SPIDER GOD LIVES!: HIS WORD





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INTERVIEWS


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Valley History: an interview with Jim Webb 2/4/2000

by Jim Cravens

[The following interview was recorded by Jimmy Cravens, a friend and neighbor of Jim’s from Anthony, New Mexico. It is an inquiry into the origin of the Anthony Country Club. The interview was recorded on a miniature cassette machine, which leaves something to be desired in the way of sound quality. Jim Cravens gave me a copy of the tape and permission to transcribe it.]


CRAVENS: Let’s see, Jim, you’ve been talking about [writing] a book about the Anthony Country Club and the members and the things that went on for a number of years. When do you think the Anthony Country Club got started?

WEBB: Well it was started when i became conscious of it. I mean it had already started. There was the carapace of the retired streetcar drug out from El Paso parked along the west side of the west levy, just north of the bridge.

CRAVENS: This was in what year?

WEBB: Well this was early thirties, i think, but i don’t know what year.

CRAVENS: Who were the members back then? Must have been the charter members then.

WEBB: Yes, i think so. Emory White and Pamsey Ickert, Horace Nesmith, and my grandfather Jim Pool, and Pete Pettick, and maybe Mississippi Fletcher; Tom--Sam Donaldson’s older brother, Tommy, i think; ah mostly farmers and farm-dependent small business people in the area.

CRAVENS: From Anthony?

WEBB: From Anthony.

CRAVENS: So this didn’t include many El Pasoans or Las Crucans, it was just strictly …

WEBB: I don’t think it included any El Pasoans or Las Crucans. People were not traveling very often that far from home then.

CRAVENS: So the clubhouse began as—what did they do? They transported some …

WEBB: They got a broken down retired streetcar from El Paso and brought it out and parked it end-on to the levy, so you could walk in the end of it and it was a bar along one side and places to stand on the other, and occasionally illegal slot machines.

CRAVENS: This was just one room?

WEBB: This was just one room the size of a streetcar. Then they added a little sun porch to the south, where people could sit at tables and drink and play cards, and they did a little entrance on the front and pretty soon they did a back room where the poker game could happen, and by 1945 or so they had the dance and eat room on the north side of the car, the banqueting room, and at that same time they did the pretty nice locker rooms for the men and women in the back, but that’s as big as the old clubhouse became.

CRAVENS: Did it have a billiards room?

WEBB: No, i don’t think so.

CRAVENS: So you’d walk in the door and there’d be the …?

WEBB: There’d be the banquet on the right, sun porch, card-playing area to the left, the bar straight ahead on the right, and interconnections would serve drinks into the banqueting rooms. On the left as you went in was generally the latest posters of people who made holes in one and got cases of Wheaties as a reward. This whole system was working pretty well by 1947 maybe when i joined with a lot of other teenagers from the club to take golf lessons from Margery Holmes, who was a pretty good teacher—strict but attentive—and we would start out and after three holes you pass by the clubhouse again, so some of us would disappear from the golf lesson and go in and play hearts, but that was part of the club too; it wasn’t really considered a shift of gears.

CRAVENS: Do you ever remember any sand greens?

WEBB: I don’t think there were really sand greens after maybe 1935 or so; not in my memory were there sand greens. I have heard that the sand greens were when they were still over somewhere by Anthony, and they didn’t have a whole lot of holes, but they had some, and they had smooth sand greens. I read in the history of the club that the lease with the Reclamation Service was finagled through by a Mr Rischeberger, whom i never met, i think he died maybe shortly thereafter, but i think he had a sister, Harry [sic], who was one of the stringers for the El Paso Times and who conscientiously put on the society page the goings on of Anthony club members and the birthdays of their children and the visitors from out of town. Her job was taken over by Mrs Lightner Burns, when she quit, and after Mrs Burns i don’t think that Anthony was really that important in the El Paso Times.

CRAVENS: Who was the manager of the club?

WEBB: Ah, when i was a small child: Fred Smith, who was Oklahoma Territory gambling partner of my grandfather, came down from the Elks Lodge at Amarillo and fixed up a little house across the bridge from the club, which he bought from my grandfather, and started growing in the fields that he bought from Horace Nesmith between there and the bridge. When he retired, which was in, i think, the early ‘40s, aunt Blanch Young’s nephew, Dalquist, took over as manager i think for quite a few years, and after that i was disconnected and don’t know. Turn this off for a while?

CRAVENS: The date of the inauguration of the new clubhouse...

WEBB: ...I think was the summer of 1961. I was just back from Fulbright years at Cambridge and i had a new contact lens and i lost it on the floor, so Mini Ickert and various other dignitaries crawled around on their knees helping me find it, this was new at the time. [Laughing]

CRAVENS: You found it?

WEBB: Yes, we found it. It had actually slipped under my eyelid but i didn’t tell anybody that because we had had so much fun struggle to find it.

[At this point there is a break in the tape containing some almost indecipherable discussion between Jim Webb and Jimmy Cravens, apparently discussing questions to ask and possible sources of information, people to interview, etc. regarding the Anthony Country Club. I include here what i’ve been able to decipher.]

WEBB: … when did you join the club, and how did that feel? What were you up to? You were playing golf? Who were the golfers? Did they have the Calcutta pool then, at the invitational? When did the invitationals start?

CRAVENS: How about stories about the poker games?

WEBB: Poker games we ah--i don’t know whether there’s anyone left alive from the poker games, but that would be a question to try to find out.

CRAVENS: Rocky might know.

WEBB: Uh huh, yeah.

[A break in the tape]

CRAVENS: Okay Jim, you heard the tape and there were a couple of corrections you wanted to make.

WEBB: Well, we can’t call them corrections, we can’t even call them objections because the tape is not dealing with history it’s dealing with folklore, and successive generations never quite understand what it was the previous ones were doing and they remake it into something that they can comprehend or be amused at or bolster against some personal pet theory. I was glad to hear that my grandfather and friends of his were noted for catching crooks instead of being crooks. I have always had my doubts about this.

CRAVENS: They came from Oklahoma?

WEBB: In 1904, in Oklahoma Territory, when Faye was born, they were on the Pottawatomie Indian Reservation in some kind of western town gambling situation. I don’t know whether they were dealers or whether they just went around and joined in other people’s games. Since they had a stable home base i guess they were dealers. Fred Smith’s daughter, Elizabeth Smith Hansen, taught me algebra and [indecipherable] at El Paso High, warned me, when i had to testify in my mother’s will case against my grandmother’s second husband, that if they ask how Mr Pool and Mr Smith knew each other you can say well they were business partners. Now back in Oklahoma and the panhandle they ah, they sold ice in the summertime and coal in the wintertime, and this kept them busy year round. I don’t know how much truth there is in that. Were they making ice in Oklahoma in 1906?

CRAVENS: How did they end up down here?

WEBB: My grandfather Jim Pool went to Yuma in about 1911 or ’12, at the opening of the Imperial [indecipherable] stuff, and he found it a wonderful place to farm because you could grow crops year-round, but he was in his forties and in five or six years he had severe heat stroke from the summer part of that year-round cropping, so he looked around for somewhere that didn’t get that hot in the summer and gave you some rest in the winter, and Elephant Butte irrigation project had opened in 1916, and there was a boom going on; they had muddied up the valley to where you couldn’t cross it, so they dug the drainage ditches in 1918. By 1919 it was drying out some and Papa Pool bought the Brooks farm—Brooks, a storekeeper in Anthony—and bought the Miller farm.

CRAVENS: The Brooks farm first.

WEBB: Well Brooks was the first anglo, no, there were some real-estate speculators from New York, who owned it before that.

CRAVENS: And which farm was this?

WEBB: This one, including [indecipherable] back.

CRAVENS: The whole hundred acres?

WEBB: Twenty acres or so, seventeen maybe, stretching to the corner where …

CRAVENS: … and then next was--or that was the whole thing?

WEBB: Well, this farm was constructed out of three terranos, which were granted to successive generation family members of the colonial imperial land grant [indecipherable: ‘and escevarino’], so most of the part where you planted your trees is part of the Librato Candalaria tract, so there are three more or less forty acre lots. They laid them out more or less north to south, which is why Ohara Road does these jogs getting to the river.…

CRAVENS: When did they put in the irrigation system and the ditch system?

WEBB: Well, Elephant Butte started delivering water to the ditch system in 1916, but the three saints west had been constructed by hand and mule twenty-five or thirty years before to take water diverted from the head of the [names uncertain] Vosgate, Shambarino, Barino area, and the canal comes down to [?] Vosgate, just below Harding Road, where it forks into the east and west, and they are not straight-line survey ditches, they are pretty much the best route that the terrain allowed. But the Elephant Butte irrigation project was dealing in relatively unfamiliar territory, they hadn’t done a lot of irrigated water diversion, no big dams of that size, and it was an unexpected consequence that they flooded the valley the first year of operation.

CRAVENS: So they had to construct the drain system?

WEBB: Uh huh, in 1917 or ’18, pretty quick response i guess, the federal government condemned land and took five and a half acres for research, but they paid approximate going value for the land and they approved the land that they would buy, they provided water for fire fighting and wildlife habitat. When i was a kid the ditch from this bridge, which was an old wooden bridge, up to the corner on O’Hara Road, was fenced off with a barbed wire fence on both sides [dog barks]. [Break in tape] I don’t know who’s going to stay where. [Break in tape] Sixty years.
[A few minutes of indecipherable taped interview, then it breaks off entirely.]




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Jim Webb: oral history interview transcript



[Session 1 (of 1), December 28, 1998]

[Begin Tape 1 (of 1), Side A]

HAIGHT: December 28th, 1998, talking to Jim Webb at our house at 966 Ventura Avenue, Albany, California, 94707.

WEBB: You’ve seen on Saturday Night Live the PBS girls who talk about food?

HAIGHT: No.

WEBB: Oh, they are so sweet; they say: Oh, isn’t that nice; what a happy thought; and next week we’ll be dealing with, rice.

HAIGHT: Sounds like “Mr Rogers Talks About Food”.

WEBB: Kind of, yes.

HAIGHT: Well i thought of a first question, but you can break in and out of any time zone you want to.

WEBB: Oh, that’s good; that’s nice.

HAIGHT: But i thought i would ask about people that you think have influenced you—i’m thinking mostly of family, but other people as well—either because you knew them or because you heard so many stories about them that they had a place in your consciousness when you were little.

WEBB: How little is little?

HAIGHT: Way back. I guess i’m thinking of when Jim was just starting to think of himself as Jim.

WEBB: Well let’s see, i was about four when i noticed that my father and grandfather were both Jim and that i was too, but that somehow i was called Jimmy, which is a diminutive of Jim, but never called James.

HAIGHT: Really?

WEBB: No, not until i got to Cambridge i think, then it was unavoidable.

HAIGHT: And that was kind of a british thing?

WEBB: Yes, british thing. Jimmy was very déclassé in England. Maybe a coal miner could be Jimmy, but not at Cambridge.

HAIGHT: And i gather Jimmy Carter took some flack for being a Jimmy.

WEBB: Yes he did; but i think he was right, he was a Jimmy. He’s turned out to be a nice Jimmy too. He’s i think our most resourceful living ex-president. Not saying a whole lot.

HAIGHT: Aside from the sense of continuity about the name, did you have any other feelings about being a Jim/Jimmy?

WEBB: No, that was just a given, really. You had to be something, and that was understandable that family had names that they used over and over again, well-worn ones.

HAIGHT: I suppose i should have a lot of elaborate notes, but i don’t. You had an older brother …

WEBB: … Jack, an older half-brother, Jack Story.

HAIGHT: Oh, that’s right, okay …

WEBB: Uh huh … and he was dragged to death by his horse at the age of seven when i was four, so i barely remember him, or maybe i was five and he was eight, but i think i was only four.

HAIGHT: So you were the eldest son of your father?

WEBB: Yeah, and consequently his name. I didn’t get the middle name because he didn’t like it. It was Elijah. He and all his brothers had biblical prophets for middle names, and he tried to conceal it as an initial all his life and didn’t think anyone else would want to have it as a name either.

HAIGHT: What do you think, would you have liked it?

WEBB: Well, it was alright; it made a little acronym, JEW, which was nice initials.

HAIGHT: Also biblical.

WEBB: But i was born on the 19th of October and my cousin Kenneth, who was born on the 19th of October was visiting that year, so naturally, as a courtesy, i got named for him too.

HAIGHT: Oh, so that’s what the K is?

WEBB: Uh huh. But i’ve never really been Kenneth, i’ve never been Kenny or Ken. When i see a belt buckle with Ken on it i think, well, i could, but no.

HAIGHT: It’s never been an attractive alternative? I know you didn’t know your older brother that well, or you probably don’t remember him very well, but would you say that there was an influence on you? that his life or his having been an older brother had any influence on you? In the birth order did you assume any kind of role, did you become the eldest when he died?

WEBB: Yeah, i did, i considered him mainly a cautionary instance of how not to live a very long life.

HAIGHT: Really?

WEBB: Yes, because he had been very active, you know, at the age of four or five he was out stopping traffic on the highway and directing them around, starting fires in the store that my mother was running, going out and learning to swim in the river without any responsible older person along, so we moved away from the railroad and the road and the river to try to save him from himself, but …

HAIGHT: Really? so that was a conscious …?

WEBB: He was a risk taker, he was a determined and willful and strong-headed child; didn’t see that rules applied to him.

HAIGHT: He sounds like he takes after your mother’s side, not so much your mother’s character, but you told me about her father …

WEBB: Yes, they were close friends, Papa Pool and Jack. At five or six he rode around with Papa Pool to the gin and the fields, doing the farming business, and once was told to stay in the car instead of going into the gin office, so he took his new toy saw and started sawing apart the back seat of his grandfather’s new car; and Papa Pool came out and said that was a dumb and outrageous thing to do, started the car, started driving along, then heard crying or whimpering in the back seat, then said: Stop that! Come up here with me. There isn’t a car seat in the world that’s worth crying about.

HAIGHT: Did you know him very well, Papa Pool?

WEBB: Uh huh, let’s see, he died when i was thirteen, but we spent a lot of time together. We played pitch and hearts and i did my musical practice under his supervision. He didn’t criticize, he praised, he was a …

HAIGHT: So was he a musical person, or did he just happen to be …?

WEBB: Oh, well, he just happened to be supportive of anything any kid wanted to learn, basically.

HAIGHT: Really? That’s interesting; i mean that sounds like it fits kind of naturally into your mother’s having been a teacher maybe, sort of facilitating learning. Where do you think the gambler’s element comes in there? Did your mom have any of that?

WEBB: Not really. She had competitiveness at the bridge table or at the poker table, but she didn’t mix it up with money, it was just the fun of the game, playing.

HAIGHT: So it wasn’t the stakes, but she did like to win.

WEBB: Yeah. But before Jack was killed i had already lost the sight in one eye and was being kind of pampered and protected.

HAIGHT: How old were you?

WEBB: Two years old. A little under two.

HAIGHT: Can you remember it?

WEBB: No, i have no conscious memory of seeing in three dimensions. Everything looks to me to have depth now but that’s only because i’ve been practicing putting it there all these years.

HAIGHT: And that’s what the movements …?

WEBB: Well the shiftiness makes a time-lapse triangulation that can tell you how far away you are from something.

HAIGHT: So if you move from side to side you can draw a bead on something?

WEBB: Yeah, you draw two beads, and the angle tells you how far away the focus is.

HAIGHT: I’ve always thought of that as sort of a cobra-like movement, and i wonder, maybe it’s the same reason that the cobra does it, to kind of get a …

WEBB: I never looked close enough at a cobra to know exactly how the eyes are wrapped around the head.

HAIGHT: When did that movement become conscious?

WEBB: That’s a later-day rationalization. I don’t know when i started doing it. I know i was doing it by the time i learned to drive, which was kind of essential.

HAIGHT: So while you’re driving you need to do that too then? Well that makes a lot of sense, although it must be harder actually.

WEBB: I don’t know, because it’s automatic now.

HAIGHT: And it doesn’t take that much movement.

WEBB: No.

HAIGHT: Just enough, just a little. Yeah, that’s interesting.

WEBB: Ah, let’s see, when i lost the sight in the eye it was … i was old enough to
walk and i pushed open a screen door all the way back, 180 degrees, and the coil spring, which was right at the level of my head, snapped and cut through the pupil of the eye; so that was stitched back together and i had an eye that i could see the difference between light and dark with, but no image, detail, though i got very good at guessing how many fingers people held out to see if i could.

HAIGHT: So you mean like when the doctor would test you …?

WEBB: Well, not just the doctor but everyone at the bridge party for instance or everyone at the barbecue, trying to see whether i really could see or not.

HAIGHT: So you didn’t actually lose the eye right away.

WEBB: No, i lost that when i was five years old and went to a birthday party in Anthony at Mary Ann Bine’s house and i got hit on the forehead by a swing on the blind side, which then developed blood clots between the eye and the brain, so rather than have it do in the brain, they took the eye out to get the clot out, i think. There was no reason to keep the eye since i couldn’t see with it. But first they tried to keep it—so that was one operation—and then a week later the thing still hurt so bad that they did it again and took it out.

HAIGHT: So there was swelling and …?

WEBB: … Yeah, where you couldn’t get at it.

HAIGHT: Do you remember that?

WEBB: I remember how hard it hurt. I remember the—i didn’t like the anesthetics that they used then, ether--

HAIGHT: --Oh, really?--

WEBB: Yes, and stuff … a very alien thing.

HAIGHT: Was that your first drug experience?

WEBB: Ah, yes, i think; well, i’d had hot toddy before then …

HAIGHT: Oh …

WEBB: … and a little bit of coffee, but that was the first what i would call a drug experience.

HAIGHT: And you didn’t like it, it made you uncomfortable?

WEBB: Yes, ah, it is dizzying and precipitous: ether starts you zinging in a spiral that gets more and more intense and you fall into darkness; it’s a …

HAIGHT: … So it felt like you were falling, what, into a hole or into …?

WEBB: Well, we didn’t know about black holes then, but that’s what it felt like, a black hole, actually.

HAIGHT: And it felt like into darkness, into nothingness?

WEBB: Yeah, uh huh, yeah, yeah: the abyss.

HAIGHT: That would be pretty scary, especially if you’re five years old.

WEBB: Then when i was about seven or eight i got to do it again for my tonsils, and i didn’t like that. And then i think when i was twelve maybe—i didn’t find school very exciting that year and i preferred to stay home and read Mark Twain and some other things, and so i usually just explained that i was nauseated at time to go to school and that i wouldn’t do it; but my parents got concerned and took me to a doctor who said, oh well we’d better take his appendix out. [Laughter]

HAIGHT: Really? because they just assumed it’s intestinal and so …

WEBB: … yeah, something down there: let’s cut out something that’s not essential, and took out the ether again and took the appendix out and they said it was really a good thing they did it because although it was a perfectly healthy appendix [laughter] it was wrapped up in so many coils of stuff that it would have been tricky to get at if it were inflamed or enlarged or ruptured.

HAIGHT: And that was unique to you, the coils of stuff?

WEBB: I don’t know—well, ah, yes; he expected to spend fifteen minutes doing it and he spent nearly an hour, so i don’t … maybe he just wanted to justify his bill, but he was my—i was still going to my baby doctor at the age of twelve. [Laughter] But i had had a very fine eye doctor that i went to weekly for years, Doctor Griffin. He was such a nice man that he always gave his young patients lemon drops when they visited the office, and my mother caught me flushing them down the toilet in the restroom and asked why i took them if i didn’t like them, and i said i didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

HAIGHT: Really? And how old were you?

WEBB: It was when i was four, three or four.

HAIGHT: So you were already really sensitive to people’s …

WEBB: … Well, everyone is i think. Didn’t you know when people’s feelings were hurt when you were little?

HAIGHT: Yeah, i think, if anything people tend to get less sensitive when they get older. [Laughs]

WEBB: Maybe so…. Let’s see, after the eye was removed, when i was five, up until i was about ten i had to get a new glass eye every six months or a year, because of growing and because the acidic conditions of the eye socket eat glass.

HAIGHT: They do?

WEBB: It turns pitted and loses its slick gloss.

HAIGHT: Wow, and that’s just the fluid in your …?

WEBB: … yeah, the tear ducts and the exposed …

HAIGHT: It’s that strong? It’s acidic?

WEBB: Well, that’s what the Bausch and Lomb guy told me when i was eight or nine. I don’t know whether i got it straight, but about twice a year the german man who blew, who shaped the glasses would come through town and everyone who needed artificial eyes would have an appointment, and he would be sitting at a desk with a Bunsen burner and boxes of eyes that looked like christmas tree ornaments and would pick an eye and here would be forty-eight eyes and they would all be blue but they would all be slightly different blues, and big pupils and little pupils and things. So he would find the one that was going to work. And then he would attach a little tube to it so he could blow and suck the air out of it as he heated it up, and he had little calipers to measure and he would make it into its little scallop size and shape, and he would heat up little threads of red and blue veins and put those on to match the other eye. It would take about an hour.

HAIGHT: Do they do them as well now as they did then?

WEBB: Ah, well, they do them much better now because they have miracle plastic stuff; i mean as opposed to getting one every year, the one i’m wearing now is thirty-five years old.

HAIGHT: Oh really?

WEBB: It was made by a lady in plastic in Boston in 1963, when i was at the University of Connecticut. She was very cool and very skilled. We sat in a somewhat darkened room…. She worked it out pretty good. Over the next, let’s see, fifteen years, until his death, my father several times gave me money to buy a new one, and i always spent it on something else.

HAIGHT: These were the glass ones that he was giving you money to replace?

WEBB: No, he said i should get new plastic ones, that nothing would last forever, and …

HAIGHT: … but you were satisfied. You had your priorities.

WEBB: I was satisfied. I just had—perhaps i didn’t work by priorities then, i don’t know. It always seemed like there was something else more important to use the money for. I have forgotten what i did use the money for in all those particular instances, but …

HAIGHT: When i first met you …

WEBB: … That was in 1970 or so maybe …

HAIGHT: … Well, let’s see, well actually i had probably seen you before, in the late sixties, but yeah, i guess you’re right, it probably would have been seventy or seventy-one.

WEBB: It was seventy when you saw ‘Spider God’, so it would have been after that.

HAIGHT: I didn’t know that you had a glass eye and the only thing i remember was that you used to wear sunglasses inside …

WEBB: … Yeah, prescription sunglasses …

HAIGHT: … and the only thing i thought about that was that you were kind of like Andy Warhol or something.

WEBB: I started doing that when i was i think maybe a junior at Harvard because i was a mild rebel, guess you would say, i wore blue jeans instead of nice trousers, and i wore cowboy boots in Boston in the middle of the winter.

HAIGHT: Oh really?

WEBB: Yeah, and turtleneck sweaters without a tie under them, and …

HAIGHT: … So in those days students were really …

WEBB: Well, you couldn’t get a meal without a jacket and a tie in your house dining room, or the commons for freshmen. Professor Samuel Elliott Morrison stopped a lecture in colonial history to ask me if i had a tie [laughter], and i said i did and i pulled it out of my pocket [laughter].

HAIGHT: Was it a regular tie?

WEBB: No; this was a time when we had very narrow tiny bow ties, only about an inch wide, but they would be in Stuart tartan or—nice design—so they would roll up nicely--

HAIGHT: Did that satisfy …?

WEBB: No, he wanted me to have it on. I had a green turtleneck sweater that served me well for very many years, so i tied it around my neck and he went on with the lecture.

HAIGHT: With a turtleneck? [Laughs]

WEBB: Yes. I forget where that came up …

HAIGHT: So the sunglasses …

WEBB: … Oh, the sunglasses, yeah, were because i was a night person, and i would go out after midnight to the Ace Bickford [?] and other all-night eating establishments and drink coffee and eat toasted english muffins and write in notebooks, a lot of stuff. There were lots of us who went down and wrote in the middle of the night.

HAIGHT: So was it more of a being cool thing?

WEBB: Ah, it was a being cool, and it was an avoiding distraction, and it was a focus thing. My myopia was sufficient that--the center of the lens was not colored—most of the color had been ground away—so i could see very clearly anything that i really wanted to see, it was just this cloud around the rim and …

HAIGHT: So mostly it was to shut out distraction?

WEBB: Well, and ah … i suppose it was defensive … ah, you could pretend to be blind, right? [Laughter]

HAIGHT: I assumed later on, after the fact i thought: Oh well, you know, so that way your eye wouldn’t show and no one could tell …

WEBB: … That’s part of it i think, uh huh.

HAIGHT: So you think that was an element.

WEBB: Yes, uh huh, and ah, let’s see, the main thing i was aware of in the appearance of the eyes was that if i actually looked really to the left or the right the other eye, the glass eye didn’t follow the movement sufficiently, so from my blind side i realized that people could think i was looking at them when i wasn’t, so it was nice to have the dark lens over there too …

HAIGHT: … so people wouldn’t think that …

WEBB: What ya lookin’ at, huh? And it was kind of thought to be cool, because, although i didn’t take drugs or anything i did go to jazz clubs where people sometimes covered their eyes.

HAIGHT: So this would have been in the fifties?

WEBB: Yeah, fifty-one to fifty-five or so.

HAIGHT: Uh huh, it would have been pretty unusual …

WEBB: Uh huh, there weren’t a whole lot of us.

HAIGHT: … ‘cause in the sixties it was more …

WEBB: … In the sixties, yeah, everybody caught on.

HAIGHT: Let me turn the tape over.

[tape 1, side B]

WEBB: Well to go back to the world when i was a child: there was no atomic energy, there was no television, there were no dial telephones within my region of the world …
HAIGHT: No dial telephones?

WEBB: No dial telephones, you had to talk to the operator and tell her what number you wanted to be connected with.

HAIGHT: You had a phone in the house?

WEBB: Yes, ah, let’s see, in Marino we were 33R2, and my grandparents’ house was 18J4, line 18 went out towards the river from Anthony and line 33 went up through the edge of the desert.

HAIGHT: So there were few enough phones …?

WEBB: Yes, and the operator in Anthony often knew why you weren’t getting an answer at one place or another and would tell you that your grandmother’s gone to town and ah …[laughter] It was better than call-waiting or voice-mail. I got tricked on voice-mail today at Howard’s. I was trying to make a phone call from his house and any time i picked up the phone i got this busy signal, and then after a while the phone rang and it was Laurie, and i thought oh great, she’s unlocked this system and i can talk now. After we finished i picked it up: still got the signal…. Well, it isn’t really a busy signal; it is called a stuttering sound that tells you that you have voice-mail if you want to listen to it.

HAIGHT: Oh, okay, yeah …

WEBB: But if you don’t want to listen to it or it’s not your voice-mail, you just imagine that it’s a dial tone and …

HAIGHT: … and you can just ignore it and go …

WEBB: But it took me an hour to get that information out of Howard. [Laughter] First he said: Well, there must be a phone off the hook. So i tracked down all the phones: none were off the hook. But it is hard to know what people don’t know because they don’t know how to ask precisely about what they don’t know.

HAIGHT: And things are changing so fast that you’re bound not to know something.

WEBB: Well, let’s see, i know that there are people who can know what number you’re calling from before they answer you. Didn’t used to be that either. And you can have your calls forwarded and nobody knows that you’re answering at a great distance. And then all of this cell stuff, people can be anywhere.

HAIGHT: Yeah, that’s right. I find that really strange, just seeing people all over the place with their phones.

WEBB: Driving along and making turns with their phone.

HAIGHT: Walking down the street just talking on the phone. Kind of strange.

WEBB: Well, it’s just an externalization of the kind of dialogues we’ve had for years…. Oh, i was listing the differences of the world, then: most cars were dark colors. The Ford’s were black, mostly, and Oldsmobile might be navy blue. My grandfather had a lemon-yellow Pontiac just before the war, 1940 or ’41.

HAIGHT: That would have been kind of outrageous.

WEBB: Pretty—lightest color car i’d ever seen. Hudsons tended to be brown. Packards were black.

HAIGHT: Why do you think that was? The car was just kind of a serious thing?

WEBB: Well, it was kind of like a suit …

HAIGHT: … Those were always dark, except Colonel Sanders or something …

WEBB: … or a carriage, carriages were generally dark.

HAIGHT: Sure, so that would have been the carry-over, the whole concept.

WEBB: The liberation came after the war, when they colored cars in profusion. And it took ten or twelve years to get to the pink Cadillac i think.

HAIGHT: So do you think that was a kind of: Let’s have fun with this … ?

WEBB: Let’s offer more options and people will buy more, i think was the bottom line on it. I think General Motors picked it up as a way to gain territory on Ford. ‘Cause Ford was stubborn: black was good enough for him it was good enough for everybody else, why else was he selling ‘em so cheap. No television.

HAIGHT: What about movies: do you remember did you go to the movies much?

WEBB: Well, yeah, from starting school i could reliably go to the saturday matinee, which had a double-feature and a serial and a cartoon …

HAIGHT: … and was this actually in Anthony?

WEBB: … uh huh, and a newsreel and previews of coming attractions, all for a dime. So i saw things like, oh there were egyptian sagas during the early ‘40s. Turhan Bey was the actor who appeared in them. They were kind of egyptian historical westerns. They were nice. The life of Chopin: A Song to Remember [1945], i thought that was pretty cool.

HAIGHT: That made an impression on you. How old were you?

WEBB: Oh i was about ten by the time i saw the Chopin thing.

HAIGHT: So did you have a kind of romantic …?

WEBB: Oh, that was a stunning—have you seen that movie?

HAIGHT: No, i haven’t.

WEBB: What is the name of the actor? Ah, Cornel Wilde, i think? and he plays the polonaises in different great gilded music houses of Europe on his grand tours, and when he is playing the Eroic Polonaise a big drop of red blood from his tuberculosis falls down on the white keys. You know he’s gonna die.

HAIGHT: Is it Technicolor?

WEBB: Yes, Technicolor, which we thought was very good color at that time. It was quite a bit better than Eastman color if you remember.

HAIGHT: No, i don’t.

WEBB: Eastman color all the reds were orange and all the blues were kind of green and ah, it all made sense if you didn’t refer it to the real world. [Laughter] But it was used for lots of like Nelson Eddy and ah …

HAIGHT: Where they wanted it to be surreal.

WEBB: Well, it was cheaper i think, i think it was cheaper.

HAIGHT: I remember when color TV first came in that my grandfather would always keep the color turned up kind of like that, what you’re describing, not the real world but something better.

WEBB: I tend to do that. I supersaturate the colors.

HAIGHT: Yeah, really? Because it’s better …?

WEBB: I like, i like the glowing colors, it’s like stained glass windows at Saint Chapelle, i mean i like—you’ve got that pos—you don’t have to do it all the time, but if you feel like it; it’s like wearing rose-colored spectacles, just a little lush intensity.

HAIGHT: I suppose that for the benefit of listeners that you should describe Anthony. Was your family living there when you were born?

WEBB: My grandparents were at the farm where i live now and had been there about fifteen years when i was born. My mother was running a little store three towns up from Anthony in Mesquite, a farming town half way to Las Cruces, and they lived there for three years, then we moved down to a farm on the edge of the desert at Berino, which is the next town north of Anthony. Lived there about six years, then moved to grandparents’ farm because they were off at the hot springs trying to ease their rheumatism and stay alive.

HAIGHT: So you just moved into the farm in a way sort of to take care of the place while they were gone?

WEBB: Yes, we were taking care of the place, and taking care of my uncle Steven at times. Ah …

HAIGHT: … now which, i’m sorry, which grandparents were they? the Pools?

WEBB: The Pools, Jim and Flora Pool, who had four children, two of whom died in infancy of various contagious plagues in Oklahoma, one was my mother and the fourth was my uncle Steven, who had spinal meningitis when he was two years old and never developed mentally beyond a two-year-old. Lived forty-five years. Maybe the last half of his life he was having epileptic seizures three or four times a day.

HAIGHT: Really?

WEBB: Uh huh.

HAIGHT: And you remember this? So he wasn’t institutionalized? He was at home and …?

WEBB: No, he was at home and there was always someone there to be sure he didn’t run off, or drown in a ditch, or …

HAIGHT: A family member or somebody …?

WEBB: A family member or the extended family, the wife of the resident tractor driver who helped with the laundry and the cooking, or relatives who would come and stay for a while to, what is called to give breaks to the caregivers, but it was my mother’s mother who was fixed and insistent that he should not be institutionalized. Ah, my grandfather would drive him around in the car with him like he did his grandson Jack, and if necessary take him into the gin office. Everyone in town knew that Steve was awfully strange and sad but that he wouldn’t hurt you.

HAIGHT: Did he talk at all?

WEBB: No. Ah, he talked like your son talks [Michael, 3 months old, who can be heard in places on the tape crying in the background], i mean he made sounds, and the sounds had emotions, and they maybe had denotations, if people were familiar with it. My grandmother knew when he was thirsty or when he was hungry or when he needed to go to the bathroom.

HAIGHT: So he would make sounds and she would interpret them?

WEBB: Which made me think, you know, ah Sound and the fury was a pretty neat novel, pretty neat novel: Benji.

HAIGHT: I was going to mention that. Yeah. I just listened to an unabridged recording of a reading of Sound and the fury …

WEBB: Really?

HAIGHT: … yeah, which really helps make the thing come clear.

WEBB: I remember at Harvard practicing vocal delivery of the Benji segment because it is a lot of sound and fury [laughter].

HAIGHT: Yeah, right. Well and then there’s all the cutting in time, which is i suppose the thing that really throws people off. It’s interesting though, i find that if you kind of relax and don’t worry so much about it …

WEBB: … uh huh, relax … let it flow into you …

HAIGHT: … that by the time you finish reading the book …

WEBB: … let it flow into you …

HAIGHT: … then you can go back and read the Benji section again and it makes sense. Yeah, so when you encountered Sound and the fury you must have really …

WEBB: I thought it was pretty neat. I used to go walking late at night on the bridge that Quentin jumped off into the Charles.

HAIGHT: So you know the bridge. So those are all real places that he’s talking about that would be familiar to students?

WEBB: Uh huh. Not as familiar as say the things in Dos Pasos’ USA. He was pretty strict reportorial kind of a describer guy. Faulkner would take liberties, but yes, you knew which bridge it was. Who’s his canadian friend, Quentin’s Compson’s? Shreve or something …

HAIGHT: Oh yeah.

WEBB: … that they stay up all night and he tells him the story of Absalom, Absalom!

HAIGHT: Right, yeah. ‘Why do you hate the South?’

WEBB: Uh huh.

HAIGHT: In some ways do you have a sense of being from a region with its own culture, sub-culture?

WEBB: Yeah, and with its bi- and tri-cultural aspects. The second town north of Anthony was Vado, where the black people could live.

HAIGHT: Really?

WEBB: Really. And from my earliest childhood i had a black nanny, two or three years, named Matty.

HAIGHT: What’s her name?

WEBB: Matty. I never figured out exactly whether it was spelled with Ts or Ds. Maddy. But Matty preferred to wash clothes in a big iron pot over a wood fire outside the house, boil it with lye soap.

HAIGHT: Really? [Laughing] Was it kind of hard on the clothes?

WEBB: I guess so. And to treat little kids’ fretfulness with hot toddy and coffee and milk and sugar.

HAIGHT: So now that was really your first …

WEBB: That really was my first drug experience.

HAIGHT: Again probably for the benefit of the listener it might be helpful to know that Jim continues to be addicted to caffeine and ah …

WEBB: I didn’t start nicotine till i was sixteen, seventeen.

HAIGHT: And not at her …

WEBB: … not at her insistence. Ah, i had great aunts who dipped snuff, and most of the males in the family smoked unfiltered Camels. In fact there weren’t really any filtered cigarettes back then. Maybe, i think mainly it was the Kent with the micronite filter around 1950.

HAIGHT: What is micronite anyway? [Laughing]

WEBB: Well, it tastes terrible when you light it, [laughter] you light the wrong end of the cigarette; it’s like smoking insulation or something.

HAIGHT: ‘Cause i was wondering about that not too long ago, ‘cause the materials that they used for the filters were always some kind of fibers.

WEBB: They weren’t quite asbestos, but who knows what the difference was.

HAIGHT: They didn’t look like something that would have existed in an earlier time.

WEBB: You see this little thing? [He shows me a piece of paper with a grid he’s drawn on it.] This has been my meditation recently because it’s a chess board, eight by eight, so it has positions for each of the I-Ching hexagrams, or each of the years i’ve been alive. And one quarter of it here [shading it in with a pen], until i was sixteen, was getting ready to go to college, and then the next quarter was going to college and graduate schools. Then on the next side i almost completed the first two rows [eight squares] teaching at Reed, and then all that time [pointing to the remaining unshaded area] has been free form.

HAIGHT: [Laughing] That’s interesting to look at it that way.

WEBB: It is, uh huh.

HAIGHT: Wow, so that was a lot of preparation …

WEBB: Yeah.

HAIGHT: … to get to the electives.

WEBB: Yes, it was. Back in the late nineteenth century you could graduate from Harvard with all electives, all you needed was sixteen credits of any kind, under President Eliot.

HAIGHT: Wow, so it was just thought that the student could figure out what …?

WEBB: Yeah, he could. And if all his sixteen wanted to be chemical, well fine, or Hebrew, i guess. You haven’t met my recent student, Shane, who went with me to Portland. This past fall, he’s done rather nicely. He took a scientific writing course, and for his mid-term paper he did a broadside single sheet, both sides, information of how to grow cannabis on public lands and not get caught. This was so well received that he did his full term paper as a little color illustrated book of the different psilocybin prubensis mushrooms to be found in different parts of the country in different seasons of the year and to identify them.

HAIGHT: Was that information he had already …?

WEBB: He had some of it, but he researched the mushroom sites on the Web, and borrowed pictures from them and fixed it up real good and published it anonymously. But at the same time he was taking a course in informal logic and argumentation from a young woman named Jennifer, who’s an instructor, and who is so precise and confident that she has a transparent backpack so that everyone can see what she has and what she doesn’t. [Laughter] So Shane went in and sat in the middle of the front row and started smiling on the first day and he was very careful not to interfere with anything, but if he was called upon he could say what should be said, or if it turned out that nobody else knew the answer, he could of course supply it. About three-quarters of the way through the semester he asked her since he’d become a philosophy major if maybe she could recommend someone in the department that he could get an independent study of Eastern religious philosophy. And she said: Well unfortunately there’s no one in the department that knows anything about it, probably can’t, but i’ll see what i can do. I would be interested in finding out. So the last week of the semester she said: Well, Shane, what do you think about this: i can’t get you an independent study—there’s really no one who will do that—but i can get you a work study, and that means you’d get paid, and you would just have to try to figure out how to learn something while grading student papers for me and helping me; so he’s become a practice teacher and is getting paid for it.

HAIGHT: Has he found sources for what he wanted to learn?

WEBB: No, no, but he has found this way to spend more time with her and learn more from her. He didn’t say yes immediately; he said he would have to think about it. So the next time he met her he said: I want to ask you one question, ah, have you ever ingested any entheogenic mushrooms? And he said she paused and said: Yes, i have. [Laughter] So he said, yes, i’d feel honored to do a work-study with you.

HAIGHT: That was his test question?

WEBB: Yes, yes, that was really what he wanted to know. He says that she’s very beautiful and, you know, a week into the class, god was he in love, he was just absolutely overtaken with lust for this woman, but in just two or three weeks he discovered that even if he thought of her very intensely he didn’t get a hard-on, it was more like he was interested in something that just transcended sex altogether, it was this student-teacher relationship; so i said, you know, don’t worry about it [laughter], it’s actually quite appropriate not to have a hard-on when you’re working on philosophy with her. [Laughter]

HAIGHT: Sounds like good advice.

WEBB: But he’s now curiously speculating about what it will be like when she and i meet, because she’s discovered that he came to them from some kind of College in Exile operation, [laughter] and that there is just a somewhat ambiguous guru figure hanging out in the countryside.

HAIGHT: It is nice to know that the College in Exile continues to matriculate students.

WEBB: Well, very seldom. Ah, what is it? All Souls, at Oxford, has not had a
student for two-hundred years or so, they just have fellows, who occupy the whole college and eat together and think about things and argue about things, lecture occasionally in the university, but not a whole lot.

HAIGHT: So do you think there are College in Exile fellows? I would consider myself one.

WEBB: Yes, i think so. There’s a loose fellowship, i would call it [laughter], that is we don’t keep a roster. But if anyone asks me about someone i don’t immediately say yes, they’re guilty too, i say ah …

HAIGHT: … Who wants to know?

WEBB: Yes, who wants to know? Lance and Steve had a little spat over the telephone the other day. I gave Steve’s number to Dobermeer, who gave it to his dad, and his dad called Steve’s number, and according to Steve this brusque guy said: I understand there’s someone there who wants to talk to me. [Chuckles] And of course Steve said: Well that would entirely depend upon who you are. And Lance said: Well who am i talking to? And Steve said: I’m not going to say; you made the call. I was sleeping through this and didn’t get involved, but i checked with Lance later and he admitted that that was a pretty accurate report of what he said.

HAIGHT: Really, that’s kind of funny. Was it a Lance-Steve thing, or was it just …?

WEBB: I guess. I don’t know. Well i had told Dobermeer where i was, but Dobermeer may have put only the number, i don’t know. It’s not worth worrying about.

HAIGHT: But sometimes your students butt heads.

WEBB: They do, uh huh. And that’s normal, it’s like sibling rivalry. Try to shift it into healthy directions. You don’t want head butting to crack the heads of the students.

HAIGHT: No. Concussions can result.

WEBB: No.

[At this point my wife, who had just gotten the baby to sleep, came in.]

GUERIN: [Whispering] Did you stop now? Is it off?

HAIGHT: No, it’s on.

WEBB: [Whispering] Shall we turn it off?

GUERIN: [Whispering] Turn it off, okay?

WEBB: [Whispering] Yeah.

HAIGHT: We’re turning off the tape for just a moment.

[momentary break]

HAIGHT: We’re back.

WEBB: [reading from T. S. Eliot’s ‘Four quartets’, ‘Burnt Norton’, I]

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotus rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end*[, which is always present.]

* The tape breaks off at this point

[end tape, side B]




* * * *


JOURNAL ENTRIES: 1945


* * * *

[Jim’s journal from his Daily Reminder, 1945. He was ten years old, and brother Pool, born september 5th, 1937, was seven.]






Monday, Jan. 1, 1945
New Year’s Day

We had to go to school today. Out of the fourty in our room only 24 were there.
Mom Pool & [Papa] Pool left for Hot Springs today.
Webbie had to go to work today at four P.M. so I did not see him.
I took four sulphur tablets & feel better. I think you should go to a Dr. before you die. Dr. Goldberger.
Pool set the weeds on the ditchbank on fire by the brige. Mama made him tell her he wouldn’t do it again.
Bathed & in bed by 9:00 P.M. Mama read bedtime storys to Pool & me.


Tuesday, Jan. 2, 1945

The school bus was 20 mins. late. Mrs. Sloan was sick today so Mrs. Braly took her place.
I made 100 in arithmetic today—Mrs. Harvey.
We had our reading test today under Mrs. Harvey.
The school bus was full this afternoon on the way home.
Pool pulled his front tooth today. Now he doesn’t have any front teeth.
Pool & Gene went riding on the raft in the ditch today.
We ate lamb for dinner. We got the lamb from Auntie.
Listened to the radio for 3 hours & 45 minutes.
We went to bed at 9.
Mama read stories to Pool & me.


Wednesday, Jan. 3, 1945

We got up at 7:30 this morning.
We had art today. We drew a snow seen.
I made 100 in arithmetic, english, & reading today.
I took my last solpher tablet today.
Pool went to see Fernando.


Thursday, Jan. 4, 1945

Aunt Eva, Uncle, & Billy got in. They could only stay one night. They came in a car & truck. They are going to California.


Friday, Jan. 5, 1945

Aunt Eva, Uncle Jim, & Billy left about ten oclock A.M.


Saturday, Jan. 6, 1945
Epiphany

Pat Osborn stayed all night with us. We played and fussed all we wanted to.
I went to the show. It was Rookies In Burma.


Sunday, Jan. 7, 1945

Fred, Fernando, Pool, Pat, & I cooked our lunch out on the ditchbank.


Monday, Jan. 8, 1945
Battle of New Orleans

The high school bus burnt up. One girl was burntup. The driver was carrying spare gas in the frount of the bus.


Tuesday, Jan. 9, 1945

Pool was sick—bad throt.


Wednesday, Jan. 10, 1945

Our colors came today. We had ordered them in September. Pool still sick.
We got our report cards. I made good grades.


Thursday, Jan. 11, 1945

We went to P. T. A. Fernando went with us.
I got six of my pictures in the art exhibit. Mrs. Young showed us a picture.
Brazeals came & had dinner with us.
Pool has the base drum in the play.


Friday, Jan. 12, 1945

Dark rainy day.
Hardy White & Webbie worked on windmill all day.


Saturday, Jan. 13, 1945

Hardy White & Webbie worked on windmill at Berino all day


Sunday, Jan. 14, 1945

We ate dinner at Fred’s.
Mary Jane’s puppy’s—she had 7
Got the beef.
Acie came to see Webbie.


Monday, Jan. 15, 1945

Pool is still sick.
Tafon [?] to reduce


Tuesday, Jan. 16, 1945

I went to school. Pool went to school for first.
I got sick at school.


Friday, Jan. 19, 1945

Mama went to town. She bought Pool & I some Valentines.
We got out of school at 1:30.


Thursday, Feb. 22, 1945
Washington’s Birthday

Aunt Mittie’s Birthday—


Friday, Aug. 17, 1945

We went up to see the grand parents in Ruidoso on Webbie’s few days off.

Also moved some house hold effects up to our new home on the Detention farm. Will finish mooving after we return from our short vacation on the Ruidoso with Papa & Mama Pool.


Monday, Aug. 20, 1945

Rained all day in The Ruidoso, but we had fun going up town in the Rain. Poolie loved to shoot and play on the River.
It was all swell. We had a very good time.


Tuesday, Aug. 21, 1945

We returned home and got buisy. mooving again. This mooving is some job.
I guess we will be O.K. soon.


Monday, Sept. 3, 1945
Labor Day

School to day in a new State. Texas. I guess we will like it. it is so different from our dear old Anthony school.


Saturday, Sept. 15, 1945

Pop Pool & Mom Pool & Steven returned to the farm. to resume their home life having been away for one year and 7 or 8 months
Living in Hot Springs one year & 6 month. In Ruidoso 6 weeks. Now I hope they are permintly located at home again.




* * * *


JUVENILIA


* * * *


I believe the following piece is one of Jim’s high school age improvisational essays, perhaps written for a contest. It appears to have been written rapidly and with minimal corrections. The handwriting is not Jim’s mature hand, but i can only guess at the date of composition, though the pieces following this one are from a notebook that Jim has labeled ‘Juvenilia 1950-1951’.






The Valley Moon

The moon shines brighter in the Little Valley than anywhere else on earth. Every detail of the old adobe houses and worn dirt roads is perfectly visible. During the warm days, when the sun shines brightly from a cloudless sky, the valley is only a bright impression, but at night, coolness and time banish the blurriness of day and leave the land in peace.
In the winter, the moon sets the rib-like clouds in bright relief and shines through the lacy limbs of the cottonwoods and the billows of mistletoe to illumine the road below without shadow. But in the summer, the moon is alone in the grey-blue sky and under the tires are inky spots of cool dark.
I feel a strange affinity with the moon. Late on winter nights I stand at my bedroom window and look over the rough, taffy-colored fields to the moonlit mesas, and I dream. On summer nights I walk for miles along the roads through tunnels of darkness and along bright, weed-bordered ditchbanks twisting between the fields of cotton and alfalfa that seem to grow in the instant I look at them.
The moon seems to remember other nights and other tiny people who walked beneath those trees when all the valley was a forest of cottonwoods, cedars, and willows. The moon remembers my ancestors who cleared the fields and dug the ditches and built the rambling adobe houses.
The moon remembers all, perhaps.




* * * *

[I think this is Jim’s high school valedictory speech.]






Heroic America


All nations are heroic. All peoples are heroic. There is only one difference. While most heroism is inspired by the nation, is built by a national spirit, in the case of America, heroism has built the nation. For America is not a young country. True, as a tangible state with a constitution and elected leaders, it has existed less than two hundred years. But in the soul of man—in the universal plan of life—America has lived and will live throughout eternity. The heroism of America, then, is more than a few centuries’ bravery in defying English tyranny, in taming primitive peoples and places. Heroic America is man’s struggle for useful life, his search for meaning in the turmoil of his mind. The Greeks at Thermopylae fought for America though then knew her only as freedom. Christ was a heroic American when He expelled the money-changers from the temple. Thus the Heroism that built and strengthened America has illuminated all history. When King Henry VIII sought a better life for the world in demanding separation of church and state. When Martin Luthur fought to abolish unnecessary social control. When, though they were starving, a belief in freedom gave the downtrodden French strength to revolt. When the freedom-loving of all nations died for liberty at Belleau Woods, Chateau Thierry, Anzio, Iwo Jima, Normandy, the Bulge. When at Dumbarton Oaks and San Francisco the diplomats of all nations worked tirelessly for human dignity. Now, the heroism of America, the bravery of freedom is being tested again—in Seoul, in Viet Nam, in Poland, Berlin, and Yugoslavia. Now it’s our turn. During the next few years, all Americans—and all peoples—must show their heroism, not by fighting and dying alone, but by sacrifice and toil. Youth must prepare itself, strive for education, and earn freedom. Everyone must work for liberty—at home, in defense plants, in hospitals for the wounded. For that is the plan of America: self-sacrifice, a little or a lot, in payment for freedom. Through the centuries to come, America will always be heroic—in peace and in war, in university laboratories and in battle, repelling the enemy at New York, Vancouver, or El Paso. Our country may crumble. The enemies of democracy—the militarists out of step with the march of civilization—may set progress back a millennium. But the spirit that is heroic America will live on—as it always has—in the mind and heart of humanity.




* * * *




Alto


Day dies quickly in the mountains. The sun falls swiftly toward the horizon, rests an instant, then drops behind a wooded ridge, leaving the valleys and peaks in soothing darkness. But for an hour or more the sky remains pale—a fluorescent blue—promise that death is but a sleep.

So has it always been.

The master of Alto watched the sunset—watched the clouds complete once more the eternal cycle of sunset—white, yellow, crimson, pink, and finally white again, a paler, purer white in the dark night sky. the master of Alto watched the sunset unmoved. Though he sat on his red-tiled terrace, seemingly contented, seemingly successful, he was neither.

So has it always been.




* * * *

[This is typed but with a lot of penciled in corrections, a very rough draft.]






