. Then he had shaken his head and scratched it.

"Johnny, some

unintelligible

you know what I think?

I think you

night and

say,

'Is this worth all the work

he

Spring, 1963

bumpkin.

There's

a

lot

of

nice

large

excused

himself and tub

metal

corrugated

on

was

on

ice.

opening

was

a

bottle,

Fred

came

up

you leave.

Pull into

a

motel when you feel like

it." He winked.

"We'll get

"We know

along all right, Fred." you'll take good care of

girl. She hasn't been around You know what I

mean.

our

little

lot, John.

We're counting on you a

whole

right. You've seen a lot and you can take her under your wing the way she de­ serves. She'll fit right in after a while."

"I'm not complaining about her at the mo­ raise

in

country

John

names,

a

"Well, son, you're just about to the end of a perfect day. Don't push yourself driving when

but hell, you've got too much effort invested to throw it away on some

little

everyone

beside him.

ment."

now,

to

beer made"

I've done and all the time I've spent building a future?'

Sure, she seems like the greatest

thing going right

so

just

wheels, where Fred had said earlier the "best

to

won't go through with it. You're going to sit back

Fred

A group of six girls swept into the room and around the couple. After Helen recited the six

As

empty, meaning­

operation

Charlie

seen

had

personal thing, and he said sorry."

The rest of the meal

less,

"Charlie

table.

gulped at

the wine.

door of the restaurant. returned

with

up

It won't

else to find out about you, too."

You're too

John

keep

can

you. You didn't go to school and win scholarships and make the grades you did so you could spend

good for her and her nutty fami­ ly'. Leave them alone." He stamped on his ciga­ rette. "And I won't be bothering you anymore."

He charged out of the rest room and out the me.

time,

your

the dance floor.

"Look, dammit, I'm in love with the girl. We're married. I'm glad we're married. If you disap­ prove, clear out because I'm tired of listening to

good might have

Take

the rest of your life

bride.

I

can

loose.

"

Wasn't all

anyway.

bringing the

...

around

running

stuff man.

her

"Oh, you know what 1 mean. She hasn't moved the circles you do, and it will take some teaching from you before she'll be able to hold her

own

with

your

crowd.

You

know

what

I

43

You

mean.

thought it was strange marriage without even

probably

that we'd consent to her

meeting you, but when she told us about you and job and everything, why, we just knew

your

she'd be

taken

well

your side of the

of.

care

She needs

to

see

I

married her.

But I

don't know where

my job fits in and I don't quite know what you mean by 'my crowd' and 'my side of the world.'

should explain "Come on, boy, don't I

Maybe

a

little

be

ating in 1959. He had previously attended Beloit Col­ lege for two years. He was a member of the Triangle

Fraternity at Northwestern and won two letters as a miler. He served for two years in the Army, stationed at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Stoll

world, too."

"Sure, I'll take care of her. That's part of the reason

Austin Stoll majored in Geology at Northwestern, gradu­

more

modest.

was

born in Au­

Illinois, and now works in Evanston. He writes that he began writing short stories while he was recovering from an attack of mononucleosis, and that he is now some 30,000 words into a first novel. rora,

"

of

We under­

stand. And you're always welcome in this fami­ ly." He slapped John's shoulder and walked

waving to some new arrivals. clutching the bottle and watching

away,

He

stood

Fred

move

away.

Then

he felt

a

hand

on

ilHIE

his

arm.

"Hi,

new

looked free

brother.

much

hand

older

and

with

me."

gown.

She

Dance in

her

Brenda took

n

his

placed it around her waist.

"Put your beer down."

CA§ilIE

They danced around the floor once before Bren­ against his chest. "Welcome aboard, John. We're all happy to have you, especially me."

"Say, Brenda, I hope you'll excuse me. I have to talk to your sister." John unwrapped himself da leaned her head

�

and motioned to Helen. She left a group of guests and came to him.

"Let's

go,

§V§ilIEWll

darling. It's getting late."

"Already? But you haven't met everyone."

"Yes, I have. Your bag is in the car. Say goodby to your parents, and I'll take you back to change clothes."