Waiting for the Sunset


He had felt the warm summer rays reflected from the brilliant white walls behind him. Even through his smoked glasses the sun was bright as fire, but the valley was deep in shadow. The valley reminded him of his mother’s patchwork quilts; darkness softened the contrasts of color and line just as age softened memories of his early life.
Yes, he thought, his valley was beautiful, prettier than anything he had seen traveling in Europe or the Americas. The terraced fields that he had bought, acre by acre through the years, were green with the magic of life; his canneries were still for the Sabbath; across the deep valley rose another mountain, almost as tall as his own, and the sun seemed to rest on the ridge. To own all that beauty should have been success.
If anyone had been allowed on the private terrace, he would have seen a man of supreme dignity, a man whose face seemed still with inner peace. But no one was ever allowed on the terrace except the butlers and gardeners; and the owner of the inspiring panorama deep below was anything but tranquil. The receding light of the sun tinted his graying hair a reddish hue—was caught by the shining brow and cast feebly back toward its source. The face and clasped hands showed, in the twilight, the careful grooming lavished upon them, and the casual clothes undoubtedly came from some Bond Street shop; but under all this the markings of time and toil were deeply graven in his skin. The back of his neck showed the indelible jig-saw furrows always present on a man who has followed the plow through all kinds of weather, year after year. But even so, he didn’t look his fifty years—his lithe body seemed determined that time would not mar it. Only in his mind was time such a burden.
On another Sunday afternoon almost a year before he had first realized that his life was finished—that the rest of his life would be spent waiting for death. Though all his life the ruler of Alto had been a cold, reasoning, hard-working man, not a philosopher, something about Sunday afternoon had always made him uneasy. Now every afternoon held the same despair. He knew that the rest of his life would be spent on his terrace, watching the incomparable sunsets again and again.
Always, at sunset, he remembered his parents. How could they, who had never done the things they wanted, never reached the goals they set, die peacefully, completely.... when he could not die....?
Many people have lived a full life after fifty—people with fewer years to live than he. But he couldn’t. He had done everything, seen everything, accomplished everything he had ever wanted. He owned everything for miles around. He had nothing to live for
He wondered if his last afternoon would be any different from this. He wondered how long it would be. Ten years? Twenty years? Today?
He hoped it would be today. He didn’t want to live uselessly. He didn’t want to spend another day in his well-manicured gardens, to sit on the cliff-top terrace and watch the setting sun and the lights flashing on below as his workers sat down to eat.
As the stars became visible in the lingering twilight, he walked over to the edge, looked down into the deep, dark chasm, wondering if he would ever jump.
So has it always been.




* * * *




JORNADA DEL MUERTO


Great philosophers have discoursed long on “moments of reality”—the few brief instances in life when one sees the shifting sands of time stand still, momentarily baring the pattern of all life. To all this studied thought I can add nothing, but I can now realize the truth and accuracy of their meditation, for my “moment of reality” had made much clear to me that I had thought I’d never understand.
The train was speeding south a few hours before dawn, crossing the stretch of barren desert that the Spaniards had so aptly named “El Jornada del Muerto”—the journey of death. The day before, on the trip north, El Jornada had shown none of its sinister brooding; it had seemed even innocent under the bright New Mexico sun. But in the black winter darkness the true character of El Jornada was plain. In the darkness, I did not think of the beauty of the purple mountains, the infinite time mutely measured by the black lava—crumbling, cracking to fertilize the soil for some unknown civilization. In darkness, the physical Jornada was forgotten. Only the spirit, the essence, remained. The sunbleached bones of the conquistadors, pale and white in the endlessness of night, seemed as close as the cold black rectangles that were the windows of the coach—my mind was filled by dark thoughts of the atom bomb test and the fate of humanity. Strange that a weapon that might mean doom to the world should be first tested on the Journey of Death—strange, and appropriate.
Although the car was filled with noise—laughter, singing, and the clacking of the wheels, I heard none of it. Anyway, the sound was futile and meaningless—lost in a second in the black darkness of the night, in the infinity of time, in the cold personality of the desert. We might just as well have been on a rocket in outer space; at least we were utterly detached from the earth, dark and veiled about us. But still the strangeness of the Jornada and of night chilled me, saddened me.
Everyone on the car must have sensed this strangeness, for some sought to blot out the Jornada in song and laughter, others in sleep. I could do neither. They sold their souls to the god of security—the loss of identity in return for the loss of sensibility. They blurred the reality of the Jornada in sleep—fitful sleep, fraught with dreams. I actually wanted to sleep myself—but fate, perhaps, or some unseen god held my lids open and my mind clear. I began to think, clearly and rapidly. Comparison after comparison, revelation after revelation swept through my consciousness.
The blackness crushing against the windows was death and infinite space.... The train was mankind, forever seeking, yet not his own master—doomed to travel the tracks of destiny till the earth should perish.... I was no longer a part of the world but a far-off, disinterested spectator—an analyst to whom no facts were hidden. Suddenly the entire pattern of life and death and infinite time and space lay before me. All petty thoughts, all fears, and hopes, and anxieties were gone. I knew all in reality, in completeness. I knew all, yet I knew I must not remember.
My “moment of reality” was gone almost as soon as it had come. Sleep had obliterated it. Not a sleep of exhaustion, but a protective sleep—a hypnotic sleep imposed upon my body lest my mind destroy itself through thought. Someone threw a blanket over me. I didn’t need it. Although I will never, can never, describe or communicate my sudden revelation of the plan and purpose of life, the warmth of that moment and of the benevolence of God that it revealed will last me all my life.




* * * *


[These poems are from 1950-1951, when Jim was 16 or 17.]






Some Poems




* * *




Dead Clocks

The worn out clocks cluttering my grandmother’s shelf
Know now the true meaning of time—
Not as minutes or hours
But as layers of dust and the thickness of rust.




Perfection Comes Not Often

O rugged, aged mountains, to the east,
Whose barren purple spines have caught on top
The paling pink of absent afterglow
Look down, deep down, into the time-worn gash
Cut by the Rio through millenniums
And watch the twinkling lights appear below
In the homes of thinking, loving man.
Then stay aloof another billion years
Till such a perfect day shall come again.




* * *




The Silent

The legions of the silent
Weave slowly throu’ the crowd.
The dryness of their eyes
Is the dryness of death,
And the silence of their souls
Is the silence of shock.
They can not know.




An Allegory

The moon forgot to rise!
No longer can the cottonwoods
Cast inky spots of darkness
Upon the roads and the dusty fields,
For all is darkness,
And for the first night since their birth
The mountains are unseen.




The Forgotten Valley

For years and years the moist, white clouds
Drifted high and aloof across
The forgotten valley and the faithless people.
The trees all died.
The ditches were dry.
There was no food.





[no title]



I’ll never know fear.
Though in dark of night
my God should leave me—
Though I be alone, forlorn, lost,
I’ll never know fear.
Though my hand tremble
and my knees fold,
I’ll never know fear.
Though at death
as my breathing slows
I question immortality
and rave throughout the feverish night,
I’ll never know fear
Only the weak know fear,
for only they admit its existence.




Sometimes My Soul Is Gone

Sometimes at night I dream
That someone is calling
From a far-off place,
And though my body sleeps on in its bed,
My soul is gone to answer that strange summons
That cannot be heard,
And cannot be explained.




Walk Through the Dark

When I have lived my life and I am through
With all its trials—and with the searching for
A wind to fan the slowly dying glow
Of burning faith and long-remembered love,
In the darkness of the moonless night
I’ll walk, and walk, and walk across the plane
Of emptiness and thought—walk through the dark
Until I reach the dawn of lifeless day.
The groping and the walking in the dark
Will soon be far behind me, lost in time.
The change will be complete in that new day.
No longer dying faith, but blazing truth.




A Hymn

Church bells ringing on a windy night
are the essence of my Lord—
ageless hymns to the glory of God
And wind blowing swift across the earth,
the tool of His moving will.
Church bells ringing on a windy night.

[Page torn off at this point; the verso contains the following lines.]

For so many striving, believing children of the Creator
is so small, so futile, and so fleeting.




I Want to Be a Man

I want to be a man who knows the right
And doesn’t hesitate to fight the wrong.
I want to be a thinking, working man.

[Page torn off below this line.]




The monotony of life and death.




The Arroyo

God made a mountain of sand and stones.
He made it steep and tall.
He made it smooth and perfect.

But the mountain seemed cold and dead.
It had no emotion—no experience.

So God sent the rain.
And the rain washed down the smooth new sides
Cutting deep knowing slits through the sand and stone.




Morning After the Cloudburst

Troublesome clouds, where have you gone
with the black malevolence that imprisoned yesterday’s sun,
turning the day into unfeeling, unseeing drabness?

Where is the suddenness with which you filled the sky,
the searing flashes that stabbed the defenseless earth,
and the thunder that echoed again and again
in the mountain’s tortured canyons?

Where is your frightful breath that lashed
the waiting, hopeful trees?

Where is your fury, your malice, your fire?

They must be in some other world,
for the narrow, fleecy ribs in this morning’s sky
are but your lifeless skeleton.




“Goodbye, Roberto.”

Roberto turned from his mother’s eyes,
then looked about the still-dark room,
seeing again the old iron bed
and the oilcloth on the table.
Beside the stove he saw the dough
for the morning’s corn tortillas.
He looked once more at his mother’s face
and saw the tears spring forth.
His mother said, “Goodbye, Roberto.”
Roberto turned around.
He opened the door of the [tenant?] shack
and greeted the rising sun.




* * *




Poet Laureate of the Crumbling Walls

He was a tiny, shriveled man
with a lined, a common face,
but he prophesied reaction—
and a hopeless people took him to their hearts.

He roamed the streets of crumbling walls;
he saw grapevines grow in ruined jacales;
he talked of the past;
and he hoped for the future.

Refugio had been the center of
a growing, powerful region.
Ten thousand people had crowded the streets.
Now less than a tenth remain.
The railroads passed her by.

His poems were poignant, beautiful—
poems of a forgotten time.
In the plaza he talked to lingering ghosts
of near-forgotten greats,
echoing in his fading mind
were their speeches and their songs.

The thoughts, the memories bubbled forth,
he rushed to snare them all.
With trembling hand and broken pen
he wrote on squares of butcher paper.
Awed brown hands clutched them tight
and treasured the squares as gold.

But sometimes he was bitter.
He blamed the people;
he blamed the river;
he blamed the weather;
he blamed himself
for the natural action of progress.
Yet time and reason always tamed
the bitter core of memory.

The poet is dead.
The walls still crumble.
The people still hope for a new Refugio.
He’s dead, but his poems
are read, re-read—
till every child in dreams can see
mantilla-draped girls of another age
dance down Calle de Rio on
the night of the patron Saint.

Yes, the walls still crumble.
And still the living die.
But his tales of the past
are eternal—almost.




* * *




“Moments of Omniscience”

Instances when we know we have lived or dreamed or thought an incident.

The sensation of the spine when we know what will happen, exactly who will say what and how and why.

It is nightmare of the conscious mind, déjà vu




* * *




Why is America the Land of the Free?
Why do we welcome the orphans of war?
Why are we the pattern for a new world,
For a world of freedom and peace?

America is free—the land of her people.
America is free because of her people.

People who came from all regions, all faiths.
People who built cabins, villages, cities.
People who lived on faith alone—
Not on food, but on hopes and dreams.

People who fought against tyranny and fear.
People who knew that in a world
Where England sailed the seas for trade
And Spain searched every hill for gold
America should not be Europe’s whore.
America had to be free.

People who listened to tom-toms at midnight.
People who fought on Breed’s Hill in Boston.
People who rode through dark country nights
To warn America—village and men—
That freedom was endangered.

People who cleared forests and planted corn,
Who built churches and schools throughout our land.
Churches that live today on that same faith that built them
Schools that teach peace, democracy, kindness.
Churches and schools that keep us strong.

People who worked under clouds of smoke
To make for America a better life.
People who knew that peace required more
Than lip-service and half-hearted toil.

Soldiers who gave their lives and hopes
To keep America free.
Scholars who studied the mistakes of history
To keep America free.
Scientists who work, through day and night,
To keep America free.

People of yesterday, people of today
Who realize the cost of liberty
And give their lives to pay the bill








LOVERS LOSE THEIR LIVES


The top of the tall mountain is surrounded
By eternal, powerful winds.
When by chance a rock is thrown
Within the towering crag’s attraction,
It is smashed against the cold granite face
And falls shattered to the base,
A new follower of the living cliff.

And the cliff of love has strong winds, too,
That smash those drawn within its power.
Like the tiny rocks, lovers lose
Their lives, so small and useless,
For a life of love, and, shattered,
Support the base of the cliff.




AN ALLEGORY

The moon forgot to rise!
No longer can the cottonwoods
Cast inky spots of darkness
Upon the roads and the dusty fields,
For all is darkness.
And for the first night since their birth
The mountains are unseen.


THE SILENT

The legions of the silent
Weave slowly through the crowd.
The dryness of their eyes
Is the dryness of death,
And the silence of their souls
Is the silence of shock.
They can not know.


Don’t let your life be tranquil.
Sleep is peace enough for anyone.





* * * *


POETRY


* * * *


[Poetry: mostly written during the Harvard years, 1953 and ’54, when Jim was 18 to 20 years old.]






Fragments for Fentonesque




The waves of sound triturate my brain
leave the skull a shell, zanthous-sand-filled




Part One: ‘he capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth,
he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he
smells April and May....’

Part Two: ‘he is of too high a region; he knows too much.’
Wm. Shakespeare, The Merry Wives of Windsor




Part One




I


‘watch the story in the chiming clock:
blindness walks a winter street
on Beacon hill
the sidewalks, herringbone tweed
beneath the ice’
(no amount of heat
can germinate a seed
in ice)
‘the will to walk this block
is so unsure. Even the careful shoe
can step on sin’
Chaos said: there is a need
for heat and ice. Let there be friction (I knew
Chaos, I was yet a child, she wore a cap and smock—
she soaked our clothes in lye and fire)
I try to say
‘the Harris streets of fall
the never-random clever bricks
bear the marks of winter feet. All
glory and bruises to the man who slips
and tumbles and curses and picks
up his books and sees all his trips
in fog and rain from past the Mall’
But to say this is nothing. Chaos is a clean shirt.




II

Ladies
and gentlemen, no need for introduction,
the learned Doctor, new to none of you.
The lecture fund endowed in memory
of our late Professor, author, donor
of the...
I had planned to say no more today
any questions

“Doctor, once again
that child, the polymorphously perverse,
so sensate, starching movement, pressing sight
into the sexual image—repetition,
growth, the flash of restless teeth, the look
of stealth. Please tell me: why the tenderness?
Why the placid sleep, the backward hands
that will not touch, caresses lost to lust
in magnitude of space?”
The problem
is so complicated...
the honest lecturer
(intellectual)
victim of the associations of sound
we find the truth, / here is youth,
the children, transitory, / trailing clouds all gory
“But if this knowledge now gives us the choice—
to make the child from birth neurotic, clean
by sublimation and re-action, strange
and fear-strung”
the asthmatic breathing of the man to my right
“or to guide the child so well
around all social motivations, leaving
finally the inconsiderate
primitive—then which are we to choose,
or what degree?”
proselytes of new religion: tactile,
cataleptic, contradictory
ín íts miracles

the trend of your questions awakens memories,
produces thus a form of sadness. I would
speak to any who have questions later
on these subjects...
Depart and peace go with thee




III

slowly, slowly shed the drowsiness—
we wander on through yearning lustless rains,
the normal detriments, the usual obligations
of this the morning mood, the toothbrush cold,
the shower warm, and down the stairs, the breakfast
fruit, the acid fresh appointment with the day




IV

This systematic study of the systematic philosophers,
the speaking in abstractions of the realities of fear,
does not intoxicate the mind, but only drugs.
My restless pen climbs across the lecture notebook:

Ánd ín the stupor of night,
Boswell, drunk and nervous, sees
the dead philosopher write in a dream,
and speaks the agony that holds him in his bed—
‘Surely,
In that last un-wholesomeness of numbered days,
You kept your secret book—you wrote the thoughts
You could not utter, and could scarce believe?
By God, you must have!’
The dream left, and Boswell
rose from his bed.

In this half-light, see neurotic Boswell,
and Hume too much the cynic to be English.
Irony the chapel bell ends the lecture—
so much for today.





[This poem is apparently the missing V from Fragments for Fentonesque. Jim seems to have removed it and made a few revisions. Whether he wanted eventually to put it back in its place i’m not sure, but i’ve replaced it to give it its original context.]




V


Krongstad. The law cares nothing about motives.
Nora. Then it must be very foolish law.


Harvard Square—
no storm impending
but suddenly the dark and snow descending
cab-drivers cursing, policemen distraught
shouting the phrase that incessancy taught
--the words all come before the thought,
the danger, the ice, the snow never ending

‘the careful must
foresee the liquid dust
forsake the winter lust
revoke the thoughtless trust’

there is a certain lazy stagecraft here in all
this movement, in the artificial light, the practiced call
of children, in the even fall
of snow, the preternatural pall

and the palsied accusations,
the falsified relations,
the list of abominations?
nolo contendere, nolo contendere




VI

IN VINO VERBERIS
these sherried nights again,
is there no other road to wisdom?
what starts as wit (for sherry, he says,*
is the drink of wit) becomes a boisterous
license to inflict the hurt of humor.
the oblique becomes the original
the noxious is considered laughable
the painful worthy....
and the pitiful scion of sobriety
for whom alcoholic saturation
only increases sensitivity, never dulling
the capacity for receiving injury—who bears the barbs
directed at his friends and is worn raw internally
by all caustic conversations—
what is to become of him?
the insults are never forgiven
nor the kindness remembered


* Dr. Johnson




VII

(And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift, how secretly,
The shadow of the night comes on
A. MacLeish, You, Andrew Marvell)

But what shall I do with my face in the sand?
But what can I do with the sun hurtling past?
the middle of spring, it seems it should be summer

the time is skating by downhill—the spring
is only a flash of houses rushing past

After lunch we walk the miles of sand
and always in my mind the horror of progression,
the lines of madness

the spokeless wheels, the spinning world

and on the ocean’s edge
a striped towel faded by last year’s sun and brine
there I lie and watch the sea—the nervous twitch
of winter gone from the water, but helplessness still
the paralysis of thought.
The cool air and the sun’s strength
seduce the skin—it becomes rose, then bloody
Through the submerged tideflats flows
the channel of the millstream—storms of gulls
dive for the herring of the run, time out of time,
again, again

the sun is sinking too swiftly—throw
the sun a rope—quickly there

There restless boys wade
beyond the sea grass into the channel creek—
the gulls scatter seaward—the three find nowhere
to step, the tideflats are dead with fish.
The moon draws the tide outward, beyond
the reasonable shores*

there on the shelves of sand
a mint of herring, flat and unsuccessful
travelers, silver under water

the boys
return against the tide, each step the sound
of water, toward home, toward supper
the sun drowns in the bay to the west—
dies in the land beyond Plymouth.
The breath of tonight is chilling my back,
and the left cheek watching the sea
But what can I do with the sun hurtling past?


* The Tempest, V








Part Two




I

‘the care of devils,’ ‘in loud lament of parody,’
‘the exchange of pity,’ ‘index of my youth’

Yes, I could write a poem of one fine metaphor
drawing into mountains of absurdity
one curt phrase, strong in its own granite,
but with scarce the magnitude
of a landscape—could add proverbially strong oaks
that must rely for their posture upon my spine
of words.
Bút are there enough careful phrases
and fortunate images to slake this lust
for expression, bed-mate of my thought, my lover
of the subtle?
Surely the poet-myth has heavier tools
and secret pens we daylight men
shall never find.




II

and the Sabbath occupation

Weekdays & Sundays 1 to 5
A retrospective showing
Gallery IV and in Gallery VI
his early work—your catalogue
“I dó nót thínk the technique fair—
he obviously has cheated.
He used depth to create depth,
where is the art there, where
is the art in mechanics?”
---the art is in the effort and awareness;
in the limits known or only sensed,
in the inner criticism
and in the rejection of externals---
and here in Gallery VII some later work
“Your theory of aesthetics has no place
for audience response? Is art still art
if never seen and never understood?”
---why question the questionable?
the audience responds today and tomorrow
these people always respond and always
differently. There is no more to say---
and here the museum publications—in cases
to the left and right.




III

“I fear these poems are not you”

then can this be
dishonesty,
to pen, sincerely
insincere, the
words I hear, the
lines I see?

rather ask: could
the wishing die
to a lasting good
if that thought remained,
the words restrained,
the pages stained
with blood too dry,
with letters that cry
when bruised, when pained

I can not say—
two aye’s, one nay




IV

Gentlemen, the exam will last three hours
exactly, from the moment that the last
of you receives his test. There will be smoking
in the hall, but please be sílént there
as well as here.

the remembered dates,
the formulas for history that crowd the lines,
that reek of study—I try to empty every nerve

Obey carefully the time allotments.

melting snow without, the nascent clouds
over-power the sky—within words fill the pages—
and a growing restlessness, a wild dissatisfaction

One hour: discuss with specific examples
the argument of St. Francis with his times.

As if a godless subtle student could
unwittingly break through the barriers
of biographers, canonization,
melting institutions, relic bones---
hear the whirr of time passing
with two or three well-chosen observations
define eleven of the twelve.

Yes, I listen to that whirr of time passing
through a thousand watches carefully watched,
and count the thousand nervous pencils
in a thousand hands carefully tensed

Relisez votre copie.

Relisez, s’il vous plait, a score of years
not all remembered. Tell me what you read.
Where is the blue-eyed boy, the cracking voice.




V

my dear, my nights have been very chaste,
I’ve been too self-enamored
too falsely glamoured
to exhibit that animal haste
you fear. The will to discovery was stunted.
While I dawdled in toddle-carts
and practiced the finest careful arts
the careless buck has traced
the snow-eyed deer—he has hunted
down the ghost of sex and found a mate,
while you and I have blundered through our youth
without the slowest taste of animal truth.
Will we twó be too late?




VI

the hollow tongues
in hollow cheeks, the eye-less stare
of the littered table, the shattered rungs
of the ladder-chair—

‘that rib-like rhythm of life and death,
the skeleton of change—‘
hear the knocking hollowness in the sleep
of anesthesia and the surgeon’s wit, death-ridden
bones, dirty, pitted
why leave the filth all hidden

the ear-bursting range
from birth to knowledge—How keep
the ringing out, the sounding bones

that phantom appeal
of the diagonal knife and death—
Why try our sensual herbs to heal
the lifeless, force new breath

the end will come unbidden,
as any man owns.




VII

(Matthew Arnold’s definition of religion : morality
touched with emotion)

In bed at night, the lights are out
Óne does not pray
One whispers

My god, these ragged days—this mortality
touched with commotion—what can I do?
these ragged days, this oily flow of
hours spiraling from here to
no where
the drugged memory—two nearly-children
the summer air, / the frantic pair, / ‘Don’t despair’
says the cynic, ‘Don’t despair. there is
an end. There’s death...
or marriage’
I force that whisper back into the blackness...
He lies, he lies. No, I’ll not delude myself,
there’s no end, nothing else—these fears
of mine say yes, say no
(sainted ambivalence, dexterous, sinister)
I can not live I must not die
these dancing days and nights, they pass so slowly
these crowded years too swiftly
Here I tumble through darkened sheets
And try to sleep—
Confusion seeps behind my eyes,
Memory jeers, the hours pass.
And when I sleep,
dreams assault me, pompous, parading. I
cannot sleep I cannot wake
I cannot live I cannot die
yet.

My youth is gone, a smoking fire
I must not mourn for something lost
My youth is gone, ‘my riots past, my wild societies’

‘Now more than ever seems it rich...?’ oh no
never have I chewed my tongue so animally for life
as now, the wine the spice all gone, the end
obscure, my steps unheard
The lights are out in bed at night
Óne does not pray one
whimpers








Declamations to the Varying Ego







One: Visionaries for Fowler

And who saw the more translucent rose?
Cut away the shrouds, dis-entomb that prose
of petals, and judge; for nothing grows;
the twisted stem is evidence of childhood’s throes
and will remain so, petrified.
The fall of all this bloom was prophesied
at birth---he lived, he thrived, and yet he died....




Two: The Swimming Pool

Diving through congealed defeats
we rise in aspirin spray;
spindle women smoke the day
in sunburn lotions.
Yellowly at play
the child repeats
our wading pond emotions.




Three: Majority for Maurice

(“How old are you, Eugene?”
“As old as the world now. This morning I was eighteen.”
Bernard Shaw, Candida, III)

for such an entrance
into ignominy, onto the ragged stage
the talent must be for drama, not
for life—here
that talent, the coiled years
of youth

“Write a poem for me—more than an hour
till dinner” Candida, give me the power
(the numb advance into the dark)
to leave—the weaker deserves
the false reserves
of warmth, the long companions, this life cream and sour

the fated, carefully written
approach of change, the climax, of life beyond the curtain—
Marchbanks more unaware
than any of those tilted, static faces, the uninteresting
gray mosaic of the auditorium

no no you have the strength. This
impetus can not be given
all the kiss
can mean is this
the hidden man, the love unneeded, the loss unshriven

nervously pacing
rooms deliberately unimaginative,
attempting speech
with men willingly dense

and at the end the strength the single nervous twitch
the newly-unshaken
resolution—but can the saving stitch
be taken
before tomorrow’s matinee? there
may yet be endless spasms, the soul laid bare




Four: The Whiteness of the Whale for Walter

Here the sundial suffering the forced frigidity
of winter, the cloudy sterility
here successive snows on the stone seats
here the shrubbery’s perennial sleep and mutilation
Is there a value in any of these feats
of conjunction? I observe the crystallization
and rhythm of these sterling wedding sheets
for men and women as cold as I
(these winter snows) and then I lie
down to mental masturbation




Five: “all winters remembering, banked in confusion” for Tad

1.

With the alarm-clock of awakening May,
Lilacs not yet blooming, the herring running
Frenetically up terraced millstreams sunning
Themselves as usual, we remembered the bay
In moon-color, the cold and encloséd drive
Through the winter-remembering caustic air
And predicted the curving, falling flight of a pair
Of sea-gulls, wave-white, ghost-white and ghost-like, alive.

The winter-air was colder than the air without.
The house wrapped its windows about the cold,
Embraced the puritan centuries, then loosened its hold.
The fire was dying. We no longer moved about,
But sat in blankets. A dozen rubbers of bridge
Awaited the sun’s awakening on the jack-pine ridge.

2.

Standing in the surf
beyond the line of breaking waves and churning gravel
my body a vertical diagram
of the áction ánd re-áction of the waves
later lying
my head beneath my arms watching the físh-gréy
clouds reflected and lost
on sheets of vapored sound subsiding

3.

Lustily as doom
we sleep with open eyes and count the spring
in cracking logs. The clock enslaves the room

with silence: silently (fear the moonlight!) wing
the gulls in white
of snow, the white of ashes.
Sliding about my brain these phantoms bring

the sound of sea-shock---the wave returning dashes
the moon-night.
Slime and surf rethread the loom
of dawn. The dying log blackens and crashes.

The phantom gulls from ashes spring....


written May & June 1953




Six: Madam Rose to Marchbanks

‘But don’t you see
the utility?
The reading is free
with cake and tea.
You do want to see
the future? My fee
seems fair to me—‘








Continuum

Along the sidewalk—faulty shroud of snow—
our shadows longer now beyond the streetlight
we’re quickly by the malt-shop, darkened for the night,
the only light within the discreet light
a jukebox mirrored silent motionless—
for all we know
we are already dead,
babies in bed








Lamentation in warm weather

can you resist the busy sun,
deny the equalizing drink, ignore one
at night offering the temporizing kiss?
nothing to miss,
nothing to shun
within the power of vacationing will,
laughing until
the love grows shrill

foolish summer evenings: we lounge in wicker chairs
among the later roses, ‘Whoever dares
the morning stares...’

the integuments of lust
outlive the summer nights, contaminate the day
the arid desire can sway
even the lonely, the old and precisely just—
you can’t obey,
but must,
the ancient call to crisis,
this periodic helplessness against the social vices








Didacticus at Lincoln Downs

I

No, this is not the South—no sun-shaded
ladies, no gentlemen of family.
Here only the proletariat, faded
Irish twice-huge women (the casualty
of careless drinks, see that man?
that woman ruined by childbearing?)
It’s hard to win, harder to live. You can
try, though, with stubby pencils preparing

bets. (He decided to save
to buy binoculars for the back-stretch,
but silver-dollar turnstiles, summer beer,
and cold spring days a slave
of coffee, hot-dogs, mustard—What? retch
at poor food or life? The crowd, hear? hear?




II

First Affirmative

Why must you flaunt
your body before me?
In dreams you haunt
me with my desire;
the spasms that tore me,
the scars of the fire,
all this is more the
sterile death,
the blighting breath,
the funeral pyre,
than any love fulfilled
could be. A body thrilled
deserves another body.








“and piety, whose source is death....”
Thos. Mann, Joseph in Egypt

a room not yet dark, a sorrow not yet borne
no cry, no tremor, yet tears are torn
from eyes unwilling forlorn worn

What are these monsters
they will not leave me
don’t touch my hands
go away
I hate their sighs

why, child, this silent threnody
for a rampant melody
dead beyond memory

They do not understand
they do not remember
but I will remember
and
I won’t tell them








‘Ashes to ashes and dust....’

You fumbled through my sight
a thousand times, all music and speech,
a projection of myself, provoking no desire.
Love shook me
suddenly. Your fingertips, your lips replied
to my confused cry, drowned in ice and sleet.

Tangled breathlessly in bed
twenty painful years met
twenty more, unfathomable, and absorbed them.


* * *

The noon of love was long and lithe
and fevered. Each word, each
kiss—burnished in space, shined—
reflected itself infinitely, released
a love unprecedented, and old as sunlight
on the moon, betrayer of the hound’s spleen.

The whispered warning of the moonlit bed:
a venetian portent on the rippled flesh
of what chaos ago the dog said.


* * *

Dead to my sight, you whisper through my mind
with the odor of rotting grapes. The release
--as a river, eternal—that I
night-through prolonged with you, I now make easy,
mechanically stirring new delights
with hands no longer free.

Alone at night, my mind caressing the blanket,
and breathing only the moon’s breath,
not yours. Love is dead.


* * *

September 1953








Through Train

Along myriad roadbeds, a spider’s nightmare,
the headlamps recrescently jigsaw the night,
the bare
-tree shapes, refractions of the web, know fright,
recoil, and are lost in the unction of priestly air.




Bodies meshing in the purple darkness
tromple the hours extinguish the stars
a double unity creating dissolving
listen my children the fast-slow-
poison of cigarettes and sherry numbing
and firing coursing vulnerable beyond
response a duplicate stimulus singly
beyond the votive the burning the color
suddenly the sudden awaited unexpected








Dylan Thomas
1914-1953

‘freedom compulsion the touchstones
giddiness in repose contradictorily’
speaking devouring knowledge prehensilely, craftily
preambling through a bristlecrust of grass
the sky oppressing as a pile of books
leaves red re-read in petty puns




* * * *


Uncollected poetry. Loose sheets of poetry that may have been written at various times; some draft variants of lines appearing in Fragments for Fentonesque.






For Judy

I speak laughingly of a latter-day Hester
who named her silent dry-eyed Pearl Rose
describing the bolshevik hair and the eyes inert
under muscular lids, the long nights alone,

the self-imposed penance, a part of my tale.
The poems you write and resolve finally in fire
parody me and subtly. I admit you made
a fitting dinner partner, self-conscious beside

my own fear, and compelled me too to admit
some birth of puritan strength and winter blitheness.
Soon in a drunken or moral fit I’ll list
your fire-tried virtues. Today be content with vices:

inordinate lust for, inordinate trust in
a man neither better nor worse than other men.








As I see it now

a room not yet dark, a sorrow not yet borne
no cry, no tremor, yet tears are torn
from eyes unwilling forlorn worn

why, child, this silent threnody
for a rampant melody
dead beyond memory








To Donie: silent in memory

You lone-walking one
late in late months
and late at night walking by

in your silence and tea
I swear I see
a parable of man’s single sigh.

Our dying fathers
our resignéd mothers
we, too, too soon will be

two old in illness.
without the slightest
resemblance your eyes are mirror to me

This fable of forgotten unity








“he that hath labored for the wind”


A fertile wind blown through draperies of rain
(mouth on my mouth) brought the hope of your love.

In autumn leaves and the ghost of that wind
(body of my body) we lay down together.

Ecclesiastes’ time to embrace and time to love
(my words in his words) are lost in these snows.








The mythology of ignorance


Insensibly dangling the bait
in voluptuous pools of honey and lust,
of langour and hate

(the penetrable inept crust
of water creating the string, bending
the string) must

vagrancy wait, blending
expectation and blackness, silence and fate,
confident of ending.








Nights after Jericho


With satin and cashmere glibness in velvet rooms,
the strength of night rewoven on phantom looms,
emerges the swaddling child from tombs

of sunlight. Words banished in the godly heat
of Joshua’s torch (half-eternal in the indigo seat
of that timeless logic), once reprieved, repeat

in more bruiséd blue the force and cry of that cress
of sound from salad dreams by day so useless.
With you as those others I speak best in darkness.








In Praise


Hear ultimate cicada sound
Of outerest skin,
The arid caress mouth as hand,
Repulse man.

Here, here the edge of love,
The last dry kiss,
Here the manumitted slave,
Free, base.








The Farm

At your better leisure
I’ll tell you things shall startle your blood:
Nor blame me that this passion I reveal,
Lovers die inward that their flames conceal.
Vittoria Corombona


Fields unused to rain, the soil dry
And as scored as tortoise shell those winter months
Had little moisture, the talent for life
Was buried, shielded from the power of the sun
By the sun’s own handiwork. You dazzled my eyes
By Apollo’s magic, by moving motionless above,
Your sidelong glance killing by ancient right,
Knowing all this, yet pitiless for death-dried mud.

I ran from the sun, chasing the rain
Across many states, expectant, hopeless
In time but trusting in space, the best
Sinner and the godless saint still worthy of grace.
In the inner darkness in rotted leaves the earth-
Worms slide through tunnels chocolate with wet.

* * * *

The clouds have failed me many times,
Their shadows embarrass the earth from the sky of noon
But the sun sets red, leaves its stain
For the moon to bleach. Rather she erases the names
Of drouth and dry-rot from sky and earth, the crumbs
The soiled art-gum collect in clouds, prepare
A July celebration of nature’s independence. Once more
The force that splits the atom bathes the lambs.

The sex of the body remembers the sex of the soul,
The insane lightning laughs in the bodies sound
Of thunder, the flowing rain in the clotted sand,
All winters rewritten in a summer’s tale.
The first drops melting the seeds of grain
Send the blood swelling to brain and groin.








Accident Rate

‘Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages’
--Cymbeline

In our circumscribed paths observe
the obscene fatality bending us
ending us always in a fit
of flowers and elegant death-scent

Clover concrete or greenleaved
the four branches fortunate
plucked and plucking ending us
sending us under choking

Fear no more the heat
of reflected sunlight, one life
suffices, or treacherous glare-ice
transient and tender ending us








Lay-over

Chalk on black proclaims
the number, the name, the gate, the time
of departure. Red caps, black faces—
furtive smiles

and hurried kisses, handshakes
awaited and forgotten. Hands buy
magazines, crackerjack feet crush the day’s
paper and prizes

without notice. Haste
and lethargy breed unseen and multiply
the salesmen and children that coltishly deflower the gate
in tangled lines.








Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman is dead, very conveniently dead.
We can shuffle his ribs, measure his skull,
for playing with his poems and life, we finger the bones.

What more than bones? Thought the comfortable hull
requires a passive plastic mass for tones
of judgment, damnation or sainthood; critics await

death to praise (are they deaf? I hear the moans
of a thousand infernal poets, When of late
I lived and wrote, who heard...?) and longer death

to damn. What college of critics can sate
both the partisans of change and who hold their breath
till lusts undone are secret, not out-spread?

“Walt Whitman, no one can call you apostate
to your mistress America, though poetics your mate...”








The Rites of Tragedy
A Prologue

(black curtain, various spotlights,
pile of tragic masks, larger than life)
‘and I only am escaped alone to tell thee’
And not escaped so much as abandoned, left
Like Fortinbras to efface the carnage, to remove the carrion.
But there was no carnage, only the ghost and the prediction
Of ceremonial deaths.
(nervously) (How much or how little to tell?)
(sees and grasps a mask)
A mask is a peculiar form of art, isn’t it?
In one static expression the whole of an emotion,
The rites of tragedy in a veneer of paper maché.
I have no use for masks. A tragedy is action—
If only the movement of an eye, or the unnoticed passage
Of a vagrant memory.
(drops mask) Enough delay! There’s little
Enough you need to know. There have been love
And sacrifice and death since the seas fell back
And the reptiles surrendered, leaving man (as I
Am left) neither whole—nor new—nor safe.
There have been heroes and martyrs, sailors, saints,
Willful love, willing sacrifice—we find
Them still and wonder. They are tragedy,
They alone are tragedy. Helpless love,
Unavoidable sacrifice is pathetic, even comic---
If you’ve the stomach for strong comedy.
But the story—two men, two women
Who deliberately tangle their allotted strands of life
(And the third sister, unseeing, snips the thread)
As kittens play with yarn.
I myself
Pulled at the skein.
(nervously again) We speak of drowning and pronounce it
An easy death, a return to the mother’s womb
Satiated, insensate, cushioned in slime, beyond
The shadow of that ghost of memory, beyond the mirrored
Spectre of hope.
To be brief, three are dead:
Two drowned, one shot herself.
And one lives and dies symbolically by the rites of tragedy.
But none of the deaths were easy. A poet once wrote:
‘The bottom of the sea is cruel.’ He knew.
(blackness: first act without pause)








Tantalus

In the spring wind and the moon’s bright stain
Frozen marble I grasp towards that feast.
The odor of lilacs will leave me insane.

Neither by laughter prayers not by hope or fear of gain
Affected the grasp for the grail has never ceased
In the spring wind and the moon’s bright stain.

False aspiration cut the heart from the brain
Each twitches, reaches, parts of a severed beast.
The odor of lilacs will leave me insane.

While heartleaves rustle in a sound as of rain
The Tantalus-image implies a prison a forehead creased
In the spring wind and the moon’s bright stain.

But heart or head even reason’s discourse could disdain
The charge both weaker and stronger in that savage beast.
The odor of lilacs will leave me insane.

Through echoed poetry shadows and sleep the pain
Of loving and limning is dulled for a moment at least
In the spring wind and the moon’s bright stain.
The odor of lilacs will leave me insane.








Nightlight

The Widow Lastly lay in bed
And heard the sirens fire the night,
Feeling her pillow hold it glued,
That halo of the light they sought.

Unquestioning for eighty years
She had obeyed the hemal ice;
Now suffering from age’s airs
She could no longer see the use.

She knew her next breath would explode
Her head of white hot ashes,
Scatter the once red hair so frayed,
Leaden with forgotten wishes.

The Widow Lastly pursed her lips
To steal the air in little sups.









[A draft of the above poem published in a journal or anthology.]



Vigil light

The Widow Lastly lay in bed
And heard the sirens scar the night,
Knew her pillow held it glued,
The secret tongue of fire they sought.

Unquestioning for eighty years
She had obeyed the haemal ice.
But suffering from age’s airs
She could no longer see the use.

She knew a full breath would explode
Her head of white hot ashes,
Would scatter the once red hair, so frayed
And leaden with forgotten wishes.

The Widow Lastly pursed her lips
To steal the air in little sups.









[This one appears to be a draft. It was typed out as prose but has slashes in pen indicating line breaks. In fact Jim cited this poem in a critical essay on Nathanael West as a modern poem on the Acteon and Artemis myth, which leads me to believe it’s not his (unless he was being very sly and citing his own poem). I havent yet been able to discover the author of this piece.]




So they stood by the maltshop, after the movies,
and she said, as he crushed the cone with his heel,
how dull, when they heard a nice tattoo of hoofs
far down the hill. Listen, Lucy said, do you
hear? as a naked man charged round the corner,
wearing a fine pair of antlers, fourteen point,
and some dozen cockers, jewels and sequins
glittering in the matted hair of their legs,
frothing, baying, and snapping at his calves.
He disappeared up an alley, the dogs
at his heels, but not before they saw her too,
naked and lathered, her shower cap askew
and panting what have I done what have I done
as the alley swallowed her.








IV. VISION

When we are

Seas, stars,
Birds,
Moons and mountains
Melting and shining;

It will be

Dead roses on the mark,
Crumbling into memories that
Ever were.








MUSIC

Music, the needle and eye of God,
Weaves me.

Begin Your mad eternal cloak!

I, forever lost,
Shed many hues.








Returning to Cambridge in Mid-winter

To sun on some beach with love in my arms,
To shade that love when the moon comes hot
And the wind dry from inland, that love firm
(Not the usual spectre), living....Thus I sat

Dreaming, I know, not really desiring, lost
In these many worlds, lost (where the heart
Is, of course, but the heart recoils in such haste
From here and there) at some home again, unhurt

By the change from one old home to another, but so
Tired and a step behind the heart. To sleep
In her arms and the sound, the sound of the sea,
To sleep and wake to the evening dream, and hope....

February
[Handwritten at the bottom of this otherwise typed page.]




* * * *


LETTERS


* * * *


[Rare preserved letters Jim sent home to his parents, most of which havent survived.]






Eliot House I-51
Cambridge 38, Mass.


the James E. Webbs
Route 1, Box 58
Anthony, New Mexico

[postmarked APR 13, 1956]

Thursday night
Received your letter today—glad to hear that you have plenty of water again, not having enough pressure has always been a nuisance. Who did the work? As you’ve noticed we are way behind on spring weather. The last two days, despite predictions of snow, have been very nice.
I went down to New Bedford with my roommate for two nights during the recess—relaxing to get a little change of scene. He drove me out to see Cora and family one afternoon. They were very anxious to know if you were planning to come up in June. Cora claimed that was the only reason she hadn’t left yet for Kentucky, but Audrey said it was also that she dreaded to travel.
That was about the only real rest I got. My tutor wanted me to turn in 40 pages of my thesis to a prize competition. Typing it up, etc., was almost as much work as the thesis itself. There isn’t much chance of my winning, but I did go on and enter to please Prof. Lynn.
Work on the novel is going much slower than I would like, but at least several people are interested in it. John Hawkes, a very good surrealist novelist, former pupil of Guérard’s and a teacher here now, has invited me to read to two of his classes next Tuesday, and discuss my work with them. I’m very glad to have him reading some of my work, since I respect his own novels very much. He came to Guérard’s class and heard me read a section of the novel, which was how I first met him—though G. had mentioned before that he would like Hawkes to read what I was doing. I will send a couple of Hawkes’ books home, if you all would like to read them.
By the way, there is one of Prof. Guérard’s novels in the bookcase at home—I believe Webbie read it a couple of years ago—Night Journey, but I don’t know if I’ve written that this is the same Guérard.
I’m not the only one kept busy by the approaching orals—both Vera and Airy Zolberg have doctorate exams in May—Airy called last week to exchange woes.
I’m down in the laundry room now trying to catch up on all the washing I let slip by during the recess. I’m enjoying the nylon underwear and the handkerchiefs.
Sorry to hear that Pool is taking such a heavy load, but of course he can bring them all up if he takes a little time.
That is very nice of Mr. Kilgore to save his books until I have a chance to look through them. I wish you would call him and tell him I look forward to poring over them all. I don’t have very easy access to a television set, but I’ll try to catch the program.
I’m glad to hear all the plants are doing so well, and surprized that the artichokes didn’t die down, considering the big snow you had.
I’d like to try to do the work this summer of finishing the porch and middle rooms, also run electricity over to use the other house. I’d still like to wall in the patio, too, if I can find cheap adobe, and also wondered what you would think of a screened summer house around the barbeque pit (something like the Morrows had), extending the garage roof, and screening the other four sides. I think that would really make eating out pleasant—no mosquitoes. Also fix the little sink and the old icebox out there—and perhaps the roll-away bed and glider. I should think the whole thing could be done for less than a hundred dollars.
It’s been a little hard finding time to write letters (or for anything), but everything should ease up after the orals in May.
Jimmy




* * * *




J.K. Webb
Queens’ College
Cambridge
England


Mr. & Mrs. James E. Webb
Route 1, Box 58
Anthony, New Mexico
U.S.A.


Tuesday, 20th December [1960]
Athens

Dear Mama & Webbie—
Have spent most of the day on the Acropolis and neighbouring sites, and am now sprawled on my hotel bed resting my feet, and will see if I can get a letter written before going out for dinner. I took the train from Venice to Brindisi Friday night, arriving around noon Saturday—the train so packed with passengers after Bologna that you couldn’t move in the corridors—expatriate workers from the north returning to Lecce, in Southern Italy, for Xmas. But fortunately I easily enough got a seat in Venice, where part of the train originated, since it was off the main route. The boat left Brindisi at 11 p.m. Saturday, so I saw what there was to see during the afternoon—principally the terminal Columns at the southern end of the Appian Way. Booked a berth—tourist class—on the boat—since the journey included two nights—one of the others in the cabin was a Harvard ’60 Fulbright to Florence, so we’re sharing a room this week in Athens and exploring together. Parts of the trip were rather rough, but I never mind sea travel. Called at Corfu Sunday noon, and had time to walk through the town and see the Cathedral. And arrived in Piraeus just before noon Monday morning in a real downpour. Got the bus into the centre of Athens, found a room, and then walked around in the rain—feeling a bit discouraged. But it stopped during the afternoon, and today has been bright sunshine. Had dinner last night with the family of a student I met on the train—reading economics at Newcastle, but came home to Athens for Xmas. Very good food, and some hints about getting around Athens and Greece. The weather was much improved today—sunny and very warm out of the wind. Took several photos, which I hope turn out well. The landscape and climate are a lot like home, as evidence, I noticed many of the same plants growing. Want to see as much as possible before returning to England—so will check the dates of sailings to Crete, Rhodes, etc. tomorrow and arrange a schedule. Bob (the Greek student) is coming around tonight with his fiancée, so perhaps we’ll be able to see a little of Athens’ night life—I would certainly like to hear more of the Greek music. Several sailors traveling on the boat from Corfu sang for hours on end—very expressive modal music, even if one can’t understand any of the words. The dinner last night was so big and so filling that I’ve had only an orange and a cup of coffee today. The fruit is a real treat, after England. Our hotel room is opposite what I suppose is about the biggest city market, and can see the stalls of fruit, meat, etc., and the pavements packed with shoppers. The city is very Americanized—even the traffic jams are on the U.S. scale. And although we’re in a rather slummy area, we can lean out the window and get a nice view of the Parthenon. Shall not get to Turkey or Israel—both too expensive in time and money. But I may scrape everything together and get a tourist flight to Egypt, which I would love to see. But I rather doubt it, since there’s so much in Greece and the islands for the time and money I have. I’ve also been meditating about plans for next year—I’ve made no decisions, but know I shall have to soon after returning to Cambridge. I know I can’t possibly finish the thesis this year, and I’m beginning to feel rather stale anyway—so the most appealing plan at the moment is to see about getting a teaching job in England for next year, and returning about the middle of June and spend this summer—say three months—at home first. I have the return travel due me from Fulbright, and I should be able to pay for the voyage to England out of the next year’s teaching. Teaching is certainly not well payed in England—but then one can live more cheaply than in America. And I might be able to get the thesis in shape too—though I do feel discouraged with research study at the moment. Anyway, I don’t have to decide yet—and shall consider various possibilities. But I’m pretty certain I want to return home during the year—for the summer if I’m coming to England again in the autumn, or after traveling for the summer if I should decide to spend next year in America. Will write whatever new thoughts I have about it. I imagine Pool and Jill will be there by the time this reaches you—give them my love. Would like to be spending Xmas with you all—but there’s certainly enough to see here to keep me from feeling too homesick. Will send the pictures home—as many as turn out well—after showing them to my friends in Cambridge. Now that I’ve more or less got the habit of taking pictures, I’m watching for a good buy on a better camera. But I intend to be certain what I want before I buy. Once again I’ve slipped by without buying Xmas presents—so I’ll bring belated ones home with me. Lots of love to all, and have good holidays and a good rest too.
Love,
Jimmy




* * * *


FICTION


* * * *


[The following pieces are, i believe, fragments or drafts from novel projects. Jim had a list of about half a dozen such projects that he made notes and did research on and some of which he drafted chapters and scenes for. There are indications in the letters that he actually finished more than one novel, but none of them seem to have survived the house fire when the big house in Anthony went up in flames in 1998 or thereabouts.]






Menu -- a la carte –

novellas -- Memoirs of a Managed Man
Henry at Harvard Law
Lucy and Wemys
Catherine
Towns of Manhattan
Mary White Rowlandson

short stories -- Fish Scales
Pretense and the difficulty thereof
The Apple & the Banana

plays -- Peace
The Falling Fallen

articles -- Vicar of Wakefield
Trafalgar Square to St. Paul’s

biographical sketches

verse




* * * *


[Another undated plan for literary projects enclosed in Jim’s file for what he was calling Managed Man, written on S.S. United States stationery.]






The possibilities currently: fiction:
(1) The Essential Man
message: despair
manner: bitter

(2) Jack Dover or: England
relatives, not absolutes
picaresque, wit,
irrelevant enthusiasm

(3) “The Buried Life”
love and { non-communication
non-fulfillment
very subtle

(4) Berlin [?]
not total, but considered, recall
<---1937 – 1943 --->
centered but extending both ways

(5) Europe –
The Americans: but how?

(6) Autobiography of my parents –
as exercise in empathy

(7) Marble Arch
anecdotes,
necessarily pseudonymous.

(8) The Laurel Walk
The Evans’s Virginia & Scott,
but very oblique

(9) perhaps Michael?
as innocence and experience

(10) The university
what beyond satire....

(11) twin-ness: jeu d’esprit

(12) Addie & the Jesus Man
religion as prostitution

(13) Elephant Butte [southern New Mexico] –
It’s been hard....


and currently: scholarly:

(1) translations from the Spanish

(2) theoretical criticism? though
so patently a blind alley?

(3) the nineteenth century:
not the current warhorses.

(4) 20th: query about McAlmon papers?
[Robert McAlmon 1896-1956 (died Feb. 2)]




* * * *




To Waterloo Station: a great crusade and exodus, a march of all the misfits—freaks and dwarfs and hunchbacks, the blind and the mutilated, all those who live in bedsitters, the old maids and the widows, the South Kensington queers—a legion of the silent Indians in lavender turbans, in all party colors—bandages, crutches and wheelchairs, banners, placards—bits of cardboard carton with Campbell’s Soup on them—all singing their own songs—the Irish in dark blue suits, shiny—the idiot children, we’re going, and we’re going together—come to me—you thick-lensed, the built-up shoes—send loudspeakers down every street and print handbills for the deaf—cowbells for the mutes—only the frustrated saints and sinners—let them televise it. Where will it end—a great river down the Edgware Road. And up from Brixton. A few debs among the King’s Road throng—the Queen looking out on all those backs in the Mall, twitching a curtain like any nosy housewife—you can hear her now, who are these people?

The trains waiting.... The train of dining cars full of fat schoolgirls in navy blue woolen uniforms—white shirts—men’s ties.




* * * *




The Memoirs of a Managed Man


Josephine Peso starts her collection rounds, her search, her expeditions, at five in winter and four in summer. Before dawn in either case, the sky still deepest blue to the west. There’s no real reason for such haste. No one else wants the trash she collects, and even the garbage trucks with their DEPT. OF SANITATION and CITY OF CAMBRIDGE don’t start their work until eight. There’s not even much she has to do around the house until noon, since Arthur makes his own coffee, and Sebastian’s never up. She doesn’t often clean the house anyway. But she likes that last hour or two before dawn, she expects it in all her untroubled sleep.
The alarm clock never rings. There’s a small preliminary click somewhere in the loud mechanism under its scratched enamel case, and Josephine pushes the button in before the ringing starts. She stands there on the cold floor of her basement room, barefoot, in a tight nightgown with fragments of lace at the top and bottom, all of it, once-white lace and rayon and even the open mouths of split seams a kind of dingy yellow, like the bottoms of her feet. She doesn’t stretch. No one would dare to, surrounded by those precarious piles of junk, those pagodas, card-castles and memorials of hers. But she scratches. And she is always vaguely excited, the tip of her tongue moving and visible between her lips.
She dresses. Since this is still her winter, she puts on her warmer workclothes. A black and fuchsia two-piece knit dress that has, with all that time, accommodated itself perfectly to the ample, the monumental parts of her, the somehow perhistoric mounds of her breasts and buttocks and stomach. She rolls and twists her stockings round her thighs, expertly and unevenly, and somehow fits her feet into rubber boots lined with what was fur and is now felt. Then over all the raccoon coat. With both hands she tries to stretch the hair back from her forehead, pulling it into two snarled clouds darkened for a storm. Without a mirror. She takes up several twine-handled paper bags that hang on the foot of the bed, Woolworths probably, then up the noisy stairs and out the noisy door, into the empty exciting streets. To see what she can find.
Cambridge, dark Boston are about her in their vacant hours. No cars at the curbs or steering down the streets, only lines of parking meters in the cribbage board sidewalks, all swollen and red violation tipped like matches. She doesn’t step on cracks, the snow has melted and she knows where they are. She passes the domestic trash cans near the corner with the knowing and unseeing disdain of years, and turns down Brattle Street to the Square.
She has the long flashlight out of her pocket now. Down narrow alleys of grayed brick, by the basement doors of clothiers and the barred windows of drug stores, to the regiments of galvanized barrels. The lids ring like cymbals, but she doesn’t hear them. Lengths of string and twine, her tongue vibrating in the cold air. Tissue paper and cellophane. The muscles in her thighs twitch. A tired policeman nods and passes. Her breathing now irregular. In another barrel ribbons, lovely bows, discarded lengths still corkscrewed from the spools. Now in a cul-de-sac behind the cleaners what she saves for last: clothes hangers, black and silver wire, twisted and snapped, dozens of them. Her hands close convulsively and her eyes roll to show the huge whites, the craze of red and blue veins. The shopping bags are full.
The sky has bleached around her, the street lights glitter in the dawn, a few people in the streets. She enters Hayes-Bickford’s for her morning coffee.








Jack Dover


You’ve seen Waterloo Station in December: cold, dim, smoky, noisy. Awkward grey mountain ranges of mail sacks, lumpy piles of quarry waste. A Christmas tree. The strings of baggage cars weave through the crowds like giant caterpillars, hooting for the right-of-way, shouting, twisting. Women at tea carts, in tobacco kiosks, in the newsstands wear headkerchiefs and knitted gloves with holes at the fingertips—he wondering whether the holes are cut or whether the abrasion of money, some corrosive quality, the root of, no, the love of is the root. Half an illuminated sign brightly reminding top people that they read. The boat train crowds: Americans in the standard light macs, carrying the inevitable suburban Samsonite luggage or folding Val-a-pak, the Australians strapped into their Aden cameras, all with the weathered skin of the new worlds.
And look at him: gaunt and gawking, all bundled up and weighed down, in that fuzzy blanket of a coat, by those bits and pieces of strapped-up luggage. Somewhere among those building blocks, that nursery floor of trunks with the bright initial letters on the sides, somewhere his will be hiding—footlockers (2)—one black, one brown. Thinking: Desolate, Displaced, Drab. No, not Diplomatic, not in this crowd. Damned cold, at least. There: D on brown,. Now somewhere a D on black.
I wake to the morning sounds, summer sounds. Birds chattering, the first bus straining up the hill. I hear a nurse’s voice somewhere, fatuous and repetitive, trying to persuade me that the sun is shining. My eyes are closed.
I don’t need to look, I know what the world is like, raining or sunny, wind or snow. I could see it now. There would be the long poplar bars of shade on the lawn like the pattern the venetian blinds cast on the wall opposite me, and the chairs scattered about under the trees for those awkward family visits to convalescent husbands and fathers and children, white and green and orange chairs, glistening with dew and turned bottom side up to keep the metal seats dry. Beds of cherry geraniums growing from hidden pots sunk in the soil.
It will be quiet outside for a while. Then the push and pause of a lawnmower, perhaps, or the snicker of shears at the hedges, and certainly the deliveries of milk and vegetables and meat to sustain us. Medicine, ink, soap and bleach for our swaddling cloths, crossword puzzle books and shaving cream to be wheeled around on the trolley to those who use them, bowls of flowers with thoughtful cards tied by little ribbons—all drawn like filings to our magnet, day after day. People come and stay and go, on way or another, but I suspect the hospital goes on forever, rehearsing the routine devotions.
Like the routine thermometer. I hear a rustle of starched cotton and the squeak of rubber soles on our tiled floor and then it’s thrust in my mouth and familiar fingers press the pulse in my throat. I haven’t had a temperature for years. There’s the low and gentle whistle of her breathing, but at least she isn’t talking about the sunshine, and now she’s gone. I’ll be left alone till breakfast.
And something of the routine seems to have entered into me after all these years. I seldom have new thoughts, but play again the old ones, as I will now. They’re permanent, scored in my mind, ordered and orchestrated, you can drop the needle anywhere, the middle of a phrase, and the rest will play on to the end.
It’s much simpler that way, and satisfies me more than doubt and searching ever did. I prefer to know.
* * *


[The following piece is a short rumination probably written in 1962, after Jim had been in England for three years, having somehow managed to stretch his Fulbright funding and his connection with Cambridge into a three year term.]






Maybe I should go home now.

Three years is long enough, or too long. I haven’t exhausted England, but it seems to have exhausted me—if I can no longer feel surprised or irate, it’s time to leave. I remember feeling so comfortable the first few months here: And why not? I was a child of four or five again, back in the America I first knew. 1938 and 1939. Dark shops with real people behind real counters. Restaurants upstairs with waitresses in white aprons. Most of the cars old and dark and small. Smiling policemen to tell me the way home. A splintery wooden floor in Woolworth’s, full of satisfactory sounds and smells. And I remember a longer period of slow anger, or growing child’s anger at the same world: its inequalities, poverty and drudgery, class, inefficiency, a daily quota of little [s?] and discomforts, caught in a crossfire of nasty shopkeepers and nasty customers every time I bought a bit of soap or a loaf of bread. But now Wooly’s has a terrazzo floor and an escalator, and I don’t really care about crossfires.








But memory is strange, the accidents stay with the essential, and throughout I hear, still, the debating self that accompanied me—I no longer have any doubt about my conclusions, but the doubt of the time is a part of the orchestration still, a counterpoint or decoration, nothing more.
So drop the needle.








places:

Boston
New York
Cape Cod
Albuquerque
Los Angeles
San Francisco

London
Cambridge
Florence
Rome
Naples
Venice
Madrid
Tangiers
Gibraltar
Malaga
Köln: the Rhine
Vienna
Athens
Dublin
Amsterdam
Edinburgh
Oslo
Stockholm
Copenhagen
Paris
Belgrade








Of course, when everything first came clear, when I understood, my first thought was that I must have finally broken the barrier, that I had gone mad. So I had to be very critical, check everything as carefully as a scientific hypothesis. It’s consistent. And I’ve seen nothing to make me doubt it. So if I’m insane the world is insane too, and you, my friend, are—well, whatever you are you are, we can’t help that.








Some of them are so sincere that I’m ashamed to talk to them. Since I can’t mouth the reassuring formulae they need and pay for—the stiff upper lip, the smile and good cheer, winning through against impossible odds—I simply say nothing at all. I don’t think they’re strong enough to face the truth.

===

They get rained on, and have two weeks vacation, acquire a third set of teeth and retire at 65. The unmarried ladies smile at occasional children in the parks, and feed pigeons.

===




All of life is a case against life, an indictment by the prosecutor sure of the death penalty. Think of it: children fall down stairs and under cars, grow like weeds and marry and fail, parents say the wrong things in the wrong accents, they don’t understand, become senile and die. There must be so much searching and straining and sweating and pain in love. Wives grow fat and husbands drink. Governments fight wars, and leave undone those things that they should have done. Science, art, philosophy: all toys. We’re either too old to enjoy them or too young to understand them. Cancer, starvation, insanity, revolution and counter revolution, suicide, religion, hurricanes, earthquakes. It hurts me to think about it.








Autumn’s the only season here, really

Autumn I like here, simultaneous warm
sunshine and cool air, all day and
every day. Cold clear nights for stars and
sleeping, a crystal show for the day—
blue sky fading very little at the
horizon, glowing yellow leaves on
the cottonwood trees, pale dry
crumbling earth.

What autumn is like here in the long valley: calm, unending, day after day.








She has seen them all, one time or another, all the usual five and six o’clock people. The homeless paying for tea but buying warmth and a chair, and a little time, their elbows on the table supporting sagging heads, Irregular nocturnal students,



The oblivious young man by the windows, writing something copperplate morning after morning, in half-leather notebooks.








I think sometimes: if I were God all those burning stars peppered in the void, those planets pirouetting round them, I’d keep a close watch. And when I saw life threaten to occur, in any form, before it could develop consciousness I’d crush it, kill it. No, I don’t mean that. Or at least I’m not sure what I mean. I know I wouldn’t have an easy conscience.
===
“I haven’t an ironic bone in my body.” From the start as he looks round I know what he’s thinking of, all those missing bones.
===
“I don’t believe there are any jokes in poor taste. If there were, I would be one.”

I tried to persuade him to bring a needle, one of those glinting syringes of morphia I’d seen, but full—I could see it, with the plunger so far back his thumb could barely reach. But I chose the wrong one, he was afraid. So afraid that I knew life was too hard for him, and if I could, I would have done it for him: to him, I mean.
===
Oh a long procession through the ages, caves all over the world where we have hidden, maimed and made [quate?], licking our wounds. Judging ourselves by that minor world of the frantic limbed and accepting its standard.
===
I often used to wonder: what were they like? What are they doing now, what do they think? But the answer is very simple—they must be a lot like me.
===
I just don’t think about death at all. It doesn’t pay. Sometimes for months at a time, waking and dreaming, it was that same cold sweat and teeth on edge at the thought that in a year or twenty or forty I would simply cease... As I say, I don’t now. God! But life is too short to worry about how short....








Lucid and ironic. Say 125 to 150 pages. “Particulars” revealed ¼ to 1/3 way through. Finality of present judgment: the needle on the gramophone record—interpenetrated by past stages. Unnamed: of an age. Literate. And the irony of course—at the same time that he is so devastatingly accurate about man’s predicament, he is thoroughly deluded about his own. A large cast of [permancuts?] and transients in the ward. His development is that of the “normal” man; also epitome of development of human race. Views on everything: sex, love, work, death, et al. The nurse: damp lock of hair, the supervisor: “I could have thrown something at her.” So looking back to adolescence: almost, or perhaps, love. Fantasy: “if she could only be reduced to her essentials. Lie beside me.” “Normal” life as slavery throughout—enslaved to self and to society. Limbs as deformities, malignancies. The intermediates. Attitude to unknown parents. Rationalisation of peculiarity: metaphor of mercury—the approach to the sphere in nature. Pure consciousness.

“I value lucidity above all.”

Ears to hear. The converts.









saw-tooth gables of rows of houses
against the clouds these east-west
streets of London that by the earth’s
rotation lacerate the sky

the whine of a circular saw

the cardboard of the pre-gothic-revival streets
and artificial lighting—stage sets—
unreal. Lion railings cast motionless
painted shadows.




* * * *


[This from Jim’s file on the Henry James at Harvard Law novella and some research of Story Street (New Orleans?) Jim was doing:]






Annabelle Peso kept an alarm clock on the floor by the head of her bed. Every night, yawning in her dirty yellow gown, she made a desperate effort to reach it, wound the ear marked “Time,” and pulled out the alarm button. She didn’t need to. Every morning—at four in the summer and five in winter—she woke and pushed the button in, before the mysterious innards of the clock could make even that tiny preliminary click that wakes the anxious lover. Sitting on the bed she could reach the light bulb on the low ceiling and twist it home.
The clock was a mystery of some sort, for she led such a well-scheduled life that she never needed to look at it. Either she was muttering about something or she was walking in a hurry to get somewhere, counting the pennies from the Mason jar spilt out on the kitchen table or mending a cracked cup with enough glue to make a healthy moon mountain range, or poking with her red parasol at a white-aproned boy in the supermarket, trying to find out where he hid the Quaker Oats. In her whole life no one thinking of a train or a dentist or a roast had asked her the vital question. They could see she hadn’t the time.



She couldn’t help blinking at the bright light. And as she reached for her stockings, hanging on a broken deck chair, she resumed the interrupted conversation with herself. “O my holy God, another fucking day.”








It was always a struggle dressing, snaps and buttons, broken elastic and safety pins, layers and gaps and over-lappings, lost garters and broken strings. And there really wasn’t room—the cellar was choked with furniture and boxes, old console radios and oak bureaus and a bronze statuette of a little girl in a garden party hat sitting on a stump, piles of Life and the National Geographic, open boxes of pipe fittings and Christmas decorations and felt hats, some ax heads without handles and empty patent-medicine bottles. She could barely stand by the bed, and to make her way to the stairs she had to turn sideways, though it didn’t make much difference. At the top of the stairs she stepped into her shoes, laceless, and with slits in the toes. She put on her hat by the hall mirror








Sorry to hear. Wanted to tell you. Glad to know. And another round of correspondence done. He stamped the letters and balanced them on the coatrack where he would see them in the morning. He took out his watch, looked at it, shook it, wound it. Three twists. It would take no more. Far too early to sleep. No reason to call on anyone. He walked around the room again, compensating for the sea-swell of the sagging floor. The sound as board rubbed against board, as a nail twisted minutely in its hole, was a ship’s rigging, tilted, strained, ropes, pulleys, marts. He dusted some ashes off the corner of the desk with his handkerchief. Again the calm sea, still the restive stresses, the dog-watch rounds and silences. He lowered the window shades, bolted the door, and sat down again at the desk. He unlocked the bottom drawer and took out a manila folder. The sheets of paper were numbered on the right-hand corner. He took out ten sheets, 31 to 40, and closed the folder. No, an even dozen. Won’t hurt me. He slipped the two sheets under the pile and reached for a pen.








The Memoirs of a Managed Man


combining Henry James, Harvard Law, Story Street and its crew—the autobiographical limited to the symbolic uses. Get everything down—details—and worry about order later.




* * * *


[A one-page commentary on a proposed writing project:]






memorial to a dead father—journey into past and into un-reality. Seclusion, cold, nature, dedication and waste of human elements—memories of adolescence. Trip from education, the urban, the motored—yet the same cold, or less. Reunion of living and dead family—which more embarrassing—shyness, indirection, third hand.
Crying somewhere, sometime and so long ago, man lost something, you lost something, somebody, some part, and for the dead flesh [word?] new aluminum (ah Horatio, there was a man) and crying in the dark (still the echo) too soon, too soon, there’s been some mistake—but no choice (or only the shadow) involved, because it pains me to consider his choice, or to become too near the real. If only he does not write me about it. Oh plead guilty now—gross and willing confusion and obliquity—for what are names? Yet the dedication is unavoidable. Make the tale picaresque, yet short-shrift the actual travel. And forswear even the shadow of my vain main eternal preoccupation. Upper Northern Regional—at least a long sound. Yet their dedication is to what? Peace? War? on what? the old friends are older, if not more provincial at (the very) least more insane. Theirs is not the self-consciousness—but Wally’s, Amy’s, Ruth’s. Long enough to say it all—rather, suggest it all , imagine all. One for all till the climax. I swear I’ll write a final sentence with so much crazy finality the tale won’t matter. But write it last—spend a year, not count the cost. And whose shadow in the background (of my mind). Guerard or Griffith? Difficult the title, with the threat of Isherwood, whom I shall not re-read. Rejoice, for Ann Arbor I know not nor Chevy. Yet I know the widow and her comfort, since she has called it that. So James’ and Faulkner’s screens and shutters, forced impediments, even Willingham’s lies. But not the latest intriguing artsy-craftsy trick culled from Anaïs Nin. (Ah see one, the reporters, the artists stealing life—but an intoxication in being at work for a moment again.
Damn the length—complete the project.
Novella surely.








Plan for months, now the project is planted. Invitations and public relations, resume the threads of private relations. Announce the date, inform the plasterers.

One must arrive from somewhere—the disparate directions.

The force of civilization, the militia as we know it.
Names there must be, but they need not be ordinary.

The poor, stupid, dedicated fools.

You knew him, and I knew him, but I was not the same man. Or we’ll assume that he was.

What becomes of his previous life, the part of the past?
Yet certainly there must be less said of him than the others. His value like Milly Theale’s illness.

Would one prefer dissipation to dedication (both meanings of both words)?

The beginning in medias res, no matter how trite?
Not bound by what I know but freed by the imagination—there must be some reason I write it and not Wally.

Everyone must have an inheritance, beyond the ordinary genes—that’s civilization, and if he hadn’t the money, so many haven’t the money, he was forced into the spirit its influence, stubborn irreligious refusal to die, lie quiet.

Not bless me, father, for man is sin. Not a monument, But please, please. Dedicate me.

--> Play with words for all they’re worth. The scene, not literate echoes, dictates the style, I hope. Refuse an outline till the words are written.




more richer and more poorer
in trickiness and stealth
till the age of retirement








Everyone must have an inheritance, beyond the ordinary genes—that’s civilization, and if he hadn’t the money, so many haven’t the money, he was forced into the spirit, its influence, stubborn irreligious refusal to die, lie quiet. What a hell before me, a profession (profess it) more richer and more poorer surely, in trickiness and stealth, till the age of retirement. Not bless me, father, for I have your sin. Not a monument. But please, please. Dedicate me.








Trees grow can houses shrink. Fall on my knees to enter the room—larger than possibility at ten years and twelve, kick at the walls harder than the womb, more constricting. Force one eye through the pinprick, square familiar window, threecent Washington wideopen window of twelve and ten, those summers, expansive, full for the moon wind and rain playing rover red rover, free wide for the dream excursion, full sheet of cold when fear awakened, howled four o’clock no more




* * * *





Postulating imperfect vision, an eye bereft early of its mate, devoid of parallax from earliest memory, imagining, through their careless speech, depth as seen by normal eyes and the ordinary larynx, singing, imagining but deceived often by chimeric sizes the ignis fatuus of landscapes, we construct a special case of the ellipse, a circle circumference 21, exciting as all circles not by its touted perfect form but by its movement—unbelievable speed, for the spokes are not seen—tilting the ellipse from that limit x2 + y2 = 11.16 to the limit upon y = 0 and beyond, imitating imperfectly and mechanically to tired vision the series of mathematical ellipses and their reflections, genuflections, finding variety in unity, endless forms of a single figure, inked on transparency: we move the transparency toward the eye, finally against the eye, x2 + y2 --> [infinity 8], y = 0 a line infinitely prolonged (now to eliminated the flesh, for the bone of my nose and the case of the eye prevent the infinity of imperfect infinite ellipses ((infinity only in the single eye perceiving)) and before the eye of the unsheathed soul to tilt the figure, spin the sheet of plastic) the now unbounded self free of the fictions of history and geography peoples the unseen, unbounded ellipse, the doubly-revolving circle, constructs epicycles on the changing figure: imposing Ptolmaic artifacts upon the astronomy of Kepler, but with the purpose of variety not regular planets. Extinguish all light and this circle revolving by spokeless nature still revolves also upon my chosen diameter, my running course.

The first remove. To obliterate the deed in an ocean of remorse finding the womb of water’s strength an end for false desires, compressing time in time, expanding space, here in this pool of light my desk I sit placid reading in the usual midnight silence after a game of bridge, immune and emotionless before the image of woman, confident of that silence, when despite the sanctity of the mind behind my eyes cushioned in this body my house arises the woman of dark hair and blue eyes silent but breathing of life, silent but omnipresent, incorporeal in cigarette smoke. In this rupture laceration caesura is my beginning and my end, I remember the actual the original of the vision, I am helpless. There is no reading no sleep nor speech this night, the victim the captive stained and wounded breathes the journey of the night motionless.

Love and the argosy erupt into life inopportunely as winter and prayer, imprisoning the senses in a sphere of poison as if of hemlock. Silver clouds not golden a fleece of memory obscures the moon: were all my years awake yes all my strength could I withstand, even alone myself sustained sustaining I could defeat multitudes a hoard of inanities: but this single smile, siren to my complexity, crushes me utterly, her bodiless weight crushing my eyes, kindling fire by a contradiction. Ten years ago even five, as simple as Alcibiades as any perception of youth, hoping remorseless, motionless in honey can symbolize, the convolutions of matter the primal writhings inflating my skull could have defeated would defeat any simple idea, conquering by treason or by royal marriage, annexing simplicity to congruent simplicity, unperturbed by the dissimilar, the dissembler. Sitting on a rock then, the climbing completed, eating hot cheese, tomatoes, grapes, crumbled crackers, the limbs of youth still supple and boneless absorbed the body the girl in tennis shoes as easily as the food, digesting desire, expanding to the touch un coeur sans peur: these same limbs (hardened, deposited of calcium like tree-rings from day of milk) now running through corridors and endless door, confronting the woman in mirrors of blackness, invisible and divisible in the mind, still eternal. The days many nights denied to the ego, tracking no less than a pure aesthetic, a universal ethic, unmoved by the I’s and the you’s, all shattered, to be the metamorphosis of a second’s delay, intuition perceiving the Christ’s wound receiving the shot the heat of atonement for a lack of lust, retreating through bloody snow.

Finally an unhoused nervous sleep expecting always the truncated awakening asking the questions of the dead mind quelle est cette langueur, / pourquoi, et comment? for to live on the hems the outerskirts of civilization, denying renouncing the social contract for a difficult ethic, a passionate complex of duty and modesty clothing occasionally and esoterically that unabashed body politic, is to lose perforce its sunshine and its health, to live on the edge of shadow, denied the warmth yet sensing the source, contributing a body heat yet gaining no dividend: the madness of living in a future age successful beyond death but never in that spasm itself, running to meet the arrows and shot of a present reality unheeding, the lunatic searching the moon his mother for a stooping man, searching with eyes myopic and hazy, an inordinate nemesis contained in the premise, containing the premise (the ordered nemesis just temporal and local) o pioneers that poets misunderstand and sing, fated pioneers themselves. Still we move through the Christ-blood of the forests, felling the masts the firewood sangrando los arboles sangrientos / mezclamos el pan de vida y muerte, / una hostia última y futura

and always the woman perfectly formed but of many forms, modal, as with dawn a reappearance of the fields of snow, reawakening not abatement of cold an orgasmic knowledge of the cold, whiteness of sin as much as purity. They say there is a young lady will sometimes go about from this enameled plain to that, singing always as Ophelia sang reflecting un-understandable light She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have someone invisible always conversing with her, New Haven’s fields rejoicing as an animal, this gadfly love mindless trampling the grass, brittle autumn pastures or the crusted snows, Sarah perversely too fertile of body and spirit entering never leaving the mind of Edwards.

or my (Edward’s) mind, full of these voices, in the Laocoön convolutions of brain the many voices warring for my voice, or casting dice behind my eyes, revolving through grey-matter gray anatomy, excelling in Vesalian dissections, the fingertips dripping shredded layers of muscle, shedding.

Let us walk the empty tilted streets at night always late, purposeless seeking only to escape the smile of the bookcases, incisors of poetry, molars of prose, through a mist that wets the pavement with reflections and the bricks with rhythm of our feet, streets once Hooker’s orchard the old man walking in apples and afterthoughts late on Sunday evenings, or beside the river a foot-whisper in grass (blocks of dormitories lining the river, occasional purposing towers, all reflected in the water, abetted, not diminished, by the moonlight, late harvest moon in a season late with lullaby, the whole of the image the total divided and corseted by the drive, double rows of cars redoubled in the river, headlamps and redlights cincturing the buildings and tincturing ((half brick half dream)) with a belt of rubies, silver: flowing and patterned, recurrent in geiger flashes) remembering dates in letters, events, speculating upon the mingling of waters, Acheron and Lethe flowing producing this mud and vapor, this cinema dissolve: an allnight restaurant.

To be aware of madness (soliloquy over a cup of coffee) lectures on psychoanalysis, the standard methods and the standard texts but never a standard lunacy (for Madame Rose knew I had read them, said I had read and believed, over a cup of leaves, more fragrant less potent) is to live in recurrent fear of life and consequent fear of death, preferring parallel infinitives to the false assurance of tenses, contemplating always the infinity of the dough-nut hole, ‘You are so kind to light my cigarette. If I were younger. You know I was a WAC---at the next table, an Irish table, a bloated woman whispers: for men it’s all right, but for a woman it’s different---Do you paint or write? I see it in your eyes. Why are they always looking at me, doll, and one to another smiling, is something wrong? with me?’ the usual modifier only understood. ‘I was once very young’ morbidity of thought complementing, complimenting morbidity of action into the street again, each of us, each of us different streets, and different shoe-sounds...

till I fall in darkness, blankets enfolding, sleep as my terror and mother—seeing in dreams a man of initials a transit where the dreams cross pitying and pitiable, legend of his times. By the tearing birth from the moment of conception, awareness torn from the spirit of darkness by acts of will or lack of will, that duplicate unity creating dissolving in that spacious blackness sheet lightening or thunderclap, existence recounted in the birth of remorse: at dawn, beyond dreams, the first attack, the first onslaught always at dawn, savage running ideas, shouting howling like the Taenas women to honor the chief compulsions, the propagating instinct already denied to mortify the flesh (by an excess of spirit), the mortification of the spirit itself now uppermost, the spirit desiring at least some contact, an exchange of words, untouching and dormant (dawn a false release, restauration, escape from the mind’s six walls and the sullen sphere of skull but to a sterner captivity, the persons, projections, all dominant) all through breakfast I resist and the dream recurring in visions of action.
* * *




[Handwritten on the back of the second of the three typed pages is the following:]

passed from the bookstore with an old copy of Mendelssohn’s Italian letters and in front of the bank walking in coldness and the noise of traffic, jostled, barbed by slivers of speech, meeting a woman, a usual woman, irresponsive unoccupied stare, passing, passed. Partly seen, seen truly perhaps, an impetus remembered as little more than impetus, and into the shop for cigarettes.




* * * *


[The following typed title page and quotation are all i’ve found among Jim’s papers of a novel he was working on during his leave of absence from Harvard (2/1/54—1/55). Jim’s friends when they wrote him refer to the novel as Mary.]






THE WINE OF ASTONISHMENT
or
THE TWENTYONE REMOVES OF MARY WHITE ROWLANDSON









[a handwritten note on the verso of the title page:]




The story as paradox—the phantom of delight seen only momentarily, opportune and inopportunely—at the continual crisis point of the imagination—thus any other sprite at the same time or the same at a different might or might not—then remembered deceptively but true to its deception, reseen not in reality, changeless and changing, for what, for four days, becoming at once meaning and expression of memory, existence and negation of imagination, and the recurrent changing symbol of change to come, finality in foundation.








‘At length they came and beset our own house, and quickly it was the dolefullest day that ever mine eyes saw....O h the doleful sight that now was to behold at this House!....with our bodies wounded and bleeding, and our hearts no less than our bodies....to add to the dolefullness of my former day, and the dismalness of the present night....I have thought since of the wonderful goodness of God to me, in preserving me in the use of my reason and senses, in that distressed time, that I did not use wicked and violent means to end my own miserable life....that there was no mercy for me, that the blessings were gone and the curses come in their room, and that I had lost my opportunity....I can remember the time, when I used to sleep quietly without workings in my thoughts, whole nights together, but now it is other wayes with me. When all are fast about me, and no eye open, but his who ever waketh, my thoughts are upon things past, upon the awful dispensation of the Lord towards us....I remember in the night season, how the other day I was in the midst of thousands of enemies, and nothing but death before me: It is then hard work to perswade my self, that ever I should be satisfied with bread again....O h! the wonderfull power of God that mine eyes have seen, affording matter enough for my thoughts to run in, that when others are sleeping mine eyes are weeping....I have seen the extreme vanity of this world: one hour I have been in health, and wealth, wanting nothing: But the next hour in sickness and wounds, and death, having nothing but sorrow and affliction....under many tryals...in sickness, weakness, poverty, losses, crosses, and cars of the World....the portion of some is to have their afflictions by drops, now one drop and then another; but the dregs of the Cup, the Wine of astonishment, like a sweeping rain that leaveth no food, did the Lord prepare to be my portion. Affliction I wanted, and affliction I had, full measure (I thought) pressed down and running over....


--A NARRATIVE OF THE CAPTIVITY AND RESTAURATION OF
MRS. MARY ROWLANDSON




* * * *


[The following form the surviving chapters of the story of Wemys and Lucy, which may be fragments of a novel that Jim more or less completed. The segments or scenes seem to be out of their original order and i’ve transcribed them in the order in which i discovered them among Jim’s papers, fearing that if i begin to shuffle them i’ll only put them further out of their intended order.]






When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humored a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.
---Sir William Temple









Shortly after three o’clock Wemys became impatient, turning on the radio to the police band. He knew he had some three hours yet to wait, but wouldn’t even that robot voice be preferable to the bird? The quilted cover was on the cage, but the parrot would not, or could not, sleep. Often, for a few moments, he seemed to try: the sound of ruffled feathers would disappear into that rare sky where Delphi made his dream flights, wheeling slowly down, down, in whatever company of eagle or mynah, disdainful of whatever earth or water dependent from his limitless floor of cloud. And as these silences settled in, as the sirens from the street crept into the room through each unnoticed crack in the clock’s ticking, as Wemys waited he prayed not to move, knew so hopelessly that even the deeper breath he needed, if not the creaking of his chair, would break the bird’s narcotic vision, precipitate the well-known rude—“Hell, he is awake!” Each time Wemys realized Delphi was shamming, knew surely in the darkest flow of silence, during that last few seconds of the bird’s hypnotic drama, knew the flow would stop, be dammed, diverted. And in the channel, Delphi. Twice he began with his shrill whistle, once broke unexpectedly into song—not a complete song, only the one line, the melody repeated without variation, though the bird’s humor excelled in perverse and unexpected, often improper, emphases. “What a day—was yesterday.”
Wemys had extinguished the lights, hoping the blackness could someway penetrate Delphi’s quilted womb, creep in and impregnate the inner darkness. From that unseen copulation the birth of silence, the growth of sleep. But in that hour of darkness no quartered chimes could reach him, Delphi insisting always upon the old life, and not the little death. Still Wemys, when he spoke to the bird, was always kind, always patient, that mother’s voice of darkness making of his threat a caress, a dark embrace and kiss as he whispered, “I have put out the light and then—to put out the light.”
“Put out what light—put out what light.” Delphi was quick to learn. The announcer had little new to say, spoke slowly to bridge those long dark morning hours. Wemys thought once he heard her yawn, but she had only paused for a sip of water. Today would be, perhaps, another blue and fluttering day of that aboriginal summer, or, the experts disagreed, of rain and wind alternately. Both the Weather Commission and the Department of Trees apologized for the late autumn, apologized for having decided to strip the foliage so prematurely. Wemys, though, was cynic enough to know they weren’t really sorry. If they had their way there would be no summer at all, neither green nor red or yellow billowing overhead.
The voice stumbled on, but Wemys could not let himself grow bored or he would miss the announcement, and he sat with his ear by the speaker lest one of Delphi’s outbursts overpower the frail woman at the crucial point. When the announcement did come there was even a hint of happiness, relief, in her own voice, though still she did not hurry. “Six fifty two A M. All lighting on all thoroughfares, streets, squares and alleys in Greater Boston—has been extinguished.” Immediately the fresh voice of the morning announcer broke forth, but before the man could finish his hearty joke Wemys had opened the shutters, was out the door, checking to see if he had his key before he pulled it shut. Mr. Pestalozzi on the second floor was tapping on the radiator, keeping time for the flute of the last secretary on his evening shift of students. And he was out the door.
You can see him as he races through the streets, know in an instant all you need to know: young and determined, a little afraid, the elbows of his jacket somewhat shiny, eyes dark and liquid, his hair tangled. And alone, even partly (though this is strange) by choice. As the streets brightened, his pace decreased, so he could look from side to side, count the open windows, wait for traffic lights to change at vacant intersections. He stayed on his favorite street. Anyone lucky enough to have a street should never risk a change. He knew that well enough, and these few short red-brick blocks suited him well as any other.
Mr. Halcyon crept round his door and onto the marble stoop, dressed in his Tuesday Macintosh and shiny galoshes, flicking open his umbrella before he saw the sun. Wemys called good morning, tried to smile, would even have stopped to speak, exchange the gossip of the street and gutter. But there could be, he knew, no pleasant conversation without the umbrella to shield them, to draw them together. Still he stopped, watched sadly as the little man slowly rolled the silk, hooked the band, and turned back to his room to sulk, cursing slowly in his satin whisper, and disdaining, of course, to call this morning good.
Wemys continued down the street, shuffling sometimes in the gutter, more often against the walls behind the garbage bins. In Mrs. Chauncy’s areaway he saw a leaf, maple and yellow. He looked over his shoulder at the quiet street—no one but the cripple at the corner with his hat full of flags. The shade on her single basement window was drawn, was still, but that crack at the bottom, just wide enough for her patient yellow eyes. A trap surely, for she excelled at subtle plotting. Or had there been a wind last night? He could not remember. Of course someone might have lost it in the darkness. Wemys knew the streetlight never reached the bottom of that filthy well. He could not decide. He looked behind him again, saw the cripple’s toothless leer, and a slow wink that decided him. He tied his shoelaces together, hung the shoes carefully round his neck, and crept down the littered stairs, oh so slowly, since the sound of a crushing candy box would surely waken her, watching the window, reaching for the leaf. It was his. He started to climb back up the ladder, grasping for the sticky rungs, stretching past the missing one, pulling hard, the leaf stem between his teeth, when the shade slapped up. She too could only whisper, clutching her stringy cancerous throat with both hands, squeezing the words out: Oh thief, thief. Oh I saw you all along. Oh if I could get my hands on you. Oh oh oh.. She was knocking her head against the casement and (in his mind he could see her) smiling.
At last he reached the top, fled down the sidewalk, cutting his feet on a gallon wine bottle, red and syrupy, the screw cap lost, that the cripple threw in front of him. And still he could hear her espresso whisper: Oh I’d like to get my hands on you. Oh I’d wring your neck.
Wemys made it to the Garden, could wash his bloody feet in the lake and replace the shoes. He sat on a bench, still gasping for breath through clenched teeth, till he saw the paper clip on the path before him, could pin the leaf to his lapel and breathe freely once more.
Wemys napped a while, now that Delphi, his somewhat delicate feelings ruffled, had decided to punish him, to hold his peace and bear the pain in silence. He shifted monotonously from foot to foot, staring not at the cage’s bars but at some intermediate space, immoderately attractive, below the chandelier. But his pique increased his appetite, the curled beak sharpening as he shelled the sunflower seeds, littering the cage with the husks. But soon, with the day’s supply untimely down that throat, his tactics changed, the policy of Gandhi or the masochist no longer seemed so politic, and he rattled the bars of the cage, tore at the seed and water cups with both feet (awakening Wemys) as his wings clutched at air. Wemys knotted his tie, brushed his teeth, and started down the fire escape, but had to return, replenish Delphi’s seeds. The janitor would call the firemen if that wrath continued. And his long-locked door chopped open, the slap of the water, that angry hand, killing the bird as a bullet would, carpet dripping, sodden books, an eviction notice on his charred pillow.
He limped along the last block to Mme. Sewall’s shoppe, ignorant, I still believe, of the adventures that awaited him, the maiden love and innocence, the last exhilaration.
Wemys first met Lucy at nine o’clock that Tuesday morning. They stood before her door together, both waiting for Mme. Sewall to open her shoppe. Mme Sewall is a procuress of the very first water. Through her door pass without doubt the strangest people in Boston. She is a good woman, I can’t deny that, but above all and ever a good business woman, scrupulous when she can be, shrewd when she must be, as her competitors will admit, remembering her uncanny prescience of the public taste. The sudden demand for that unusual liqueur flavored with the tears of Australian aborigines, supposedly rather stoical primitives, was a typical coup last year; she had two casks in the cellar and another dozen at the warehouse, and laughed quite heartily at Mr. Channing’s attempted bathtub counterfeiting, though she wept the next day at his funeral. Her general stock is less exotic, is limited to the more common of those demands the Bank can’t always satisfy—men, women, girls, boys, all ages and several ethnic groupings, human merchandise that is handled by appointment, the actual meeting occurring at a nearby hostel; various drugs; apparati for several little known methods of sexual gratification, together with assorted equipment for preventing the possibly inconvenient consequences of the more usual pleasures; materials for alchemical and anatomical experimentation; books; liquors (licensed); camel-dung cigarettes; splinters from the true cross; antiquities; potions associated with the black and particolored magics, etc., etc.
Anyone who has studied planetary influences will understand her fluctuating business. At certain phases of the moon her shoppe is thronged by convivial yet well-mannered customers. At others the shoppe is deserted, except for occasional furtive and ill-natured visitors who turn up the collars of their overcoats and walk by the shoppe three times before entering. So—
Mme. Sewall was understandably surprised that Tuesday morning. She had she knew every right to expect a dull day, perhaps two customers before tea time, and she had her Nation’s Business and an old report of the Medieval Society to while away the time, was understandably, I repeat, surprised to see two young people waiting on her doorstep. The magazines in her hand she approached the entrance, ready as always for the day, raising the green shade from the huge oval glass of the door, staring out at the two staring in standing side by side touching almost in the obvious, they thought, end of their waiting. And Mme. Sewall unmoving there suddenly, working hard to remember the resemblance, the face and eyes immobile the mind racing frantically, remembering suddenly, turning and running to her study, without sign to the waiting Lucy, Wemys. Who had not looked at each other, had not spoken. It was shyness in him, the usual perversity in her counting the minutes of his shyness, neither voicing surprise when the witch decamped, leaving the door still locked.
Already for several minutes Wemys had seemed to study the familiar stuffed bear in the shoppe window, the chained eagle perched on its head and the small dusty mice that chased each other lazily about the bear’s feet. They had no fear of the eagle, for they knew he was firmly anchored to the bear’s leather collar. But Wemys’ vision had not reached that far, had stayed on the glass’s surface where Lucy’s dreamy apparition spread, as still as the hopeless bear. Yet what had he seen: only the prominent cheek bones, the long blonde hair, calm eyes possibly cruel, no, not cruel, possibly kind, oh not possibly, certainly, for beneath them, somewhere subterranean for fear of the old rebukes, in glittering candlelit passageways dwelt the beautiful bountiful secular nun, barefoot and velvet gowned, laughing, loving. Oh Wemys could see it! Almost feel the ease, the languid after-dinner coffee, cigarettes offered glowing and faintly lipstained to his need, the children in bed, somewhere beneath that polished face, that mirror to deceive. And below that only the dark film of her fur, unseen upon the brown and hairy, the equally lifeless background. She refused to see him at all, in the flesh, on the glass, or even his shadow before her on the door.
And then Mme. Sewall running back to the door, a book now in her hands, fumbling with the lock. She was speaking before she had opened the door, before they could possibly hear her, excitedly, “Lucy! Wemys! Look at yourselves!”
She knew them both, both who knew each other’s name only from the witch’s excited lips. Knew Lucy as one of her best customers, a young woman of great faith and energy, a serious student of alchemy, Hermetic philosophy, the benevolent forms of witchcraft, perhaps a little too sincere. But of good family. Wemys as an odd perhaps lunatic young neighbor who had withal a common ancestor of which they, or at least she, spoke often, for whom she felt great family affection at several removes of distant cousinship, whom she often fed, his social ineptitudes leading almost, but not so often, to starvation, certainly to malnutrition. She gave him vitamin capsules which he never remembered to use, but could never refuse, not wanting to admit that he had accumulated a box full of bottles, tablets, tonics, under his bed, unopened.
“Wemys! Lucy! Why hadn’t I realized! Look here at these engravings of the alchemical marriage, see here you are, you two standing close beside one and the other but looking straight ahead unaware but married all the same. I should have known, should not have needed to see you together to know—“
“But Sew you never told me you had this.” Lucy had been caressing the book and the pictures: John Daniel Mylius, Philosophia Reformata (1622). “Lovely old book. May I read it? I’ll be so careful, I’ll read it here in the shoppe.”
“Not really worth your while dear, you’re well enough initiated to study the masters and not the mere adepts, to do even more work on your own I might suggest, and not waste time, precious time on Mylius. I only bought it for the pictures, look here now at the two of you standing—“ Wemys all this time uncomfortable, observant of course, but only by inference as it were from the life-long habit of introspection, forgotten by the women, anxious. He had come for some poison, and for a cup of Mme. Sewall’s aromatic coffee. he had not bothered to eat since Monday’s breakfast, and would enjoy the coffee, had slept little, that parrot becoming unendurable after only five weeks, though still too human and too imitative in his speech to be killed by any obvious means, drowning, bludgeoning. The woman, the owner of the bird, lived across the hall from him several months, leaving suddenly when she procured, through Mme. Sewall, the lease on a small tearoom on Forty-seventh Street, just off Times Square, abandoning to Wemys the loquacious parrot—called Delphi for his oracular manner—because it happened to be Wemys’ birthday, and since she would have to live in her well-furnished shawled and shuttered workrooms, Delphi talking usually twenty hours in a day, too much a parody, aping as well as parroting his mistress, predicting legacies, liaisons, loves in the leaves, the tea leaves, never dogmatic like most parrots, but enigmatic, equivocal, the woman willing to sacrifice the bird because she preferred telling fortunes in New York to streetwalking in Boston. Delphi had picked up some male-sounding vulgarity too. Finally Wemys had determined to poison the next portion of sunflower seeds.
So Wemys anxious, standing one foot and then two, then the other, when the women remembered him, rather, looked about them in the moment between one subject and another in their disjointed conversations (these two together each had a conversation distinct from the other’s) and were shocked into silence by his unremembered presence. Then both spoke naturally at once.
Lucy: “If you’re to be my alchemical husband perhaps you had better teach me to pronounce that odd name Miss Sew insists on using. I’m Lucy Masters.”
Mme. Sewall: “Cousin Williams, this is Lucy. I’m so sorry I hadn’t thought to have you meet her, or have you?”
Neither considered stopping for the other to speak, so Wemys heard both together, like at the cocktail parties of his brighter youth. he didn’t know which to answer first, to which woman to yield priority, and could think of no answer that would satisfy both at once. yes and no, yes or no would not do, both women looking intently at his face, drawing up the blood to his face like women at a well. “That’s all right, that’s...all right,” which was an answer of sorts, but one that came only from his embarrassed vocal cords, that gave, at least, some time for thought. “there was no reason for you to introduce us, no I mean there was no reason for you to have thought to introduce us, no reason to think you should have thought really,” thus finally yielding, answering first his kinswoman. Then: “She calls me Wemys. My middle name is Werrin, if that seems any less ridiculous to you. Or Williams, you can simply call me Williams, that’s easier.”
“No I like Wemys. It is Welsh, old Welsh I mean?” All the time observing, but seeming to have no interest in what she said or what she saw either. Miss Sew was talking before Wemys could begin to answer, was walking towards her safe in which she kept, along with various precious items from the stock of the shoppe, her genealogical record book, leatherbound, huge, oiled twice a year.
“Of course old, dear, and Welsh, but not druidical I should hope. Wemys Williams was a firm dissenter. Oh don’t misunderstand, I hold no brief for Christianity, especially the more strict schismatics. But firm beliefs and strong character do appeal to a maiden lady, especially in an ancestor, that way I can hope I inherit some of the strength, like from Sam Sewall, don’t you see. Wemys was a firm dissenter who came over late in the eighteenth century and settled at Washington Courthouse, Chowan Bay, Albemarle Sound, North Carolina, gradually importing four of his brothers, the five of them doing more than their part toward populating the western states as they opened up. I’m his great great granddaughter by way of my mother whom my father found somewhere in Tennessee almost dead of ennui. Wemys is a great great great—one more even yet I think—grandson, direct male as you see by the surname. So he’s my cousin, like a son Lucy, treat him well.”
Wemys during this, frightened almost, at least embarrassed by Lucy’s steady eyes, losing himself in Mme. Sewall’s speech which he had heard several times, seeing very distinctly Samuel Sewall and his wife sitting up the night through, trying to comfort their young daughter who had found the fear of death. (Mme. Sewall’s descent from the illustrious justice was by no means sure, the proof wound deviously through many pages of the big brown book, but no one disputed the proof, no one even bothered to understand it. The “madame” of course was only a gesture, a compromise.) Seeing also Washington Courthouse, Chowan Sound, Albemarle Bay, North Carolina, though he had never been there, and five stern, bearded men, praying in loud voices and nothing sticks to keep count of their progeny. Remembering an adventurous great great granddam, something about an itinerant preacher on a white mare, that made his own notch on the stick dubious. Imagining the reunions these descendents surely held in California, fried chicken picnics, the park soon gray with defunct and greasy paper napkins, and canasta parties, with a policeman present, reading the regulations. Shaken back into reality, like an apple from the tree, by Lucy’s voice:
“I’ll care for him, and carry him to dinner Thursday with the family. No Miss Sew, no objections, he needs to meet the philistines on their own grounds, to get the taste of their mud in his mouth, the cure or kill method you know. And I’ll send Abigail around to eat with you, you can talk all day, she won’t interrupt.” She took Wemys’ arm, leading him out of the shoppe, calling back to the flustered lady, “Now don’t look so bereft.”
Poor Mme. Sewall, reaching with one hand to unhook her big black shawl from her dark cat’s claws, as she did many times a day, while the huge and unopened book of dates, births and deaths, names, threatened to fall from the other. She would have to read it to herself now, they were leaving, and it would be a dull day.
Lucy calling back, “Now don’t look bereaved, I said I will care for him. This alchemical marriage is your idea, don’t regret it.” They set off toward the river, that is Lucy’s firm grasp on Wemys’ elbow indicated the direction, Lucy not even remembering too late her forgotten purpose in coming to the shoppe, not needing to, having half-consciously reconsidered, eliminated altogether all urgency, any need for haste. This was a habit of hers, this preliminary haste and sudden lapse. Wemys had forgotten entirely the poisoned sunflower seeds, felt only the need for coffee.
They walked all that morning, awaiting the courage to talk, or perhaps the necessary fatigue. Calves twitching, heels blistered, surely then they would feel old in misery, friends in the length of days, and at some tea shop waiting to be served, or crushed against the police line at a fire, they would all unknowing begin to talk. Not of serious matters, not of the future, that would be premature, nor of the passing scene, for they both had eyes, but as old friends sometimes speak, or sink in silence, of unexpected riches, those transient childhood memories, that persistent base-metal and time’s jeweled inlay—stolen eggs stirred into mud delights, the largesse of a drunken father, the swing’s orbit in a careless shade, a brother dead of an afternoon, the rope cutting his flesh to the spine, the horse tied to a tree, lathered, the mother’s controlled tears. Their lives would have entered a common fund, the view of that day wash over them, and the next hour come huffing into sight up the nearest stairwell.
The next morning Wemys tried to sleep in the public library because he so dreaded Bank Day. But the foul-breathed alderman opposite kept kicking Wemys’ feet under the table. Each time he looked up in pretended shock and contrition, called “excuse me” softly, winking. Then he kicked Wemys hard on the shin, looked up but said nothing, stared, glowered, whatever. So Wemys said “Pardon me, I’m really sorry, but I have to go,” and ran downstairs. One of the librarians, as transparent and brittle, perhaps even as hollow, as a light-bulb, collapsed in her chair, shattered at the sound of his heels on the stairs.
But even conscience would have defeated sleep. Never yet had he defaulted at the bank, and today he arrived on time, took his place in Mr. Whitney’s line when the guard called his name. Miss West was already in her place ahead of him. He spoke to her as usual, though they had never been introduced, sympathetic, less bashful, for they did belong to the same bank. She made her usual complaint, that there should be chairs, for the women at least. Why sometimes they had to wait two hours. Wemys agreed, for he knew by the time they reached the office door Miss West would be near collapse. She reminded him of his grandmother, but older. They spoke of the weather, still that native summer, the last cloud culled from the sky, the few last roses blooming. Of the Department of Trees, lowering their voices. Then silence. Every three minutes the door opened and they moved forward a step.
At noon the guard brought them sandwiches and coffee in disposable cups, which he later collected on the same cart. The newsboy ahead of Miss West disappeared through the door, and Miss West began her goodbyes. As always she doubted she’d be around another week. Then she too was gone, and the door closed against Wemys’ toes. The sign before his nose was in golden letters two inches high: MR. WHITNEY, VICE PRESIDENT.
His palms were sweaty and his throat dry. These last three minutes were the hardest. As soon as the door opened the difficulty was over; Mr. Whitney’s gray hair, his smile and paternal manner reassured him. Sometimes he thought of the fatherly man behind his desk, and knew then why his belonging to the Bank was both pleasant and dreadful. Ah, and Miss West’s too. But on Wednesdays this cleavage, his life on the meat board and chopped in two, the nausea from dawn until noon, reassurance, comfort of a sort, when his turn finally arrived. Only on those mornings did he regret his parents’ selling him into the Trust Department.
“Well, Wemys, good to see you. Everything fine, I suppose?” He took Wemys’ envelope from the cash box and handed it to him. “Good to see you again, son. You’ll be coming to the dinner tomorrow? You know we’re having Thanksgiving for all our people.”
Wemys had forgotten that, and his hands were wet again. “Well no, I—“
“No! Why, boy, I told you last week. There’s nothing for you to do but come.”
“But Mr. Whitney, I’ve been invited out to dinner, so I thought—“
Mr. Whitney more than half relented. “Oh, by whom, son? Aren’t you going to tell me?” He looked a little hurt, now, to be asking.
“I met a young lady—Lucy, Miss Masters, that is.”
Mr. Whitney rang for his secretary. “What address? Wellesley Hills? Ah, Miss Winder, Masters in Wellesley Hills.” Motherly, thought Wemys, that helps too.
They sat waiting for Miss Winder to bring her report, the silence lengthening, until Wemys decided he must say something, anything. “The Department of Trees—“
Mr. Whitney broke in, “Just a rumor son, you know how the press exaggerates those things.” Miss Winder brought in a slip of paper with a figure on it, which Mr. Whitney glanced at, then relented completely. “Well, we’ll excuse you this time.” He wrote on a voucher, and rang for the guard. “Good luck, son. Have a nice time,” And Wemys scurried after the dark green uniform.
They took the elevator down past the street floor and into the basement, where the guard released him to another attendant, a spiteful stooped man with a tape measure over his shoulder. He read the voucher and scowled, went muttering to one of the racks of clothes. “I don’t know how some people always get the best suits, I certainly can’t figure it out, and what will we do when they’re all gone, huh, what will we do then?” He turned his fiery eyes on Wemys.
“I don’t know, sir. But Mr. Whitney—“
“I know, I know.” He sent Wemys into one of the vaults to change, then turned him around before the mirrors. “Sloppy, sloppy. But better than you looked before, huh? Well, you can go now.”
“But my old suit, I’d like—“
“Now, now. Mr. Whitney and I, We don’t want you wearing those old rags, so we decided to keep them for you until Friday. Here’s your stub.”
So Wemys had no choice but to wear the strange clothes, because there wasn’t time to go through Mr. Whitney’s line again, and what could he say to him anyway? Wemys got out of the elevator at the street floor.
At first he noticed nothing strange. The main floor was always noisy, always so crowded that he had difficulty finding his way to the door, but this was a different crowd, a more determined noise. Everyone was falling to the floor, scrambling, fighting, groveling actually. Across the seething battle at his knees Wemys saw Mr. Whitney, and started toward him, but a woman bit his calf and he lost a shoe before he could reach him. Mr. Whitney had a broom handle in one hand and was flailing at the guards with it, and in his left hand the gladstone bag that had left the trail of money on the floor. Miss Winder was approaching him from the Trust Department, calling “Mr. Whitney, Mr. Whitney,” and stooping to gather as much of the money for him as she could. Wemys found three bundles for him, too, before the tear gas went off. Crying and coughing, they reached the sidewalk as the police arrived. The lieutenant recognized Mr. Whitney, and came to him.
“Oh, you’ve got the money.”
“Yes, most of it, Officer. And here’s the culprit, too.” They carried Miss Winder away, and when the paddywagon turned the corner she was still calling “Mr. Whitney, Mr. Whitney.”
Wemys gave him the money, and Mr. Whitney thanked him, hoped he would have a nice time tomorrow. Then he disappeared in the crowd with the black satchel.
Miss West came out of the bank, choking, a bloody lace handkerchief to her nose. “Don’t you know that’s our money he has? We have to catch him, follow him.”
Wemys gave her his handkerchief, saying there was nothing they could do. And he tried to comfort her, thinking, though he did not say it, that now she would no longer have to stand in line. Nor would he. The flow of blood seemed to slow, but then something broke deep inside. She was clutching at Wemy’ shoulders, the front of his suit was dark and sticky with it. The fleet of ambulances arrived, and the attendants went into the bank, wearing gasmasks, but one of the drivers, somehow, pulled her fingers from Wemys’ flesh. He started home, trying to hold his torn trousers together.