"But John, we have a lot of "Helen, let's go."

She looked at him and nodded weakly. Fifteen minutes later they were in the car, and an hour

CRAIG DONAHUE spent

later they

utes every morning standing in front of the mirror

A us tin StoU

�

"

were

out of Helen's

town, away from

The

water

obscured

the

when it started

road

and

made

on­

coming cars next to invisible. John switched on his lights. The rain depressed him even more than the vague displeasure he had been feeling.

It had rained the

ever

since he

Ellis house and

now

it

pulled up in front of was

raining

as

they

you like

thirty min­

fraternity house. And thirty minutes ar­ spent and his blond hair, patting short ranging combing and smoothing it down in the back, wetting it with his comb, and changing the part several times un­ at least half of the

he

til he

was

satisfied. It

was

a

ritual.

Craig grinned at himself in the mirror and bent nearer the glass for a closer inspection of his face.

There

were

two

or

three blackheads clustered on

the tip of his nose. He deftly popped them out. He

left.

"I love the

least

in the bathroom of the UG

Helen's

family.

It was just becoming evening to rain again.

at

inspection, running his hand

rain," Helen said. "In the car with

continued the

it

his chin where he had just removed a thin yellow

like no

else

this, in, and we can never be separated."

John nodded and smiled. "I was just thinking the same thing." seems

one

can come

over

stubble.

It

was

a

handsome

face,

as

were

all the other

faces in his fraternity, and, as a freshman, he had been accepted at once by his brothers. With his face he needed no entrance examination, pass­

port, or credentials. It could get him anywhere. It was

better than money.

Craig stepped back from the mirror and adjust­ ed the collar of his minutely patterned sport shirt 44

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QUARTERLY

beneath his shaggy wool sweater. He appraised himself from long range and strained to examine

dragged through

his profile out of the corner of his eye. It

demic.

was

im­

possible, of course, but every morning for yeurs he had glanced sideways into the mirror, hoping to see

his face in absolute profile.

Next he adjusted the bottom of his sweater, roll­

ing it so it hung below his belt in a casual fold. He looked down at his shoes.

dirty, used

They they had been worn for months in all kinds of weather. Only Craig knew that yesterday they had been white and new, and that he had spent a good hour the night before rubbing dirt into them.

Finally he picked up his UG fraternity pin and pinned it to his sweater. He looked into the mirror grey and looked

as

were a

if

again and watched the little gold emblem of se­ curity, status, and acceptance glitter in the bath­ room

were

could be

light.

Not

given

out not for what

everyone

a

UG.

you've done,

Pins

but for

what you are. And either you are, or you aren't.

Practice didn't help. "The next best thing to being a

UG is to be pinned to one," he used to say with

a

laugh,

and

only he knew that he was serious.

Craig didn't like the location of the pin and moved it a quarter of an inch up and to the left; glance in the mirror. It still wasn't right. On the fourth try he was satisfied and then another

stepped back for a final look.

Before he left the bathroom,

Craig spent several expressions in the mir­ ror. He scowled, as if he had just been asked a profound question, then raised his eyebrows and, intelligently and without hesitation, answered it.

Next came the squint-eyed, harassed look, and the bored, satiated look. He ran through them rapidly.

It was an old game. Finally he smiled his big personality smile and was ready to walk to class.

"What are you doing?" a voice spoke behind him. One of his fraternity brothers had silently opened the door and was looking at Craig in the minutes practicing facial

mirror.

"Nothing, nothing." Craig jerked around,

em­

barrassed that he had almost been caught at his game.

"Are you

ready?"

"Ready! Jesus, I've been waiting for ten min­ utes. I thought maybe you fell in, or something.

You spend more time in the can than any ten guys in the house."

"You could have left, you know, if you were in such

a

damn

big rush. I

can

find the

goddamn

classroom without a guide."

Except for the color of their sweaters, Craig and his friend

smooth,

were

unlined

dressed identically. His friend's face

was

as

as

his hair. They put on

Craig's, but darker,

as

identical raincoats,

soiled and

was

good-looking

beat, and walked

out into the fall sunshine.