[Jim’s professor’s comments on this section:]


Webb

This is a very polished and skillful opening. It has some things which are far better than anything in the opening pages of the first draft; has more imaginative and verbal invention. To be sure, I don’t think things have been made easier for the “common reader”!
There are many things I like very much: Lucy & Wemys’ staring in the window, unconsciously conjoined, as Madame Sewall stares out... is truly a brilliant “introduction”.
Keeping in mind Hawkes, Nightwood, Miss Lonelyhearts and the few other superior examples of this genre, I call attention to my comment on the opening page and my comment on pages 7-8. You might consider them as “general” comments:

1. I think the cockers should be intensely real cockers, not cobalt, copper, platinum. These adjectives force the reader to weigh their propriety. Should they not, however strange, be intensely real cockers—their “psychology” intensely real? Vide Hawkes’ dogs chasing the train. They do things normal dogs can’t do, yet (chewing the furniture) behave as normal dogs. Put generally...I suggest you give the most intense reality—not literal but psychological reality—to the purely material. Thus Mr. Halcyon can be unexplainable yet, by the way he handles his umbrella, could be intensely real. So for the beggar.
//In Hawkes, in fact, everything is strange and everything is psychologically true to some human obsession. I think this is one (though not the only) impulse behind my feeling that Lucy ought to be a very attractive girl in common-sense terms: face, body, personality. The strangeness of Hawkes is continually anchored in the truth of a) familiar visualization; b) truth to psychic obsession;

2. I like most of the incursions of the narrator. But the rational, common-sensical introduction of Madame Sewall’s shop is subversive of credibility. What makes the shop credible is the catalogue of its stock-in-trade. One may keep the tone & appearance of rational explanation, yes. But if the explanation is rational, the reader begins to ask the kind of question you don’t want him to ask.

I admire the tact in introducing Bank Day through the modulating scene of the Library. And yet the two scenes are not absolutely convincing. I have the feeling it is “hurried”, but would be hard put to prove it.

These are very small quibbles—made chiefly with the future in mind. On the whole, these pages are very successful.




* * *




Inch by inch, a leg then an arm, Wemys snaked to the edge of the bed. Twice he saw Lucy’s eyelids flutter, seem to flutter, and stopped, tense as a serpent waiting, trusting his camouflage but ready to spring. She needed her rest, if today and tomorrow followed their pattern, if nothing could be done. His left foot touched the floor, accepted a part of his weight. He paused three endless seconds, holding his breath, waiting for Lucy’s fingers to loosen, and they did, on schedule. He was free and quickly dressed, out the door, sliding down the banister, slowing for corners, braking, skidding.
The sun was obscured by the smoke. How could one say whether spring, or any season, was rising in that darkness? The men in their slickers were at work on the trees at the end of the street, with ladders, pruners, a band saw, two fire hoses coiling and jumping from the pressure. He had to run around three sides of the block to reach the news-stand. Perhaps he could have wormed through the police lines, all the men seemed haggard, useless, and their eyes were nearly blinded by indefatigable tear glands fighting the smoke, the cinders. But running was faster, and he didn’t want to see the trees submitting, wet, black, bare.
No one bothered to pay for a paper. The news-hawk stood among the others, re-reading the same bulletins. Mr. Halcyon embraced Wemys sadly, patted him on the shoulder with his rolled newspaper.
“No change, son, nothing to be done. They still play up the Menace. It’s the end.”
Wemys was near despair, the tiny morning hope trickled out, left his mouth dry. He tried to clear his throat but couldn’t.
“Don’t they know, hasn’t anyone told them?” They all lowered their papers at the voice of youth, stared, first at Wemys, then at Hal’s wan smile.
“Oh they know by now, you can be sure of that. If they didn’t know all along.”
“But we must do something, get some buckets, hold a meeting.” Now they all smiled. “We must. I’ll go get Lucy.” He turned to go for her, running again, but met her at the first corner. “Oh Lucy, what shall we do, the Department won’t admit, they say first things first and—“
“I know, I know. Calm yourself. And slow down, there’s no hurry.” Lucy had on her tweed suit and walking heels. “We’ll find a way.”
The crowd had grown, there were forty or fifty people in the street now, no longer reading, talking now in undertones.
“Good morning, Mr. Halcyon, Mr. Springer, Mrs. Chauncy. If you’ll all come into the church.” They crossed the street, Lucy leading, pacing them slow. Lucy and Wemys stopped on the top step, the crowd pressing against them, face to face with the Rector or his underling. His arms were thrown out, had grasped both door jambs.
“You can’t come in here. I’m sorry, we don’t open until nine.”
There were disappointed curses in the crowd, some even turning in retreat, but Lucy rallied them, froze the martyr in his insolence, led them through. The Rector stood nailed to his doorway as two lines of suppliants danced under his arms and into the darkened sanctuary. Lucy lit some candles, called the meeting to order.
“Ladies and gentlemen, a session extraordinary, but we will maintain some semblance of procedure, if not of order. No agenda, only one item: a plan for survival. We should have done this months ago, but there’s no time for regrets. Who will start the discussion?”
She had to fight for her semblance, all wanted to speak, to shout, felt more comfort in their own voices than in others. Only one good plan was suggested—Mr. Springer, who read westerns, suggested a backfire. “You see, we can come back, and the fire will go around us.”
Mr. Halcyon jumped up, applauded, “Burn them, burn them!” The vote was very close. If Miss Agatha hadn’t spoken so well of desecrated memories, burnt reminders, and the cost, she returned to that several times, the motion would surely have carried. Then she suggested a committee to investigate and report, but Lucy ruled her out of order. There was nothing left but an appeal to the Department, and Lucy appointed Wemys, over Miss Agatha’s protest. She threatened to leave the meeting, but was too interested, remained seated, taking notes on old sales slips.
They crowded around Wemys, shaking his hand, wishing him well. Lucy followed him to the door, kissed him behind the Rector’s back. “I know, dear, it’s hopeless, but they’re counting on us to try everything. And who knows. If you find the right man—“ So Wemys ducked under the black-robed cross, turned for a moment to look at the stone face, was shocked to see the indomitable eyes fix him, then roll slowly up in agony, till only the bloody whites showed unblinking still.
Wemys knew the Department offices were in Post Office Square, but had great difficulty reaching them. Around every corner of every twisting street he met the creeping surf of the advancing fire, had to flee the refugees running with their bundles, dart into corners to escape their trampling, or met the crews at work in the trees, the cordons of police chained hand to hand. Finally he caught sight of an inspector in his green suit disappearing around a corner and ran after him, followed him, from battle to battle, through smoky alleys and unexpected bare parks, tiny squares, but the houses were lost in the dusk. He knew that he could not keep up with the tireless messenger much longer, would fall somewhere in the fire’s path, but fortunately the inspector returned to the office cafeteria for lunch. Wemys followed him into the lobby, stood looking at the directory that covered the wall opposite the elevators. The listings were no help at all. He would have to ask.
There was an “out to lunch” sign on the information counter; Wemys was resigned to waiting, but a balding charlady shuffled toward him from a dark corner of the damp marble. She suggested he try Mr. Greene, ninth floor west, and he gave her his last dollar. She crumpled it in her hand, threw it to the floor, spitting. Wemys picked it up when she was out of sight, and rang for an elevator. The charlady’s voice echoed through the wall, rumbled, left whistling aftertones like the sea, Wemys shook, bowed in the storm.
“Huh, ain’t he the bright one. He’ll wait a long time for one of them elevators, damn him.”
Breathless he arrived at the ninth floor, breathless he knocked by the open door. The room was full of busy typists, and they paid him no mind, waved him away shrewishly from desk after desk. Then in an alcove he saw a water cooler, a young boy leaning on it. No, Mr. Greene was busy, no, so was his secretary, no, that wouldn’t help anyway, Mr. Greene was in charge of Nurseries and Zoos. No, but you might try Mr. Brown, twelfth floor annex. So he started up the stairs again.
Breathing hard, coughing into his handkerchief, he started down the twelfth floor corridor, stumbled over a mop handle, caught the steam pipe in time.
“Huh, him again. Christ and his saints, I’ll tell him again, nine, boy, seven—eight—nine.”
“No, ma’am, I’m looking for the twelfth floor annex.”
“You can’t get from here to there. You have to go down and up the annex stairs.”
He thanked her, turned to go. “Huh. That’s all my help is worth, damn ya.” He gave her the dollar, stood fascinated as she chewed, chewed, swallowed, rubbed her lips, turned vomiting to the pail. There was no banister, he had to run down, to open firedoors at each landing




* * *




The little girl had been crouched behind the hedge thirty minutes waiting for the open blue car, the one her brother had described so carefully the night before. She saw it at the top of the street, counted to twenty as it descended the grade, gained speed, then threw herself carefully under the front wheels. Lucy slumped forward as the car braked. And we were late already, Lucy said. Jonathan wanted to find the girl’s mother but Lucy said a girl of seven has no mother, so he and Wemys laid her back behind the hedge, Jonathan saying we can take a little time for gentleness. Lucy said “hurry” once, then sat back quite still, looking down the cold and sunlit street.

“I hope you didn’t let Lucy drive, I worry so when Lucy drives.” It was her mother talking, the mother’s voice that predominated at least, for everyone had come out into the hall, were greeting Lucy and Jonathan and their guest, hurriedly now that they might think of eating, sit to the smell of sage and nutmeg. “We were delayed a little,” Lucy’s voice rang clear, “Jonathan will not be hurried, can never see that unpleasantries are best as memories, can never see, for the strength perhaps of his dread, that punctual visits here are sooner ended, more easily endured.” The family listened, smiled. Her father drew Lucy aside, tried to kiss her, saying baby, we miss you so, you should come more often, and behind Lucy’s back her mother took Wemys’ hand, led him up the stairs. “We’ll just get rid of your coat and hat.” She closed the bedroom door behind them, turned the key.
What surprised Wemys was the continued dull roar of voices. Surely they could hear Lucy speaking, there beyond the door, even more clearly than he, separated by its heavy panels and her mother’s body, could hear her sharp and angry Mother, open the door, this is your last chance, I will not have this happen every time, mother I mean it this time—could hear all that, but still no shocked silence. Or didn’t they know what was happening, threatened to happen, within the room? But they must have, with Lucy saying Mother, I won’t argue morality, but this is rape, now open the door. Yet Lucy’s mother made no motion, that is, no motion toward the door, and Wemys, listening to the laughter without—they all must be in the upstairs hall now, the babble was louder—had not thought to defend himself, was beginning now, awakened by Lucy’s speaking of the word he hadn’t thought, when Lucy said so carefully Mother—your—last--chance.
She is, though, a beautiful woman, so much stronger than Lucy. Wemys had thought that, looking at the serene face, feeling the strength of her fingers on his back; had thought, Lucy will never be so ageless, so serene, her own daughter’s admirers will never feel such placid strength, see so translucent a marble face, never feel helpless beneath the metaphorical weight of, no will have no daughter as she had no, though now has?, mother. And that thinking all this responsible for the shock, since he had known, she had told him, her power, and hinted even, hadn’t she (her mother’s hands clawing at the small of his back), the resolution to use it, the concurrent hope she would not need to, the power he could have forgotten only under stress, so impressed was he, so anxious to see. So naturally the sequence itself, whether the door swung back before of after, or at the very instant, he could not remember, lay awake that night trying to reconstruct, but failed of course. He had seen the door’s unaided movement, but had not wondered at it, saw indeed only the single glaring still of the half-open door and Lucy quiet, still beyond it, half-revealed only, and half-seen, for he was watching, was fascinated, had lost all sense of time in the spectacle of clumsy flight, the plummet, whirr, flutter, shock of the hen’s fall, seeing vividly, in the moment of its seeming suspension before his face, the red wings outstretched still and tense, the tiny liquid eyes unfocused, the beak open as the mouth had been, the yellow wrinkled shell of the legs, the nailed feet, resting so suddenly on air, falling before realization could flare, until the wings should stir that air in animal reflex, settle the bird more gently to the floor than he had expected, had perhaps hoped.
And then the laughter, the voices did stop, the silence triumph, as heads craned around the door jamb, jaws dropped, as Aunt Penny prepared to faint. All quiet now staring at the stunned red hen, hearing the silly cackle as it rose, attempted flight, ran ruffle-winged to Lucy, pecked at her legs. And only Lucy still talking, Wemys, put your coat back on, it was just too much, I didn’t really mean to, but she will not reform. Lucy was about to kick the hen away, could not stand, now, the spiteful pecking, but her father grabbed up the chicken in his arms, clucked to it reassuringly, now be nice to Lucy, dear, we mustn’t make things worse.
And he turned to Lucy. “Really, baby, your mother can’t help herself, come on baby, change her back, you know dinner’s been waiting an hour already.”
“Father, I told her time and again, she knew this was her last chance.” She pulled Wemys toward the stairs, calling to Jonathan to follow.
“Now baby, really.” Her father in his excitement dropped the bird to the floor, where, stunned again, it rested momentarily, fought to regain its footing, and followed Mr. Masters docilely, entreatingly.
Jonathan held Lucy at the door. “Now Lucy, there are guests for dinner, you mustn’t leave like this. We’d have to call Aunt Ellen, ask her to interrupt her own dinner and come up from Providence. And that would take so long.”
Lucy’s voice came through sharply, now father, if you’re going to rush me I’ll just—“Oh baby, please don’t. I only meant we have guests.” Wemys saw the poor man was going to cry again, and turned away, met Jonathan’s gaze. Only Jonathan seemed, to Wemys, not to be enjoying his father’s discomfort. His grandmother sat near the door, smiling broadly, and if, though deaf, she still could smile—since surely she smiled at what Lucy was saying to her daughter—Wemys suspected she could have charmed as well as Lucy or the exiled Ellen. He always suspected concealed abilities, Mme. Sewall often said, “You are too kind, can you never realize appearances don’t always deceive, that there is a dense majority incapable of revolt, of secrets long contained. The first Agent’s badge brings them to their literal knees.” Wemys finally decided Lucy at least would know, and might have respected, if only in the family, her grandmother’s confidence, or lack of it. He turned his lowered eyes to Aunt Penelope, finding her smile a trifle more contained, saw on all the other faces no open mirth, had to read the mad amusement in their lighted eyes. Mr. Masters stumbled to the cabinet again, was trying to find another quart of gin when his wife returned.
Smiling, and a little rueful. “Consider me duly chastened. Why, I wonder, are we always such trials to our children?” No one responded, her husband handing her a tumbler, patting her shoulder tenderly. She sat down slowly, then suddenly blushed at her husband’s whispered “Lucy?” and whispered carefully, inaudibly, back, that Lucy had to do a little cleaning in the hall before they could walk through to the dining room. Penelope could not have heard the whisper, of that much Wemys was sure, so he had to postulate a maiden sister’s envy, of her brother’s wife, as she snickered, “That is a problem, you know, does one call the gardener or the maid?”
Lucy came in then, seemingly calm now, unresentful.
“Really, Aunt Penny, hasn’t anyone told you? The better people have no servants these days, only those, like their relatives, that they can’t get rid of.”
“Your mother may let you play St. Francis and walk all over her, but I demand a little respect.”
“Watch your tongue, shrew, or they may have to call Aunt Ellen yet, and I just might talk to her first myself.”
Mr. Masters stumbled between them, now please, baby, and you too Penny. Lucy Sr. shooed them to the door, saying they’d be hearing Cookie scream if they didn’t start soon. But they were not to start, for Mr. Masters stopped them in the hall, screaming I couldn’t, how could any of you, how could you sit down to that after what happened. They were all a little ashamed of their hunger, of their somewhat less than delicate stomachs, and followed him back to the drawing room without complaint. Lucy’s mother went back to the kitchen to order sandwiches.
Lucy then suggested entertainment, had her father mix more drinks as Wemys began to recite his poetry, was forced to remember, though he thought he could not, by her caressing fingers on his neck, sitting before her on the floor, properly, he thought, at her feet, and his back turned. His audience was very attentive, searching, he knew, for the sexual symbolism, finding more than he could have suspected. Lucy’s grandmother interrupted once: so you were never in love, poor boy, but there’s time yet, I wouldn’t fret. Lucy Sr. came back, caught his proud echo in a final line, and offered him an epitaph. “I hope you won’t need it soon, but let them grave it, ‘He had allusions of grandeur.’”
“Thank you, mother, it’s good to see you have your wits back. but a little lighter, please.”
“She was considerably lighter a while ago, and without dieting too.” Penny would not hold her peace, but was ignored, effectively because not completely, her nephew Horace snickering. Mrs. Masters passed the platter of sandwiches, all began to tear them in their hunger, handing a last one to her husband. he took the first bite quietly enough, asking with his lips about the bread, what coldcuts did we have, then began to chew. “Lucy, how—could you now—it’s sliced tur—“ He began to vomit, to flood the carpet with disgust. Aunt Penny stepped back to save her shoes, tripped over the hassock she had been sitting on, and her head crashed through the sash, the panes, the broken shards nearly severing the neck, only the bone holding, the severed artery still pumping yet a while. They all ran to Mr. Masters, “Oh father, you’re ill!” Lucy grabbed the lavender shawl from the piano, swathed her father in it, “Jonathan, get some cold towels, call Cookie, quick!” Jonathan fled, was quickly back, pulling the startled Cookie fast behind him. As he let her hand loose, left her to minister to his stricken father, he glanced to Penny’s window, exclaimed “We really shouldn’t leave her there, her head will fall to the ground.”
They could not, however, decide to move her. Horace was sure the latest Regulations forbade all useless tampering, and Lucy Sr. agreed. “Horace, would you call for me, the number’s on the memo by the phone.” And later, “No, the one with the circle around it, the others are grocers and doctors.”
Lucy pulled on her gloves, we’ll let them worry about that. “And so useless,” Jonathan said, “when you can do it yourself perfectly well, if you only will.” Aunt Penny came rushing down the stairs, kicked the startled chicken down before her, nearly tripping over it herself. “Oh do pardon me dear, but don’t stay underfoot so. Now Lucy dear, you know how Ellen hates to travel by day, to take a plane. Now please dear.” Lucy’s father began to cry, the tears rolling unimpeded off his chin. “Please, Lucy, she’s learned her lesson, baby, it won’t happen again.” It was rubbing against Lucy’s leg, seemed to implore, the small dejected comb alternately pale and blushing, then sat down suddenly, most embarrassed, trying to conceal the evidence of her perturbation that had soiled the carpet, the red settling into the comb, the blood there to stay.
So Lucy relented. “All right, just this once, but you must all go into the drawingroom, I don’t intend to lose my one chance of giving her an uninterrupted lecture.” So they left her to her willing audience, shut the double doors. Mr. Masters stirred up a pitcher of martinis, saying they needed something while they waited, and she, he knew, would surely want one too, when she could. But Lucy now would not be hurried, so soon he mixed a second round. “It’s sure taking a long time, I hope nothing’s wrong. Baby?” He knocked on the door to the hall.




* * *


[Jim’s professor’s comments about the last piece:]


{Tale Hawkes, Nightwood} Webb


This is very promising.
People say surrealism & fantasy are “easy”. But nothing is more difficult to get away with. Let’s assume for the moment that the transformation of mother into hen is not quite convincing. [The situation, by the way, is charming—Lucy’s exasperation because it’s all happened so often before; the hen? spiteful pecking; the family’s mixed reactions.] What can be done to make it more credible? Some possibilities:
1) A dominant narrator-voice whose style rhythms are unmistakable...and which bridges the gap from the commonplace to the strange. The same voice (which I think ought to be slightly appalled) tells us about the martinis, the rape, the transformation. [A “voice” which can, to be sure, dip down into the consciousness of the characters.]
2) A richer, more detailed sense of place, of the feel of the moment. More sensation! Let the reader get a little more into Wemys’ shoes;
3) Possibly—remove merely gratuitous obstacles to reader-involvement, such as the absence of quotation marks;
4) Should the transformation be more gradual? Or, at least, shouldn’t we have one sentence: she was becoming a hen? [The transformations into fox in The Cannibal & into dog, in Nightwood, are at once carried by a richer voice & left a little ambiguous. You’re trying the more difficult task of magic by daylight.] I still like the idea of making Lucy very charming, likeable on the normal plane. Had you considered giving Wemys a gradual introduction to her witch-powers—four or five samples, each a little more outrageous than the last. [I think the household, in its normal state, needs a little more Beacon Hill respectability.]
In other words, I suggest a delicate interpenetration of the real and sur-real. But as I say this, as I say the rest, with considerable hesitation.
Don’t repress any impulse to make it fun to read!!




* * * *


[These pieces are finished and some of them were published in Granta, the Cambridge University journal Jim helped edit. I think they were all published in some form because the folder Jim gave me with these stories neatly typed in it was marked: Printed Stories.]


The Curt Little Mouth in the Brain

There’s no way of telling whether or not he really had fish scales on his chest. But it doesn’t matter much. The important thing is that he knew they were there, knew not to rub them the wrong way, knew they glowed silver in the dark the way a word will shine in the mirrored halls of a mind straining for sleep. There’s more than one reality.
When he was five his mother took him to a specialist. He stood barefoot by a window, behind one of those folding screens, the translucent white cloth shirred and stretched tight over frames of enamelled tubing, and put on his shirt, his fingers as uncoordinated as a cub’s paws making the agonizing journey from collar to tail, crushing the buttons through their slits, and ending with one button too many. He had to pull them out and start again, more carefully, but he couldn’t put on his shorts until the shirt was done. His mother was talking to the doctor in that limbo beyond the screen.
‘You mean there’s nothing we can do about it?’
‘No cure. I can hold out no false hopes on that. But there is much you can do—help him live with it, help him avoid what situations can be avoided. And help him adjust to those that can’t.’
‘I see. Just do what we always do.’
‘I’m sorry. I mean sorry that I can’t be more specific.’
‘Thank you.’
She called for her son, he was dressed now except for his shoes. He refused her help and forced them on, breaking down the heels in his haste. Perhaps he could see his father striding through the mornings of his small memory, huge and bare-chested, the trousers buttoned at the waist but the belt hanging loose, the smell of shaving cream, a coffee cup in his hand, and a fresh shirt still folded on the bed. See him sitting on the mattress, draining the cup as he stomped into his shoes, reaching for the crisp board of his shirt.
He always had a cold. After athletics he was slow as a clock-hand undressing, kept laces in his sneakers that were many times broken and strung with knots so he could twist and pull and mumble to himself, and had a book in his locker he could open and stare at if he had to. You would have to watch a long while to know for sure whether the long procession of shoes and socks and T-shirt and shorts and jock strap were going on or off. When the room was finally empty except for the twisted towels pasted soaking to the floor and slung over locker doors, he reached the showers to find all the hot water gone, gone with all his classmates, out in the schoolyard dawdling their slow way home. Sometimes at first their was a false shadow of warmth, but the water was always icy by the time he had finished soaping himself off. He could run all the way home, and take the stairs to his room three at a time, but never lose that chill and chatter.
He spent a lot of time in his room, sitting at his desk with his chin on his arms or lying face down on his bed. Sometimes he stood at the window, staring out at the dark and at the ghost of a street-light through the branches of the locust tree, and felt sorry for his parents, all alone downstairs and talking, when they did, with a tone that was hollow and words that were empty by the time they reached him. But there was nothing he could do about it. Sometimes he gave a furious spin to the globe his father had bought him, pulled down his eyelids and poked with a careless finger to stop it. For a while he would make an effort and imagine himself in a hotel room in Dakar or the Y.M.C.A. in Tokyo, or if he hit one of the huge ragged patches of blue, stiff in a deckchair and helpless in the cocoon wrapping of a plaid robe, chilled to the heart. But late at night he gave that up and only kept a running score between the eastern and western hemispheres.
Every spring his mother, with blossoms in her eyes, would knock timidly at the door and step in, rather cautiously, looking with a child’s curiosity at the pattern in the wallpaper, and would ask him why he didn’t take some nice girl to the school dance. He always answered her questions with questions, clearing his throat—‘Whom, mother.’ Of course she had no answer, and every spring he bit blood from his tongue in remorse, watching the flowers wither, pelted by the rain in her helpless stare. She would have liked to run her fingers through his hair, and pat the back of his neck, and he wanted to tell her it was all right. But they never did.
There really wasn’t anyone he could talk to. He had long ago abandoned prayer. He still went to church and to confession, but he knew they did no good, knew his confession was never complete, never full of the thought he was full of, the doubt that all could come of God and go to God, and he felt himself an empty shell, in whatever house, of God.
On his eighteenth birthday he enlisted in the army and went down for his pre-induction physical. There was no decision to join or not, there had never been any question. He filled out the forms with yes and no in all the expected places, and then had to strip and wait in line with the others to be examined. He stood with his arms folded over his chest and side-stepped along with his face to the wall, reading the calendar and the framed pledge of allegiance, and staring at the cracks in the plaster which spread huge to the ceiling like Mercator Greenlands.
‘Look at the shy one. Suppose he’s got any?’
He ignored them, and slid on along the wall. Later he was sent into an office to see one of the doctors. The man was very kind, behind his desk in the little room. He could smell the kindness above the pipesmoke, see it in the horn-rimmed eyes turned down embarrassed to the papers. He sat on the edge of the chair and looked past the man to the wall behind him, with its three diplomas in ascending sizes like the three bears. The doctor had a greying crewcut and cheeks that bulged from smiling.
‘Of course you know we can’t take you.’
‘Yes, I know.’
He looked at the bookcase, saw a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica and a thick green text on animal husbandry, then stared at the glass top of the desk, and at the ashtray with a golf ball on a little mountain in its centre. The doctor made sucking noises on his dying pipe.
‘But I don’t think you know how much I wish we could.’
‘I know, because of—Yes, people, we all wish—‘ He didn’t see the hand the doctor offered him, and knocked against a typing table as he stumbled to the door. The doctor tapped his pipe on the golf ball.
Well that’s all right, his father argued. Time in service would have been time wasted, and a college education was the important thing. He went up to his room and picked a college out of the list in the back of the dictionary. His mother packed a trunk with sweaters and soap and stationary, some patent trouser-hangers and some needles and thread in an empty aspirin bottle. They stood on the platform at the station until his train had disappeared.
He took a room in a boarding house run by a widowed lady who was afraid to sleep at night with less than a dozen people in the house. She rented to college students because she knew the more young people she had in the house the less likely it was she would die in the night. There was a front yard the size of a mattress, tangled with lilac and forsythia and some honeysuckle that climbed up into his attic window. The front door had a huge oval of plate glass backed with lace. I remember once ringing the bell and thinking, as I waited, that it must have been someone’s pier-glass once, and kept the power of its silver, for I could see myself standing in the hall, peeking nervously through the lace.
He was comfortable in his corner above the last stairs. The landlady let him rummage and take his pick of the accumulation in her basement storeroom, and he covered the walls of his room with brown monochromes, with a few smiling photographs of couples in tennis clothes, a china bas relief of coloured fruit, and a long Belgian tapestry of Arabs playing chess under a palm tree shaped like a stretched S, and waving rifles in the desert air that billowed their robes above the horses’ rumps.
There was no mirror in his room, and when he went into the bath down the hall he shut his eyes as he shut the door, turned on the hot water in the shower for a count of thirty, and opened them to find the mirror covered with a grey mouse fur of steam. He sometimes hummed as he shaved.
He wrote a letter home once a week when there was enough to say, telling about the weather and his study habits, itemizing his expenses and sometimes making colourless little stories about the inmates of the house, putting the word in quotation marks. The letters were tiny milestones through the years, and if he had happened to think he would have known that his mother kept them all, a sprawling bouquet in one of the linen drawers in the dining room. The letters he received from his mother in return went into a cardboard box under his desk with his bills, soap discount coupons, and the grade cards that came twice a year. His father sometimes wrote a few words at the bottom of the monthly bank statement he forwarded.
He did fairly well in his classes. There at least he was anonymous, and even at examination time he was only a name, was only what he chose to put on paper. But at meals in the house it was more difficult—his shyness made him a target for the others, particularly for the blonde and red-nailed girl who slept till noon, worked at a dance studio, and smoked her way through lunch and dinner. She made sly and endless variations on her favorite story, of the tawny cat who crept up to the pram parked outside the supermarket, rolled her eyes to be sure that no one was watching, and with one dreadful snap of her needle teeth got his tongue and scurried away. All the other men returned her winks, and wondered what they should do next. For a while he tried to smile at her taunts, but he gave it up and stared down at his plate, eating slowly and mechanically. The tilt of his neck became habitual, so that he found something on the sidewalk every day, and filled a drawer in his room with keys and coins, with all sizes of paper-clips and pins and an empty silver locket on a chain. The widow felt sorry for him, and always gave him the biggest dessert, which he felt he somehow had to eat.
His senior year there was a new boarder, shyer even than he. She had a vaguely heart-shaped face, a fragile pointed chin, and a symmetrical hair-do like a wig in a mirror. Peering through the combs on his lowered lids he could see that her myopic eyes floated on a sea of wonder. The blonde blew a smoke ring over the coffee pot and started to say something about a brindle cat. He told her to shut up.
He and the girl always stared at the same vacant spot on the table cloth between them. They passed the salt and pepper back and forth several times each meal, and finally began to talk quietly in their corner. At first the others listened surreptitiously, but they decided there was nothing to hear, and talked louder and faster day by day with the frightening momentum of life.
They spent the long winter evenings together. She was taking a secretarial course, and he read off endless lists of spelling words to her, and dictated all the letters to the editor from the evening paper. He paced the floor as well as he could in his crowded room, and she sat in his armchair with her legs curled under her and her notebook in her lap, the effort of concentration emphasizing the flawed line of her jaw, from teeth that would not be reconciled. He was very patient, repeating everything she asked him to, but when he was sure she couldn’t see him he made the smile that curled up half his mouth, pulled on the lobes of his ears and hitched up his trousers nervously. Often he straightened the pictures on the wall, and when he could think of nothing more to do with his hands he took up smoking, would take long choking puffs and hold his breath.
The dirty snow began to melt and bared nasty black patches of earth. There was a sluggish drip of water from the eaves all day. Finally he appeared one afternoon at the door to her room, with a bowl of red tulips in his hands and his helpless smile on his face for her to see. She thanked him, and they spent a long while with their hands tangled together, pushing a pencil into the wet gravel of the pot and tying the broken stem of a bloom to it with a bobby pin. Then they sat on her bed in the grey light and talked about the furniture. He might never have had the courage to touch her but he ran out of cigarettes. For once she was near enough to see him clearly, and she wanted all at once to laugh at the line down his forehead and cry at the pout of his lips and turn down the collar of his jacket. A cold impatient moisture crept out on the palms of his hands, pearled his upper lip like raindrops on the eaves, the zipper on the back of her dress caught the cloth and bit hard. She said no, God, now. He worked the zipper back the forth, back, and it came loose, and the hooks on her bra. She was naked on the bed, crying and wanting it finished quickly. He said he caught cold easily and had better keep his clothes on.
All that May was a fine month for shopping. They were going to be married in June, so they had taken an apartment and went daily to Woolworth’s carrying away armfuls of brown paper bags—china and cutlery, sheets, lampshades, philodendron. She could not resist a Utrillo reproduced so carefully that there seemed to be paint caked on the cardboard, an almost perpetual clock with gold balls that twirled lazily under a glass dome, and a blue parakeet in a wire cage. He bought a tin tool box, hammers and saws, and some paste-on paper to make windows look like stained glass. They used gallons of beige paint, yards of striped denim, and sawed, hammered, and painted so late every night that they were too tired to make love. He wanted to tell her, but it wasn’t easy. Each day he tried, and each day passed, and the words grew hot in his mouth like thirst on a salt beach.
They were married the day after commencement. He cleaned the paint from under his nails as well as he could and brushed down his hair with water. They had forgotten to tell their parents, so when she was dressed in a puffy little girl’s dress, pink and sashed, they invited the people from the house. The widow and the dancing teacher were there, both sobbing a little, and a few strangers prayed to saints in the side aisles, awesome in the thick air with its rippling glint of candle flames. The priest mispronounced his name, and so did he when he repeated it, but she didn’t.
They walked the long way round the apartment, holding hands, stopped to watch the little boys playing in the river and had a lazy supper. She wasn’t much of a cook anyway, so they had bread and cheese and tuna salad and drank cheap chianti to celebrate. They washed and dried the dishes and brushed the crumbs away, and once when she walked past he snared her with a looped dish towel, but let her go. He walked across the park to buy some milk and cornflakes for their breakfast, struggling back through the lucid air that had not yet surrendered to the late dark.
She had changed into a nylon nightgown and was propped up at the head of the bed, with her feet under the spread, sewing a button on one of his shirts. The pillowcases had been embroidered with her new monogram at no extra charge. He switched off the bedside lamp and unscrewed the bulb a turn before he started to undress. He knew he should tell her he loved her, but he didn’t know how, hoped the knocking of the little man caged in his heart, frantic to be let out, would tell her.
He tried not to hear, but couldn’t shut out the logical voice of that loud curt mouth in his brain, either her moans are pleasure, and this wet slime is sweat, or she cries in pain, I have sliced open her breasts, the mould biting the clay. He tumbled off her sudden as popped corn from the skillet, ran from the room and she was calling for him. No answer. She switched on the lamp to the same sodden darkness, calling, fumbled for her furred slippers, strapping on her robe as she tripped on the foot of the bed, falling and calling and through the door down the hall to the light from the kitchen sprawled on his back on the linoleum squares, arms thrown wide and twitching, silent panting through that gaping mouth, his head twisted, the eyes rolled up and the carving knife beside him calling my god, my god as she saw the blood smooth and lush and unblemished covering his chest like welling deep velvet upholstery.




* * * *


[This story was published a special joint issue of Granta, February 18, 1961 (Granta no. 1206, Oxford Opinion No. 45, editors: David Frost and Christopher Butler)]






New York: Time for a Quick One

It didn't seem to make much difference what he was doing or where he was going--to get there he always had to cross through the project. Through the barren land, and usually at night. The slums had been razed, but they left the empty grid of streets. The metal street signs remained at the intersections, rusted, twisted like the vanes of a ruptured windmill, the petals of a withered rose. Fireplugs and mailboxes still on the sidewalks, garbage bins. Curb Your Dog and No Parking This Side Mon., Wed., Fri.
But he usually took the diagonal paths across the vacant blocks, paths that twist like cautious drunkards, rise and hover to fall like the sea, fathoms, farther. Look at him. Shoes polished, his shoulders slumped and his head tilted forward. What would he see? Bricks, rubble, waste paper blowing. Bent bedsprings. Puddles black, with broken panes of ice healing. Shacks half-risen from the ground, made of flattened oil cans and black tar-paper--dark but breathing, shivering and eyed. There was some life. The occasional baby wail and quick shape of a hungry cat. A lost and frightened detective. Wraiths. Waifs. Points of light: a few windows in the surrounding apartment houses, receding like mirages. An occasional unbroken streetlight. The weather beacon flashing red on the southern horizon. A small fire at the corner of the block.
And then he saw the old man, huddled on a sagging Florida orange crate by the fire. A rag or a bandage holding his chin to his head, an enveloping overcoat, the tips of striped pyjama legs. Shoes open like grinning mouths at the toes. 'Watch where you're going,' the words were four separate breaths in the night air, four chuffs of visible vapour.
He walked by without answering.
The path skirted lush mounds of garbage, and tufts of grass brown and frosted. A few snowflakes melted on his face. At the next corner another fire and the old man, still hunched with his fingers splayed to the fire. 'Why do you think--?' but the young man quickened his pace, kicking a beer can out of the path.
Another corner, and the old man shouting to him as he approached. He picked up a brick and swung at the bandaged head, at the pools of shadow around the eyes, at the huge ears. One stuttered cough as the old man toppled over, and bubbles of blood on his lips, violet and oily under the yellow streetlight.
Now the policemen's torches, flickering like sluggish fireflies as they spread across the fields. Shouts. The baying of bloodhounds. Now the young man stumbling across an empty intersection.

It's getting worse now--the night watchman. Lately he's taken to tying rags around his shoes to deaden the sound of his feet on the stairs, and I have to be even more alert than usual. But at least the stairs still creak, with a different sound from that the wind makes, and the keys rattle on the leather ring at his hip. So I have several seconds to fold the sheet, hide it under the mattress, put on my raincoat, and crawl out onto the ledge.
Sometimes he doesn't even come into the room, but I have to take all the precautions every time, because I've given up trying to discover any pattern in his actions. For a long time I kept a minute record, and studied it every day, but I couldn't establish anything. I still have it here in my coat pocket.
January 14th. 10.34 Flashed light in corners of rooms. 1.12. Sat on bed and made shadow animals on the ceiling for several minutes. 3.29. Stood outside door for 20 minutes, trying to suppress breathing, but didn't enter. January 15th. 11.48. Thorough inspection of closet, peering through laths where plaster is broken. Perhaps looking for rats or notes. Found nothing. 4.18. Light in corners of room and under bed. January 16th. 3.31. Knocked on door rather ceremoniously, wrote some initials or a name in dust on table but rubbed them out.
And so forth. So I never really sleep--a part of my mind is always tense in bed, always sitting on the edge of its chair, listening for that creak on the stairs. I keep everything in my raincoat--toothbrush, razor, letters, library book, everything--and keep the coat spread out on the chair by the bed. I used to hide them under the mattress, but then I realised: a sheet is one thing. If he found it some night, he might think someone had forgotten it years ago, but if he found a damp toothbrush or a letter with my name on it, he would know. So when I hear him, I hide the sheet, throw the coat over my shoulders, and crawl out the window.
It's not even really a ledge. The window opens on an airshaft of dirty brick, about four feet square. There's a blank wall opposite and on the left, but on the right there was once a window, and when they bricked it in, they left a little shelf, maybe three inches. If I stand very straight I'm safe enough.
I used to hold my breath as long as I could, and then take tiny gulps until he went away. But then I noticed he never flashed his light out the window, so I became a bit braver. There's a rusty hook just the size of my index finger in the wall opposite the window. Someone must have had a little clothesline for drying socks and underwear. And if I hold to that I can lean forward enough to see in the window. That's how I know what he does in the room.
Sometimes he talks to himself, but it isn't very clear. I don't know whether it's a foreign language or if year by year his words have had all their corners rubbed off in his echoing mind, but I never understand what he's saying. Sometimes I think I hear a word--dusty, empty, why. But they're like the night landscape in a thunderstorm. I can never be sure I didn't put them there myself.
My ears play other tricks too--some nights I hear him in every breath and twitch of the building. Then sleep is impossible, and I explore the apartment. There's a window in the kitchen facing a wall or the orthodox church--when I try very hard I can imagine incense. And if I stand very still among the broken chairs and the piles of blackened pans and skillets, the dark comes alive with a sound of crinkled paper. I strike a match, and mice and roaches scatter, like spilt mercury. From the living room, as I lean out, I can see an edge of the garden next door, the branch of a dead tree, and a bit of the cross-street behind. Taxis, and perhaps a fire truck at the hidden blaze of a cloudy sunrise.
When I can, I take a nap during the day, but that's not very often because I have so much to do. I have to buy soap and kleenex and ask for money at the bank, see if I have any mail at the post office. And at least once a day I have to eat. That usually takes a lot of time, because I go to the delicatessen at the corner of Amsterdam and 105th and I have to wait until the owner is out for a coffee or a drink. The sandwiches he makes don't have enough meat to live on.
But both his clerks are very good about sandwiches. They put more meat than bread and sometimes give me a pickle or a little potato salad. The thin one with the pointed chin always talks to me while I eat, even if there's someone waiting. He usually has something to sell--a set of tyres or some pearls or a suitcase. And he's always wanting to borrow my room, just for an hour or two, with a wink towards one of the negro women shopping. But I tell him it wouldn't be safe.
So I stand around eating my sandwich and sometimes have some ice cream for desert, and watch the people walking by outside the front windows. But around dark I have to get back.
The front door and all the windows facing the street are boarded over, so to get in I have to climb a fence into the garden next door. It's a home for the aged and infirm, and except for little muddy circles around the trees the whole garden is paved with cement. When I go out in the morning they're sitting there in wheelchairs if it isn't raining. I think some of them can still see me, but they don't seem very interested: their eyes unmoving in their heads and the pupils swirled with an interior smoke. And when I come back at night they've all been wheeled in.
I go in through the cellar door, by the garbage cans. I think it must be the same door he uses, because I haven't found any other way in or out. Then I climb up in the dark to the fourth floor, striking matches so I won't trip over the trash outside each door. At first I thought I was the only one in the house because all the doors are locked, but the garbage must come from somewhere, and I notice lettuce leaves, and potato peelings, and tomato soup still wet and sticky in the cans. But I never hear them or see them.
They may be the ones who drop bottles down my airshaft, but I suspect it's the night watchman, because in all this time I've never heard one breaking while he's in my room. The bottom must be covered with broken glass, and I'm afraid someday I may slip when there's ice on the ledge, or the hook may pull out of the wall.
But there may not be time for that. This morning I found an eviction notice on the floor by my bed. At first I thought it was real, but then I noticed it didn't have any name on it, and that the seal was drawn in in ink. So it's easy to see who did that.
I often think everything would be all right if I could meet him on the street sometime. We could have a beer and talk things over. Perhaps if he knew I have nowhere else he wouldn't mind. But maybe I have seen him, perhaps he's even asked the sleepy time of day, leaning against the railings in the sun in front of the church, or standing by the frozen food in the delicatessen. He's careful with his flashlight, and in all these years I've never seen his face.

A flat meadow in the Bronx. You'd think it a field for growing subway cars stretched out on their parallel rows, watered and tended. Pale lights inside, and the wheels cold and still in the long hours between the closing of the bars and the delivery of the milk. The cleaning women are at work with pails of detergent and mops, turkey-feather dusters and dust cloths--old jockey briefs saturated in red furniture polish, dust pans and big Kraft paper bags for the candy wrappers, tabloids and ticket stubs. Their heads are all partly grey from age or dust, tied in faded souvenir kerchiefs. Some in overalls, some in aprons.
One woman sings a wordless song, another talks. But Annabelle thinks of food. Steak, fried chicken, peaches and cream, jelly beans. French fries. How many years thinking of food. Bending to scrape up chewing gum with a blunt knife. A dime under the seat. Someone's hair oil smudged on a window.
Forward to the next car, scrubbing, polishing. Post Toasties, hot pastrami sandwiches. A lost umbrella. Forty minutes, then the next car. She would have to bring a lunch. She had been planning to for years.
Finally the front car. Another forty minutes, then only the motorman's compartment to finish. Polishing the window, sweeping up the illicit cigarette butts, then only dusting to finish when she saw it in the far corner of the window ledge, her eyes focusing, like snapped elastic, on the apple, and her had as suddenly reaching for it, hitting the switch, the brass throttle, whatever they have. Thus began the triumph, slow and so easy, south and down: the apple stuffed to her mouth, juice on her chin. Accelerating, across the bridge and onto Manhattan: soon underground. In the echoing tunnel, the cold earth air blowing past, a whistle above the roar, the punctuating light bulbs blurring to a dotted line. Plummeting through startled stations, the cellar world of tile and girders, dirt and chipped enamel, advertisements to sightless eyes. Annabelle mindless at the window, her forehead pressed to the glass, eyes bulged lidless, the thick apple paste dribbling from the open mouth, quick-worn nails scrubbing at her cheek, her throat vibrating with the lost screams. Through the dark-faced stations of west Harlem, a sweeper leaning on his broom, the click of merging tracks and 92nd Street, the decaying west side. The black stain spreading back from her spilt bucket. Her progress, acceleration--Columbus Circle, Times Square, lovers and hustlers on the platform, their lives in their eyes. A work crew in that punctuated gloom, trackmen writhing in the knife of light, the dumb bleating to the deaf before the wheels grind and cut. Ambulance sirens fast and lost on the streets above, piercing alarm bells in control rooms and frantic men cutting the wrong switches. Nearly the length of the island now, only the core in her hand and the chill to her bleeding head through the broken window, dropping now to the deeper tunnel burrowed between boroughs, the train a long serpent in the East River slime. Hurtling on to rise again in Brooklyn near the dawn.




* * * *




Coda: The Morning Trials of Mrs. Fayerweather

Friday mornings Professor Fayerweather was always unconsciously relaxed. His wife wanted to be out to the house in Connecticut by noon, and they never were. Not that there was often much news in the paper, but with no seminar to prepare for, and safe behind the careful barricade that kept his neurotic graduate students at bay from dinner on Thursday until his 10 o'clock lecture on Monday, he felt he could read it all. Even, with the third cup of coffee, the local news that was lost, the rest of the week, in the quick and crinkling flurry of the turning pages. It was the Times, of course; documentary coverage, and a predictable bias automatically discounted. Mrs. Fayerweather would have felt much safer with the Trib. But then her mother had warned her, many years ago in the garden at Greenwich. She had worn a floppy leghorn hat firmly anchored by a scarf of silk chiffon, and had pruned the roses somewhat more severely than the experts advise, saying there are some things you simply have to put up with if you want to be married at all.
The breakfast room faced south and had an oblique view of Riverside Drive, of the Hudson and the Jersey shore. At least the sun was shining. She pushed the ashtray under his descending cigarette and poured the last of the coffee.
"Did you see this, Prue?"
She couldn't have, of course. He had brought the paper in with the milk, and had had it in his hands ever since. It was merely one of those ritual forms. She knew she needn't answer; he would insist upon showing it to her anyway.
There was a three-column picture, under the heading "Mayor in New Ceremony at Rockefeller Center." She had time to see that Wagner was mildly pleased about something before the professor jerked the paper back and began to read in the ironic tone that served so many purposes in his life.
"Rather rich. 'Under blue skies, and before some two hundred city officials, Mayor Wagner inaugurated today the new monthly memorial services announced at last week's press conference.' You remember? I read you the embarrassing questions the Post man asked?"
Prue nodded anxiously. She had left the percolator plugged in, and the element was beginning to smoke now that the pot was empty. But she didn’t want him to see that she had forgotten.
"I was sure I had. 'Relatives of fourteen city employees killed on duty during the past month shared the platform with the Mayor. They were presented engraved certificates communicating the city's official gratitude (reproduced below).'
"Oh God, just look at it!" And this time he spread the paper on the table so she could really see. The photograph was rather small, but quite clear. A wide black band surrounded the certificate, and several remarkably detailed drawings--predominantly black and red, according to the caption--occupied all the space left by the gothic text. An ambulance and a police car, both with red lights flashing, were shown colliding across the top. On the left a brick tenement collapsed in a garish holocaust, tumbling three firemen down the broken ladder. On the right a uniformed policewoman was being pushed back on a garbage can by a crowd of Puerto Rican teenagers. One, standing behind, had an arm around her neck and his hand clapped over her mouth. And a dark and noxious sewer flowed across the bottom, below the mayor's signature, dragging under a struggling inspector while two huge rats watched.
She tried not to look too closely. "Not very nice, is it?"
"Not very? Why it's perverse, sadistic." He had the paper on his side of the coffee cups again. "And listen to the text! 'The City of New York, as by law and by custom constituted, hereby recognizes, with the greatest corporate gratitude, the noble sacrifice of blank, loyal employee of the city and member of Local No. blank of the blank Union. RIP. Under my hand and seal this blank day of blank, A.D. 196 blank. Robert Wagner.' It's grotesque."
Prue nodded. She was thinking of the engraving of "The Shipwrecked Family" above her grandmother's fireplace. Saddest of all was the dog. Terrier? Pug?
"'Mayor Wagner, when presenting the certificates, shook the hands of all the present survivors of the dead employees. Among those honored were four policemen, three firemen, a Central Park Zoo guard, a Health Department inspector rumored to have died of typhus, four subway track repairmen, and a subway car cleaner, the only woman in the group.
"'The latter, Miss Annabelle Brist, had no surviving relatives, and Mayor Wagner accepted the certificate on her behalf (see related news story, page 42).' Well at least that explains the picture."
Once more he showed his wife the photograph of the mayor. He had been caught in a rather awkward pose, trying to shake hands with himself after accepting Miss Brist's certificate, his arms and the clasped hands above his head forming an asymmetrical Moorish arch.
Mrs. Fayerweather was uncomfortable; death always made her think of the trays of liver at the butcher's, and she didn't like that. But her husband didn't see her shiver; he was already hot in pursuit of page forty-two and the related story.
"Really it's too much you know. Tasteless. Every week there's some new--some worse--"
She wasn't listening. They would be late again, would have to eat at one of those Howard Johnson' s on the road. And Willard would insist upon fried clams and then he would have indigestion and then--
But parts of the story filtered through. Familiar as she was with her husband's reading voice--the practiced rise and fall in tone, the almost loving indolence with which he lingered on the particularly inappropriate words and inept phrases that would once have made him angry--she could not totally ignore it.
Miss Brist had been a subway duster for thirty-seven years. She worked from midnight until 8 a.m. at the end of an IRT line. Her tools were the regulation mop and turkey feather brush. She was not popular with the other women.
"Just imagine that. 'Her associates complained that Miss Brist read too much.' You would suppose she drank or didn't use deodorant." It always amazed her that he knew what the next sentence would say before he read it. But of course he read a great deal.
“What they really meant, you’ll see, is that she read the wrong things.” And he was right. Miss Brist read the advertizements in the cars as she worked, each asking for a generous donation, by cash or check, to encourage education, conquer various diseases, prevent broken homes and mistreated animals.
She was generous, they said, to a fault, and they avoided her. All her earnings went to charities, and she couldn’t afford to eat properly. The other dusters didn’t intend to share their lunches every night, or to look at the sunken eyes, the cavernous cheeks. Consequently she must have been quite lonely; Mrs. Fayerweather could understand that.
“’Thursday morning Miss Brist was cleaning car 1880. George Worsham, who finished his shift at midnight, remembered leaving some fruit in the motorman’s compartment.’
“Trust the Times for the details. ‘His wife always packed an apple and a banana with the sandwiches. Worsham usually saved one “for later,” but was unable to remember whether he had eaten the apple or the banana on Wednesday evening. The sandwiches, however, were pastrami, and disagreed violently with Worsham, who then neglected his late snack.
“’It is supposed that Miss Brist, in reaching for the fruit, came into contact with the drive switch, thus setting into motion the train and the nightmare progression beneath the streets of Manhattan which would lead to her own death and those of the four track repairmen.’”
It was positively hallucinatory. Mrs. Fayerweather was sure she smelt onions frying.
“So there you have it.” Professor Fayerweather took off his glasses, an infallible sign that one of his labored academic jokes was imminent. “You pay your money and you take your choice: daughter of Adam or child of Freud.”
His wife was not at all sure she understood. But she knew they had to get started. And perhaps an apple would help the growing queasiness she felt. They had some in the cellar in Connecticut.




* * * *


[Published Granta Vol. LXIV No. 1203, 5 November 1960; David Frost was editor and Jim is listed as one of three associate editors.]






Missy Justinian Makes Some Arrangements


Her mother, Mrs. Justinian. The long May afternoons she sat on the screened porch and painted her toe-nails petal pink. She wore striped cotton shorts, and between coats she would drink iced tea and stick her feet out full length before her, staring at the toes. She had time to do a thorough job. Except on Fridays when she washed her hair, using a blue rinse and brushing it into waves as it dried. And she kept the radio going beside her—not that she listened, but it was good company. From her deck chair she could spy on the street, on the world, through the wall of Virginia creeper, but there was nothing interesting to see.
She always intended to have dinner ready when Missy got home from work, and she always felt a little guilty when the screen door opened and her daughter came in.
‘Sit down and rest, dear. I’ll open a can of tuna or something.’
‘No, mother. I’ll fix dinner. You finish your toes.’ And she would bring her mother another glass of tea, with mint leaves and lime juice and saccharine, before she cooked the broccoli.
They didn’t talk much after dinner, either. Missy had the ironing and sweeping to do, and the beds to make, while her mother dozed before the television set. She slept quite a bit—she was never up in the mornings until after Missy had left. Then she would drink coffee in the kitchen.
So the only time they really saw much of each other was Sunday, when Uncle George was there. The three of them read the Sunday paper, passing the sections around, and had a big meal of steak or fried chicken or roast rib at noon, talking and joking, and played three-handed bridge until six o’clock when they turned on the television and ate peanuts. Then Missy knew she had done all she had to, all that could be expected of her, and would read in the corner under the lamp. It was the only chance she had, so it took two or three weeks to finish a book.
They had spent every Sunday together since before she could remember. And even now she still called him Uncle George. On her twelfth birthday her mother had given her a book called Mother and Daughter—Little Lectures on Life, saying there are some things you ought to know. She turned her head to the window as she spoke. There was a hummingbird suspended among the flame blossoms of the trumpet vine.
‘And your Uncle George. You see your mother, we—it didn’t work very well all the time. Divorce, you see, but of course you were—legally speaking—his, too, so of course he likes to see—‘
And it was one Sunday evening that it happened. It must have been spring, for there was the smell of lilac in the room. She heard the voice very distinctly, the words clear and separate, like raindrops on a clothes-line, but she was reading and they had to filter through: As John stood beside her on the terrace she was conscious only of his lips, blue in the moonlight, and the silver of his voice as he said Missy will have a baby.
She looked across at her mother and Uncle George, but they were both slumped in their chairs, intent, asleep. There were dogs dressed in caps and tutus dancing on the television screen, and jumping through hoops.
‘I do not intend to have hallucinations.’ And the sound of her own voice startled her more than the other. She tried to read on: Blue in the moonlight, and you just wait and see, then.
‘Well, at least that part is sensible.’ She said goodnight to her mother, kissed Uncle George on the cheek, and took the sewing basket up to her room.
And so she waited. Cross that bridge when we come to it. Sitting at the office desk, her hands motionless on the typewriter keys. Time enough for that. Standing in the back yard with clothes-pins in her mouth, looking at the sunset. I don’t know yet. Perhaps just late this time. A few more days.
The next Monday she went to the clinic during her lunch hour. And then waiting again for whatever that happens to the rabbit to happen. Waiting for Sunday to tell them.
Uncle George was shuffling the blue deck, and her mother dealing the red, slapping each fourth card to the table.
‘You know, I’m going to have a baby.’
Her mother dropped the cards and pulled her out of her chair, trying to waltz her round the room.
‘Oh Missy, oh Missy, when, oh lovely!’
And Uncle George still shuffling, saying, ‘I don’t believe it. I didn’t think you knew anybody.’
‘That’s just it, I don’t.’
‘Now, now, never mind, oh Missy, lovely.’
So there was that done, she had told them. Now she would see what to do next. One thing at a time. Her mother started learning to knit, making little shapeless rags the colour of a Wedgwood sky. Uncle George brought a pint of strawberry ice cream every Sunday and she had to eat it.
She was slower walking home in the evenings, stopped at empty intersections, turning her toes inward to project a point in space before her. An occasional dog strolled past.
‘It’s not me personally. I wouldn’t mind. But just anyone. Not chosen people. No lottery tickets or bathing suit parades. No 5-part question, no furrowed brow in splendoured isolation.’
And later: I will speak no valedictory.
She grilled the lamb chop for her mother and made a salad of avocado and grapefruit sections with a frame of rye-crisps. Then standing by the kitchen sink, brushing her damp hair back from her forehead, eyes watering in the smoke from a limp cigarette. She had practically stopped eating and weighed herself daily. 103. 104.
‘Hundred and five today, mother.’
‘Yes. Looks like a long hot summer, Uncle George says.’
There was no point in answering. She spread the dishtowel to dry. If I thought. But that’s really not enough. If I knew. Could had long ago settled in, adjusted itself to the furniture of her mind, waiting for should to arrive.
She made no appointment, just sat in his waiting room late one afternoon. And he didn’t put any questions until the consulting room door had defined his square.
‘So you’re a virgin.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’re now—how shall we say—enceinte.’
‘Yes. Pregnant.’
‘Oh, it’s not so uncommon. Many women—‘
‘Call the clinic and ask them.’
‘That won’t be necessary. I’ve dealt with cases like yours many—‘
‘Call the clinic and ask them.’
‘Well, if you’re sure you want me to.’
The confirmation was no surprise. He cradled the phone and matched the tips of his fingers, an accomplishment of sorts.
‘It would certainly appear that you haven’t—‘
‘Of course not.’
‘But I mean, you needn’t have. There are many cases where—that is, penetration is not strictly speaking necessary for—‘
‘I’ve never been near a man.’
Then the excitement was there, all at once, as he cracked his knuckles.
‘The thing is to have an international panel, specialists, to observe and—‘
‘No.’
His wife often told him that he knew very little about women, but there were some things he did know, that if a woman lies back as she says no, and relaxes her hands and says it again longer, that if a woman.
‘So, I was all right, wasn’t I?’
‘You were marvelous.’
‘And I satisfied you.’
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘And I was satisfied.’
‘Yes.’
She pushed him aside and stood up.
‘Then you listen to me. If I have this baby I’ll never satisfy anybody again. I mean it.’
So Missy got her certificate—detrimental and dangerous to the well-being, physiological and psychological, of the mother-to-be. And she told them at the office that she had to change her vacation assignment for family reasons. Then, at home, she packed a blue over-night case with Kleenex and lipstick, her unfinished book and a quilted satin bed-jacket.
She knew a mid-wife would have been enough, but it’s hard to argue with science, and three surgeons bent over her in the operating room. One wanted a general anaesthetic, but she threatened to leave, so only her eyes furred, and a trickle of sweat down the two lines of her forehead. Steam from sterilizing cabinets. Nurses. Staring up at the enormous pan and pain of light that gripped her. Her fists clenched, and the surgeons chattering—rapt and lost in the school-boy moment, prodding at their discovered jewel, the spongy mass of a large flesh pea—Missy’s voice lost in theirs as she whispered I will not. I will not be used. Not even by you, not by anybody. I will not as they sealed the specimen jar.
And later Mrs. Justinian trying to construct a nourishing tray for Missy, from dirty dishes and Vienna sausages, canned soup burnt on the stove-top and the knitting needles forgotten in her hair.




* * * *




California Here


The summer after the war. And the heat. Here in the valley of the Rio Grande, that wide and twisted furrow in a desert land. What can you do. Fields of cotton that seem to twitch, to dance and shiver in the haze of heat. In the towns, in the city, the asphalt pavements go soft and tacky—pitted by the heels of listless women moving from store to store. When you drive fast along the roads of the valley the air is still hot, but at least it seems to move. And you can stop at a filling station and drink iced coca colas, standing in front of an oscillating fan and talking to the attendant about the weather. Then drive about at night when you can’t sleep.
But when you come to August nothing will help. Tyres explode like gun-shots. Gasoline credit cards grow black from sweat and crumble in your hands. Priests faint from the scented heat and the churches are closed, indefinitely, extinguishing the candles and altar lights. Nuns give up their black wool habits and lie naked on their beds, cologned towels on their foreheads that go dry in a minute.
The birds are silent. Leaves turn yellow. There’s little talk anywhere, throats dry in the oven rooms.

* * *

Katherine had the window shades pulled down and sat at the kitchen table in the hot yellow light. She was wearing only her slip and had her hair knotted on top of her head. In the dry heat her sweat evaporated immediately, except for the tiny drops on her upper lip which she licked off. Her children and her mother sat motionless in their rooms, and the few flies settled on her pink paper wouldn’t move until the pen touched them, then would walk slowly to one side, blurring the ink. The letters they ruined she shoved aside with a slow and cautious sigh. Twice she started again, finished finally when the flies each had letters of their own and let hers dry unsmeared.
Her mother called from the next room, ‘Have you done what I told you?’
‘Yes, momma.’ She folded the letter and addressed it, Texas State Employment Bureau, El Paso, Texas.
‘Well, aren’t you going to mail it?’
‘Tonight, momma. I can’t go out now, you know how hot it is.’
‘Send Frank, he’s young. You know you’ve got to do it, they’re stealing us blind.’
Katherine went into the children’s room. Anna and Amy were sitting in their corners crying, the dry salt of tears on their cheeks. Frank was standing in the clothes closet, dozing with a book in his hand.
‘All right, mother, I’ll try.’ He put on his grandfather’s pith helmet and shuffled to the door. She gave him a dime for ice-cream at the post office, if they had any. He stepped on the dog’s tail, but she only growled, didn’t lift her head to snap. The screen door creaked open, then slammed shut, the steel spring vibrating, purring.

* * *

August 21st
To Whom Soever May Be Concerned:
Dear Sir, I do not really know to whom to write, but I suppose you will be able to tell me who can help me if you can’t help me. You see I am a widow. My husband and I were married ten years, but he went to the war and they killed him. He didn’t have to go, because he was a farmer and we have three children, but he went anyway. So we were thinking it’s a shame one of our boys isn’t sharing my farm with me. It’s a good farm, forty-six acres under cultivation with full water rights besides the house. So if you know of someone who might be a good father to the children you tell them to come and talk to me. The farm is just outside San Elizario, just ask anyone for the Frietze farm. I remain as ever
Sincerely yours,
(Mrs.) Katherine Frietze Welcomb.

P.S. I am thirty-four, if they should ask you.

* * *

Leroy Watson standing by Highway 80 in Big Springs, just past the last filling station. Sometimes he lifts his thumb, sometimes he just stares. Cars on their way to California. Big semi-trucks full of ice and cantaloupes with ‘No Riders’ signs on the windshield.
Got his discharge papers and headed home to East Texas. But his mother had died, and his sister disappeared. Figured he’d go out to California. Nothing to keep him and nothing to take. His sleeves rolled up nearly to the elbow, showing a blue tattoo of an eagle with a snake in its beak. A wrist watch on a chromium band.
A Ford coupe pulled up, sample cases in the back and the man in a Panama hat.
‘Going to El Paso. Imagine that’ll help.’
‘Reckon.’ He got in and they went on west. Desert, bare mountains, a clear hot sky bleached white at the horizons.
‘Army?’
‘Yeah. Out now.’
‘Married?’
‘Naw.’ Thinking, one of those. But looking at the soft hands on the wheel, the fat chin, thinking he’s weak, he’ll give me a ride even if I don’t. ‘Naw. Not yet.’ He rolled his sleeves on up as far as they would go and propped his elbow on the window ledge.

* * *

No one hiring casual labour just now, but a few men on the sidewalk outside, not talking, just leaning against the wall and smoking, thumbs in their front pockets and the fingers out.
Leroy, still in his Levi’s and that faded khaki shirt, smelling of sweat and waiting by crossroads, young but with those wrinkles from sun at the edges of his eyes and the back of his neck, looking at the scented letter, walking from the notice-board to the desk and asking ‘Where’s San Elizario?’ An East Texas drawl. The man at the desk paring his nails with a bone-handled pocket knife.
‘Down the valley.’
‘You mean down the river?’
‘Yeah, down the valley.
‘How do I get there?’
‘Same way you got here, expect.’
‘Yeah, expect.’ And then, from habit, ‘Much oblige.’

* * *

Late that night at the farm. The air is full of the sound of crickets. There’s a pitcher of lemonade with the ice all melted. A pale light in the kitchen, where the grandmother sits in her wheelchair sipping buttermilk. Several bugs and a small white moth attack the light. Katherine is washing the dishes. No one is listening to the gospel singers on the radio. The twins are in bed and Frank is standing outside the kitchen door, tense and listening, his back to the house and his eyes shut.
The grandmother’s arthritic hands throb, she rubs her fingers and also listens. Leroy sits on a straight chair, leaning his neck on the back, his legs spread wide and the toes pointed up. He watches Katherine and rolls a cigarette, pulling the strings of the bag closed with his teeth.
Katherine’s lips are shut very tight. When she does speak the words explode from a tense mouth, but they seem no louder than the crickets or the hymns. Leroy and the grandmother and Frank all listened.
‘You see how we live.’
She has finished with the dishes. Now she wipes the stove with the wet dish cloth.
‘It might be good for the children.’
Frank is cracking his knuckles, slow and careful. ‘Just a closer walk with Thee’ now on the radio.
‘I just don’t know.’
Katherine scratches her nose and hangs the tea towel on the hook by the window. Leroy drops his cigarette on the floor and steps on it. The grandmother watches her daughter.
Katherine leans back against the sink. Everyone breathes, perspires. Their eyes blink. Crickets call and answer. Leroy’s watch ticks. Katherine bends her neck back slowly and looks at the beaverboard ceiling. There is a mole under her chin.
And now she moves. Her shoes slap on the linoleum. She turns off the radio.
‘I’m going to bed. Frank, you take care of him.’
She goes out, and they still listen. Then Frank walks through the kitchen. The door spring purrs. He says nothing. Leroy follows him out, and the grandmother’s eyes also follow but she still sits, twisting her fingers.

* * *

The grandmother rolled her wheelchair to the table, though dinner wouldn’t be ready for an hour. ‘I’m glad it’s a little cooler, we have some appetite now.’ Katherine went on kneading the biscuit dough. ‘I think I’ll have a little bowl of milk and cornbread while we wait.’ Katherine brought her the pan half full of cold bread from breakfast and a crock of milk. ‘Where’s Roy?’
‘He’ll be back in a minute, momma. I sent him to the gin.’
The twins played under the table, untied their mother’s shoestrings and retreated giggling. Frank came in and stood behind her. ‘Mother? Mother? Do we have to call that man father?’ She turned and slapped him, leaving smears of sticky dough on his cheek.
‘Well, do we mother? He’s not our father.’ He wiped the dough off with the back of his hand and went to the sink where he ran water over his matted yellow hair and combed it down, in front at least.

* * *

Going on to California. Never should have stopped here anyway. Twenty dollars stolen from Katherine’s purse now in his pocket. But first a little fun. Bout time.
Leroy crossed the bridge to Juarez. He ignored the pimping taxi-drivers, the smells of a border town. Through the dance music and bright lights of the main street. He turned right and walked down to the next corner.
‘Fausto’s.’ He stood at the oval bar and had two beers first because he was thirsty, and then started on the whisky. The women smiled—their dark hair long on their shoulders, red lips, tight low dresses. Asked him to buy a drink. An argument about the price with the bartender, so he threw his glass at him and went to another bar.

* * *

He lay sprawled on the river bank, his face nuzzled to earth, until the sun reached him and he woke. There was a brown blood stain on the sand under his mouth, and frost in his hair and on his denim jacket. He rose to his knees and looked at the red sun over the junked railroad cars on the river bank, and sank back to the sand, spitting out a tooth, reaching in with his fingers to dislodge the soft cake of clotted blood that filled his mouth. Then he began to cry quietly. He rose unsteadily to his feet and started south down the levee road. There was a white stripe around his wrist where the watch had been.
For several miles he walked beside the debris of the city, the wrecked cars and twisted bedsprings, the mangled dress forms, the mountains of broken glass and empty tins and rotting food, with empty bulldozers on the slopes, sinking slowly into the smelly sponge of the city dead. The stagnant pools in the river on the other side of the levee smelled of sewage. Wads of floating pulp.
Scavenger birds rose screaming, settling back to work as soon as he passed. Before and behind him they were raking the city’s compost, or diving in the thick yellow scum of the water. He stopped once to bathe his face, to drink and vomit, then started down the road again. Soon he began to run, trying to keep his feet above the gravel now beginning to bake in the sunlight and blister the soles of his feet through the worn leather. Beyond the city now. On his left was the yellow bosky, pale cottonwoods and the stringy salt cedars, fading nightly with the light frost and now quite asleep from last night’s killing freeze. There were no longer even stagnant pools in the river, oh Rio Grande, only the pale dry sand rippled into ribs by the wind and last spring’s ghostly waters. He tripped over his shoelaces, or some pebble, and rose with bloody face and palms, picked the sharp stones out as he ran, then fell again and could not rise. But he kept his way, his knees and hands leaving a red trail on the road. His neck grew crimson from the sun, his hair bleached like the silent foliage, and his hands were cooked by the gravel and clay of the roadbed. His head sank lower, and he began to weave from side to side of the raised bank, leaving, now, a drunken trail behind him, and collided finally with the post of a U.S. Government No Trespassing sign. He rolled down the slope, came to rest against the trunk of a cottonwood, snared by the thorns of the berry bushes at its base. His eyes had been closed for an hour, he lay still.
The Border Patrol drove by on the levee, their machine guns trained indifferently on the river and the bosky, disappeared, leaving a curtain of white dust the length of the road and the height of the tallest tree. Seconds later the aliens began to creep through the cloud and started inland. One saw him in the thicket, crawled to him and explored each pocket. There was nothing, of course, they had seen to that last night. Her pink eyes narrowed there in the shade. She stabbed him once with her dagger, wiped the blood off on his trouser legs and concealed it again in her hair. Her man called her. She spat on him and left.
Later running, stumbling down the road, his back bleeding, one eye swollen shut.

* * *

The grandmother nodded in her chair. Katherine had pinto beans spread on the table, picking out the gravel before putting them to soak. The screen door slammed and she said, ‘Frank.’
But then she turned and saw him. ‘Get out. My twenty dollars.’ And saw the blood, the swollen eye. The grandmother was awake.
He grabbed her around the waist, was pulling her out of the room. She scratched his face, tried to kick with her knees, saying, ‘God damn you. God damn you. Momma.’
They were out of the room now. The grandmother heard a chair knocked over in the next room. Then a door closing. Then her own breathing.
Then Frank ran in.
‘He’s back. Where’s mother. He’s—‘ He started for the other door. The grandmother rose from the wheelchair, catching his shirt in both hands as he passed.
‘No. It’s all right. No now.’ She held on to his shirt, the swollen joints red in her white hands, her knees buckling, ‘It’s all right now.’




* * * *




If It Comes to That


You can look at him now and see all you need to know: young, rumpled, and elbows fraying. Perplexed and decorated with packages, pleased with something or other. Inspecting the back of the envelope a last time. Liquor. Cigarettes. Peanuts. Olives. Fruit: grapes oranges bananas apples. Everything. Waiting to cross the street. Making the final addition.
He had forgotten he had to pass the antique shop until it was too late to turn, too late for resolutions. Indian bells giggled at his entrance. The old woman stood by the door, one hand clawed to her throat, twitching.
‘I’ve been watching you, days, months.’ Her voice laughed too, but was cracked, much mended, old. ‘But I knew, know. You want the candlesticks, have to have them.’
The floor was lost in newsprint, roiled and rolling, grey-foamed. She twisted the candlesticks into a paper, screwing the ends like frizzed wicks, and forced him out the door. Giant crackers.
It was faster walking home, obtusely bent at the waist, and inside something singing, somewhere, something life at the moment, in the moment, something yes. He saw no one, nothing, but was moving fast and weighted, inertial. Contained and alive.
Everything spread on the landing to unlock the door, and a rhythm in the emptying—folding and hiding the paper bags. He put candles in the sockets, drew the curtains over the cometing sun, squinting his eye to judge. He saw that it was good and laughed at himself. Echoes. Accidents.
He arranged the fruit on a tray, distributed ashtrays, and brushed his teeth once more. He saw the hollow host, waiting, the evening starched on the bed, black-studded. He could think of nothing to do. The crumpled paper would have to be burnt, but he stopped to read it first. Births and deaths and engagements with both signatures. Personal. And there it was, half-way down the column.
MORE BRASS for your little Georgia room? A few years older than you are, but that doesn’t make the world last. The pulse of death is blumping in your ears, you can’t stop that with candles and parties. The drum, flowers, the worm, nothing. Nothing!
He sat down on the floor, dizzy, fighting the nausea. I didn’t really want them, not really, not really. Seems it rich to. Hands clasped and a rapid shallow breathing. Here’s the steeple, open the door and. The drum, flowers. Objects in the darkened room: the clock rasping, a cup, a pin. Solid, lasting, seering, there, now.
Always a terrible temptation to rush about when you know there’s so much to be done, but his experiences had taught him a little. He lit a cigarette and began sorting the lists in his handkerchief drawer. Shopping. Letters Unanswered. Guests. Books I Will Read. A very elaborate one called The Good Life.
Stop smoking. Less starch. Arbeiten und lieben (check German). Freud’s motto. Regular hours. More exercise. NO DAYDREAMS NO ANXIETY NO HYSTERIA NO SHAME. ‘For proving of our patience, without which our merits are but little to be pondered.’ Thomas a Kempis. Crypto-defeatism. ‘By and by I shall be kind and only kind.’ Hawthorne. Smile. Walk erect, shoulders back, toes straight ahead. Speak French while shaving. ‘Chastity and continence, but not yet.’ Augustine. Ha.
Then one that would do:
Bank: cash cheque. X
Sort laundry.
Pack case: shirt X
underwear X
socks X
toilet articles X
papers X
Leave note. X
Check watch and schedules.
For a moment ‘papers’ bothered him, but then he thought of shaking some of the books piled in the corner. There was an old postcard from a friend at school saying ‘The trouble with you is you’re altogether too damned self-conscious for your own good. As ever, L.’ and a newspaper clipping listing the pallbearers at his grandfather’s funeral. He tore out a section of the personal column, drew a double circle around this item, and then slipped them all in under the shirt.
He pinned a note on the door and propped it open.
 I can’t in all honesty say I didn’t know this would happen, but we have to make an effort to forget, don’t we, or we can’t go on living. Whoever arrives first, light the fire and the candles, and serve the punch. BURN THIS NOTE! And whenever anyone asks where I am, wink or laugh or something and say ‘He won’t be long.’
‘A ticket to the last town on the next train, please.’ He had forgotten his raincoat. It should have been on the list.
‘But you can’t buy that at this window.’ The face framed, gold-rimmed glasses, eight hours’ stubble peppered on the upper lip. He moved to the next window. The face came in, took his money. Soiled collar. A hair on the coat sleeve. Onetwothrfingernails.
I should have told someone I was going? Who I was I should have told whom, the train living, breathing, but the compartments littered, all strewn with. He took the last, kicked them all it all out onto the platform.
I will not. I’ll sleep. Count the rails. Count the dark. Sound of the train chasing itself. I’ll sleep. Lamps, watercolour reproductions, life in the surface of the window. Count the rails.
Stopping. A flurry. Starting. Then failing to start, so he walked through the station silence, across to a commercial hotel. The voice, the words from somewhere, but not his, neither seemed his. Yes rather tired. Travelling several days. An important engagement in the morning. Yes now thank you. And he switched off the light.
The appointed time is past I know, but such dreadful consequences so I must hurry, if my watch is fast or the time misunderstood or all late. Always late, someone, no wedding without the groom. Which street. Green lawn, fountain, brick MORTUARY clock over the door tell the time to die please ring.
Wax figure. Grey wig. Putty fingers. Manicure. ‘Are you—‘
‘Oh no. My brother Will. Must find.’ Descent tight passage down exposed electric, clutch the wall along down, billboards, posters, names and addresses, colours, the vibration, sound, of distant subway trains, the wind cold and nobody at the time of, row of white girders, Hershey wrapper, falling, Will from behind a pillar.
By the arm, we must hurry. Sunshine, black carriages, coachmen, odour of lilies. ‘No I won’t.’ An unpaved alley, garages, open sheds, crumbling brick wall, cold shadow of the mountain. Horns, fireworks, somewhere. Pulse like a snaredrum, cadence for a parade, never the starting signal: the paunchy man opening a steel firedoor.
‘Come along please. We’ve been waiting.’
‘He’s right, Will, mother and father, the newspapers—‘
‘I know all that but I’ll tell you it’s not easy it’s a hell of a thing to be young and hopeful and have to crawl in a coffin and know that that’s the end of it not even know anything not even nothing anymore all the flowers and the organ and the plush and soft lights and this unctuous bastard with his pink carnation and his hands in his hands don’t help a damn bit.’
‘Yes yes. Hell I know it I don’t want it either but we have to hurry.’
Hands in his hands, a pin-striped suit, smoked mirror shoes—‘It would be so much simpler if you come in the back door, they’re already here.’
Crush him out, not think of that. To find a church, the church, up a steep street, friends in the pews, mothers of the bride and groom corsaged, priest and acolytes surpliced and posed, champagne with the bubbles gone, the plaster cake the funeral baked he or I tears no not even never.
‘Cup of tea.’ She left it on the floor by the door.
He looked out the window—at least the sky was still black, there was still some time left. Only a few squares of lace-curtained light where the landladies sipped, reading their bills and mending sheets.
Then he saw the letter on the chair by his bed, under his cigarettes. It was from his mother.
We know you would have done it if they had given you time. They should realize you’re not lazy, not even really slow. You decide what’s best, and let us know. I know you’ll make the right decision. We’re all well, but a little tired from the waiting. Love, Mom.
And at the bottom a note from his father—
We’re betting on you. Keep in there. If you’re in any trouble and would rather your mother didn’t know, write me at the office. Let us know if you need money, we can always find it somehow. And send us your itinerary as soon as you know, in case of an emergency.
Quickly dressed down the stairs, fighting his breakfast down and losing. Still the black night. A long bus waited at the kerb, unlighted and empty but the doors open. He crept in and sat down, clutching his case in his lap. At once the ratcheting sound of the motor waking, and they were moving. He told the conductor ‘all the way,’ squirmed as he searched through the fare book. Then bent over the case and slept.
The bus had stopped. Sunlight cut the air, parked by a pleasure garden, in sound and smell of the sea. The conductor and driver were gone. He stepped down to tulips, azaleas, rustic benches, leashed dogs, photographers. A newsboy called, and he fled across the street.
It was a huge shop, plateglass, double-doored. W.H. SMITH & SON—ADVERTISING AGENTS FOR ALL NEWSPAPERS. There was a girl behind the counter adding up words on her fingers aloud. ‘I’m young. I don’t mind. If it really comes to that.’ He couldn’t wait and interrupted.
‘I want to place a notice in the personal column.’
‘Yes, sir. What paper?’
‘I don’t care. Any one will do. Just take this down. You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you, your name legion and your power unlimited, but I’ll be damned if I’ll—‘
‘Oh sir, they won’t print that!’
‘Well spell it with two ems—that’s a nice word isn’t it?—if I’ll go on toadying to an ignorant, snooty, cowardly, politicking—If I want to have a party that’s my business, and I’ll do it my way. I’ve got a passport, I can go any time I please, but I’m not—‘
‘It’s getting very long, sir. And very expensive, you know.’
‘That’s all right, you just listen and let me worry about the money. I can go any time I please but I’m not going to. It’s my own business what I do and you can’t chase me away. You don’t need to send me any more messages, because I won’t read them. If you want to see me you know where to find me. All right? Because I’m not going to run around looking for you—the next move’s up to you, and as far as I’m concerned I don’t care if you never make it. Publish and be damned! Spell that any way you want. And as for agents, delegates, messengers, envoys, plenipotentiaries and underlings in general you keep them, I won’t see them. I think we’d better have this out once and for all, so if you don’t have the decency to come and see me, I have a pretty good idea where to find you, and I—‘




* * * *




His Castle


For the first time, that day, the sun died quietly on the autumn leaves, seemed reconciled finally to its winter’s isolation in the southern sky and beneath the horizon that would soon engulf it. he drove the MG along the wooded road, half suburb, half country, talking to the woman beside him and scarcely needing to watch the familiar pavement. He neither slowed the car or stopped talking, just turned suddenly across a lawn and headed straight for the shingled side of the house. Stealthily, quickly he touched the button on the dashboard, the sloping cellar doors popped open, the car dropped in and the doors fell shut. She screamed once, thrown forward in the darkness, and fell back against the seat sobbing. He kept on talking with his usual composure, and pulled the cord of an overhead light. The old stone walls and packed dirt floor of the rootcellar appeared, reassured her, but the convulsive sobbing continued.
‘You see, I push this little button and the doors open all by themselves. Would you like a drink?’ He helped her from the car and up the steep stairs.
As usual he refilled the drink, once, twice. She began to laugh uncomfortably at her fright. Best of all, she had to prove she could forgive the prank, even in bed she had to choke back the nervous laugh.
His plan always worked very well, or almost always. Once his electricity went off during a storm. He pushed the button twice, but nothing happened, and he had to repaint the cellar doors because the tread marks wouldn’t come off. That one wouldn’t even come in for a drink, she wouldn’t let him drive her home either, started walking up the road. About half of them fainted, and a month before he had had trouble reviving a frail little schoolteacher. He rubbed her hands, held whisky to her lips, begged her to stop teasing him, to open her eyes, but she refused, so he buried her near the rear wall of the cellar garage.
Late that waning autumn night he lay back musing, was almost asleep. Her laughter had long ago succumbed. Then he felt her touch him on the shoulder—she had her clothes on, said he’d better drive her home now. He let her out at her house, uncomfortable with his usual lie, I’ll see you soon, and drove home, slowly now. He never felt quite satisfied any more.
A few days later as he was reading the classified telephone directory he noticed the downtown address of a specialist, so he put down the book and began to spend his days in the halls and lobby of the medical center. Many days went by before one of his new acquaintances would accept his invitation for a ride. Gingerly, he said to himself, they all walk even more gingerly coming out that door than going in. Not one of them disappointed him. He carefully observed the ritual, rubbed their hands, and kept a bottle of whisky and some smelling salts in the cellar.
Soon he had three, and then four. He measured the floor with a ruler and found he could accommodate nine without any crowding. But the supply at the doctor’s had run out, most of the patients were middle-aged or older, so he began to go to the movies every afternoon and evening. He wore a putty nose and a false beard, because he thought someone might notice how many women were disappearing.
The women were captivated by what they considered his shyness, or his chivalry. After starting a conversation he was very tactful, would let his fingers fall lightly, unconsciously even, it seemed, on their wrists. Some were disappointed when, soon after, he excused himself and pretended to leave the theatre. But none of the others complained when his fingers moved down triumphantly to clasp their own.
Five and then six. Sometimes his diagnosis was confirmed by his every observation: her speech, too, had fluttered along unevenly, and her eyes, when she looked up at his face in the glare from the headlights, had seemed to flicker and die out.
‘Why do you wear such a funny beard?’
‘I can’t seem to remember to buy razor blades.’
‘I’ll give you a whole carton for Christmas.’
‘You shouldn’t make such rash promises.’ He turned hard on the steering wheel and pushed the button. As they fell the darkness hit them and the doors flopped shut.
‘My what a surprise. You’re a real joker. Is this where you live?’
Yes, sometimes he misjudged. He knew he was obligated, in spite of his disappointment, to offer them drinks, to let them sleep in his bed. That night, after she fell asleep, he thought for a moment of striking her blond head with his shovel and carrying her back downstairs, but he resisted the temptation.
One night on his way to the theatre a motorcycle policeman motioned him to the side of the road.
‘Sorry to bother you. Are you the Bearded Rapist?’
‘Why yes, I’m on my way to a masquerade.’ He took off the beard.
‘Huh? Oh, good of you to take it that way, we all make mistakes you know.’
‘Oh that’s all right, can’t be too careful.’ They laughed and shook hands.
When they came out into the lighted lobby that evening he was a little worried, she had a club foot and was much fatter than he had realized. But she was the quietest of all, he had grown used to shrieks and laughs and sighs, but with her there was not even the single frustrated inhalation as the body tenses so uselessly. The problem was getting her out of the seat, he had to pry with the shovel from the other side of the car. Stretched on the floor she seemed even larger, perhaps because she was no longer embarrassed by her size. Unfortunately she required two of his three spaces. He hadn’t finished when he heard a knock on the door, so he took the shovel upstairs with him.
‘I want to get this settled. Did you have an accident?’
‘What kind of accident?’
‘My wife says, well she says she saw a car run into your house, and I argued with her ten miles before I saw I’d have to turn around.’
‘No, no accident.’
‘Well would you come tell my wife that?’
‘I’d be delighted to meet your wife.’
Gradually, he had learned to accept his disappointments philosophically. One night he was sure his labor was over, and just in time too, he was thoroughly bored with movies and his beard was becoming frayed.
‘How long?’
‘A few minutes. I thought you weren’t ever going to come to.’
‘No, how long have you been pulling this little stunt?’
‘I don’t remember, a year or two.’
‘And you still enjoy it?’
‘No, I almost have enough.’
‘Have had enough.’
‘Yes.’ She told him later that she had taken psychology and English at the university.
At last he was finished. She was a little waitress who liked rollercoasters, and she kept begging him to try it again. It finally worked. He whistled to himself while he covered her.
‘Well, that’s done.’
About a month later the last frost was out of the ground and his first bulbs blooming. As he was spading up his garden he realized how restless he had become and backed out the car. He drove aimlessly about downtown, stopping suddenly at the Oldsmobile dealer’s because he saw the new models were out. The salesman didn’t offer him a very large trade-in allowance, but he didn’t quibble, had decided to buy a black convertible anyway. He told the salesman he would drive it home, and sat down to write the check.
‘You picked a good car there.’
‘Yes, I think I’ll like it.’
‘And the pick-up is very good.’ The salesman winked as he said it.
‘Fine.’ He started the engine and backed out onto the street. The salesman waved him to a stop.
‘Say, I’ll bet you need a bigger garage for this one.’




* * * *


[An undated postcard written during the writing of his novel:]






J. MAX BOND, JR.
LOWELL HOUSE D-42
CAMBRIDGE 38, MASS.


Now Max, I know I’ll see you all next term, D.V., that that is less than three months off as the crow flies, but I would nevertheless and notwithstanding enjoy hearing of you and all those others, you might even send me discarded house plans if you have nothing to say. Writing thus shortly and publicly is of course against my best policies of long standing (not to write at all) but I’m almost drunk with authorship, writing these last few days tooth and all four claws, Max it’s the damnedest novel you ever saw in your life. I’ll make a real effort and send a short personal philosophical sociological aesthetical psychological architectonic essay as soon as I get any encouragement from you, postcard, letter, newspaper clippings, Thompson’s lecture notes (carbon of the final form) Rgds. to all, Webb




* * * *


ESSAYS


* * * *


[The following essay on William James was left in an apparently unfinished or draft state. The first two pages are typed but the rest is in longhand and very rough. No doubt Jim would have polished and revised in the typing stage, had he completed it. I’ve had to decipher his sometimes very obscure handwriting, and i may have made errors in transcription.]






James Webb ‘55
Philosophy 137


WILLIAM JAMES


Willie and Hank,
Jesse and Frank;
Each pair brothers,
Perhaps, of the others.


‘And I consequently find myself...obliged to state my conclusions in an altogether personal way. This personal method of appeal seems to be among the very conditions of the problem.’ ‘It is the recognition of limits, foreign and opaque to our understanding. It is the willingness, after bringing about some external good, to feel at peace.’ ‘The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that those other worlds must contain experiences which have a meaning for our life also; and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points, and higher energies filter in.’








In most lay writing on, and European criticism of, the famous “money metaphor” of James’ “Practical Cash-Value” seems distorted; perhaps my attempt at verse, and a quotation from the “Will to Believe” will help show the other side of the “coin”:

A whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) will be looted by a few highwaymen, simply because the latter can count on one another, while each passenger fears that if he makes a movement of resistance, he will be shot before any one else backs him up. If we believed that the whole car-full would rise at once with us, we would each severally rise, and train robbing would never even be attempted.

Here in the western James brothers and the New York James is an interesting antithesis for interpreting the latter nineteenth century in America: Jesse and Frank to represent Turner’s Westward movement and Beard’s economic motivation, and William and Henry to represent the paradox of conservatism and the instrumental planning (elimination of train robberies) that Dewey was to develop. As a westerner who absorbed the ballads of Jesse James and Billy the Kid at an earlier age but with no less enjoyment than the Portrait of a Lady or The Ambassadors, I find the subject very appealing, but an adequate analysis would require much more knowledge of many fields than I have to offer. But the desire at least shows my inclinations, which are literary and rather practical, I fear, only in the application of discoveries of philosophers to the form or content of literature. The philosophers in the course that appeal to me most were Edwards and Santayana, and in each case I have a lingering suspicion that I was seduced by the style, and by the image of the authors that remained in my consciousness—the Edwards sermons and Santayana poems that I have read coloured all else, and I kept hearing “they say there is a young lady of New Haven who loves to walk about the fields.” James is a compromise subject. He possessed a style much more forceful than many we read, though not one that excites in the manner of Edwards or Santayana; but, more important to me, his discoveries in psychology and philosophy have been utilized with great effect in modern, in Europe even more than in America. With James many modern authors have sung “the particular, sensible, and transient” rather than shouting “the binomial theorem to the end of time”; with James they are “helping to make a universe that shall forget its very place and name.” A comparison of this avowal with Parker’s “permanent” or Emerson’s poetry of inspiration and revelation perhaps explains the relative distaste for Emerson in most moderns. Most of the methods even are primarily Jamesian; his associational psychology and his “stream of consciousness” have been adopted and adapted to varying degrees by Joyce, Woolf, Proust, and Faulkner, to name a few. From his statement under drug intoxication that “There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference” to Gertrude Stein is a short step, and perhaps the justification of myths in Yeats, Joyce, and Eliot is implicit in “The ancient formulas are reinterpreted as special expressions of much wider principles, principles that our ancestors never got a glimpse of in their present shape and formulation.” If James’ own Principles of Psychology is to be judged by his suggestion—“Every new book verbalizes some new concept, which becomes important in proportion to the use that can be made of it”—it was certainly important for the development of literature.
In short, I have chosen James, after two false starts, because of the western analogy that, although of dubious merit, has helped me to understand some relationships I could not have expressed any other way, and also because he forms an effective Yeatsian counter-self for my own literary tastes. The reference to Yeats perhaps indicates anti intellectual leanings; I think this valid as self criticism, but, with James I do not think anti intellectualism is a matter of choice. I just don’t have predominantly intellectual powers, although my interests are perhaps intellectual, and I have been consequently prejudiced in favor of a rather untrustworthy intuition. The James of this paper is the James of the American myth; as described by Meade “James’ own individual problem—the skepticism of adolescence set in a long period of illness that sickened both body and mind.... He demanded the right to believe that he might live.” This is perhaps the romantic attraction of youthfulness for the problems of youthfulness, to the art student rather than the explicator of native philosophy, but anyone who has lived and still remembers vividly a childhood and adolescence of continual wonder and doubt feels moved by the out-of-context James: “For twenty years past I have mistrusted ‘consciousness’ as an entity.” This paper is only an attempt at setting some of James’ statements in a wider reference; I have preferred not to attempt systematic analysis or criticism, since incompleteness would render them faulty.

“The Sentiment of Rationality”

‘My less gifted neighbor (paralyzed by his scruples and waiting for more evidence which he does not anticipate, much as he longs to), ...But if the means presume to frustrate the end and call us cheats for being right in advance of their slow age, by guesswork or by hook or crook, what shall we say of them?’

In this essay James discusses the requirements we make upon a philosophy we can believe. A human can know and can act, therefore a philosophy cannot stultify these needs and still be accepted. A human is also capable of faith and it cannot be denied him. A philosophy that generates the sentiment of rationality and leads to effective thought, action, and faith will be true: if a philosophy does not suit these human needs its truth is inconsequential. On the last of these three elements, Santayana was indeed closer to James than James thought, though in Santayana the primacy of animal faith included knowing and doing more explicitly than in James. (James does, though, say that “Faith is synonymous with working hypothesis”—as explicit as Santayana if you abstract Santayana’s metaphysics of scepticism.) Several points impressed me: The closeness to existentialist thought in such statements as “In nightmare we have motives to act, but no power; here we have powers, but no motives,” and the discussion of “fear, disgust, despair, or doubt,” comparable to the Sartrian trinity of anguish, forlornness, and despair—all of which James denies only because of his belief in action, which the Existentialists seem to consider a sort of over-belief. The relation to Dewey is rather odd: James describes philosophy as banishing “in a general way, at least, uncertainty from the future.” It is of course the degree that keeps this from being the “Quest for Certainty.” (In “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” James shows the same distrust for the duality of experience as consciousness and content that motivated Dewey). More interesting, James points out that evolution offers no abstract ethics—the perception of future change is not necessarily submission—and his analysis of faith as the prime element of such ethics helps to explain how evolutionary thought could lead both to William Graham Sumner’s “social Darwinism” and Peter Frank Ward’s sociology. On the subject of the morality of nature (and by implication, teleology) James suggests that both extremes are difficult—a system of “epicycle upon epicycle” or a “universal vanitas vanitatum.” He seems to posit Santayana’s conclusion that nature is neutral, because of the difficulty or perhaps impossibility of proof otherwise. On personal sentiment in philosophy James realizes that every man is “peculiarly sensitive to evidence that bears in some one direction,” and that the “personal temperament” will influence philosophy. This emotional basis gives a rather unfair tactical argument against the idealists, but when used as such the statement that “Idealism will be chosen by a man of one emotional constitution, materialism by another” loses to some extent its descriptive validity.
James also has his own version of Pascal’s wager: “I expect then to triumph with tenfold glory; but if it should turn out, as indeed it may, that I have spent my days in a fool’s paradise, why, better have been the dupe of such a dreamland than the cunning reader of a world like that which then beyond all doubt unmasks itself to view.” That this is not James’ own view appears in another essay discussed later. But the lack of agreement is not a particular distrust of older thinkers; as an example, despite the opinion of his friend Dr. Holmes and the metaphysical method of Edwards, James agreed with the latter on the freedom of will implicitly (we cannot will what we will—which means necessity for Edwards but freedom and human nature for James) and the importance of all causes and small causes. The force of every atom shall be recognized. As a psychologist James even occasionally anticipated Freud: “The line of enjoyable suffering is not a fixed one; it fluctuates with the perfectness of the life....—that our pains are thus unendurable, means not that they are too great, but that we are sick” is good Freudian doctrine if stated in the Viennese forms. The magnificence of this and the other essays lies especially in this their suggestive and tentative nature: “Rather should we expect, that, in a question of this scope, the experience of the entire human race must make the verification.” By his own standards this continual awareness of future ends is the mark of mentality.

The Dilemma of Determinism

“to transform an equivocal and double future into an inalterable and simple past”

I don’t know how valid my statement—that Edwards and James come near agreement on the freedom of the will—really is. But I can’t help reading it that way (which is perhaps what each means); for even in his argument for the freedom of the will James’ main point is that it is impossible for him to will otherwise. There is a hint that James recognizes this himself in his genial ‘ad hominem’ ending, “If it be so, may you and I then have been foredoomed to the error of continuing to believe in liberty.” At any rate his psychological investigations convinced him that the will seems to make actual choices. The practical belief in freedom is sufficient for his pragmatism, because the necessity or the causation, if present, is too recondite to be discovered. James’ “live option”, the distinction of the “morally possible” and the “physically possible”, can perhaps be equated to Edward’s limitation of the will to what the will decides is the greatest apparent good. This essay offers a more explicit dismissal of natural teleology, at least on a human level, by considering the argument from design as essentially post facto, “either universe after the fact and once there would, to our means of observation and understanding, appear just as rational as the other.” I don’t know whether this approaches logical certainty, but it suits me admirably—ecstasies over the great chain depending from Jupiter’s footstool and over the admirable purpose of nature have seemed to me an example of philosophers ‘peculiarly sensitive’ to their own desires. James is admirable on the confusions of cause, effect, good, and evil in “soft determinism,” the dilemma is one whose left horn is pessimism and whose right horn is subjectivism.” the “gratuitous actions” of Gide and, in a sense, Sartre, seem to hinge upon the confusion of this dilemma with liberty. To James’ question “Is any one ever tempted to produce an absolute accident, something utterly irrelevant to the rest of the world?,” Gide, the spiritual descendent of “the baser crew of Parisian littérateurs” answers yes. And Sartre (at least in his novels, for the same analytical ineptitude that handicaps my treatment of James excludes me from his philosophical essays which seem rather ambiguous to me) accepts “a plurality of semi-independent forces, each one of which may help or hinder, and be helped or hindered by, the operations of the rest,” accepts the “world as vulnerable, and liable to be injured by certain of its parts.” In both authors the freedom that was a matter of belief and genial discussion becomes a mania. Two comparisons to Santayana are also very suggestive. “The most that anyone can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example ‘to work on others as it may” closely approximates Santayana’s avowed method in Skepticism and Animal Faith. Also James and Santayana each employ a sly method of valued speech; just as James’ “deepening” of subjective knowledge becomes a “downward slope,” Santayana’s “suspected parentage” becomes an intellectual “bastardy,” and his plays on “nature” “natural”. It is a fault, I suppose, of all philosophers, unless they are expressing themselves in symbolic logic, but in Santayana and James it becomes almost an artistic virtue because of the skill they display—or perhaps hide. That the practice also contributes to the difficulties of philosophy and I suppose is a truism and the basic problem of semantics.
The resolution of free will and Providence is the main point that dissatisfies me. That Providence could “provide possibilities as well as actualities,” could think in the same too categories as man seems a valid speculation. But if “chances may be there, uncontrolled even by him” how can one say “and yet the end of all things may be just what he intended it to be from all eternity”? The only solution would seem to be to have Providence intend varying solutions, a contradiction of terms as normally used. But on the subject that would occupy The Varieties of Religious Experience he was admirably explicit: “There are some instinctive reactions which I, for one, will not tamper with.... Not the saint, but the sinner that repenteth, is he to whom the full length and breadth, and height and depth, of life’s meaning is revealed.” This is the respect for the entirety of experience that he includes in “this reality, this excitement” of what the subjects of Will: zest, effort, question, answer.