"When are you going to get that rag cleaned?" asked his friend.

Spring, 1963

"Rag? What about yours? It looks like it was a sewer after a dysentery epi­ "

"But mine isn't full of lipstick stains," he

said,

and motioned with his head toward Craig's coat collar, where some pale red smears were plainly visible.

Craig looked down, causing about six folds to neck, and stared at the marks. "Oh I didn't notice them before." yeah. form in his

"Bull!

"

"Whatdaya mean, bull?"

"I mean I've looked at those damn stains every

day for the last two weeks."

"Well, I didn't notice them till now.

"Bull."

"You think I left them there

on

purpose," said

Craig, fearful that his ego-bolstering deceit was no longer

a

secret.

"Did I say that?"

"That's what you meant." just saying it doesn't look

"I'm

good."

"All right, I'll get it cleaned, if it will make you

happy. But not this week. I'm low on money."

They walked in silence, looking at the girls but pretending to be occupied with other thoughts. Craig glanced furtively at a pretty blond just as they were abreast on the sidewalk.

Their eyes met for an instant. He looked quickly away, embarrassed that she had seen through his

blase composure, but satisfied that she had

looking at him.

They walked up the steps to the classroom.

"God-damn it, I forgot my notebook," Craig

been

said.

"I'll let you use my notes later."

"There's no use going to class if I can't take

notes."

"You

can

"There's

Listen to what he no

point

in

that.

says." going

I'm

to

the

Besides, I haven't cut his damn class yet."

"All right, I'll meet you there after class," his friend said, and disappeared into the building.

Craig walked back down the steps and paused indecisively for a moment. There was a noise be­ hind him. He looked around and saw a dumpy coed scrambling around on the steps trying to pick up a stack of papers she had just dropped.

He turned away quickly, pretending he hadn't seen her, and walked across the street.

Craig stopped in front of the Grill and slipped his raincoat back a little farther on his shoulders, bringing his UG pin into view. He hoped he Grill.

would meet

someone

he knew. It made him

easy to sit and drink coffee

un­

by himself.

Besides, funny if they saw him in there alone all the time. But then, if any­ one saw his UG pin, they would know he was all right.

The Grill was crowded. Craig stood in the en­ trance and peered over everyone's head, pretendpeople

would

think

it

was

45

ing that he was looking for

someone.

cup of coffee and looked for see anyone he knew. a

On the opposite side of the in

sat

girl

booth

room

alone.

He bought

seat. He didn't

a

a

She

lovely blond

bent

intently occasionally sipped coffee out of the cup at her elbow. Craig edged his way through the people over to her booth, trying not to spill his coffee.

"Is anyone sitting here?" he said.

She looked up at him. "No," she said, "I'll move my things." over

a

of

sort

some

-

workbook

He looked down quickly what kind of

and

he sat, trying to see

as

body she had, but she still wore her raincoat and he couldn't see much. She had face

cute

a

a

and

fine

a

complexion,

though.

He

glanced at her over the rim of his coffee cup. The girl had gone back to writing in her workbook.

"Is that Economic Geography?" he began.

"Yes, have you had it?"

"No, but some of my fraternity brothers have."

"Oh.

"

"Who

do

"Olsen.

you

He's

"I hear he

wears

the

day of

every

have, Englehardt good."

or

Olsen?"

very

the

same

sport coat and tie

year."

"I guess so. I haven't paid too much attention, though," she said. The girl closed her workbook,

Craig her complete attention, and waited expectantly for him to speak.

Craig reached under his sweater and withdrew a pack of cigarettes. He shook one out of the crumpled pack and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. It dangled limply as he fished in his pants' pocket for his lighter. He brought the lighter up in his hand and snapped it open. gave

"Didn't

I

see

at

you

the

ZIT

open

house

last

Saturday?" he said, the cigarette bobbing wildly up

down

and

in

seemed

question

hoped the

answer

wanted

know.

to

mouth

his

harmless

as

he

enough,

spoke.

The

but

Craig

would tell him what he most

girl stared at the flapping cigarette.