The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life
“What closet-solutions can possibly anticipate the result of trials made on such a scale?”

If nature is neutral, neutrality including the lack of an absolute, the general statement of James’ ethics follows: “Nothing can be good or right except so far as some consciousness feels it to be good or thinks it to be right.” That the intuitive perspective precedes the rational is as significant, I think, as the grammatical equality of the two predicates. A better passage can be quoted to show the primacy of feeling of the “sentiment of rationality”: “what the words ‘good’, ‘bad’, and ‘obligation’ severally mean. They mean no absolute values, independent of personal support. They are objects of feeling and desire, which have no foothold or anchorage in Being, apart from the existence of actually living minds.” The most paradoxical element of his relative ethics is his desire for stable ethics without an absolute: “So far as the world resists reduction to the form of unity, so far as ethical propositions seem unstable, so far does the philosopher fail of his ideal.” It is my impression that James avoids the difficulty by keeping the ideal carefully caged in some possible ideal world; stated more in his terms, the ideal is a part of the philosopher’s human nature, and is inattainable, but can perhaps be approximated. As such an ideal it is classed with the other personal motives the philosopher brings with him to the problem of ethics, but also opposed to them, whatever they are in any particular case. “If the philosopher is to keep his judicial position, he must never become one of the parties to the fray.” He may keep the ideal before him, but must discard the less universal demands of his personality. The solution for James is a mean between “moral skepticism” and “a wayward personal standard of our own” and is a sort of hedonic calculus of his own. He begins with the thesis that any demand is good. “Take any demand, however slight, which any creature, however weak, may make. Ought it not, for its own sole sake, to be satisfied? If not, prove why not.” Then “must not the guiding principle be simply to satisfy at all times as many demands as we can?” By a little mathematical doodling with inverse proportions one can then verify James’ conclusion that “those ideals must be written highest which prevail at the least cost, or by whose realization the least possible number of other ideals are destroyed.” This far the utilitarian “greatest good for the greatest number” applies. But James has scruples here; he would not sacrifice one person to “lonely torture” for an earthly utopia. This I have been unable to understand. His three approaches—the psychological, metaphysical, and casuistic questions of the origin, meaning and measure of moral ideas—lead to nothing more definite finally than his version of hedonic calculus, encouragement for religion as a reflection of human needs, and the “strenuous mood” a form of existential “involvement” or Faust spirit, perhaps. That James regretted his inability to believe in an absolute, and in an unending teleological movement in nature give a poignant flavor to a passage that was probably more positive from the lecture-platform: “the pure philosopher can only follow the windings of the spectacle, confident that the line of least resistance will always be towards the richer and more inclusive arrangement, and that by one tack after another some approach to the kingdom of heaven is incessantly made.” I think the ambiguity rests in the “line of least resistance”, which may have been induced by the metaphor; satisfying the greatest number of demands, even on a personal level, is not always easy.

The Will to Believe

“Objective evidence and certitude... where on their moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?” “We find ourselves believing, we hardly know how or why.”

The thesis of “The Will to Believe”, says James, is that “Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, “Do not decide, but leave the question open,” is itself a passional decision—just like deciding yes or no—and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.” It is this concept, as James notes, that distinguishes and unites him with Huxley. Huxley considered belief without reason as “the lowest depth of immorality,” but, reiterated James’, “Scepticism... is not avoidance of option; it is option of a certain particular kind of risk. Better risk loss of truth than chance of error [says] the faith-vetoer....” The extension of these forced options to the field of laws shows Holmes’ doctrine of creative jurisprudence; “because a judge’s duty is to make law as well as to ascertain it... (as a learned judge [Holmes?] once said to me)” And the fact that the option is faced is important; Pascal’s wager, says James, has no meaning for a non-Catholic, and wryly adds “when religious faith expresses itself thus, in the language of the gaming-table, it is put to its last trumps.” The will to believe seems unassailable on James’ terms, and I like to consider the possibility of actual effects as a tentative and imaginative suggestion. The underlying resemblance to Santayana’s “animal faith” is a close one where James says that “the greatest empiricists among us are only empiricists on reflection: when left to their instincts, they dogmatize like infallible popes.”

Conclusions on Varieties of Religious Experience

“a place of conflux where the forces of two universes meet....” “I took these extremer examples as yielding the profounder information.” “Such aspects of things as these, their naturalness and unnaturalness, the sympathies and antipathies of their superficial qualities, their eccentricities, their brightness and strength and destructiveness, were inevitably the ways in which they originally fastened our attention.”

* * *

The personal element in philosophy that James valued is a very attractive one in his own philosophy. “The particular, the sensible, and the transient” are interesting. But they come no nearer to telling the whole picture, than would the following passage if we read “Henry” as “some men” and “William” for “moralist”.
“Some men (even at the student age) are so naturally cool-hearted that the moralistic hypothesis never has for them any pungent life, and in their supercilious presence the hot young moralist always feels strangely ill at ease.” For in Henry’s novels is an implicit ethics of pleasure and pain, desire and frustration, here rationalized, but more widely applied, than William‘s. And a hot young moralist can [be] unconsciously subversive to morals in many ways, ending beyond good and evil.




* * * *




Henry James

Jerome Buckley, author of The Victorian Temper, began a lecture on Gerard Manley Hopkins last year by saying that he would attempt to rescue Hopkins from his posterity, that he would attempt to prove that Hopkins had, in fact, lived and written in the nineteenth century. The critical situation of Henry James is, to a degree, similar; he has been widely appreciated and explicated by our contemporary critics, who often seem to view him entirely in a timeless realm of pure art. But the situation is also more complex, for James did publish, and achieve some degree of popularity, during his own lifetime, and there has developed a biographical school (complementary to the pure critics) who can not seem to see beyond the facts of historical involvement. My own attempt is to steer some sort of middle course, to maintain that James did produce significant literary art, and that his art was produced in an identifiable human society and historical era. Henry James was, of course, an extremely prolific author, and I had best admit that this essay is more an effort at revaluation than a research paper. I have read, at various times, most of James’ works, but rereading them all would have taken more than a semester’s diligent effort. I should also add that I have not attempted a compilation of relevant critical opinion from the wealth available; I simply could not convince myself that such a compilation of fallible human opinion was necessary, when my own fallible opinions were so readily available.
Like Eliot and Auden later in our own century, James was a cultural anomaly, and, like them, is the bane of those professors of English who try to maintain a strict dichotomy between English and American literature. Although he was born in New York City, his youth was spent, and his unsystematic education accomplished, in Europe as well as in Newport, Boston, and Cambridge. Throughout his years of residence in England his American ties remained strong, and this breadth of interest is reflected in his work, which can be divided into three roughly equal portions, dealing with the American, the English, and the international scenes. Van Wyck Brooks to the contrary, James never abrogated his American heritage; his acceptance of British citizenship in 1916 was not so much a change of allegiance as a formal admission of the growth of additional allegiance.
I fear this divided, or broad, allegiance, does create some difficulties for any cultural historian who would evaluate James’ significance as a critic of English or American society, for I find it impossible to decide, finally, whether his greater detachment, in each case, was sufficiently valuable to balance the estrangement, the limited knowledge, that the detachment did, to some degree, create. Fortunately, I don’t feel myself committed entirely to cultural history, and the problem seems unimportant when we consider the extent of James’ criticism of the continuing life of man on earth, a criticism more significant than the most acute critical analysis of transitory cultural phenomena.
Of course in one sense it seems either irrelevant or irreverent to consider James in relation to our seminar theme at all, since our current aesthetic beliefs have led both to the present apotheosis of James and to the fact that we are deeply enough concerned about artistic honesty and the possible inhibitions foisted upon an artist by his contemporary society to devote a graduate seminar to the problem. At the risk of over-stating the case, I would say that our present appreciation of Homer, of Dante, of Shakespeare, of James (I deliberately select such notable company), all rest upon the usually unarticulated belief that they all achieved more significant art than we have any right to expect, given a knowledge of the human and social odds they worked against. And, although this is merely a personal impression, I would expect James to be a leading candidate, if we can imagine a survey being taken among today’s graduate students of English to determine the world’s “most artistically-honest” writer.
This seems already an unnecessarily long preamble to a discussion of James’ subject matter and artistic methods, but one more point should be made. Although a conviction of the wide significance of that subject matter and of the pristine honesty of those methods preceded any attempt to marshal the evidence, I believe the investigation of these foregone conclusions can be of some use to our seminar as a gesture toward clarifying what we do mean by our terms: significant subject matter and honest methods.
It is difficult to formulate a description of James’ subject matter broad enough to include all his work, but narrow enough to distinguish his production from that of others who have studied that “continuing life of man on earth.” Most important, perhaps, we should note that James was interested in adventures of the mind and the emotions, but scarcely at all in physical adventure, the objective and easily observed dramatic action. This is possibly the reason for his disastrous failure when he attempted writing for the theater. Secondly, we should note that his interests were also limited by what we might as well call class considerations: his subjects were almost entirely drawn from the experience of the middle and upper classes. The first of these limiting factors we may call taste, realizing, of course, that the name does little to explain the fact. With the same reservation, we may call the second factor the accident of personal experience. I think we must admit that both inhibiting factors operate, to some degree, upon all men, both in the production of art and in its appreciation. If we believe that man contributes to, or participates in, his own conditioning, by an act, or a continuing action, of will, we can say that James was responsible in part for refining his own taste, and for choosing not to seek out the experience that did not seek out him. In either case, my feeling is that, although James may have had a voice in the selection of the blinders he would wear, he wore none of his own contrivance, and that, within the conditioned and escape-proof realm we have described, he did produce much significant art and commentary.
It is probably dangerous for me to try to read the minds, rather than the papers, of the members of our seminar, but it seems to me we have a systematic, if submerged, test that we have been applying to the subject matter, rather than the methods, of the authors whom we discuss; that is, we attempt to decide whether an individual author dramatized, or whether he ignored, certain wide-spread attitudes which we, after an interval of fifty or a hundred years, consider hypocrisies. Specifically, we hope to find a realistic approach to, or at least a realistic acknowledgement of the existence of, sex as a strong and pervasive human motivation, rather than an etherealized or conspiratorially-silent treatment of it. We hope to find an acceptance of the significance of economic determinism in personal and public life, rather than a defensive protestant ethic or a limitation of that significance to either the personal or the public. We hope to find a recognition of a distinction between art and homiletics, rather than either unthinking or elaborate reconciliations and identifications of possibly contrary artistic and didactic aims. Finally, although the list could be made much more extensive, we hope to find an admission of the discrepancy between the professions and the practices of religions, rather than a purely emotional acceptance or rejection of them. I have no doubt over-simplified in trying to objectify an unconscious standard of judgment, but I believe the statements correspond sufficiently to the submerged standards to permit profitable discussion.
I do not know to what extent we are justified in hoping to find mirror images of our contemporary attitudes in the works of Victorian authors. But we do find instances, and we are pleased; possibly more often, we cannot find any without distorting our materials, and we suffer a negative reaction, disappointment, at least, or possibly frustration.
To what extent does James fulfill our hopes, or at least our more reasonable expectations? To a great extent, if not fully. His dramatization of the existence and power of sexuality, and his life-long determination, not to divorce art and homiletics, but to eliminate all moral intention that was not an integral and organic element in his intended artistic effect, are all that we could hope, and provide a partial explanation for his current popularity.
I have attempted not to submerge the tentative conclusions I have been able to reach in a morass of documentation, but I believe a few instances could serve well here to show the extent and depth of James’ dramatization of sexuality. The following drastically fore-shortened synopses are a random sampling of James’ production between 1881 and 1904.
The heroine of The Portrait of a Lady is enticed into marriage with a sadistic and diabolical fortune-hunter; whether her refusal to extricate herself and marry a more “healthy” young man is the result of an idealistic morality or of a perverse sexuality that may include frigidity and masochism is left ambiguous. The hero of The Aspern Papers is offered the personal papers of the late, great poet at the price of marriage with the unattractive middle-aged daughter of the dead poet’s mistress; upon his refusal the priceless documents are burnt. The Pupil, a novella, deals with either latent or repressed homosexuality, depending upon our reading of several ambiguous passages. In The Spoils of Poynton a young bachelor’s mother tries to persuade an innocent young girl to seduce the son, who would of course “do the right thing.” Unfortunately for all concerned, the young girl cannot “let herself go.” In What Maisie Knew a young child is the enforced spectator of the immoralities and unfortunate re-marriages of both her divorced parents. In The Turn of the Screw we are presented with the choice of believing in the extreme and unnamable corruption of two young children, or of believing that the governess is suffering from delusions and fantasies as the result of sexual frustration (this is Edmund Wilson’s popular interpretation of the novella). In The Wings of the Dove the incurably-ill heroine is courted by a fortune-hunter, who is aided and abetted by his fiancée. In The Ambassadors we are presented with a love affair between a young man and an older woman; the essential conflict in this most magnificent novel is between the approval of individuals and the condemnation by powerful forces in society. In The Golden Bowl, a ménage à quatre involves adultery and suppressed incestuous desires.
I think the breadth shown in such a listing is more important than the fact that each instance individually escaped wide-spread public condemnation on moral grounds. Certainly James’ methods were the controlling factor here, and we will have to discuss the problem later in the paper.
James was also quite articulate on the subject of the purposes and limitations of art. In reviews of the works of his contemporary novelists, from Dickens on, in critical articles on the French and Russian novelist, and particularly in the series of critical prefaces that he wrote for the New York Edition of his own works, collected by Richard Blackmur as The Art of the Novel, James maintained passionately and consistently that the form and content of a work of art was determined by purely aesthetic considerations. He did not maintain, as some modern aestheticians do, that art does not serve moral ends; but he did maintain that the moral effect of art is a result of its aesthetic value, not a contributing factor to that value.* [* not a forced option? Jim’s marginal note.] In James’ view, art was more moral than life, but in the same way. In the same way that a sentient being observes good and evil in the world around him, the sentient reader observes it in a novel. Since art is more lucid and more balanced than nature, its moral meaning is possibly more easily observed than nature’s is. But in neither case are there, or should there be, denotative sign-posts.
To move on to our other preoccupations: James is often accused of being either unrealistic or limited in his sense of economic determinism. I don’t know that either charge can be fully accepted. The supposed failure in realism seems actually a misstatement of the fact noted above—that James’ field of interest was limited to the middle and upper classes. I would say that his perception of the strange and ambivalent power of wealth for good and evil is, in such a context, realistic and acceptable. It is also, certainly, limited, in the sense that he seldom deals with the power of wealth for good and for evil in a broadly social, as opposed to a personal, frame of reference. He deals much more often with the wealth of individuals than with the wealth of classes, and his sense of the responsibilities entailed by wealth is also more individual than social. However, these are not necessarily serious limitations; social responsibility is a necessary corollary of personal responsibility.
James also treated but seldom the force of economic determinism in public affairs, but this was again a reflection of the limitations of his subject matter, for he did deal with it in the areas where it impinged upon his limited realm, notably in “The Death of the Lion,” where the artist suffers at the hands of a philistine plutocracy, and in the little-read novella, The Reverberator, where the evils of journalism, and its rampant invasions of privacy, are patently economic in origin. On the other hand, James displayed very little interest in the hypocrisies of organized religion. He was reared in an atmosphere of free inquiry, and seems never to have acquired an abiding interest in institutionalized religion as such. Yet I think the recurring accusation that “art for art’s sake” was, in fact, a religion for James, is actually an exaggeration. Art is, of course, practiced for the sake of art—because it does seem, to any artist, a significant human endeavor. But unfortunately most critics who use the label intend it pejoratively, and imply that in the artist under attack respect for art has supplanted respect for humanity, or, more precisely, for the significance of the condition in which man finds himself to exist. And in these terms I cannot accept or understand the accusation.
As I have noted above, the demands we tend to make upon an author’s subject matter are relatively easy to isolate, but it is difficult to use such a standard to judge the author’s honesty or his freedom from external inhibiting forces because of the difficulty in deciding to what extent the author himself and the society he lived in contributed to the limitations of his taste and of his personal experience. Formulating the standards we use in judging the author’s methods, his formal and stylistic tools for objectifying and presenting his material, seems somewhat more difficult, for unhappily our immediate and virtually-reflex impulse is to equate honesty in methods with frankness. I do not believe the two terms are co-extensive, and to accept an unreasoned cliché of popular criticism of the Victorian age would be to neglect our duty first to examine such criticism. Certainly frankness is an honest method, but it is not the honest method. In the same way that we can endorse surrealism by observing that it is, at its best, the realistic communication of special and complex material of human life, we can justify indirection, suggestion, nuance as the suitable, perhaps even necessary, methods for communicating perceptions and situations so delicate that frankness would threaten their very existence. In the craft of fiction, as in all crafts, only a tool adapted to the job at hand should be used.
I believe a rather good case could be made for the proposition that the last major generation of Victorian novelists, James, Hardy, and the somewhat younger Conrad, contributed more to the development of viable techniques for fiction than the two previous generations had (my division is arbitrary, but I would consider Dickens and Thackeray the first generation and Eliot, Meredith, and Trollope the second generation). At any rate, with James we find methods not current earlier in the century. They may all be considered as aspects or portions of his prime method—the complex, indirect, and suggestive communication of his subject matter. James was virtually intoxicated with these technical aspects of his art, and they were probably responsible both for the limited contemporary popularity of his works and for the fact that they suffered little moral disapprobation (with the exception of Daisy Miller, in some ways a rather uncharacteristic work).
James’ method was an advanced one, and it undoubtedly cost him the chance for a truly wide reading public, in the years that in retrospect seem to have been the flood tide of public interest in serious fiction. But the difficulty of appreciating, even of understanding, James’ fiction also saved it from the moral condemnation its subject matter might well have elicited. His insistence upon filtering his material through a central consciousness, and his use of “reflectors” and carefully managed ficelles, held obvious difficulties for readers accustomed to the omniscient narrator or the fluid first-person narrative. [Add: complex style.]
But indirect and suggestive communication of his material seems to have been more than a technique with James, seems indeed to have been a basic necessity in his thought. His works are not merely complicated in treatment, but complicated in conception; that is to say, his method is necessitated by his meaning. For this reason I feel particularly guilty for having contrived the capsule plot summaries enumerated above. But since they have already done the damage they could to James’ reputation and to my critical conscience, I should like to use them again in another connection, the attempt to explain James’ easy relations with the moral arbiters of the age.
The classic difficulty of effective censorship, a difficulty for which we as liberals must certainly be grateful, is that the censor must recognize and understand what he is to censor. This may seems merely a quibble, but I would consider cases in which these two elements are not both present as cases of suppression rather than censorship. And it is not difficult to see how easily James’ novels could have been only partially understood by his Victorian public. To use our same sampling again: One could possibly maintain that The Portrait of a Lady reflects only the sanctity of the marriage sacrament; that the delicately worded proposal in The Aspern Papers is not a proposal at all; that The Pupil is a story of simple, if extravagant, friendship, not homosexual love; that the mother in The Spoils of Poynton doesn’t advocate seduction (after all, she never says so, but what well-bred lady would have?); that What Maisie Knew is a tract against divorce, and is really an account of things that Maisie must certainly not have known; that The Turn of the Screw is a ghost story and a morality play showing the earthly activities of the biblical Satan; that The Wings of the Dove demonstrates only that “the love of money” etc.; that The Ambassadors is not tragic, but rather a long novel on the evils of French society; that The Golden Bowl is some sort of complicated finger exercise and has no recoverable meaning at all. I do not feel that I am exaggerating too unconscionably here, for most of the interpretations given in the first synopses were those of twentieth-century readers who have had the benefit of James’ own prefaces and of the general psychological revolution instigated by Freud, whose Interpretation of Dreams, published in 1900, did in fact impose a new intellectual orientation, fittingly, upon a new century.
I suppose by now my high regard for Henry James is obvious enough to explain my half-serious elevation of him to the pantheon of literary saints, the exclusive club on whose membership committee sit Dante and Shakespeare. At the risk of canceling any effect my discussion may have had, I will also say that James has one very real claim to their company; he, like some few very great writers, evokes in his critics the conviction that it is impossible to say anything that approaches within hailing distance of a final truth. I am dissatisfied with the present form of this paper, but, given the subject, I don’t know that any other form would satisfy me.




* * * *




English 271
May 16, 1955




Henry James: The American




James K. Webb, 55-3

History & Literature
Junior Generals




The American1 is one of the earliest James novels, published in 1877 (four years before The Portrait of a Lady), and in his Preface for the volume in the New York Edition thirty years later he decided that the novel had to be classified as “romantic.” He distinguished carefully—the treatment, the dramatization are romantic, the theme per se is realistic; the dramatization, as the “situation I had conceived (,) only saddled me with that for want of my invention of something better.” James admitted, though, that he could tolerate the romantic elements, to a degree, because of their unconsciousness, and I must admit a similar response. The American is not as “sure” in the welding of story to theme as The Ambassadors, but few novels are; and the technique itself, in many respects, compares reasonably well with his later developments—in style, in the centering of narrative on a single personality, in the scenic method, in ironic dialogue, to mention a few instances. Probably the best estimate of the relative merits of the book would result from comparison to later works (to The Spoils of Poynton for the theme of renunciation, or to The Ambassadors, perhaps, for stylistic developments, particularly the dramatization of the American in Paris), or from comparison to Hawthorne and Eliot (the sense of the weight of the past—“It’s time such a family should be broken up!”—in the one, the renunciation motif and Orestes myth in the other). But I feel slightly more capable of discussing the novel more nearly in vacuo, with only occasional references. The resulting simplicity will perhaps atone to some degree for the lack of breadth.
The international theme, the American in a European setting, is superficially the theme of the book; James describes the “germ” of the novel as “the situation, in another country and an aristocratic society, of some robust but insidiously beguiled and betrayed, some cruelly wronged, compatriot....” But he continues that “the question involved” would be the hero’s reaction, a result of personality and religious temperament as well as of national or social background. The international motif provides much of the irony” Newman’s ignorance of European customs played off against the often willful misinterpretation of his own American society by the Bellegardes; but the dramatic conflicts continually cross geographical categories. Still, the America-Europe alignment is important dramatically beyond the limits of irony, both “the American” and “the Europeans” finally achieve some sort of mythic stature. The Bellegardes, as an ancient and aristocratic family, recreate in many aspects the Oresteia. Valentin describes himself and Claire as Orestes and Electra, and their mother, Clytemnestra, kills (though very subtly) Agamemnon and takes, as symbolic paramour, her son Urbain. The parallel is not as complete as in Eliot’s Family Reunion, which ends with the death of Clytemnestra and Orestes’ flight to an eventual Athens, but achieves James’ purpose of the objectivation of social evil. Opposed to this is Newman’s search for his “ideal” wife, a recreation of the Grail legend similar to Fitzgerald’s use of it in The Great Gatsby. Newman’s quest, in fact, demands an interpretation in religious terms, despite the disclaimer near the end of the work:

“Whether it was Christian charity or unregenerate good nature—what it was, in the background of his soul—I don’t pretend to way...”

The religious significance of Newman’s actions can best be understood in relation to Jonathan Edward’s homily on “bread-corn” in Images or Shadows of Divine Things, in which he says “that often comes to pass concerning the saints in this life that is livelily represented by it: after their conversion they have a falling away...and then revive again and grow much taller than before and never fall again till they bring fruit to perfection.” Newman’s trip to Europe is the result of his “conversion”—a “conversion” he describes to Tristram in quasi-religious terms. There is a strong Biblical echo in “I feel as simple as a little child, and a little child might take me by the hand and lead me about.” To “become as a child” has always been the classic image for conversion. As for humility: “I’m not proud, I assure you I’m not proud.” In describing the incident itself, he says “I woke up suddenly, from a sleep or from a kind of a reverie, with the most extraordinary feeling in the world....” “It came upon me like that!” “...quite independently of my will....” “I seemed to feel a new man inside my old skin, and I longed for a new world.” Note “New man.” The “new world”, in this case, being the “old,” as well as the world of experience it represents. The “fruit to perfection” is the final renunciation, the abstention from revenge symbolized by the burning of his evidence. If there is an actual “falling away” between the infusion of grace and its sacrificial acknowledgment, it is Newman’s unrealized selfishness in the quest for a wife (the principal element emphasized in Charles Williams’ use of the Grail image), which is obliterated in the process of growth (Newman felt he had “out-grown” Tristram, finally).
The religious contrasts form another interesting division of characters. Despite my quotation from Edwards, Newman cannot be considered as purely Protestant. He occupies a middle ground between the Protestant and Catholic, which may be labeled “catholic.” In Chapter Five, Newman’s temperament is contrasted with the orthodox Protestant, the Rev. Benjamin Babcock of Dorchester. Newman “liked everything, he accepted everything, he found amusement in everything....” But Babcock “Your way at any rate is not my way....” Babcock “proceeded to tone down” his impressions of Luini, but Newman, later, conversing with Valentin, is amused “to heighten the color of the episode.” Contrarily, Newman cannot understand the Catholic ideal of monasticism when Valentin half-humorously advocates it (for himself), or later when Claire takes the veil as Sister Veronica. Her choice seems to him “a confounding combination of the inexorable and the grotesque. As the image deepened before him the grotesque seemed to expand and overspread it....” But there are elements of both views in Newman’s own character, of the Protestant ethic and of the more Catholic emphasis of his growing tendency to renunciation. The religious orientation is reinforced through the work by the use of religious imagery and terminology: “purgatory”, “innocence”, “sacred”, “profane”, “persecute”, “saint”, “apostle”, “vocation”, “they mortified me....pushed me into this bottomless pit, where I lie howling and gnashing my teeth!”, “Croix Helvétique”, “the lamb”, “Rue d’Enfer.”2
Much more important for the shape of the novel than either the geographical or religious cleavages is the distinction between the “social” and the “sociable” American, and his nemesis a “social” European mother and son, is not accidental, but the actual antithesis is between the devotees of the “forms” of society and of the “real thing”. The distinction is dramatized throughout, and is also mentioned, with varying degrees of subtlety, many times: “Madame de Bellegarde appeared to think him too sincere,” a head stuck “into a vice, as if you were sitting for the photograph of propriety,” Newman possessed “in default of a competent knowledge of the principles of etiquette, a very downright sense of the ‘meanness’ of certain actions,” Claire is the victim of “a kind of religion....of the family laws, the religion of which her implacable little mother was the high priestess,” Mrs. Tristram comments “They’re a bad lot; they have pulled off the mask.” The difference is stated in several ways, perhaps the best and simplest is used by Newman during his visit to the duchess: “delicacy” vs. “policy”.3
In the Preface to The American James admits that to limn the division between the real and the romantic is as difficult as placing a milestone between north and south; form and technique can sometimes be as difficult, especially when great care has been exercised in the attempt to make both organic. The problem is particularly evident in James’ habit of making names and houses extensions of characters. The names often approach a “supersubtle” form of allegory. Christopher Newman: Mlle. Nioche mentions Columbus, the “inventor of America”, and in the form of St. Christopher his travels are perhaps protected, the New Man. The Bellegardes: the “fine (ironic) watch, or guard”, represented by the suavity of Urbain, urbanity, the fraternal love of Valentin (though not martyred at Rome, he was wounded there), the purity of Claire. Mrs. Bread: wholesomeness, perhaps even, in her capacity of dea ex machina, the Christian “bread upon the waters.” (The game can be pushed too far—does Mlle. Nioche derive her name from “niche”, as prankster, and “noche” as Charon? The tracking of unconscious mechanisms, coinage etc., ends very quickly in the quicksand.) Characterization by setting is generally more successful, being less obvious: the Tristram house, extension of the rich expatriate Americans “was rich in the modern conveniences...their principal household treasures, the gas-lamps and the furnace-holes,” the Hotel de Bellegard is lighted, rather, by candles, and impresses Newman with the associations of “Eastern seraglios” and “convents”, their chateau with the comparison, “like a Chinese penitentiary,” Newman’s own rooms represent Tristram’s choice, but the character of “the American” is forced upon them by the trunk in the drawing room. Valentin, carefully, lives away from the Hotel de Bellegard, among symbols of social forms for which he has an honest, if scarcely limited, affection. The house as symbol develops very little after the first statement, but with the progression of the story the significance of those first descriptions gains in importance, in force.
This use of house symbolism is a good example of the continued double utilization of many stylistic elements to implement the romantic theme of the novel. The novel “works” well on the first reading; only on re-reading are the devices so obvious as to impede the narrative flow. It is in relation to this double significance or deliberate ambiguity that much of the technique may be profitably studied. It is the language itself that most rewards such a study, but first we may look at a few devices used to point, to direct the language itself. First, the use of Mrs. Tristram as a ficelle, a confidante. At several points she is responsible for the direction of the narrative, for the foreshadowing of events—either by her own comments, or by those she draws from Newman. The most obvious examples of the former are her actual contradictions of Newman’s inferences, or his lack of inference:

“But after all,” said Newman, “there is nothing to congratulate me upon. It is not a triumph.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mrs. Tristram; “it is a great triumph.”

Then, of course, she explains her assertion. The prime example of the latter is worth quoting at length (since the exchange provides the reader with the “dark secret” a full 150 pages before the proof is discovered):

“Well,” said Newman, “she is wicked, she is an old sinner.”
“What is her crime?” asked Mrs. Tristram.
“I shouldn’t wonder if she had murdered some one—all from a sense of duty, or course.”
“How can you be so dreadful?” sighed Mrs. Tristram.
“I am not dreadful. I am speaking of her favorably.”
...”And what has he done?”
“....If he has never committed murder, he has at least turned his back and looked the other way while some one else was committing it.”

(There is an immediate disclaimer, describing this as “American humor”, but the chill remains; the final achievement perhaps is a vindication of the seriousness of that humor.) The main criticism of this particular confidante is that she is not sufficiently integrated into the narrative—a criticism harder to feel today, perhaps, when James’ ficelles have become almost an accepted convention; but the deficiency could be easily pointed up by a comparison with the role of Maria Gostrey.
The subject of Newman’s conversations with Mrs. Tristram puts before us the larger problem of the uses of dialogue, and one of its occasional components, the anecdote, in the novel. In this early work it is the ironic by-play that is most fully developed—both the conscious ironies of M. de Bellegarde and his mother, and the unconscious irony of the unfeeling or uninformed. The first is omnipresent, and could benefit little from any discussion of it; my quotation of Tristram’s anecdote (below) gives a sufficient example of it, in its most obvious, if not its most polished, form. As examples of the latter, here are two of the most “telling” sentences in the book. Young Mme. de Bellegarde, as the unfeeling commentator:

“Poor Claire—in a white shroud and a big brown cloak! That’s the toilette of the Carmelites, you know. Well, she was always fond of long, loose things.”

Tom Tristram, as the uninformed commentator:

“It may be that it was not Madame de Cintré that backed out first; very likely the old woman put her up to it. I suspect she and her mother are really as thick as thieves, eh?”

The extended ironic commentary is at its best in these two scenes, and in Lord Deepmere’s comments in Hyde Park.4
Another element in the utilization of dialogue for dramatic irony—an element, essentially, for the more complete rendering of character, and for narrative development, but also quite in line with James’ pursuit of the “interesting” in storytelling—is the seemingly irrelevant or extraneous conversationalist. The two most carefully developed scenes making use of the method are Mrs. Tristram’s first discussion of Claire with Newman (Tom Tristram makes 15 interruptory comments of varying use and value), and the announcement of the engagement to Claire’s family (young Mme. de Bellegarde asserts herself some seven times, underlining the scene with the practical—her tailor—as well as the ironic).5 An interesting minor characteristic of the dialogue is the occasional literal translation from the French,6 and the retention of idiomatic French phrases throughout.
Tom Tristram also reproduces the best example of what James considered the proper anecdote (“the first of its duties is to point directly to the person whom it so distinguishes.”):

“My wife told her we were great friends of Mr. Newman. The marquise stared a moment, and then said, ‘Oh, Mr. Newman! My daughter has made up her mind to marry a Mr. Newman.’ Then Madame de Cintré...said it was this dear lady that had planned the match and brought them together. ‘Oh, ‘tis you I have to thank for my American son-in-law,’ the old lady said to Mrs. Tristram. ‘It was a very clever thought of yours. Be sure of my gratitude.’ And then she began to look at me and presently said, ‘Pray, are you engaged in some species of manufacture?’ I wanted to say that I manufactured broom-sticks for old witches to ride on, but Lizzie got in ahead of me. ‘My husband, Madame la Marquise, ‘ she said, ‘belongs to that unfortunate class of persons who have no profession and no business, and do very little good in the world.’ To get her poke at the old woman she didn’t care where she shoved me. ‘Dear me,’ said the marquise, ‘we all have our duties.’ ‘I am sorry mine compel me to take leave of you,’ said Lizzie. And we bundled out again. But you have a mother-in-law, in all the force of the term.”

James’ discussion of the anecdote is as a form for a work, but the stringency of his definition is of quite as much use here. I have quoted the scene at such length because, beyond the illumination of character, it effectively dramatizes a theme I have mentioned before, the intentional cruelty within polite forms, of the skull beneath the skin. This is “policy”, not “delicacy”.7
Despite the many elements that, in any broad or total view of James’ work, seem important as germinal forms of later excellences, The American does not enchant one by its form, not even totally in its theme, but in the purely linguistic aspects of style the work is mature even by Jamesian standards. In his Preface he carefully analyzes the faults, both of the form (the clothing of the theme in effective drama) and of the theme (which fails at enchantment only so far as it is obscured by that faulty dramatization), but does not mention the stylistic accomplishment in the novel. This is not from false modesty, I am sure, but from the belief that the careful reader will be conscious of it on his own. For this reason (the adequacy, but limitations, of James’ Preface), even in the consideration of the form and theme I have concentrated primarily on linguistic, stylistic elements—James’ analysis of the inadequacy of his characterization of Claire, of the disconnected and uncontrolled run of the story (that Newman must not have been at the Opera the night after his betrothal, etc.) is much more perceptive than anything the student critic can offer. The following discussion of certain uses made of language-themes is thus partially justified by James’ complete neglect of them in the Preface, a justification that cannot, unhappily, be extended to cover many of the random generalizations above.
The linguistic threads may be distinguished quantitatively, and perhaps qualitatively. As examples of the extension of the single word, reference, or metaphor—the word “satisfied” is used many times, and gains an incremental as well as a variational force before the final utilization, “It was a strange satisfaction, and yet it was a satisfaction....”8 The reference to Dr. Franklin is prepared for by an earlier allusion.9 And as an example of the metaphor, strictly speaking, used for unity and development: first, Tom Tristram says “They are terrible people—her monde; all mounted upon stilts a mile high....”, later James mentions that Valentin’s “instructors had not succeeded in mounting him upon stilts.” Thus in its final use the adjective regains the force of the repeated metaphor—Mme. de Bellegarde is “the stilted little lady by the fire....”10
In the telling of the tale itself, and in the development of Newman’s character, James uses several general or ideational language-themes. Of general importance are those of tone: of cold and dampness,11 of light and dark;12 and the active imagery that keeps the prose moving, and dramatic: of death and violence,13 of gestures.14 To intensify Newman’s character, terms from gambling,15 commerce,16 and the theatre (surprizingly a serious interest of his),17 and syntactically, the emphasis on the American, the Whitman “I”.18 The appealing differences between Newman and Valentin are universalized by references to the “democratic”19 and the “epicurean”.20
Two images that served James well later are worth noting. The sea: “as if he had plunged into some medium as deep as the ocean, and as if he must exert himself to keep from sinking,” “a strange sea of feeling,” “Well, to cast your nets you have to go into the water,” “the swimmer stripped,” “rise to the surface, return to the light.”21 The jolt: “He felt as one does in missing a step, in an ascent, where one expected to find it.”22
It is disappointing to realize that I have reached the limit of the paper without the space to discuss in detail either the successful element of the novel, the language patterns, or the unsuccessful: James’ forced plotting that requires to unrealistically abjure “the savor of success”23 because of their distaste for “the odor of democracy”,24 but I can perhaps partially justify myself on the latter count by affirming that, on first reading, the novel very nearly succeeds in forcing the reader’s belief in the romantic framework—mainly, I think, by the force and irony of such metaphors as the “fishbones and nutshells” of M. de Bellegarde’s diet (his Bourbon allegiance), and particularly the recurrent illumination of Newman’s character, the “tall, protective, good-natured elder brother” of the Preface, such as the description of his desire to “break all the windows” of empty forms.




Notes:

1. Page references are to the Rinehart reprint of the text of the first edition.

2. For some other examples of religious imagery, pp. 69, 74, 103, 114, 138, 142, 170, 195, 249, 259, 263, 300, 315, 318, 321, 351, 354, 357.

3. For other overt comments on the conflict, pp. 32, 51, 88, 94, 110, 114, 117, 127, 150, 151, 152, 155, 174, 176, 192, 236, 239, 251, 289, 323, 332.

4. Pp. 322-324, pp. 340-341, pp. 349-350.

5. Pp. 33-39, 184-186.

6. Pp. 8, 82.

7. For a characteristic anecdote delivered by Mme. de Bellegarde herself, see p. 127.

8. For “insatiable”, “satisfied”, “satisfaction”, etc., see pp. 13, 35, 205, 220, 239, 268, 280, 281, 299, 311, 335, 356.

9. Pp. 19, 158.

10. Pp. 37, 92, 130.

11. Pp. 78, 148, 152, 165, 180, 189, 259, 275, 289, 320, 338.

12. Pp. 165, 181, 204, 259, 279, 321. Also the use of art terms passim.

13. Pp. 47, 76, 77, 111, 152, 153, 165, 194, 203, 209, 226, 243, 254, 263, 273, 274, 283, 288, 303, 305, 313, 315, 326, 355.

14. Pp. 27, 41, 104, 177, 217, 241, 299.

15. Pp. 20, 21, 24, 57, 123, 345. And the word “deuce” throughout.

16. Pp. 19, 23, 25, 31, 34, 61, 95, 130, 133, 137, 149, 171, 178, 192, 200, 202, 203, 268, 306, 324, 327, 329, 345.

17. Pp. 28, 92, 99, 100, 200, 226, 345.

18. Pp. 17, 30, 33, 117, 120, 160, 249, 265, 295.

19. Pp. 27, 44, 85.

20. Pp. 64, 163, 259.

21. Pp. 79, 124, 156, 162, 242, 283.

22. P. 79.

23. P. 215.

24. P. 167.




[The professor’s comment and grade on the paper:]

This is a very good general essay. Its clarity and simplicity of style are admirable and rare in undergraduate papers. Moreover, it contains the germs of many good papers. But, though excellent in its generality, your paper does not—as you realize—go deeply enough into any one idea or theme.
B+ 88




* * * *




The Captive Architect
in
Absalom, Absalom!




James K. Webb, ’55-4








At the time of its publication reviewers used several analogies in their attempts to understand and judge Absalom, Absalom! The most common and naive reference was to the gothic tradition in the novel, often to Charles Brockden Brown, the American practitioner of the genre. Thus they could account for the tombstones and midnight rides. Others mentioned Wuthering Heights for obvious reasons, but with no better results. Cowley suggested a better analogy, to Poe in general and “The Fall of the House of Usher” in particular, in an attempt to interpret the incest theme and the sense of family doom. (I personally feel that Poe’s detective stories are also important, particularly for the method of “divination” in the last four chapters, but a French reviewer had what is probably a better suggestion in this regard, “Et cette lettre (Mr.Compson’s) declanche une recherche du temps perdu ou, plus exactement, une divination de temps perdu” using the “technique du jeu de patience” and “incidentes toutes proustiennes”.) But I think the most fruitful comparison is to the Greek tragedy.
There are several elements of technique in common: the basis in myth (announced by the title); the action usually “reported” rather than “represented”; the incomplete knowledge of the narrators (Mr. Compson’s presentation of the Sutpen-Coldfield wedding is vivid, but he forgets that Mrs. Coldfield was still alive at the time)’ the choral feeling and method of the longest single-voice section, the central chapter in the italics of Rosa Coldfield. The form of the novel is itself similar to Oedipus Rex, an “imitation of the action” that is complete when the past has succeeded in overtaking the present. But the most important similarity is in philosophical intent. As in Oedipus again, the theme is the working-out of the curse, the design, with its basis in the childhood of the man and of the country. There is in Absalom, Absalom! just such a sense of ordaining and guiding fate, which can be analyzed in many ways, but I shall limit myself to its representation by and through the captive French architect.
Absalom, Absalom! is a novel of speculation, not fact. The narrators remember, sometimes accurately, rationalize, invent, sometimes lose themselves in rhetoric, leaving the story to the tone alone to tell. There is one document from the central narrative, Bon’s letter, and even it gives us little fact. So with each re-reading, my attitude to the novel becomes more tentative, more speculative. I question each fact, each episode, question especially the motives, memory, and sources, of each narrator’s contribution, and take the total emotional experience of the novel on faith to escape from the hell of a judicial attitude. So let’s say there was an architect, and we can say something about him. He was French, he arrived in Jefferson in the same wagon with Sutpen’s slaves, in 1833, somehow in thrall to “the demon”, wearing some Paris clothes and a hat, and later (during the two years of his stay in Yoknapatawpha County) losing the hat in his unsuccessful attempt to escape either the demon or the thralldom, then gone. Paid or not or how much we don’t know. Birth or death or past (except for a shadowy reference to the same Indies that cast out Sutpen) or future or even name unknown, only the vivid and present two years of the building. And that’s all we can learn in the novel. In Requiem for a Nun we are told that he laid out the courthouse before he left, so his dubious memory lives in the county even after the burning on the Domain. yet we may claim some importance for him; he is, to the narrators, a vivid image from the past and, like all such images, is mentioned, rementioned, discussed hypnotically, “the captive architect”.
An organized discussion of the importance of this captive architect is difficult to present, mainly because of two distinctions that must be kept in mind—the distinction between the architect’s importance in the actual story and his usefulness to Faulkner in the telling of it (the former slight, the latter great), and secondly, the odd dualism in the nature of fate itself, that an individual is both acted upon and acting, fated object and instrument of fate’s action. Also, I have difficulty finding a suitable working definition of this “fate”, a definition that would be both broader than the individual or nation curse and more concrete than the all-inclusive “things as they are”. Only a little less objectionable is “the limitation of choice, volition, or action” which I shall have to use, for lack of a better.
The architect’s own participation in this “limitation” is his two years of captivity during the building of Sutpen’s Hundred. He is described repeatedly as “the captive architect”, and not “captive” only to “Sutpen’s bare promise” of pay, as the incident of his attempted escape and his recapture demonstrates. That his “fate” is not unique among Faulkner’s characters is intimated by General Compson’s description of him, “desperate and hopeless but indomitable too, invincible too,” the paradox and the words that Faulkner has used so often to describe characters he respects, or even admires. He, too, endured. But the French architect is also an instrument of fate, is “adjunctive to the design”, the design that is also the curse, since it is the imposed limitations of the design that prevent Sutpen from acknowledging Charles Bon. The architect’s success, as man and artist, is in vanquishing Sutpen’s baroque dream and building a house in the classic manner—“...and so created of Sutpen’s very defeat the victory which, in conquering, Sutpen himself would have failed to gain.”
The temptation is great to say that Faulkner, too, succeeded in vanquishing his material and creating a classic drama. (In this regard his most subtle achievement is the relegation of the so-called gothic elements of the story to the imagination of his narrators, thus retaining the desired drama, yet not falsifying the perceived reality. As a single example, in Quentin’s description of the fire, at which he was not present:

“and then for a moment maybe Clytie appeared in that window from which she must have been watching the gates constantly day and night for three months—the tragic gnome’s face beneath the clean headrag, against a red background of fire, seen for a moment between two swirls of smoke,...possibly even serene...before the smoke swirled across it again....”

The careless reader accepts this as fact, and not as the arch subterfuge of art.) That is too broad a statement for a paper this short, but I leave it as an opinion and a salute to Faulkner, and affirm that the captive architect, the house, Clytie, are not the only minor characters upon whom Faulkner thrusts heavy but bearable weights of meaning.
I have already suggested two of the uses made of the architect, as an “adjunct” to that portion of the “design” which involved tearing a plantation from the land, and as representative of the artist. But he wears several other masks too, with some difficulty occasionally because of innate contradictions, or seeming contradictions. From his first appearance on the second page of the novel his plight serves to heighten the horror of slavery, since his character as an artist is inseparable from his very denomination (always as “architect”, this is perhaps one reason his name is never mentioned). This may even be read as a not-so-subtle dramatization of the position of the artist in the antebellum South. Later, during the construction of Sutpen’s Hundred, he represents, in his Paris clothes and his hat, achieved civilization, in opposition to the process of civilizing, represented by the naked negroes and the naked Sutpen. Here his character as European is important, if one considers European civilization in the role of midwife, rather than mother, in the birth of American civilization.
But the most important function of the architect is his hopeless flight from his captivity, an incremental variation on a recurrent theme in the book. Sutpen tries to leave his past behind him in Haiti (and in Virginia), Henry tries to outride the knowledge of the sudden Christmas birth of a brother, Rosa rides to Jefferson to forget “the affront”, Quentin goes to Harvard but does not escape (no one escapes) either his incest fantasies or the South. In all these cases only the past (and its seed of future growth) pursues them, the past, among other things, of the slave and the society founded upon them; but the architect’s pursuers are the actual slaves, and, more important, the actual owners of slaves, the society itself. (The achievement of the grotesque here, strangely, is not through the tracking negroes, whom we have heard of in action before, but through Sutpen’s care to borrow unneeded dogs, fearing that his county neighbors would not recognize the stalking of a human being, even a foreigner, as “sport” without its usual accessories).
The incident provides a framework for Sutpen’s narration of his past and the American past, and an opportunity for Faulkner to tell a hunting story—the Sutpen narration important to the reader; and the hunting, to the author. But one does not forget the architect, either in reading of his flight or in attempting to analyze it. In the literal tale of the attempted escape the architect is the animal desire for freedom (it is on this literal plane that Shreve suggests another animal motivation, “Or maybe he just wanted a girl.”), and the negroes are the domesticated animals that trail, are animal complacency. But the architect’s motivation is not wholly animal, he accepts the desperate gambit, with foreknowledge of defeat, but doing his damnedest to “architect” himself out of the Domain and the South, Oedipus fleeing the curse, the fate, but, to change tragedies in mid-stream, pursued by avenging furies hoping to eat his “interdict meat”.
This is the principal function of the architect in the novel, his literal attempt to escape his fate that emphasizes the images of flight used to describe the hopeless effort or lack of effort, lack of success always at least, of the principal characters against their own fate. he and the negroes are type and symbol of captivity and subjection to fate, and are the basis for the inevitable emotional induction that climbs, step by step, to the captive characters, all adjunctive to the ultimate design; to the captive narrators, having to tell it, to hear it, again; to the captive novelist, never quite succeeding in escaping his own involvement.




The professor’s comments and grade:

I don’t know exactly what to make of this paper. Certainly it shows an enormous sensitivity to language—especially those portions which are almost Faulknerian in their rhythm. But remember that this paper is a critical one and criticism demands clear, concise prose. You are not supposed to make reading your paper a “living nightmare.”
If your subject is the “captive architect,” you are too slow in developing your ideas for so short a paper. If your subject is the “captive architect as a character in a Greek tragedy,” you seem to forget it around page 6. The inevitable consequences of your method of presentation is a confusion concerning your theme.
I was particularly impressed by your parenthesis on page four—a parenthesis which alone would make an interesting and original topic.
Again, if you have used any outside help—and it appears that you have—please use footnotes and bibliography.
A C.R.




* * * *




Trollope’s Teleology of Art


One of our primary methods for investigating cultural and intellectual history is the examination of the unquestioned assumptions that any age found it possible to make. Through such an examination we arrive, ideally, at a statement of the articles of faith upon which their working assumptions were based. Thus, I will begin an exploration of the mid-Victorian teleology of art by discussing the version of it that appears in Anthony Trollope’s Autobiography.
The Autobiography was written between October, 1875, and April, 1876, but was not published until October, 1883, some months after the author’s death. According to Michael Sadleir, in his Trollope, A Commentary, a book which corrects the strange omissions and exaggerated emphases of the Autobiography, the publication of the Autobiography resulted in an immediate diminution of Trollope’s literary reputation. This fact would make us suspicious of any attempt to attribute currency to the views Trollope expressed, were the reasons for its poor reception not so apparent. The Autobiography was published nearly seventy years after Trollope’s birth, and was rejected by a younger generation—a generation consciously striving to free itself from the mid-Victorian moral views, and already committed to an aesthetic diametrically opposed to Trollope’s. We are therefore reasonably justified in considering Trollope’s views as representative of the 1850’s and 1860’s, though not of the 1880’s.
There is also the problem of the reliability of autobiography, since it is notoriously subject to conscious and unconscious suppression and distortion (Trollope himself wrote pointedly on this problem). And his Autobiography is, certainly, brusquely self-conscious, and bristles with strategic, and repetitive, self-criticism and disclaimers. But as a whole I consider the book an honest portrait of the writer’s intellect, such as it was, despite the deliberate suppression of most of his emotional life.
Trollope’s teleology of art seems, at first sight, to be that which has been most widely accepted, and for the longest period of time, in western civilization—the dual aim, to delight and instruct, as we have been told by Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Joshua Reynolds. But careful examination of Trollope’s contexts shows tow significant special meanings: to “delight” or “please,” for Trollope, had necessarily to be accomplished through “realism,” the realistic portrayal of character and situation; and to “instruct” had necessarily to be the imparting of moral instruction. I should in fairness add that moral instruction could, for Trollope, include, if only tangentially, the intellectual and the emotional, but had to lead, as its chief aim, to better moral conduct.
From our contemporary viewpoint, this is an unexamined assumption. Trollope seems to have been totally unaware that his two aims could conflict; that the effort for moral instruction could distort the realism of his work more than any essential artistic selection did; that fidelity to character and situation could cloud his moral vision. We would probably be justified in ascribing Trollope’s unresolved dualism in teleology to a view of the world as essentially moral, since this would coincide with our knowledge of mid-nineteenth century English thought. (This last statement had better be amended to read “popular or conservative thought.”)
That Trollope’s philosophy of art was essentially mid-Victorian becomes more obvious when we consider it in relation to that of the next succeeding, and last Victorian generation, to that of Hardy, Conrad, and James. The concept of moral instruction had been displaced or modified. For Hardy, the impetus was more the dramatization of the amorality of the universe than the morality of man; for James, moral action was an essential element, but only an element, of “aesthetic conduct”; for Conrad, morality had, in addition to a real value, a nostalgic value. Hardy, Conrad, and James were also nearer our contemporary beliefs on artistic psychology and method than was Trollope’s journeyman in literature.
I should perhaps add that our contrasting contemporary views of the teleology of art are also unexamined ones, in some senses. The twentieth century distrust of dualisms, developed in this country by William James and Dewey, in England by Lord Russell, and on the continent by the various existentialists, has made us carefully critical of all dualistic philosophies, and particularly those of the nineteenth century, but has left us, perhaps necessarily, and inherently as human beings with human limitations, only carelessly critical of our own fixed ideas.




* * * *




NATHANAEL WEST


It is possible to make a circumstantial case for Nathanael West’s involvement in radical politics. His adult life co-incides very closely with the period of our study. Born Nathan Wallenstein Weinstein, in 1902, and educated at Brown University, receiving a Ph.B. degree in 1924, West moved in literary and intellectual circles, in New York until 1936, and then in Hollywood until his death in 1940. He worked with William Carlos Williams in editing the magazine Contact, and was a friend of James T. Farrell, Erskine Caldwell, Josephine Herbst, Edward Newhouse, John Herrmann, Julian Shapiro (later known as John Sanford), and Leane Zugsmith. In company with Miss Zugsmith, Farrell, and Newhouse, West picketed with strikers at Ohrbach’s department store in New York City. Later, while in Hollywood, West corresponded with Jack Conroy, writing of the “great, progressive fight” being made by the “sincere, honest people” who worked there.
But a little reflection makes such an evaluation of West’s supposed radicalism seem quite dubious. In listing his associates we would be employing, in criticism, methods that we deplored, a very few years ago, when Senator McCarthy used them in Senate hearings—association proves merely association, and not guilt. By emphasizing his Jewish background, by assuming some vague ethnic determinism, we would be submitting to a xenophobia little more sophisticated than that which amazes us in our reading of Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Sacco and Vanzetti. To be consistent we would also have to attribute the radicalism of a Foster to his Anglo-Saxon heritage.* [* If we were not already suspicious of xenophobic reactions, we would be after reading West’s extensive satirical attack on racism. The fascist villain of A Cool Million glorifies his “National Revolution,” in the final speech of the book, by claiming that through it the country “was delivered from sophistication, Marxism and International Capitalism [the Jewish Bankers]” and “purged of alien diseases.”] And in quoting from West’s letter to Conroy we would be suppressing a context already incomplete; the limited version of the letter available in print continues:

I believe there is a place for the fellow who yells fire and indicates where some of the smoke is coming from without actually dragging the hose to the spot.

We would also be ignoring a very significant element in West’s fiction: his satirical treatment of Communists and reformers in general.
Thus we seem to be checked in any effort to analyze, through reference to West’s biography, his political position and political significance. Too much of the relevant material is unavailable; we have no published correspondence, no biography, no worksheets, no juvenilia. And the little material that is available may be variously interpreted. We are therefore forced to attempt a broader approach, an approach, fortunately, that offers greater opportunity for significant comment, even though it often requires greater effort. Although we cannot, with conscience, consider West only in his relation to any organized political, or even literary, movement, we can subject his four published novels to analyses of meaning and method, of the content and that which contains.
At first sight, we seem to be committing a critical indiscretion here comparable, in its capacity for distorting our material, to the emphasis upon West’s biography. Can we have any justification, other than convenience, for dividing West’s work into its component meaning and method, since this implies a fragmenting of West himself, as a writer, into separate roles of intellectual and artist? Possibly we can. The intellectual and the artistic are functions of the mind that can have independent existence. It is possible, is, indeed, a common occurrence, for a man to be an intellectual without being an artist; it is also possible, although perhaps less common, for a man to be an intuitive artist without having the logical and mnemonic capacities that would qualify him as an intellectual. These two functions of mental effort are thus, at least theoretically, separable; and with a writer like West we are bound to attempt the implementation of the theory, since the use of either of these limited views alone would leave us with a mistaken and inadequate precipitate to represent West’s achievement.
In approaching the intellectual content of West’s work, we once again have an option of method. West was, unfortunately, virtually a stereotype of the twentieth century intellectual; but to limit our discussion to exploring the significance and validity of this stereotype would be again to bow to biographical ease and to admit to our discussion the patently extraneous history of the development of this stereotype in the American mind. Rather, we would employ a method suggested by a quotation from Matthew Arnold:

Human thought, which made all institutions, inevitably saps them, resting only in that which is absolute and eternal.

Naturally, our assault upon the world of West’s thought will be incomplete; the object of intellect is everything—physical fact, the individual human being, the abstract idea, as well as institutions. But a view of the institutions West carefully and consciously sapped should give us at least a symbolically operative panorama of the unlimited objects of human thought.
Before investigating some of West’s criticism of institutions, we had better attempt to clarify our application of Arnold’s partial definition of intellect. The sentence rests upon a suppressed metaphor: “sapping” may be constructive, as in the production of maple sugar, or destructive, and eventually fatal, as in the conversion of the energy of a host organism to the use of a parasitic growth. West, as artist, can be considered as exemplifying the former process; from his attack on institutions came significant art. But West, as intellectual, was much nearer the latter meaning, which was probably Arnold’s own; West’s purpose was destructive.
West attacked a wide range of institutions, and there seems to be no necessary order for treating them. For convenience, we may group them into those broadly considered political—democratic government in this country, the radical movement, and the nationalistic fascist counter-movement; secondly, those we might call humanistic survivals—religion, education, and marriage; and, lastly, those included in the phrase “profit capitalism”—banking, communication, entertainment, the professions, advertizing, and enforced inactivity. Others might be listed, but this round dozen should be sufficient to show West’s criticism of his contemporary American culture.
The satire on our system of democratic self-government ranges from the top to the bottom. “Shagpoke” Whipple, in A Cool Million, is a former president of the United States, but is not above defrauding the depositors of his Rat River, Vermont, bank, and leading a national fascist revolution, to preserve, among other American traditions, the right to sell the labor of one’s children to the highest bidder. At the other extreme, Patrolman Riley not only refuses to arrest Wu Fong, “the biggest man in the district,” and proprietor of a very elaborate disorderly house, but also assaults and arrests the man naïve enough to suggest such an impolitic act.
In West’s treatment of the radicalisms of the left, we find a significant and marked limitation in his satire. his prime example, the Communists, are not necessarily wrong—only stupid. West seconded the criticism of American culture in the Communists’ traveling display, the “Chamber of American Horrors.” The following is his description of the inanimate half of the exhibit:

The hall which led to the main room of the “inanimate” exhibit was lined with sculptures in plaster. Among the most striking of these was a Venus de Milo with a clock in her abdomen, a copy of Power’s “Greek Slave” with elastic bandages on all her joints, a Hercules wearing a small, compact truss.
In the center of the principal salon was a gigantic hemorrhoid that was lit from within by electric lights. To give the effect of throbbing pain, these lights went on and off.
All was not medical, however. Along the walls were tables on which were displayed collections of objects whose distinction lay in the great skill with which their materials had been disguised. Paper had been made to look like wood, wood like rubber, rubber like steel, steel like cheese, cheese like glass, and, finally, glass like paper.
Other tables carried instruments whose purposes were dual and sometimes triple or even sextuple. Among the most ingenious were pencil sharpeners that could also be used as earpicks, can openers as hair brushes. Then, too, there was a large variety of objects whose real uses had been cleverly camouflaged. The visitor saw flower pots that were really victrolas, revolvers that held candy, candy that held collar buttons and so forth.

Yet the Communists stupidly join forces with Whipple’s National Revolutionary Party, and are crushed. In addition to convicting his representative Communist, Snodgrass, of stupidity, West questions the motivation behind radical involvement:

Sondgrass had become one of their agents because of his inability to sell his “poems.” Like many another “poet,” he blamed his literary failure on the American public instead of on his own lack of talent, and his desire for revolution was really a desire for revenge. Furthermore, having lost faith in himself, he thought it his duty to undermine the nation’s faith in itself.

Yet West’s failure to criticize the aims of communism does not necessarily signify his complete, or even partial, agreement; we could argue with some success that his generally pessimistic appraisal of human capacity to manage human affairs made unnecessary an analysis or judgment of impossible ideals.
West’s version of a possible fascist revolution in the United States is a pointed example of his propensity for underpinning extravagant surface detail with serious critical thought. The revolutionists are figures from comic opera; their equipment includes

Coonskin hats with extra long tails, deerskin shirts with or without fringes, blue jeans, moccasins, squirrel rifles.

But the revolution itself is only too real. Its first overt act occurs at Beulah, a small southern town. After a demagogic speech by Whipple, the mob goes into action:

Before Mr. Whipple had quite finished his little talk, the crowd ran off in all directions, shouting “Lynch him! Lynch him!” although a good three-quarters of its members did not know whom it was they were supposed to lynch. This fact did not bother them, however. They considered their lack of knowledge an advantage rather than a hindrance, for it gave them a great deal of leeway in their choice of a victim.

Other, more practical-minded citizens proceeded to rob the bank and loot the principal stores, and to free all their relatives who had the misfortune to be in jail.
As time went on, the riot grew more general in character. Barricades were thrown up in the streets. The heads of Negroes were paraded on poles. A Jewish drummer was nailed to the door of his hotel room. The housekeeper of the local Catholic priest was raped.

Thus, in politics, the status quo and the movements to the left and to the right, are all unacceptable. West’s analysis of three social institutions—religion, education, and marriage—that have served as refuges for some of his intellectual and artistic contemporaries, is no more sympathetic.
On the subject of religion, West’s criticism again extends from end to end of the scale, from the “new thomistic synthesis” to the “First Church of Christ Dentist, where He is worshiped as Preventer of Decay. The Church whose symbol is the trinity new-style: Father, Son and Wirehaired Fox Terrier.” West’s criticism is indirect but powerful; in the following newspaper report, for instance, he exaggerates current tendencies into the realm of the unarguable absurd.

“ADDING MACHINE USED IN RITUAL OF WESTERN SECT...
Figures Will be Used for Prayers for Condemned Slayer of Aged Recluse . . . . DENVER, COLO., Feb. 2 (A.P.) Frank H. Rice, Supreme Pontiff of the Liberal Church of America has announced he will carry out his plan for a ‘goat and adding machine’ ritual for William Moya, condemned slayer, despite objection to his program by a Cardinal of the sect. Rice declared the goat would be used as part of a ‘sack cloth and ashes’ service shortly before and after Moya’s execution, set for the week of June 20. Prayers for the condemned man’s soul will be offered on an adding machine. Numbers, he explained, constitute the only universal language. Moya killed Joseph Zemp, an aged recluse, in an argument over a small amount of money.”

West also chose for commentary the more ridiculous aspects of education—the advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning, engineering. The traditional educational system became, in his hands, similarly debased. “John Gilson, Class 8B, Public School 186, Miss McGeeney, teacher,” spends his time writing tormented journals because his English teacher “reads Russian novels and I want to sleep with her.” Miss McGeeney, on the other hand, is writing a biography of Samuel Perkins:

“Stark, clever, disillusioned stuff, with a tenderness devoid of sentiment, yet touched by pity and laughter and irony.

“But who is Samuel Perkins, you are probably wondering. Samuel Perkins is the biographer of E. F. Fitzgerald. And who is Fitzgerald? You are of course familiar with D. B. Hobson’s life of Boswell. Well, E. F. Fitzgerald is the author of a life of Hobson.”

Somehow the educational process itself is crowded out of the picture.
In all of West’s novels there are only two married couples of any importance, both pairs in Miss Lonelyhearts, but the evidence is sufficient to damn the institution. The common quantities in the marriages are deception and adultery. Here are the successive characterizations of their marriage made to Miss Lonelyhearts by Shrike and his wife:

“She’s selfish. She’s a damned selfish bitch. She was a virgin when I married her and has been fighting ever since to remain one. Sleeping with her is like sleeping with a knife in one’s groin.”

“Of all the god-damned nerve. do you know why he lets me go out with other men? To save money. He knows that I let them neck with me and when I get home all hot and bothered, why he climbs into my bed and begs for it. The cheap bastard!”

The Doyles are less articulate, but no happier. Possibly it is also significant that in the other three novels marriage plays no part. But how should we explore this negative significance? We can only say that the novels did not require marriages; this moves the question into the inaccessible regions of West’s creative imagination.
West’s investigation of profit capitalism yields fruit as bitter as his exploration of political and social institutions did. We have noted above his distaste for the shoddy and sham products of our industrial society; but his dissatisfaction extended into all branches of a corrupt and competitive system. Ex-president “Shagpoke” Whipple goes to prison for irregularities in his Rat River bank. Ironically, he blames his failure upon a conspiracy by Wall Street, the international jewish bankers, and the Communists.
The newspaper industry is as reprehensible as Whipple’s bank. there is no reference in Miss Lonelyhearts to a newspaper’s responsibility to print news, or to maintain any semblance of an editorial policy; but there are several references to the prime importance of circulation. Shrike, the feature editor, reprimands Miss Lonelyhearts for recommending suicide in his column—not because suicide is immoral, or tragic, but because the paper would be minus one subscriber.
the treatment of the entertainment industry in the novels is particularly caustic. West seems to have considered radio and the movies prime agents in the devaluation of humanity. His case against the movies, elaborated throughout The Day of the Locust, is that they not only present a false and romanticized version of the real world, but that they also succeed in imposing this version, with hypnotic force, upon their viewers. We should have to go back to the Puritan divines to find a contempt and respect for theatrical art as great as West’s—contempt for its product and values, and respect for its magnetic appeal. Perhaps West’s own theatrical ventures, two unpublished plays, should be considered an evangelical or missionary vocation.
We should probably also consider West’s satire on prostitution, in both its East Coast and Hollywood modes, as subjoined to the attack on the entertainment industry. Wu Fong’s Chinatown establishment has over fifty suites; originally a ‘House of All Nations,’ it is redecorated in “Pennsylvania Dutch, Old South, Log Cabin Pioneer, Victorian New York, Western Cattle Days, California Monterrey, [and] Indian” as a result of the ‘Buy American’ campaign of the Hearst newspapers, Mrs. Jenning’s, in Hollywood, is more of an agency than a house: “none of the girls lived on the premises. You telephoned and she sent a girl over.” West’s complaint here is a reactionary one, that the traditional qualities of prostitution have been replaced by “cellophane” and “vending machines.”
The professions and the field of advertising, in West’s dramatization of them, consist only of the profit motive and the hypocrisy that motive entails. This conclusion scarcely startles us, but one of the bases of West’s anger and despair was that it would startle many—that Lemuel Pitkin, his disintegrating Horatio Alger hero, believes in the honesty and humanity of lawyers; that Miss Lonelyheart’s correspondents answer, in good faith, advertisements offering “to add inches to the biceps and to develop the bust,” expecting “to develop a grip that would impress the boss, ... to cushion Raoul’s head on their swollen breasts.”
But West’s most penetrating analysis of American society, possibly, is that which forms the thesis for his last novel, The Day of the Locust. Retirement and unemployment, what we might call the institution of enforced inactivity, of leisure, he considered a more serious problem than any other in the field of economics. The fear West dramatized, that the unoccupied and hopeless would be moved to undirected violence, is strikingly similar to the message of Erich Fromm’s Escape From Freedom, although West’s novel, published in 1939, antedated Fromm’s study by two years.
The quotations, in the discussion above, of West’s critique of American institutions, were chosen indiscriminately, but deliberately, from all four novels. The intention was to demonstrate that West’s critical method, and many of his conclusions, were omnipresent and—given his premises—consistent. But, more important, they demonstrate the danger in considering West’s literary production as a chronological map of our troubled ‘30’s. There is, indeed, a progression—from surrealist exploration of the individual dream world to a growing despair and more frenetic dramatization of social terror. But to consider this progression as simply a point-by-point reaction to contemporaneous history would certainly be to underrate the creative imagination of the author.
When we turn to the achievements of that creative imagination, to West as artist, we need no longer continue the negative method that has guided us through the domain of West’s intellect. For West’s positive contributions to the art of the novel are considerable. Miss Lonelyhearts, his finest novel, is rightfully considered, by such serious novelists as John Hawkes, to rank near Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood as an American classic in experimental fiction; the rigid economy of method, and the carefully maintained multiplicity of meaning, all unique in American letters. His other three novels, though inferior to Miss Lonelyhearts, all contain passages of great technical brilliance. The temptation is very great to consider the novels individually, as formal constructions, of varied worth. But for a paper attempting to some degree the “Complete Nathanael West,” we must necessarily limit ourselves [to] some of his general methods.
West’s prose style, when it is his own and not, as in A Cool Million, an involved and tired parody, is admirable. It is an extremely swift style, and operates through very careful selection of significant detail and significant color. The physical description is deliberately limited to preserve the fast pace; West seems to have felt, with Poe, that a literary composition should be short enough to be read without interruption. Here, as an example, is his description of Doyle in Miss Lonelyhearts:

He used a cane and dragged one of his feet behind him in a box-shaped shoe with a four-inch sole. As he hobbled along, he made many waste motions, like those of a partially destroyed insect.

West’s occasional use of extended metaphor seems all the more striking because of the bare setting:

He smoked a cigarette, standing in the dark and listening to her undress. She made sea sounds; something flat like a sail; there was the creak of ropes; then he heard the wave-against-a-wharf smack of rubber on flesh. Her call for him to hurry was a sea-moan, and when he lay beside her, she heaved, tidal, moon-driven.
Some fifteen minutes later, he crawled out of bed like an exhausted swimmer leaving the surf, and dropped down into a large armchair near the window.

The discussion above of West’s interest in institutions has probably made it sufficiently clear that the content of his novels was significant: man in society. But that content becomes more significant through West’s use of mythic re-enactment. Most of the late criticism of West is devoted to deciphering and elaborating Christ symbols.* [* Possibly we could argue that the Christ symbol in contemporary fiction, since it rests upon a human interpretation of Christ, is best handled by non-Christian authors and critics. This would explain its current popularity. JKW] The Christ symbol is indeed basic to West, and cannot be ignored; but, contrarily, it should not be over-emphasized. Miss Lonelyhearts, at the end of the book, rushes to his death “’With his arms spread for the miracle.’” Yet we could make a case for the book’s being, also, a version of the Acteon-Diana myth, the woman’s destruction, through her agent, of the man who has seen her physically and spiritually naked, and who she has changed into what he is not.* [* In the myth, Acteon saw Diana naked, bathing. Diana changed Acteon into a stag, and his hounds devoured him. We would not maintain that West was conscious of the relationship of the novel to the Greek myth. Along with Cocteau, we may believe that the significance of myth is that it can and does recur unconsciously, that, indeed, its truth is demonstrated by its recurrence. I might add here a twentieth century poem utilizing the same myth:

So they stood by the maltshop, after the movies,
and she said, as he crushed the cone with his heel,
how dull, when they heard a nice tattoo of hoofs
far down the hill. Listen, Lucy said, do you
hear? as a naked man charged round the corner,
wearing a fine pair of antlers, fourteen point,
and some dozen cockers, jewels and sequins
glittering in the matted hair of their legs,
frothing, baying, and snapping at his calves.
He disappeared up an alley, the dogs
at his heels, but not before they saw her too,
naked and lathered, her shower cap askew
and panting what have I done what have I done
as the alley swallowed her.]

But there are two aspects of West’s artistic method less easily explicated and evaluated. The first is his interpenetration of farce and psychologically-valid fantasy. In Miss Lonelyhearts the reader is usually conscious of the distinction, and feels no difficulty. But in A Cool Million the two aspects –the comic-opera strain and the opposed terror of a brutal society—are occasionally confused and inseparable. We can only speculate that the confusion reflects an unresolved duality in West’s plan for the book, which was written to meet a publisher’s deadline. We should perhaps add that the word ‘farce’ is not necessarily pejorative; West was often a master of a rare art, serious parody. An instance would be his revision of the prayer of St. Ignatius Loyola at the beginning of Spiritual Exercises, “Anima Christi santifica me.” Miss Lonelyhearts opens with Shrike’s prayer, “Soul of Miss L, glorify me.”
The second problem is West’s use of satire. We usually assume, citing Aristophanes, Cervantes, and Swift, that satire is always based upon a firm morality used by the author as a standard for judgment. This has led W. H. Auden, finding no standard, to make the uncomfortable distinction, that although West wrote fine satirical passages, he was not a satirist. There seem to be at least two possible solutions to the dilemma, neither completely attractive. It is possible that satire can be, in some cases, so extensive as to be inimical to any belief at all. Or it is possible that the exercise of satire can be a malignant growth that gradually undermines and kills all original belief. Perhaps we could resolve the difficulty by saying that West’s satire was supremely rational, as in the following view of art:

“Art! Be an artist or a writer. When you are cold, warm yourself before the flaming tints of Titian, when you are hungry, nourish yourself with great spiritual foods by listening to the noble periods of Bach, the harmonies of Brahms and the thunder of Beethoven. Do you think there is anything in the fact that their names all begin with B? But don’t take a chance, smoke a 3 B pipe, and remember these immortal lines: When to the suddenness of melody the echo parting falls the failing day. What a rhythm! Tell them to keep their society whores and pressed duck with oranges. For you, l’art vivant, the living art, as you call it. Tell them that you know that your shoes are broken and that there are pimples on your face, yes, and that you have buck teeth and a club foot, but that you don’t care, for tomorrow they are playing Beethoven’s last quartets in Carnegie Hall and at home you have Shakespeare’s plays in one volume.”

For despite this dim view of the artistic impulse, West was motivated sufficiently to create art.
Some of West’s techniques are so admirably adapted for presenting his analysis of society and of the social animal that we may consider them a successful bridge between the intellectual and artistic functions of his mind. All his novels make extensive use of grotesques—dwarfs, hunchbacks, deaf-mutes, cripples, idiots—to objectify his sense of human isolation. The physical is used to signify the internal, as in the progressive mutilation of Lemuel Pitkin, who loses his teeth, eye, scalp, leg. This is West’s version of man’s fate: gradual disappearance between the grindstones of reality. He occasionally excels in minute but effective symbolic actions. His vignette of Homer, in The Day of the Locust, sitting in his patio, day after day, looking at tin cans and a garage wall, when by turning his chair ninety degrees he could have a view of an entire canyon, and of the city beyond, is as effective a representation of the murder of time as Camus’ Old Man, in La Peste, who transfers dried peas from pan to pan.
This paper probably seems a very elaborate approach to evaluating West’s radical involvement, but the elaboration seemed necessary if we were not to falsify West’s position by oversimplifying it. In reading the novels we are conscious of the pervasive influence of radical politics upon West as an intellectual and artist of the 30’s: he was forced to argue in their terms. In the broader sense, he was compelled to an analysis of contemporary institutions by obvious or covert uses of radical dialectic, of economic determinism. And in a more literal sense, he adopted their terminology to his artistic purposes, describing the participants in the climactic riot of The Day of the Locust as “a great united front of screwballs.”
Having analyzed the components of West’s achievement, we are in a better position to understand his statement in a letter written to George Milburn in 1939, that “The radical press, although I consider myself on their side, doesn’t like my particular kind of joking.” The difference is that between a partisan and a critical view of the movement, the difference between Granville Hicks and Nathanael West. Naturally, a militant movement expects to succeed without criticism; but we, as non-combatants, usually learn more from the critical than from the committed.




* * * *




WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS




James K. Webb
English 163a
January 11, 1956




Unlike most of the other poets on the reading list, Dr. W. C. Williams I had read very little before beginning this course. I had read a few poems in anthologies, “To Ford Madox Ford in Heaven” and “The Yachts”, as I remember, and was not particularly impressed or interested. Also, a friend had quoted “so much depends / upon // a red wheel/ barrow”, and I was horrified and insisted upon interpolating a second stanza, “so much depends / upon” // so much more / than // “a red wheel / barrow”. And I was frightened away from his poetry by uninformed allusions to him—“in the spirit of Whitman” (uttered sarcastically), or “a baby-snatcher who attempts verse on the side”. But I have had such great pleasure in “discovering” the real Dr. Williams for myself that I cannot really feel annoyed at having been misled. In reading, and rereading, Paterson and Selected Poems I have found so much more than I had expected that I could almost wish to have all poets disparaged before I begin to read. Seriously, the Selected Poems has been a continuous and lasting pleasure, and then to find in Paterson a mosaic of the same bright colors, but with deepening thematic development—so much more than I expected of one man, one “baby-snatcher.”
But before I settle down to a discussion of the poems that I consider most impressive, I would like to discuss a few that seem to me to fail—not, perhaps, of their intent, they are all quite “precise renderings of the image”, but of the complete and successful communication of emotion, perception, or whatever, that many of the others achieve. I do not appreciate a “red wheel barrow”, or “This is Just to Say”, or “Fine Work with Pitch and Copper”, or “The Attic which is Desire:”. Like “Poem”—“As the cat / climbed over / the top of // the jamcloset”—they seem to me to be more the mannered expression of a momentary impression than “emotion recollected in tranquility”. They are recollected in tranquility, perhaps, but not with any effective artistic distance. (The experiments in attenuation, of which “The Locust Tree in Flower” is the most notorious, are shocking and vivid on first reading, but I’ve found “The Locust Tree” growing more and more lifeless, dull, as I become familiar with it.) I have much the same complaint about “January Morning”; that is, I haven’t decided whether the fine last section, “All this-- / was for you, old woman.”, really unifies, justifies the disparate sections of the “Suite”. Nor can I decide whether the harangue on Sacco and Vanzetti (“impromptu: The Suckers”) is more nearly verse than political speech.
I don’t mean to say that Williams has not written much fine short verse, but the better ones have more than mere shortness and vividness to recommend them. I like particularly “The Term”, with its submerged inequalities, “brown paper....unlike a man”, “appearance” and “actuality”, “eternal shadow” and “mortal substance” that remind one of Eliot’s Quartets; “Love Song”, in which the color theme is simpler than, but almost as effective as, in “Burning the Christmas Greens”; “To Waken an Old Lady”, suggestive of far more than its simple statement, “Old age is / a flight of small / cheeping birds”; “The Dance”, which, though a description of a static representation of action, and framed itself, like Bruegel’s picture, by an identical first and last line, rises to an almost philosophical judgment, “those / shanks must be sound to bear up under such / rollicking measures”; and possibly “The Young Housewife” and “To a Poor Old Woman”, though I don’t know why—perhaps there is always a submerged dramatic quality in a male’s observation of the female, as a reminder either of wife or of mother.
I have already written cards on the two items that I enjoyed most on first reading the Selected Poems, “The Last Words of My English Grandmother” and “The Horse Show”, but I would like to explain why I was more struck by them than by those I now prefer: “Burning the Christmas Greens”, “These”, “The Yachts”, “A Visit”, “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime”. I have come to have—as a child of the age, I suppose—a nearly morbid fear of sentimentality; and one’s relationships with an aging and aged mother, or a dying grandmother, are extreme examples of genuine emotions that tend to become lost in sentimental clichés. But Williams’ method (as distinguished from his meaning, which is often surprizingly romantic) is the objectivity natural to a man of science. His objectivity, like Hemingway’s, is actually the method of understatement when, as in these two poems, he confines himself to concretely reportable actions and dialogue. This objectivity is, I feel, inaccurate because it must be so rigidly selective, but the inaccuracy seems to be necessary (I’m judging from my own responses, considerably to my shame) for the acceptable communication of certain suspect emotions.
“Burning the Christmas Greens” is, for me, Williams’ best verse—excepting always Paterson, in which I would also point out the fire section (Beautiful Thing. So be it.). The structure is deceptively simple, but essentially very dramatic. The first three stanzas state the theme, the burning, but in a very low key when compared to the coda. Then at line twelve there is the sudden quiet flashback to the cutting of the greens, the decorating—“and it seemed gentle and good / to us.” At line thirty six the greens are put on the grate, but the act is passed over lightly, the narrative continues quietly until the sudden “—Transformed!” of line fifty five, which has been prepared for by the previous lighter exclamations, “All this!” and “relief!” From “Transformed!” to the end of the poem, the coda is maintained at an even high exclamatory key. I am particularly impressed by the magnificent color imagery: green, red, black, and white in so many variations. There is also some half-concealed rhyme, particularly on the key words, as “clean” with “green”, “dead” with “red”. Another point drawing me to the poem is the poet’s voice one hears behind it, a lively but natural lyric expansiveness that seems to be one of Williams’ more important assets as a poet. About this poem even more than the others I am compelled to quote Williams’ own fine explanation—“These things / astonish me beyond words.” In my case the statement is literally true, though for himself he means it figuratively.
I now think “The Yachts” probably the second best poem in the book. The experience of reading it after seventy-six pages of Williams’ verse is very different from reading it in an anthology without preparation; when one is submerged in Williams’ mind it is easy to see that the last three stanzas, the ones that had previously annoyed me, are the result neither of a conventional personification nor an uncontrolled freedom of the imagination. The “entanglement of watery bodies” is the only possible representation, for Williams, of the enforced passivity, and, incidentally, solidarity, of man confronted by his fate, and thus for him the only natural representation. “...bearing what they cannot hold” is the key to the poem’s meaning, and works beautifully on both levels, literally, as the sea buoying up the ships that it has failed in sinking, in “holding”, and figuratively, as man confronted by his fate in time, “bearing” what (either felicity or, as in this instance, pain) he cannot keep from passing on, “cannot hold”. The verse itself is, for Williams, unusually sedate and serious, another point one does not realize when reading the poem without a wider knowledge of Williams. I have probably done the poem a disservice by trying to reduce it to two levels of meaning; its lasting interest is mainly a result of its recalcitrance before such an attempt. Perhaps one can say, though, that, like “O Dewey! (John) / O James! (William) / O Whitehead!”, Williams considers all dualisms artificial; so that the substitution of “humanity” for “nature” is as valid, and as simple, as the mathematical substitution of identities.
“Burning the Christmas Greens” is Williams’ own voice and “The Yachts” that voice grown less personal, almost god-like in the sense that it sees all and not, on the surface at least, in relation to the poet as a person. “The Widow’s Lament in Springtime”, on the other hand, is an example of Williams’ successful use of the dramatic monologue. The Widow laments in her own voice, without any other introduction or comment save the title. The contrast of the beauty and rejuvenation (literally, as “new youth”) of the spring and the flowering trees, with the sorrow, mortality, and final death wish (the last line) of the widow, is very powerful, and needs little comment. But there is one subtlety of grammar that I would like to comment upon. The Widow’s tenses become a little confused, past and present; and deliberately, I’m sure. Consider the two most prominent examples: “loaded the cherry branches / and color some bushes”, “today I notice them / and turned away forgetting.” This mingling of past and present without rational excuse contributes considerably to the terrible feeling of a timeless present. The poem is economical to the extreme: the single references to “my husband” and “my son”; and the single image of the “cold fire / that closes round me this year,” which is the only hint that her bereavement is a recent one, a hint that is nearly lost in the timeless sensation I have mentioned.
“These” is a poem diametrically opposed to “The Widow’s Lament” in its subject. The latter is the paradox of human despair and hopelessness in a natural setting (spring) representing its opposite, hope; the former places all hope in “the desolate, dark weeks” (winter). The hope is to be hidden away somewhere like a bulb, that the cold may be of use in the forcing of the roots necessary to future growth. The “it” in line twenty five is possibly poetry, possibly anything. The verse here is in three line stanzas, as in “The Yachts”, and that perhaps aids in producing the feeling of seriousness. It seems at least to be a convention of Williams’. Also as in “The Yachts”, the title is actually the beginning of the poem, a practice of Williams’ that I think has its greatest effect in these two instances where it is the only irregularity, rather than when he uses it with poems less rigidly patterned. The last four stanzas intrigue me particularly, with their suggestion that “the source of poetry” is in winter, the little death, in nostalgia for the past—“and hears the sound of lake water / splashing—that is now stone.” This seems to be a nice concurrence of theory and practice, for my one response to Williams’ verse that I tend to identify with the poet’s motive is just this nostalgia. A nostalgia that, paradoxically, is often most present in those poems that are limited to the present instant, with little reference to the past, as in “The Lonely Street”.
“The Visit” deals more specifically with Williams’ theory of poetic “craft”, that the mind traffics in symbols, images, and always words. And the poem seems to me a good example of the theory in practice, the sea is used as a multiple symbol and is more difficult for me to isolate the more I read the poem. The most important reading, to my mind, is the sea itself as the unconscious, the “living barnacles” and fish and gulls as conscious intellect and/or art, as in “the mind is subtler than the sea”, and “the mind is / still (though barely) more than / its play.” The gulls and the “fish they are after, / fish—and get them” I read also, with reasonably clear conscience, as the poet catching the poem, and I like the image. As to his use of words—here again is the dramatic voice, captivating by its seeming (and only seeming) absence of art. The nearest I can come to describing the hidden art is as an absence of “artiness”, or extremely conscious representation of apparently casual or unconscious speech. The development is often through word-associations that are nearly puns; the sixth stanza, as an example, works from “the case” through “cases” in law to “cases at the hospital”. And I must admit my personal preference is for associational development rather than rational. I think it is little more than this that certain critics refer to when they label Williams “anti-intellectual”—in which case I agree but go on cheering, seeing no reason to demand that Williams should be so careful as Eliot, so long as his associations and the poems built of them “work” as well as Eliot’s. At the moment I’m almost convinced they do.
It is this personal voice and seemingly-careless method of Williams’ that appeal to me most. A very versatile speech, its variations range from “Smell!”, almost a parody of Rostand, or “Danse Russe”, that succeeds in making abnormal psychology seem, not only normal, but charming, or the light “Portrait of a Lady”, to the serio-comic “Death” or very serious “Tract”. In this respect I have even come to appreciate “To ford Madox Ford in Heaven” as a lighter treatment of the impulse that in “An Elegy for D. H. Lawrence” reminds me of “When Lilacs Last in Dooryards Bloomed”. Nor would a comparison here be all in Whitman’s favor.
My total impression of Williams is of a poet with considerable range, but range of a special sort. Like Bach, Williams is an artist limited to a few forms, but a master, surely, of variation within a form. His forte is the free verse lyric and the dramatic monologue, though the distinction between the two is often a purely artificial one, so far as I can see. Even Paterson seems to me a series of lyrical variations on a theme, admittedly a complex theme, but even the short verse is often the result of a complex motivation, and developed by complex variations. The complexity of motivation seems to be very nearly an unconscious process; Williams’ view of the world I continue to visualize as that of the physician, ideally half scientist and half humanist, psychologist, whatever. I am encouraged in this view by his deep identification with his material, whether a lamenting widow, or trees that have “sense enough / to stay out in the rain”, or (in “Choral: The Pink Church”) another physician, Michael Servitus. It is a very human motivation, and defies literary categorization—how reconcile the romantic interest in sensation, even morbid sensation, with the essentially classical final virtues (as in Faulkner or Epictetus, those of endurance and willing participation in the natural world). I can only say I’m glad to have met Dr. Williams. Had this course done nothing more for me than to perform that introduction I think I should have been well repaid for my effort. And I trust that as our acquaintance widens and deepens Dr. Williams will continue to “astonish me beyond words”. Astonishment can be a very rewarding path to understanding.




* * * *


[Here are the ‘cards’ Jim wrote for this class, which appear to be more immediate responses, possibly written in class though typed, and generally dealing more exclusively with technical aspects of individual poems in question. First the poem, then Jim’s card.]






William Carlos Williams

THE LAST WORDS OF MY ENGLISH GRANDMOTHER

1920

There were some dirty plates
and a glass of milk
beside her on a small table
near the rank, disheveled bed—

Wrinkled and nearly blind
she lay and snored
rousing with anger in her tones
to cry for food,

Gimme something to eat—
They’re starving me—
I’m all right—I won’t go
to the hospital. No, no, no

Give me something to eat!
Let me take you
to the hospital, I said
and after you are well

you can do as you please.
She smiled, Yes
you do what you please first
then I can do what I please—

Oh, oh, oh! she cried
as the ambulance men lifted
her to the stretcher—
Is this what you call

making me comfortable?
By now her mind was clear—
Oh you think you’re smart
you young people,

she said, but I’ll tell you
you don’t know anything.
Then we started.
On the way

we passed a long row
of elms, she looked at them
awhile out of
the ambulance window and said,

What are all those
fuzzy looking things out there?
Trees? Well, I’m tired
of them and rolled her head away.




W. C. Williams: The Last Words of my English Grandmother
James Webb

Composed of ten short four-line stanzas, the meter very free, but lines of four accents predominating. Irregular unemphasized assonance and occasional rhyme. the impulse is ironic, with a slight tragic overtone. The method is very difficult to isolate and describe. In the broadest sense it is the personal (or perhaps even folk) anecdote, utilizing easy conversational rhythms, and a no doubt studied simplicity of phrasing and vocabulary. This seems to me quite successful, though the elements of the method are hard to describe: the casual setting of scene (first stanza), the lightest of impressionistic descriptions of the grandmother (line 5), and then what seems the most important device—compressed and dramatic dialogue. This is a device, of course, of much wider utility, but one essential to the oral or conversational anecdote (in Henry James’ definition, a short narrative for the purpose to delineating character). The change of speaker in stanza 5 demands a change of voice, back to the original speaking voice used before the imitation of the grandmother—stylized imitation is the method of the accomplished teller of anecdotes—but with deliberate falsity, demanded by “after you are well”. The “No, no, no” and “Oh, oh, oh!” are actually a literary form of shorthand, and demand of the reader dramatic interpretation, the “hearing” of the speaking voice. The narrative framework, “I said”, “she cried”, “she said” prepare the tone of the voice for the similarly isolated asides: “She smiled,” “By now her mind was clear—“ “and rolled her head away.” Perhaps the best testimony to the success of the poem, and of the anecdotal method used, in not the sensation of the speaking voices, but the compulsion at the end to repeat (and the true anecdotalist would) the title, to say, “and those were the last words of my English grandmother.” The success, I mean, is that Williams did not have to repeat it, the irony and the method are sufficient to recall it without an actual repetition, and that subtlety is probably much more effective than the complete statement. At least it must be called a strong example of the organic title. The tragic element is much more submerged than the ironic—I think it rests mainly in the aside “By now her mind was clear—“ and the accented “tired” in line 39. The irony is mainly in tone, though one may cite lines like “Yes / you do what you please first / then I can do what I please—“




William Carlos Williams

THE HORSE SHOW

Constantly near you, I never in my entire
sixty four years knew you so well as yesterday
or half so well. We talked. You were never
so lucid, so disengaged from all exigencies
of place and time. We talked of ourselves,
intimately, a thing never heard of between us.
How long have we waited? almost a hundred years.

You said, Unless there is some spark, some
spirit we keep within ourselves, life, a
continuing life’s impossible—and it is all
we have. There is no other life, only the one.
The world of the spirits that comes afterward
is the same as our own, just like you sitting
there they come and talk to me, just the same.

They come to bother us. Why? I said. I don’t
know. Perhaps to find out what we are doing.
Jealous, do you think? I don’t know. I
don’t know why they should want to come back.
I was reading about some men who had been
buried under a mountain, I said to her, and
one of them came back after two months,

digging himself out. It was in Switzerland,
you remember? Of course I remember. The
villagers tho’t it was a ghost coming down
to complain. They were frightened. They
do come, she said, what you call
my “visions.” I talk to them just as I
am talking to you. I see them plainly.

Oh if I could only read! You don’t know
what adjustments I have made. All
I can do is to try to live over again
what I knew when your brother and you
were children—but I can’t always succeed.
Tell me about the horse show. I have
been waiting all week to hear about it.

Mother darling, I wasn’t able to get away.
Oh that’s too bad. It was just a show;
they made the horses walk up and down
to judge them by their form. Oh is that
all? I tho’t it was something else. Oh
they jump and run too. I wish you had been
there, I was so interested to hear about it.




W. C. Williams: The Horse Show
James Webb

I’ve chosen this as an example of what seems to me to be most effective in Williams, the statement of a philosophic viewpoint as intuitive as Eliot’s is rational (though one doesn’t know but what the first impulse, even in Eliot, is intuitive) in a form that can best be called “unobtrusive”. As Paterson shows, Williams is a master of contrived effect—whether this is intuitive, one little cares—incremental refrains of “Beautiful thing!” or “So be it.”, emphasis by line arrangements, mosaic development, tricks that communicate immediately and effectively, but never so strongly again as they do the first time. But “Horse Show” is poetry without fireworks. One may consider these six seven-line stanzas as blank verse or free verse or accented lines, and it doesn’t matter. In any case, there is a lattice, a framework, and upon it or within it a lyric, or a conversation. One can abstract a philosophy from it, by quotation perhaps and with little affront to the mind it represents: the necessity, the beauty, the difficulty of communication, its foundation in love, the value of experience—for itself, and of no value unless communicated, “I was reading” and “I remember”, the source may be anything, anywhere, and irrecoverable once foregone, “The Horse Show”, but of no abstract value, only of interest, or not of interest. And this doesn’t really matter either. The view of life, as in Whitman and Frost, is of little importance, as long as it is “life” viewed. “There is no other life, only the one.” And the value of that “life” is in its combination of uniqueness and universality, “some spark, some spirit” that is individuality, a near approach to meaning, import if not importance, and “just a show”, only the walking up and down. Not only the horse or the poem, but living itself, can be judged “by their form” only. The old woman is one of Williams’ primary symbols, in this case made personal as “mother darling”, but always procreation, and procreation past, unalterable if not complete. This can lead to the utmost verge of sentimentality (as in this poem) without falling, or to irony, almost (as “My English Grandmother”), but is most effective as a representation of life force, not directly, but by its shadow, a correlative more wistful (and capable of tragedy) than Whitman’s grass from the grave. But most important, the old woman as symbol is yet capable of conversation (Williams’ best device, is not the dramatic monologue, is subtly-dramatic dialogue), capable of a Jamesian reflection and, most important, of understatement—as in the last stanza, and perhaps the best, “Oh that’s too bad...Oh is that / all? I tho’t it was something else....I wish you had been / there, I was so interested to hear about it.” All comment on this seems to me hopelessly ineffective.




William Butler Yeats

Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop

I met the Bishop on the road
And much said he and I.
‘Those breasts are flat and fallen now
Those veins must soon be dry;
Live in a heavenly mansion,
Not in some foul sty.’

‘Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied,
Learned in bodily lowliness
And in the heart’s pride.

‘A woman can be proud and stiff
When on love intent;
But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.’


W. B. Yeats: Crazy Jane talks with the Bishop.
James Webb

Ballad or three six-line stanzae, rhyming a, b, c, b, d, b. Alternate lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter. Their meeting is recounted by Jane, using only two and a fraction (ll.1-2, “I cried” in l. 8) for the mechanics of her presentation, and devoting the rest to the “actual” conversation—or to two set speeches, since one must consider the possibility of unconscious distortion. The story goes her way: the Bishop speaks only four lines to her twelve, and has no chance of rebuttal. Besides possible compression and expansion, the precision of the verse and the arguments allows the possibility of subtle or not-so-subtle distortion, either by memory or the ego. Ironic force with a rather comic situation comes from the “scholastic” elements in Jane’s answer to the Catholic Bishop: “Fair and foul are near of kin, / And fair needs foul....”, and “For nothing can be sole or whole / That has not been rent.” The two speeches of contrary intent are bound together also by linguistic and associational transitions, from the Bishop’s “foul” to “foul” in ll. 7 & 8, and by association to “excrement” in l. 16, a debating trick also contributing to the stylized quality of the poem. Ll. 5 and 11, with the most metrical variation in the poem, point up the contrary positions: “Live in a heavenly mansion....”, and “Learned in bodily lowliness....” Considerable alliteration, as in the latter line, or “flat and fallen”, interior rhyme or “sole or whole,” with perhaps the classic ambiguity of “soul”.




William Butler Yeats

The Three Bushes
An incident from the ‘Historia mei Temporis’ of the Abbé Michel de Bourdeille.

Said lady once to lover,
‘None can rely upon
A love that lacks its proper food;
And if you love were gone
How could you sing those songs of love?
I should be blamed, young man.’
O my dear, O my dear.

‘Have no lit candles in your room,’
That lovely lady said,
‘That I at midnight by the clock
May creep into your bed,
For if I saw myself creep in
I think I should drop dead.’
O my dear, O my dear.

‘I love a man in secret,
Dear chambermaid,’ said she,
‘I know that I must drop down dead
If he stop loving me,
Yet what could I but drop down dead
If I lost my chastity?’
O my dear, O my dear.

‘So you must lie beside him
And let him think me there,
And maybe we are all the same
Where no candles are,
And maybe we are all the same
The strip the body bare.’
O my dear, O my dear.

But no dogs barked and midnights chimed,
And through the chime she’d say,
‘That was a lucky thought of mine,
My lover looked so gay;’
But heaved a sigh if the chambermaid
Looked half asleep all day.
O my dear, O my dear.

‘No, not another song,’ said he,
‘Because my lady came
A year ago for the first time
At midnight to my room,
And I must lie between the sheets
When the clock begins to chime.’
O my dear, O my dear.

‘A laughing, crying, sacred song,
A leching song,’ they said.
Did ever men hear such a song?
No, but that day they did.
Did ever man ride such a race?
No, not until he rode.
O my dear, O my dear.

But when his horse had put its hoof
Into a rabbit hole
He dropped upon his head and died.
His lady saw it all
and dropped and died thereon, for she
Loved him with her soul.
O my dear, O my dear.

The chambermaid lived long, and took
Their graves into her charge,
And there two bushes planted
That when they had grown large
Seemed sprung from but a single root
So did their roses merge.
O my dear, O my dear.

When she was old and dying,
The priest came where she was;
She made a full confession.
Long looked he in her face,
And O, he was a good man
And understood her case.
O my dear, O my dear.

He bade them take and bury her
Beside her lady’s man,
And set a rose-tree on her grave.
And now none living can
When they have plucked a rose there
Know where its roots began.
O my dear, O my dear.




W. B. Yeats: The Three Bushes
James Webb

Ballad form, eleven six-line stanzas and a short refrain—“O my dear, O my dear.” Basic rhyme scheme, a, b, c, b, d, b. But the rhyme is usually imperfect, within the three “b’s” there is often both rhyme and halfrhyme, as “upon, gone, man”, “there, are, bare”, “came, room, chime”, “said, did, rode”, “hole, all, soul”, “charge, large, merge”, “was, face, case”, and in the other four stanzas, three complete rhymes. Lines a, c, & d are often related by more subtle assonance and alliteration, “him, same”, “he, sheets”, “chimed, mine”, “her, there”, or actual repetition, “dead, dead”, “same, same”, “song, song”. The stanzaic pattern is that of the ballad “tune”, tending more toward accent than meter, and generally counted 4, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3—and the refrain probably 2. Three first lines seem to me to be exceptions: “Said lady once to lover,” “’I love a man in secret,’” “When she was old and dying”. It is possible to worry them into four-accent lines (and one would, perhaps, in singing), but it isn’t necessary; all are first lines of stanzas, a line in the ballad that is generally treated with considerable freedom. There are several “literary” elements in the treatment of the theme (a few sentences longer, though not much more complex, than the usual ballad subject), but not enough to divorce it from the strengths of the ballad form. The theme, as announced in the title, of a triangular love affair, and its objectification in the rosebushes, growing from the graves as secular symbols of immortality (compare the former to “Lord Thomas and Fair Elinore”, the latter to “Barbara Allen” and its derivitives) are common ballad material, though Yeats’ contrast of spirit and flesh, Eros and Athena, is not so common as the usual true- and false-love. The distinction is recurrent in Yeats, e.g. “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop”, born probably of the scholastic tradition. Some of the force of the poem comes from the disappointed expectations, not of the lovers, but the reader; the subterfuge, the “no lit candles”, is a Boccacian element that usually announces its own future discovery, and the development of the two types of love from it has the virtue of being unexpected (in the ballad form, if not in Yeats). The distinction between Eros and Athena may even be used, to some extent, to characterize the disparate elements in the poems—there are actually two types of poetry, but they live in harmony, appealing to different aspects of a postulated poetic taste, the ballad elements of dogs, and chimes, graves, roses, leching songs, midnights and candles on one hand, and the more abstract Yeatsian comments, “And maybe we are all the same / That strip the body bare” or “And O he was a good man / And understood her case.”




Hart Crane

Voyages
I
Above the fresh ruffles of the surf
Bright striped urchins flay each other with sand.
They have contrived a conquest for shell shucks,
And their fingers crumble fragments of baked weed
Gaily digging and scattering.

And in answer to their treble interjections
The sun beats lightning on the waves,
The waves fold thunder on the sand;
And could they hear me I would tell them:

O brilliant kids, frisk with your dog,
Fondle your shells and sticks, bleached
By time and the elements; but there is a line
You must not cross nor ever trust beyond it
Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses
Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast.
The bottom of the sea is cruel.




Hart Crane: Voyages, I
James Webb

This poem seems to me the most subtle technically I have yet read in the course; lines that read deceptively like free verse seem on analysis to be careful variations on a pattern of blank verse. Eleven of the sixteen lines have five strong accents. The most effective metrical device is the exact shadowing of contiguous lines: this is most telling in the second stanza, “The sun beats lightning on the waves, / The waves fold thunder on the sand;” and is repeated with less force in lines 14-15. Rather than rhyme, there is irregular assonance, “surf”, “shucks”; “weed”, “scattering”; “caresses”, “breast”, “cruel”; almost in “interjections” and “them”. Sentence structure is important to the dramatic effect of the monologue; up to line twelve, the structure is simple and straightforward, but then comes “but there is a line / You must not cross nor ever trust beyond it / Spry cordage of your bodies to caresses / Too lichen-faithful from too wide a breast.” This sentence is so involuted and elided that any pause in the oral delivery of it destroys the sense. The purpose of this sudden complexity is not only to clothe a complex thought and disparate images, but to emphasize, by the contrast, the last line—a simple sentence, missing a foot. There are careful threads of imagery, “ruffles” and “striped”, “weed” and “lichen”, “sticks” and “cordage”.

The impact of the poem, and its meaning, rest, as in much of Crane’s poetry, in the force of large symbols. The “Bright striped urchins”, “brilliant kids” are scarcely images, they are themselves: youth, fantasy, simplicity. But the “sea” is another matter. On the surface it seems to symbolize only “reality”, the life awaiting the “brilliant kids”, but I think this may perhaps be limited to a specific “reality”. The speaking voice here is Crane’s own, and the sea here the mother, the Jocasta image; the cruelty here and the resulting homosexuality of the Oedipus relationship. See for example the feminine or sexual images: “ruffles”, “fondle”, “caresses”, “faithful”, “breast”. One remembers the manner of Crane’s suicide, and of the disposal of his mother’s ashes, the two finding perhaps consummation in that “sea”.




Gerard Manley Hopkins

Heaven-Haven
A nun takes the veil

I HAVE desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.