"No, I was at my own open house," she said, instinctively, or perhaps purposely, rejecting bait. name's

Craig Donahue," he said, removing wavering cigarette from his mouth, and wrinkling his brow into a per­ turbed scowl. The lighter still burned in his "Oh,

my

without

the

hand.

finally lit the cigarette and put the lighter pocket. Just as he was about to re­

back in his

place the pack under his sweater he said, almost as

afterthought, the cigarette still hanging lips, "Would you like a cigarette?"

"No, thank you." an

from

his

Craig blew

a

his mouth and

46

"

.

thin stream of smoke out across

through

the table toward the girl. A

.

.

"Don't you think it's warm in here?" " "I hadn't noticed. My fra ...

"Wait, I'm going to take my coat off." Craig watched her slip out of the raincoat. She let it fall between her back and the back of the booth, dis­ closing a small, diamond-shaped Delta Phi pin hanging from the soft backdrop of her sweater.

Craig stared at it for an instant, then looked quickly away.

"I'm sorry, what were you saying?" she said.

"I wasn't saying anything." "

"Oh.

several

neither

spoke. Craig cigarette and looked around the room, then down at his watch. "God, I didn't know it was so late," he said, "I have an appointment with a professor at nine o'clock."

Craig got up hurriedly, leaving his coffee half finished. "It's been nice talking to you, Joanne.

I'll probably see you around campus."

"Goodby," she said.

Craig walked quickly out the door without look­ ing back. He wasted an hour in the library read­ ing magazines, then went to a history class and listened indifferently to the lecture. After class he walked back to the fraternity house for lunch, assuming his bored, haggard expression as he walked lazily along.

As he stood in the living room of the house, waiting for lunch to be served, his friend from earlier that morning spoke to him.

For

dragged

"I

moments

his

on

looked for you in the

thought you

going

were

Grill

to meet

after

class.

I

there."

me

"I was, but I had to leave. I went into the Grill for coffee and there I sat had

was this girl sitting alone so down- and started talking to her. She still "

...

"Who was she?"

"I don't know who she was. I just sat down and started

talking to her. She had on her coat and drinking coffee. Anyway, I was just ready to

ask her to the Fidel Castro party when she said it hot and took off her coat. Then I

saw this big Pig pin hanging from her "Was she pretty?"

"Yeah, she was all right, I guess. But Jesus, I saw that damn Delta Pig's pin dangling from "What was her name? Maybe I know her from someplace.' was

"

Delta

.

.

.

"

...

,

"I don't know what her

"I'm Joan Buchek." She smiled.

He

looking girl, he thought, and friendly.

"My fraternity's having a

was

The

the

very nice

or

anne,

name

something. When I

was.

saw

June

or

that damn

Jo­

pin,

I left."

"Oh yeah?"

"Not that there's anything wrong with the DP's.

I mean, if it to take

was

her out.

myself, I would have been glad But it might look bad for the

house, you know."

"Yeah, I probably would have done the thing.

same

"

NORTHWESTERN

TRI-QU ARTERLY

I'm no histor-ian,

HOTAI

Merry round man of teak With shining ivory eyes And great polished stomach to be rubbed You stand, feet wide spread, Praising Buddha, happy priest, Fat robed arms high, palms up to your Maker.

-

Blissful, tranquil mannequin, Smiling with your whole faceWide, fiat, shiny nose, Wide, smooth, shiny brow, Great, wide, laughing mouth, praising your Maker.

No prognosticatorian, But only see signs

Of good, signs of evil, And at boll's heart, the weevil Looks dark as the devil.

These haphazard rhymes

May be wrong, may be right, But I have seen signs Of dark times, dark times, And hoped for some sign of light.

Yet, at boll's heart, the weevil Looks' dark devil.

Do you never weep, Hotai,

But that's a metaphor

With cocked brown head And long ear lobes brushing your necklace?

You wait on your pedestal,

Laughing such a deep teakwood laugh.

You have a great secret, shared with your Maker.

But look at you, mannequin,

Smiling in your woodenness Thin, dry, yellow lines, Thin, deep, yellow cracks, call to your Maker!