G. M. Hopkins: HEAVEN-HAVEN/ A nun takes the veil
James K. Webb

A short lyric of two four-line stanzae, a title, & subtitle. Title a hyphenated combination of somewhat similar ideas giving rise to implied reciprocal modification (“paradise” as “refuge”, any “refuge” as some “paradise” perhaps), gaining force by the near-identity of the two words (as well as the two concepts), near-rhyming, alliterative, confusing to the eye. Stanzae rhyming a – b – b – a, c – d – d – c. Little interior rhyme (go, no; to, few), but considerable extended alliteration (fail, fields, flies, few; storms, swell, swing, sea), and some assonance (have, asked). Rhythmic pattern rather tricky: lines 3 and 7 are iambic pentameter (except the first foot of line 7), and lines 1 & 2 and 5 & 6 (both sets run on without punctuation) add up to pentameter lines. Lines 4 & 8, each trimeter, show the greatest variation—4 is anapestic; line 8, imitating the swing of the sea, v ‘ | v v ‘ | v v ‘. The sub-title is most important: stating the dramatic situation. The imagery is “negative” in application—“not”, “no”, “few”, “no”, “dumb”, “out”. There are two noticeable ambiguities, the first quickly resolved, “springs not fail” becomes definitely “seasons” and not “water-supplies”, the second remaining strong, the “great swell” mentioned after “fields” but leading quickly to the “sea”. The tone and intention of the poem still elude me; two opposite interpretations seem equally tenable. (1) A quiet though somewhat ecstatic statement of faith and of fact (if “hail”, “failing springs”, “storms” = life in society, and “the fields”, “the havens” = the monastic life, or (2) A deceptively quiet (since perhaps fantastic) attempt at self-conviction—requiring the following scansion for lines 1 and 5: “i HAVE deSIRED to GO”, and “and i HAVE ASKED to BE”. I personally tend to support the second reading as better explaining the vagueness and lack of definite reference in the imagery. In that case the title gains an ironic force, the two words gain antithetical values as well as their surface similarity, and the negations an explanation as reflections of unconscious doubt.




Gerard Manley Hopkins: Peace




Robert Frost

Acquainted With the Night

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.


Robert Frost: Acquainted with the Night
James Webb

An unusual sonnet form, built of terza rima. The poem may be considered four triplets and a concluding couplet, or five triplets, and last lacking the contrasting center line, since the rhyme does develop from the preceding triplet (a, b, a. b, c, b. c, d, c. d, a, d. a, a.). Meter: regular iambic pentameter, less than half the lines beginning with trochaic feet. Some strong counterpoint, as in line 5. The poem seems to result from an odd combination of influences, or diverse elements. The “Whitman” “I” is emphasized, from the very first line, so that one expects a rather thorough-going romantic treatment, but the rigidity of the form carries over into the treatment of the felt emotion and its clothing of images. The method is “imagistic” in the sense of “precise rendering”, as the best example “And further still at an unearthly height, / One luminary clock against the sky”, but the images lack final effect because of the poem’s lack of any explicit or even implicit direction or reference. Perhaps the intent is Symbolist rather than Imagist, since the concrete : abstract “night” is emphasized in the repeated line that serves for both beginning and ending of the poem, and, in a lifted phrase, for title. But I must confess the “night” escapes me. Despite the images of movement in the poem, there is a feeling of stasis and negation; note the circular movement of the rhyme, the beginning-ending line repetition, the “not”, “neither”, “unwilling”, and “unearthly”, the “out” and “back”. Perhaps the speaker is “unwilling to explain”, not only to “the watchman”, but to the reader either. The speaker suggests the situation in “an interrupted cry...but not to call me back or say good-bye;” but there is no further elaboration, unless “the time was neither wrong nor right” is read as a vacillation similar to Prufrock’s. Since it is a Frost poem, one is tempted to read “city” as a symbol of unsatisfactory human relations (the word appears twice, and the concept, as “scene”, is always present), but I see little warrant for it, beyond “sadest”. There are some technical elements worth noting, considerable alliteration, as “stood still and stopped the sound”, assonance, as “saddest” and “passed”, “proclaimed” and “acquainted”, “time” and “right”. And the effective reversal, in the immediately succeeding line, from “walked óut” to “outwálked”, the accented “out” contrasted with the accented “back”—both, repetitively, “in rain”.




* * * *




[Undated draft of an essay (probably written at Cambridge when Jim was reading and writing about victorian literature there), with revisions in Jim's hand, on the portrayal of children and childhood in the work of Charles Dickens:]


Charles Dickens devoted more attention than perhaps any of his contemporaries to the social and dramatic qualities of childhood. There is some justification for the cliché, since 'devotion' suggests several characteristics of his attitude towards his created children: love, sympathy, reverence, concern--and sentimentality. And there is much more justification for ascribing to him the priority in attention when we think of the number of imagined children he presented over the years from Oliver Twist to Our Mutual Friend. Oliver and the Artful Dodger, Little Nell, Paul and Florence Dombey, David Copperfield, Jo the crossing-sweeper, Amy Dorrit, Tiny Tim, Pip and Estella, to list only the more important.
And they are important not only for our investigation of attitudes toward children during the period, but also to the novels they appear in, to the fictional world they inhabit. Indeed, one of Dickens's significant influences on English fiction is his demonstration that childhood is a legitimate and worthwhile subject for the novelist.*[note: credit K. Tillotson] His extensive use of children was virtually an innovation, and its effects are still being felt.
The abundance of the material, the number of Dickens’s fictional children, shows in itself his high opinion of their dramatic value, since he had an acute sense of what interested his readers. But the dramatic uses his children served create a certain barrier to our precise understanding of the social value of the child; we cannot assume a precise equivalence between his novelist’s attitude towards fictional children and his ‘real’ attitude towards ‘real’ children. This problem always confronts us when we try to make a critical analysis of the ‘ideas’ or intellectual content of an artist’s work.
But there are valid reasons, in the case of Dickens, for side-stepping the difficulty. Because of the consistency of his novelist’s view, throughout his writing life, and of the suggestive key of the autobiographical fragment published by Forster in the official biography, we can fairly assume that his personal experience and attitude exercised a nearly compulsive effect on his manipulation of his fictional children. And even if there were not a near equivalence between his personal and fictional views, the material would still be of great use for our study—because of the tremendous extent, and approval, of Dickens’s contemporary reading public, and because of his close relationship with that public through the serial publication of his novels.
The determining characteristic of Dickens’s attitude towards children is implicit in the observation above, for when we say that Dickens considered children as legitimate a subject for fiction as adults, we suggest that he considered children to differ from adults only in degree, not in kind. The most important corollary of this view is that childhood is not a separate preparation for adult life, but simply a part of the continuum, worthy of interest and deserving of respect. So if we first explore what Dickens considered the most important differences of degree, we shall see with more clarity the type of interest and the amount of respect childhood deserved.
First there is a difference in the degree of innocence. ‘Original sin’ had no place in Dickens’s theology; his characters were born innocent and were subsequently corrupted, to different degrees by society. This belief in innocence was at least partly responsible for his antipathy towards ‘chapel’ religion, to the Chadbands who shut out the light. The antipathy seems sometimes to extend to all religion, since religion seems incapable of preserving innocence.
Second, there are the obvious differences in physical and mental capacity. The pathos of the child confronted by a Gargantuan society is a recurring theme for Dickens, and the disparity is often exaggerated by poor health, poverty, circumstance.
This brief and generalized account of differences in degree is sufficient to indicate Dickens’s conclusion: the child is as interesting as the adult, often more so, since there is more potential, greater suspense; childhood requires deeper respect, since there is a necessity for help to redress the balance of capacity. The interest Dickens paid in the construction and peopling of his fictional world, and the respect and help he quite overtly sought to elicit from the real world he lived in.
His method, in seeking reform and enlightenment, was the classic one of communicated indignation. The extreme case is the funeral oration for Jo in Bleak House, and if we keep those apostrophes in mind (“Dead, your Majesty. Dead my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends….”) we will not entertain excessive expectations for the analysis below of the changes he sought. Great indignation and a lucid programme are seldom hand in hand.
Those evils attributable to an improper ordering of society were, of course, remediable by changes in the social order, and on these points he can be said to have had a programme. Education, child labour and criminality, poverty, sanitation are subject to agitation and legislation. But Dickens’s deepest and constant indignation on behalf of his children concerned failures in human relations and human nature which could be changed only by ‘conversion.’
The concern here is truly reiterative, nearly compulsive. The children in the novels are often orphans in fact or in effect, and questing for substitute parents. Those with parents are pawns in games for adult ends. The patterns are so often repeated that considerations of dramatic necessity are scarcely sufficient explanation unless we add the potent and lasting influence of Dickens’s memories of his own childhood.
David Copperfield and Little Dorrit are the clearest instances of the use of autobiographical material. But in many of the other novels the emotional force of memory is acting without the accompanying remembered detail.




* * * *




[Draft of a letter:]






Rt. 1, Box 58
Anthony, N.M.
January 15, 1957

Chairman, English Department
University of California
Stanford Berkeley, California


Dear Sir:

I would like to apply for a teaching fellowship or assistantship for the 1957-58 school year. I received my B.A. at Harvard College, June 1956, magna cum laude in history and literature. while at Harvard I worked on fiction under Albert Guerard. My undergraduate thesis was on Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, on the criticism of fiction and my own unfinished surrealist novel. This year I am teaching in a public high school, but I would much rather do graduate work next year. The teaching has been good experience, yet I feel myself just a little wasted and a little bored.

If you think I would have any chance for a fellowship scholarship, or a fellowship in your department, teaching composition or grading in a literature course, I would appreciate your advice on the necessary applications and recommendations.

Sincerely yours,


James K. Webb




* * * *


[Draft of an undated letter to a Harvard professor for recommendations for Jim’s applications to Stanford and Berkeley.]






Dear Mr. Lynn,

I am applying, and very nearly late as usual, for an “acting instructorship” at Stanford and a “teaching assistantship” at Berkeley. At the moment I’m hoping particularly for the Stanford appointment, where I would be teaching freshman composition. I feel much better qualified for that than to “assist” with a literature course at Berkeley. I’m sure you know more of my academic virtues and vices than anyone at Harvard, so I don’t feel I’ll be misrepresenting myself in asking you to write recommendations to the two English departments. (The pink form seems to be regarded as rather farcical even by the Stanford admissions office, but is necessary for admission.) With Guerard “en France” I don’t know whom to ask for a second recommendation; perhaps Mr. Taylor or Mr. Conway. I know David Wheeler would be willing, but I don’t know that he’s still in Cambridge. I hope you’ll be able to palm off the second pink form to someone, at any rate.

The airmail envelopes aren’t planned only to snare the tired eyes of the professorial committees—the deadline for applications and supporting materials at Stanford is February 15. Considerably less rush at Berkeley.

You will be amused with the changes wrought in me by a year’s teaching, I’ve smiled myself watching my sympathies change from student rebellion to the hopefully wise constraint of the teacher. I think it’s satisfying work, and I no longer tend to think of teachers as expendable appendages to the learning process.

I would feel impertinent and troublesome asking for recommendations I don’t really deserve, if I didn’t harbor the secret hope of being asked for them myself some day.

Sincerely,




* * * *


[Jim, while getting his MA at Columbia, drafted a letter to Albert Guérard, one of his professors at Harvard who’d been encouraging of his literary and academic career.]






February 24 [1958?]


Dear Mr. Guerard,
I’m applying for teaching assistantships at Berkeley and New Mexico, trusting to the arts of your fiction for convincing notes of recommendation. I’m neither, quite, convinced of the wisdom, or reconciled to the prospect, of further graduate work, but have to apply now to have freedom of choice later. Rather think the teaching part would make it bearable.
I’ve enjoyed working on Hardy and notice some unexpected shadows on my sense of the novel. Leading a strange split existence submerged in Byron and Arnold and panting out nearly dead to write a while and. Convinced some such soggy desolate beach is where the writing happens and matters. Dupee about the best here with his pose of the terrible infant and bad boy of Amer. criticism.






[The letter breaks off here, but on the reverse of this page is another draft of a letter to someone else.]






Feb. 24 [1958?]

Dear Mr. Taylor
I’m applying for a teaching assistantship at the U. of New Mexico and would appreciate a note of recommendation or attestation of literacy or whatever you can with best conscience send.
You would be pleasantly surprized to see how logical and literal Columbia has made me for the nonce at least, and simply by refusing to recognize any distinction between whimsy and ignorance. Reaping, in short, the benefits of an illiberal education, Matthew Arnold from dawn to midnight. Some lecturers even devote the eighth or ninth session to the unimportance of Arnold.
Dupee quite good (as lecturer) on the usual 1850-1950 Amer. Hist. & Lit. topics and enthusiasms.




* * * *


[The draft of a letter, date and provenance unknown, but possibly composed the same time (24 february [1958?]) as the above requests for recommendations.]






My rather checkered academic career represents, as I look back upon it, a multiplicity of interests that has inhibited me, perhaps, from really exceptional achievement in any one field. My enthusiasms are still rather broad, but have become more focused upon literature, teaching, and writing.
As the winner of two firsts in the state competitions of the Texas Interscholastic League (in extemporaneous essay-writing as a sophomore, and in mental arithmetic as a senior) and as valedictorian at El Paso High School, I was fortunate enough to receive a National Scholarship at Harvard,. My four years there were uneven, but ever stimulating. Freshman year I was enrolled, successively, as a concentration in Mathematics, Philosophy, and English. Finally at the end of freshman year I settled upon the double field of American History & Literature, feeling that my interest in literature would not suffer from the addition of what I considered the non-rigorous discipline of history. During my junior year I took a leave of absence to write a novel. The experience made me a believer in the importance (for the writer as well as the student of literature) of self-discipline, soul-searching, and the trial & error of technical experimentation.
I received the degree of B.A. from Harvard magna cum laude, although my grades were somewhat below the standards for that honor, upon the strength of general and oral examinations and of my thesis work.
My year experience on the faculty of Bowie High School, El Paso, Texas, has made me feel that I have a real vocation for teaching, and has encouraged me in my hope of combining teaching and writing. My joy in teaching is particularly fortunate, for I could not hope to support myself by writing—since I conceive of fiction as a craft and an art, and have a preference for subjects that verge upon the surreal.
At Columbia this year I have concentrated upon English literature, and particularly upon the 19th century, to balance my emphasis upon American culture as an undergraduate. As a result of the Columbia system of unlimited auditing of courses, I have been able to attend classes by some stimulating teachers—Eric Bentley and Mark Van Doren—for whom I had no room in my schedule.
I am applying for graduate appointments at the University of New Mexico and the University of California, with the pronounced impression that 5 years on the Eastern seaboard are enough.
If I am not successful in my application for financial aid, I plan to teach again next year, at some high school. Unmarried, and living with my parents, my expenses would be minimal and I should be able to save enough from the year’s salary for the next year’s graduate work.
Unhappily I am unable to give this letter the additional thought and care it deserves, since the complete draft of my master’s essay is due the same day these applications are.

Sincerely,




* * * *


[Draft of a letter:]






Rt. 1, Box 58
Anthony, N.M.
April 12, 1957
Mr. Gordon McKenzie
Vice-Chairman Department of English
University of California
Berkeley 4, California

Dear Mr. McKenzie:
I have received your kind letter, and your continued consideration if additional appointments are made. There is a possibility that I could borrow enough money for a year’s graduate work, and I will seriously consider doing so. But the teaching experience of an assistantship is fully as important to me as the financial aid, and if no appointment develops I will probably try for an assistantship at some of the Southwestern universities less to my liking. I suppose a fear of borrowing affects my decision more than I admit to myself, since I rather have my heart set on studying at Berkeley. I shall not let my optimism get out of hand, and shall remain grateful for the chance at future appointments.
Sincerely,




* * * *




STANFORD UNIVERSITY
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
April 12, 1957


Mr. James K. Webb
Route 1, Box 58
Anthony, New Mexico

Dear Mr. Webb:

I am sorry to tell you that we have carefully considered your application for an acting instructorship and have been unable to offer you an appointment for next year.
I know that you must be disappointed, but I can assure you that you have no reason to feel that our action is any reflection upon your qualifications. We had about two hundred applicants and could make only about twenty offers outside of our present staff.
I hope that you have already made satisfactory arrangements for your schooling or will be able to do so.
Sincerely yours,

[signature]
Virgil K. Whitaker
Executive Head

VKW:mn




* * * *




Route 1, Box 58
Anthony, New Mexico
April 21, 1957


Mr. Virgil K. Whitaker
Executive Head, Department of English
Stanford University
Stanford, California


Dear Mr. Whitaker:

I know writing letters of condolence must be one of the more thankless of your duties, yet I believe I am being sincere when I express my gratitude for your consideration and encouragement.

I must confess that my first thought upon reading your letter was that the unsuccessful candidates in your department alone had enriched Stanford by $900 in non-refundable application fees. Reconsidering, I must admit that, from the individual viewpoint, five dollars is little enough to pay for two months’ hopeful anxiety.

Sincerely,


James K. Webb




* * * *




STANFORD UNIVERSITY
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
April 25, 1957


Mr. James K. Webb
Route 1, Box 58
Anthony, New Mexico

Dear Mr. Webb:

I am acknowledging your letter of April 21 because it may reflect a misunderstanding. The five-dollar application fee which you paid was for admission to graduate standing in the University. That admission still stands, of course, even though we have been unable to offer you an appointment. As I remarked in my letter, we hope that you can make other arrangements for your schooling, and I had in mind that these would enable you to come to Stanford.

The requirement that people apply for admission before being considered for scholarships is also intended, as I am sure you must have guessed, to discourage people from shopping around if they are not seriously interested in attending the University.

Sincerely yours,

[signature]
Virgil K. Whitaker
Executive Head

VKW:mh




* * * *


[A typed draft of a letter:]






149 W. 105th St., Apt. 3N
New York 25, New York
March 9, 1958

Mr. Gordon McKenzie
Vice-Chairman, Department of English
University of California
Berkeley 4, California


Dear Mr. McKenzie:
I have requested two additional letters of recommendation in support of my application for a teaching assistantship—one from Mrs. G. S. Dunbar, the director of my proseminar at Columbia and the only faculty member here whom I considered to have sufficient personal knowledge to be able to write a meaningful letter, and the second from Albert J. Guerard at Harvard, who was out of the country on sabbatical at the time of my application last year.
I have also ordered a Columbia transcript sent you. The graduate English department at Columbia does not give letter grades for course work. This is unfortunate for an attempted documentation of an application, but I am nevertheless grateful for the unlimited auditing of courses that this system makes possible. I have found F. W. Dupee and Eric Bentley, for whom I had no place in my schedule, to be quite stimulating lecturers. One cannot maintain that these lecture series, supported by the merely cursory reading that I have been able to devote to them, can be as significant as regular course work. But I am pleased with the foundations for future work that the lectures have suggested. The degree of honors for the M.A. is determined on the basis of the masters’ thesis and the general examinations administered May nineteenth and twentieth; thus the results will not be available before my application has to be processed.
My field of specialization this year is nineteenth century British literature, in which my previous knowledge had been limited and unsystematic. My thesis, a draft of which I turned in for criticism last week, is an analysis of the various techniques employed in Thomas Hardy’s first four novels, the series of books that culminated in Far from the Madding Crowd, in Hardy’s discovery of a world and a manner that was to be the basis of his best work. I shall have time, fortunately, for second thoughts and considerable revision before the final copies are due on the first of May.
I have found my work in the proseminar much more fruitful than any of the lecture courses. The individual research necessary in preparing reports gains much from the ensuing discussion with students interested in different aspects of the same field. I am now very much involved in preparing a talk on Keats’ poetics for next Wednesday’s session, and shall have to be satisfied with this rather summary treatment of a year’s work that I have found quite improving.

Sincerely,


James K. Webb




* * * *


[Two three-by-five note cards.]






4:20 a.m. March 30, 1958

I actually and literally know beforehand that it won’t work. But what can one do? One has to hope, one lives on hope—

2:45 p.m. March 31
But did not foresee the depression upon the impossibility, not of the result, but even of the effort. Hope deferred minute to minute, hour, day—the years foreclose.

A story of waiting—born not out of James’ ‘Beast’ but recurring personal experience exaggerated. Prose as painful nervous energy. Busywork, impending futurity. Question : ending?
Something ridiculous.




* * * *


[Undated prose poem or note, which may be from the Reed years but was found among materials of the late 1950s.]






L’Histoire de l’amourouse

If I added up all the hours I’ve
waited, wouldn’t the total be—
impressive? ridiculous?
But if I counted, rather, the
hours I have thought, wished,
the figure would be beyond belief.
So in either case, counting would
mean merely pointless pain—
the “terrible algebra” that it’s
better to avoid.
For both the x and y factors would
be pain – the x of his carelessness
and the y of my anxiety,
helpless hoping, whatever it should
be called.
Like the cancer in the panic posters,
I should have caught it in time—
ripped it out, no matter how
painful the operation would
have been at the time.




* * * *




149 W. 105th, Apt. 3N
New York 25, New York
April 10, 1958

Mr. Hoyt Trowbridge
Chairman, English Language & Literature
The University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, New Mexico


Dear Mr. Trowbridge:
I am most pleased to be able to accept your offer of a teaching assistantship for next year, and look forward to studying at New Mexico. I shall write again if any questions remain after reading the catalog.
My current plans are to spend most of the summer with my parents in southern New Mexico, and I shall probably make a short trip to Albuquerque in June to familiarize myself with the University.
I shall do my best to justify the confidence expressed by the appointment.


Sincerely,

[signature]
James K. Webb




* * * *


[Jim’s notes from a meeting of the English Department at University of New Mexico when he was teaching there.]


meeting – Feb. 12, 1959

purpose: review of last semester’s work
discussion of plans for current semester from department & staff “points of view”

the retrospect: Trowbridge
the attempt to teach effective expression
decent minimal level --> up to limits of ability
impossible and thankless?
an anomalous American development, c.f. continental methods
(the least illogical position?)
success through series of compromises; eclectic methods
“a middle ground between authoritarianism and anarchy”
the teacher as mediator? thus an “art” of teaching
a saint would be lacking in patience
the political theory of delegation, with, ideally, ensuing
harmony: “society,” “higher education,” ad nauseam
“the ultimate action, but....” obviously, and maturely theoretically + pragmatically; responsibility + results
“the best hope” – Miss Wyler, last year: “gestapo”
informality, relaxation through 1) manual
2) routine reporting
3) conference system
retrospective evaluation:
the heavy load, in various ways, “pretty often”
Trowbridge’s envy: “it’s nice to be young”
Miss Buchanon’s “enthusiasm” “willingness to coöperate
with the system”
papers private “to a certain extent, in a way”
but: public document – assumed transmittable [indecipherable]
-- establishment of standards
traditional theme-grading contests
two erratic grading groups a. first year teachers
b. full professors
“time” and “communication” yield “reliability” & “uniformity”
distinct advantages:
submitted plan for new semester
projected review for committee
an opportunity for review: contrast to resentment
“the kind of thing we want to crow about”

advance prospect:
the same theories, variations in practice
“easier, more informal”
three conferences, 30 min. each: 1st: next week
2nd: seventh week, midterm
3rd: twelfth week
two meetings like this: one 4th or 5th week, résumé of conference; one the 8th week.
method tentative and experimental: nothing
“dogmatic, dictatorial, or frozen”
program of conference: Robt. E. Streeter, Winfield Townly Scott
equal division between problems of Engl. 1 & 2.
last year’s “really exciting, and a lot of fun”
apology for “sermonizing tone,” possibly “stupefying”
notes and comments: Mr. McMurray, Mr. Baughneau, Miss Buchanon
“as many as”




* * * *


A sheet of notes attached to a Columbia University fellowship application form:






20.
A) My particular field of interest, in the Department of English and Comparative Literature, is the novel. In undergraduate work at Harvard I concentrated in American history & literature, writing my thesis on Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, and my special field in master’s work at Columbia was the British 19th century, since in neither case was a specialization upon the novel either permissible or advisable. But since the novel has always been my major interest, my work has been directed toward eventual specialization.

B) I have already discovered that teaching is the a most stimulating and pleasant occupation. My current position as a teaching assistant would be ideal, were I not forced, in order to teach conscientiously, to neglect my own graduate work. I also write, principally prose fiction (I have a small trunk/full of drafts for semi-psychological, semi-surrealist novels and stories), and trust that teaching and writing are will be workable complements.




* * * *


[An undated note in Jim’s hand:]






I want to go to Cambridge because:

the only U.K. university that treats lit past 1875
E.M. Forster is (or was recently & is still associated) there!
F.R. Leavis is THERE—this means nothing but sounds good
It is a GLORIOUS city.
I like punting:
the chapel, daffodils, bookstores & high teas are incomparable

England because:
Richard II, Act II, Scene 1, l 40-50 (out of context)

the colonies because:

wealth of much fine lit
(see vast list of authors)
current, pressing problem
(Cyprus, Kenya, et al)
connecting lit to REALITY
nobody’s done it
(& if you don’t, I will)
thusly we see the TOTAL picture, the whole, the parts in terms of the sum, the world view, a gestalt, a weltgeist, a thorn in the side, the savage, the effete, the responsibilities of the world powers toward underdeveloped countries, UNESCO, morality, psychosis (see Oliver Lyttleton), philosophy, & incidentally some literature that may stand the Test of Time




* * * *


[Perhaps the draft of a letter, with a few corrections:]






THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO
ALBUQUERQUE

ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

Bandelier Hall 212
April 5, 1959

Professor Marjorie H. Nicolson
613 Philosophy
Columbia University
New York 27, N.Y.


Dear Miss Nicolson:


I am writing for advice, or, perhaps more accurately, for approval of a tentative decision. I have received notice from the Secretary of the University that I have been awarded a University Fellowship for 1959-1960—mainly as a result, I am sure, of my First last year in the masters program of your department. Of course I am immoderately pleased, since I feel I have done very little toward “exhausting” the resources of your department and consider it certainly the most rewarding place to work for the Ph. D.

But I have also received a Fulbright grant for next year, to study English literature at Queen’s College, Cambridge. And the offer is certainly very seductive, for several reasons. For one thing, I’ve never been abroad. Yet the problem of choosing would not be so difficult if I had not been given my first choice, Cambridge, and had rather been shunted off somewhere in the Midlands. Cambridge is such a fine institution, both for English literature in general and for my particular project, which is the influence of the “colonial complex” on British fiction since Kipling and Conrad, that I have not been able to convince myself to decline it.

The problem is whether my reasons are valid or merely rationalizations. But, for what they are worth—I’ve decided that, at 24, I can afford to delay the eventual Ph. D. one year; that my project, even if it did not yield eventually a dissertation topic, will not be wasted effort; and that a year in England would help me, tangibly and intangibly, as a student and teacher of English. And of course a determining factor is that a Fulbright grant cannot be deferred to a succeeding year.

I shall delay sending Mr. Herpers my final acceptance or rejection until I have heard from you (he has asked for a my reply within two weeks from April first). //I realize that universities, also, necessarily have policies against deferring awards to the next succeeding year, but I hope it will be possible in my case, since I believe the year at Cambridge would be in my best interests and the University’s. But if the deferral is not possible, and you do recommend accepting the Fulbright, I will ask simply that my application, recommendations, transcripts, etc., be kept on file by the Office of University Admissions, since it would be difficult to compile another such set of materials, for next year’s competition, while in England.

I shall send Mr. Herpers a note today, explaining my delay while awaiting your advice.

Sincerely,

[signature]
James K. Webb




* * * *


[Draft of a letter:]






Bandelier Hall 212
[University of New Mexico]
April 15, 1959
Mr. Richard Herpers
Secretary of the University
Columbia University
New York 27, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Herpers:
It has been a difficult choice to make, but after considerable debate with myself and consultation with friends and advisors I have decided to relinquish the University Fellowship offered by Columbia and accept a one-year Fulbright grant to Queen’s College, Cambridge.
I am quite grateful for the appointment to a fellowship, and shall be re-applying next year. Since I shall be abroad, I hope the university will keep the supporting materials from this year’s application on file.
Sincerely,
James K. Webb




* * * *


[Jim’s final exam for his freshman writing class at University of New Mexico.]






English I
Final Exam
2 June 1959

Many professional educators would consider the final exam in a college course to be such a serious matter that the directions for it should not seem to be a personal letter from the teacher to his students. I could scarcely disagree more. I feel that what little we have been able to accomplish in this course has been the direct result of the relatively relaxed method and atmosphere that we were able co-operatively to develop, despite the size of the class. And since an examination, at its best, is a tremendously potent device for education, I could see no reason to change methods in mid-stream. I hope that by telling you in advance what would be expected of you on the final theme tonight I have succeeded in spreading that “educational device” over a slightly longer period.
A few more words on the topic: I think the most important element in our semester’s study has been our developing knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of that marvelous quantity, human intellect. All joking aside, I can honestly say that members of the class have increased my realization of both limiting points. And surely as thinking beings, you have asked yourselves occasionally—“Why?” You find yourselves in a world you didn’t make, caught in a complex net of relationships to your family, friends, country, fellow man, and the universe—depending upon your philosophy, God or Chance. In different ways, you control these relationships, and they control you; the result is the individual human being, one among billions, but one still recognizable as belonging to that expansive category, the human race. So I ask not only who you are (or, more accurately, to what extent you realize who you are), but also how you came to be that way, and, always, in questions of past, present, and future, why.
I sincerely hope you have profited from and enjoyed the course as much as I have; it’s a pity we didn’t learn more, but it would have been a tragedy if we had accomplished less. My best wishes.




* * * *


[The following are notes from a notebook Jim was apparently using while at Cambridge. It, like many of Jim’s surviving notebooks, has been written in and sketched in from both sides, as if he’d flipped it at some point or indifferently written from front to back or back to front. The notes i think are mostly from 1960, though there’s little evidence to establish or corroborate that date.

The first part, actually from the back of the book, appears to be notes regarding Jim’s plans for study at Cambridge, and specifically an idea for a thesis he was interested in writing.






Title : Attitudes (‘Atts’) toward childhood, 1830-1870.
_____ book -- immortality Ode to way of all flesh.
Literary bias, but intellectual history: return to under-grad plus grad.
list of major areas.
‘endless’ reading. retticie [?] (or return?). draft.



first draft by End of Mich. Term 1960.
candidacy for Camb. degree? M. Lit. or [vs?] Ph D.?
or return to Columbia : _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ field.
residence and research during most of long vac.




[page]




For Spring Term :
a story for Delta ?
and another for Granta ?


Christine Peso ? Peace ?
Fishing trip ? The witch ?
The two detectives ?

Memoirs of a Managed Man


travelogues of sorts.




[page]




granta
characteristics v. faults

crawl
child
refuse

neo-romantic

Flaubert and the fear of life




[page]




Varsity. Wed. 6.30. “Atticus”.


Thurs. Feb. 11.
“Heidegger & Tillich”
Dr. M. Green (Leeds)
8.30 Tower Lecture Room. Selwyn.


Lent Term -- 1960

Prof Chadwick “The Oxford Movement”
Tu Th 10 ; Divinity School

Prof. Dugmore “The Doctrine of Grace
in the English Reformers”
6 lectures ; F 5 ; Divinity School

Dr. Vidler “Religious Life and Thought
from 1830” MWF 11 ; Divinity School

Mrs. Bennett “The Victorian Novel”
Tu 11 ; Mill Lane

Mrs. Bennett “The Novel , 1880-1910”
M W ; Mill Lane

Mr. Brown “Conrad”
Fri. 5




[page]




Mr. Holloway “English Literature and its
Background since 1850”
F 10 ; Mill Lane

Dr. Redpath “Bentham and J.S. Mill
As Moral Philosophers”
M 12 ; Mill Lane

Dr. Stevens “Music and Poetry, 1540-1700”
Tu 9 ; Music School

Mrs. Grant “Aspects of the Spanish Novel
in the 19th and 20th Centuries”
W 11 ; Sidgwick Avenue

Mrs Grant “Spanish Poetry after Darío”
Th 10 ; Sidgwick Avenue

Mr. McKendrick “The Industrial Revolution
and its Social, Political, and Economic
Consequences” F 10

Mr. Bennett “The Philosophies of
Locke and of Leibnitz”
Th 10 F 11 S 10 ; Downing Place

Dr. Bradnook – seminar
“Introduction to Literary Research”
Thurs. 5 p.m. Girton College




[page]




Mr Holloway. Engl. Lit. since 1850.

Browning’s “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower
Came” as widely symbolic. Dickens “the
romance of common things” (preface to
Bleak House). Similar avowed intention:
Kingsley’s Alton Locke. Perhaps Middlemarch,
and [Landor’s?] dogs; Wordsworth’s respect
for common life. Charlotte Yonge’s Daisy Chain.
Ruskin: “railway station novelists.” Arnold-
John Bright controversy. Bright’s “condition of
England.”




[page]




“Spontaneous combustion – and __ [?]
other death.” D.’s Notebooks

Oxford Phd Oxford – 1958
P. Cominos – (American)
Vic. Att, Economics & Swx.
Revolt at end of C.
socialism – new women.
do not swallow thesis. But wealth
of cultural material

Submission of subject for degree
committee: from “hall[?] bones[?].”

wording of “middle” – not _ amoral.

Stevenson – reversals. vice versa.
*Amy Cruse – Victorians and Their Books
-- old but useful.

Invitation for thesis_ larger for
“wonderful book”
Randall – Making of Modern Mind “tinned” phil. psy.




[page]




H. Marineau – associationist.
and drop – philosophy.—
Edgar Johnson. drop. or ½ on Dickens
Newsomes. Charterhouse.
Public school for a year? still child?
Dating of Way of All Flesh.

Drafts—chapter structure . clear.
1st by end of 1960. -- revision by
Annan. _

E.g. – Dickens ; + only Johnson. One month. _

Trilling and Barzun . directly relevant
Rylands—missed. Joan Bennett –
Tu. 11. 2 courses –
M. 10. on Novel -- --
Holloway F. 10.


(Notes on supervision with N.G.A. – Wed. 27 Jan)




[page]




the flow, the blot, more than ever
nothing but admiration
veritable force – the man for the
an italic and a roman situation
why their proprietary interest in type

the then and except
when and why freaks
wherefore fury rivot and
and fury then pivot
fury fry fill inertia
fight blight italic script
confident ethical standards. must ought
bulkhead and bulkhead
crazily potent_ _ _ _ _ _ _ palpable
exertion of pressure
pressure adult manhood
pleasure contingent
responsibility relieved
prestige privilege burden loneliness
the shadow of her shape




[page]




Conrad’s retrospective notes on
Typhoon : two poles as in
Heart of Darkness


paralysis havoc….stagnation, will.
insidious tragic menace
ffsp – abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
[five lines of alphabet]
the sense of the test persists.
House. the theme formidable isolation
ordeal and initiation. concussion.
lost touch.
1, 8, 11, 69, 88, 96, 101, 111, 181, 609, 619, 689, 808, 818, 888,
906, 916, 986, 1001, 1111, 1691, 1881, 1961




[page]


[The following are notes regarding Jim’s initial project at Cambridge. He’d been accepted into Columbia’s PhD program before he got the Fulbright to Cambridge. He ended up staying at Queen’s College for almost five years but he didnt get his PhD there and may have been planning to go back to Columbia for his PhD.]






Title of research project:
“Victorian Attitudes toward Childhood”
Not limited to literary sources:
more nearly “intellectual history”
Concurrent research and writing
for the next four terms, and
most of the long vac.
To be submitted eventually for
the M. Litt. or Ph.D. degree at
Cambridge, or the Ph.D. at
Columbia.

including philosophy, psychology,
and educational, political and
religious history.




* * * *


[One of the few surviving letters from Jim to his parents, this postmarked December 18, 1963, probably sent from Connecticut where Jim was working on his PhD at University of Connecticut.]






Mr. & Mrs. James E. Webb
Route 1, Box 58
Anthony, New Mexico 88021


Wednesday
Dear Mama & Webbie –
Will get a rushed letter off in hopes it gets to you before you leave for Utah. I’m glad to hear you’re going, and thought all along perhaps you would. I bet Sheri is grown up enough to enjoy Christmas. And it’ll be fun to see the two together since they seem so much alike. Thanks for the telephone number. I’ll telephone at some time while you’re there. I guess it’s better not to try to set a special time to call, since at holidays often as not you can’t get through at the moment you want to. But I imagine with two little girls you won’t be going out much. I’ll try to call about 7 o’clock dinnertime one day. It’s snowing again today—the last week it’s been mid-20 degree highs by day and 5-10 degree lows at night, so I’m getting plenty of experience running my kerosene heaters. The car is holding up pretty well in the cold weather. The choke freezes stuck, which is a bother. And I think I’d better get sparkplugs and points soon.
I haven’t sent any Xmas presents either—didn’t see anything anyone needed that I could afford! Haven’t even sent any Xmas cards. Had one from Aunt Salley—and Martha—and the “family newsletter” you forwarded from the Evanses—who have moved from Charlottesville to Mass. and are practically neighbors. They ask to be remembered to Mama. Tad is in Saigon, Vietnam, as Episcopal minister, and was married in Oct. to an English nurse. I’m about to catch up on my housework—did 4 washer-loads of clothes at the launderette last night. the last couple of weeks have been really busy—grading lots of papers, three Christmas parties, including one here to trim a tree with popcorn, cranberries, etc, which several friends living in the dorms wanted to have. So I’ve got a big tree reaching to the ceiling (though it’s low) in my living room. Just glanced out and discovered some of my neighbors are scraping the snow off the pond behind my house for skating—maybe I’ll borrow some skates and see if I can learn, since I just have to step out the door to do it.
I expect I’ll go to Audrey’s for a couple of days, and to Jane’s in Boston for another couple, during the holidays, but exactly when will depend mainly on the weather and partly on how fast I get the reading done for my classes. Audrey suggested I bring my electric blanket since her upstairs is not heated, and I imagine I will—box it up and put it in the back seat. I’m enjoying it—seems to have been a good buy.
Some plumbing trouble this week. The bathroom drains froze, and the landlord had to spend most of the day under the house with a blowtorch melting the ice out. Seems to happen at least once a year—so you’d suppose he’d change the plumbing. But that’s not the Yankee way. He invited me to take care of it if I was in a hurry, but I said I wouldn’t know how, since I didn’t want to have it become my job every time it happens.
The tree trimming party was fun, since three different couples in the dept. had little boys aged about 5 who helped us put all the old toys Thomas Twining left on the tree, though I think maybe the “grown-ups” enjoyed it even more—making paper chains, stringing the pop-corn and cranberries etc. and make hot chocolate for the kids and eggnog for the rest of us.
The shirt and socks from Ann arrived yesterday—I’ll write and thank her, though I always feel uncomfortable in expensive clothes that aren’t bought at special sales. She says Mama has three very pretty new suits and Webbie’s also buying “about a $150 one”. I don’t believe the last part, but I’m glad you both got some new clothes for the trip.
Would you buy a couple little presents for Sheri and Leslie and put “from Uncle Jim” on them, since I couldn’t get anything there on time?
I let the barn cat spend some time in the house now, since I discovered I had a rat. She caught it in about 30 minutes, and I figure I won’t have any more if she comes in for visits and bowls of milk once in a while.
Well, I’d better finish this off if I’m to make today’s mail with it. Give Pool and Jill my love, and tell them I’d like to be there, and have a good time.
Love, Jimmy
P.S. The harpsichord seems to be lost in the Xmas rush—hasn’t arrived yet.




* * * *


[A draft in longhand of an essay on Faulkner’s style probably written in the early sixties at the University of Connecticut, where Jim told me he did extensive statistical analyses of Faulkner’s work, word counts and that sort of thing.]






I begin uncomfortably with some rather general conclusions, since they may explain (though not excuse) some of the awkwardness in the particular analysis to follow. First: it seems impossible to reconcile traditional concepts of style (as a deliberate or unconscious choice of one out of various “manners” or “modes” for making a particular statement) with the observations of literary phenomena made by modern descriptive linguistics (which maintains that the “manner” or “mode” is inseparable from the statement; that since there can never be exactly equivalent statements in different forms, a choice of “manner” or “mode” is always to some degree a choice of meaning). This brief and brutal account of the linguistic attitude toward “style” is sufficient to show that it supports the “organicist” tendency in present-day criticism: the refusal to recognize a dichotomy between form and content. But it is also sufficient to show that the linguist may well suspect that his descriptive methods will prove inadequate for any final analysis of style (the word meaning above signaling the “no man’s land” where linguistics shades into semantics or—what? humane criticism??) Thus we see Ohmann admitting in his title—Shaw: the Style and the Man—that his interests and results are extra-linguistic and debatable, however “descriptive” his primary tools. His concept of “epistemic choice” offers a quick transition from description to evaluation, but it strikes me that both his phrase and his explications of it are a little too elevated and abstract to be generally useful. Admittedly, the analysis and demonstration he has embarked upon are necessary to establish the theoretical bases for a linguistically-informed stylistics. But for one whose interest is practical rather than theoretical criticism, a less elaborate approach should be possible.
(Partly, I suppose, I am still haunted by Auden’s satire in “Caliban to the Audience”: “’O yes,’ you will sigh, ‘we have had what once we would have called success.... I introduced statistical methods into the Liberal Arts.’)
But any approach, whether theoretical or practical, must recognize the distinction between generic style and particular style. Although we no longer allow ourselves to imagine a store-house of style from which a writer may select any variety that suits his fancy and spread it over his prose, we are still convinced of the existence of an English style apart from the particular styles of individual authors—it’s a conviction we re-affirm, as teachers of composition, each time we red-ink an “awkward” in the margin of a freshman theme. And for our final evaluation of a particular style this sense of generic style is as important as the “native speaker” is for the study of a language: when Chomsky’s computer finally settles down to generating an infinite grammar, someone will still be writing an occasional “awkward” on the out-put tapes.
Unless we are to describe fully the language of a particular writer, we must rely on our sense of generic style. And since full description would be such a laborious form of linguistic “over-kill,” we will probably always be limited to a description of significant variation from generic style. Perhaps the best analogy here would be “language” and “idiolect” for “generic style” and “particular style” respectively: although an idiolect can be described from scratch, it is much more economical to particularize its variations from the language in general.
The question then is how explicit our use of generic style (as basis for comparison) must be. For Ohmann’s purposes, very explicit indeed: thus his statistical counts on a control group of five of Shaw’s contemporaries. For the purposes of practical criticism: only implicit. Short of comparative statistical counts, we have only our informed sense of stylistic norms to rely upon, and for the cruder forms of analysis they should be sufficient. So in the analysis below only the descriptive methods represent an attempt to be rigorously objective; both the selection of passages as “typically Faulknerian” and the selection of the elements that seem to signal that typicality, are unabashedly subjective.
(And, as far as I can see, the main hope for achieving a description of generic style is from the compilation of many complementary analyses of the differentiations of particular styles.)
On the other hand, I am abashed by the eclectic nature of the vocabulary used below to describe Faulkner’s syntax. I can only claim that no single set of terms seemed to work properly for all the aspects I wanted to comment upon. And although I have tried to limit my analysis to strictly syntactic elements of Faulkner’s style, there are a few points at which syntactic considerations merge with those of diction and figure. My main text is “Dry September,” but I have at points used “That Evening Sun” and “That Will Be Fine” for comparison and amplification. All three stories are in section II: “The Village” of the Random House Collected Stories.
First, I had better specify which of Faulkner’s styles I am dealing with (again the analogy to “idiolect is helpful: just as an individual speaker may have more than one idiolect by participating in different language groups, a writer may have more than one style for different literary uses). So I would distinguish between Faulkner’s dialogue style and his narrative style. It is the latter which is what we normally intend by the description “Faulknerian,” and which is thus the subject of this paper, but we should at least take some notice of the dialogue style (a luxury Ohmann’s method does not allow him, although Shaw’s dialogue techniques are as important, to our view of him as writer, as Faulkner’s are to our view of him).
As a general description, we can say that Faulkner’s dialogue is nearer to standard Southern dialect—in diction, figure, and syntax—than it is to the particular literary idiolect of Faulkner’s narration. But I would like to avoid the usual temptation to say that the dialogue is “realistic” or that it demonstrates Faulkner’s “good ear,” since both suggest reportage rather than creation. I think on the evidence of “Dry September” we would have to consider it to be creative within the difficult limitations of assumed idiolect—as all really good dialogue is. His sparing use of eye-dialect always indicates a genuine distinction in regional dialect: “aint” [p.170], “durn” [p.170], “damn” [p.170] for “damned”, and “Jees Christ” are the only instances in the conversation of the whites in “Dry September.” But, for our purposes here, we may simply define the dialogue negatively by saying it has little of the complexity or idiosyncrasy of Faulkner’s narrative voice.
Well, having eliminated dialogue with rather short shrift, have we narrowed the subject to a single style? As Hockett says of idiolects:

In some cases it is impossible to decide whether a speaker has two similar idiolects or just one relatively flexible idiolect....
[Course in Modern Linguistics, p.321]

Faulkner’s style is certainly flexible, but I think we can with conscience argue for the existence of a continuous spectrum, a progressive exaggeration of continuing habits, from the omniscient narrator in “Dry September,” through “Quentin,” the narrator nearest Faulkner’s own voice, in “That Evening Sun,” to the more extreme child narrator of “That Will Be Fine” and perhaps even to “Benjy” in The Sound and the Fury: the styles differ in degree, not in kind.* [* I am ignoring the “Southern rhetorical” style of section IV of “The Bear” and Intruder in the Dust etc., which may indeed differ in kind?] So I have chosen the relatively simple “Dry September” as the best way into the style.
Here is the first paragraph of “Dry September”:

Through the bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixty-two rainless days, it had gone like a fire in dry grass—the rumor, the story, whatever it was. Something about Miss Minnie Cooper and a Negro. Attacked, insulted, frightened: none of them, gathered in the barber shop on that Saturday evening where the ceiling fan stirred, without refreshing it, the vitiated air, sending back upon them, in recurrent surges of stale pomade and lotion, their own stale breath and odors, knew exactly what had happened.
[p.169]

My feeling that this introductory paragraph is palpably Faulkner led me to choose “Dry September” as the primary text for analysis, and it may serve to introduce some of what I consider the differentiating characteristics of his style. (Even the progression from one or two relatively “short” sentences to a relatively long and complex one is his standard opening gambit, cf. first paragraph of “That Evening Sun.”) The most striking aspect is the “nested” modification in the second half of the paragraph, from “none of them” to its predicate “knew exactly what had happened.” The attached graph shows only the “nesting” clearly indicated by Faulkner’s punctuation; a complete immediate constituent analysis shows even more “nesting,” but is too unwieldy for graphic representation. As in the case of similar “nesting” by Henry James, stress and intonation patterns—pitch levels and clause terminals—make the sentence seem much simpler when “heard,” either by the ear or the mind, than when read “silently” by the eye. It is this paradoxically simple complexity that I consider characteristically Faulknerian, but I was surprized to find that it occurs rather infrequently in many of the short stories (there is not another sentence as complex in the rest of “Dry September”). I would still expect to find many similar sentences in the major novels, say The Sound and the Fury or Absalom, Absalom!, but I think it is fortunate for my present purposes that “Dry September” has so few, since I have been forced to deal with smaller syntactic units—not only are these somewhat more manageable, but they are also basic to the more complex units and might thus suggest keys to an eventual analysis of the larger structures.
So let’s look at the paragraph again. Notice first the “it” in “it had gone” and in “without freshening it.” In each case the pronoun precedes its referent (“the rumor in the first instance and “the vitiated air” in the second). This device of the “succeeding antecedent” is a favorite stratagem of Faulkner’s, and has affinities with his use of the “empty” subject:

“It was twelve years now....” [p.174]
“It was midnight when....” [p.182]

and the “dummy” subject:
“there would be the scent of whisky....” [p.175]
“there was no sound in it save....” [p.177]
“there was another sound: a blow....” [p.177]
“there were four people in it....” [p.180]

and perhaps even with other reverse-order sentences:

“From his hip pocket protruded the butt of a heavy automatic pistol.” [p.173]
“Below the east was a rumor of the twice-waxed moon.” [p.175]

in that all of them seem to serve the purpose of “delayed narration,” a phrase which it would be tempting to extend to describe his whole fictional technique as well as his sentence structure.
All the above patterns delay the statement of a sentence “topic,” but much more frequent—and more important for a description of Faulkner’s style—are his patterns that delay ending a sentence, and several of these are worth looking at in some detail.
The first is his tendency to use strings of co-ordination:

“The barber wiped the razor carefully and swiftly, and put it away, and ran to the rear, and took his hat from the wall.... The two other barbers followed him to the door and caught it on the rebound, leaning out and looking up the street after him. The air was flat and dead.”
[p.173]

(This becomes much more extensive in the child narrator of “That Will Be Fine”:

“So I went and bathed and came back, with the presents all scattered out across momma’s and papa’s bed and you could almost smell it and tomorrow night they would begin to shoot the fireworks and then you could hear it too.... Christmas Eve, and go to Grandpa’s and then tomorrow night and then it would be Christmas and Grandpa would take the presents off the tree and call our names....” etc. etc.
[p.266]

Slightly less glaring is the use of a sub-type of co-ordination: apposition. Looking back at the first paragraph of “Dry September”:

“the bloody September twilight, (=) aftermath of sixty-two nameless days”

“the rumor, (=) the story, (=) whatever it was. (=) Something about Miss Minnie Cooper...”

“Attacked, (=) insulted, (=) frightened”

(The second and third examples may be another sub-type of co-ordination: series construction. But it seems to me such a judgment would be based on semantic rather than formal grounds?)
I am also tempted to consider the most characteristic of Faulkner’s methods for delaying sentence terminals—constructions centered upon “-ing” and “-ed” verbal forms—as also being suppressed forms of co-ordination. But since this will take some argument, I had better attempt to describe them first.
They may be classified into two groups: those which are specifically directed, as structures of modification, to an external “head,” and those in which all the modification or syntactic direction is internal. As examples of the first group:

“gathered in the barber shop” [p.169]
“sending back upon them....” [p.169]
“roving his gaze” [p.172]
“dragging his sleeve across his face” [p.172]
“jerking at the cloth” [p.172]
“not looking at one another” [p.172]
“running” [p.173]
“leaning out and looking up” [p.173]
etc.

and of the second:

“his heavy-set body poised easily” [p.171]
“his head lifted” [p.171]
“the barber still pressing” [p.171]
“the razor poised” [p.172]
“the headlights glaring” [p.176]
“his eyes going swiftly” [p.178]
etc.

My suggestion that both groups are related to Faulkner’s tendency toward co-ordination is based upon the observation that the “kernel” sentences which yield these constructions are, in the first group, a second predicate with the