Sharp, thin, hurting pains -

Would be better for

My purpose were weevil And cotton one thing.

That's what my signs sing, Dark in light, good from evil.

And around the dark, weevil heart of the boll, Cotton

shines, cotton shines like a soul.

MALCOLM McCOLLUM,

L.A., '64

-

THE INTERVIEW

You are of another place, Not this arid, splitting heat.

Good

You are of steaming rice fields,

You feel

Morning.

Badly.

I'm sorry to hear that.

Thank you.

tender bamboo shoots,

juicy water chestnuts.

But

now

Call to your Maker!

Now, Hotai

'

morning, Miss Marvel. well, Miss Marvel? let's get started.

Your work before

coming?

Gladly.

Filing.

Take any dictation?

Rarely.

And what about

typing?

Some work with computers?

Seldom.

Far away from rice fields,

Educational background?

General.

Far away from bamboo shoots,

Nearly.

Far away from water chestnuts.

Graduation from college?

Your interest or major?

But still you praise Him,

Your

grades:

Merely.

Now

personal data.

Call to Buddha!

He will not hear you,

Crying for your wooden life,

Trusting, dreaming, laughing man of teak.

SUSAN ALLEN, Speech '63

Your health

about

as

a

average?

Dependable?

Home

ec.

Yessir.

rule?

Poorly.

Hm. Time out for sick leave?

COTTON SIGN

Barely.

Punctual?

Never.

Surely.

Your

salary requirements? dependents?

Now just one last question.

Your plans for advancement?

Modest.

How many

One, sir.

FinallY· None, sir.

Well, thank you for coming.

A warning's in order.

Welcome.

At boll's heart, the weevil

Looks dark as the devil.

Don't call

Neither statistician Nor metaphysician Am I, but I incline

To believe in a sign Of good, a sign of evil.

Good

That was a metaphor.

Don't ask, "What was it for?"

Spring, 1963

we'll call you.

Warning?

GladlY·

morning, Miss Marvel.

Morning.

us

-

SUSAN ALLEN,

Speech

'63

47

POETS IN

PROGRESS: -

)

THEODR

RICHARD WILBUR

J. V. CUNNINGHAM RANDALL JARRELL

ROBET LW

RICHARD EBERHART HOWARD NEMEROV

W. S. MERWIN

STANLEY KUIZ

( ROETHKE

WILLIAM DEWITT SNODGRASS

,;

Prefacs Critcal

"

Contemporary American Poets

to

Ten

B.

HUNGERFORD

EDIT BY

EDWARD

NORTHWESTEf 1840 Sberlda:

they work;men as

tomb,are wased

banquets often

cares rathe n

is It nde

fortunate to be able "to meet" authors in full flight of their For to wait for the appraisal of succeeding generations. tendered toothless old men in their dotage and eulogies over to see these gestures. It is much more vital and exciting as they respond watch and shoulders their over to look in. These essays achieve just that and give understanding

to the world weive

�IT is "1

perctiv, to en

articulate talents.

224 pages

S'" '"",'a.."..,t

$5.00 trade

Av>chi�rr::;s *

*

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*

Evari st, '"'n,

Cam!:"·

Africa n

the United Nations

by THOMAS HOVET, JR.

)

of behavior tha

Nations, Ued

aproximtely Ou f

Africans in the 25,000 individual votes participated in by Professor Hovet has isolated and identified important patterns characterize Africa's role in the world organization.

demonstra tha

Africa and those f

exampl, For

total votes, the nations of statistics show that in 66.4% of the Professor Hovet the Soviet bloc voted identically. However, ic an undue influence statist this from infer those who would the facts. The evidence shows that,

contray on he its

upon the African

states

incorrectly interpret

the Soviet bloc that, in the majority

of instances, votes

African tl he

nations.

("onerd with e

IN THE {!.\ITED

Invights such as thes

and make AFRICA characterize Professor Hover's study, interested in Africa and for valuable everyone NATIONS future of the United Nations.

posn ';onter

j.;

parcel may be op ,

Fourth-class Mai: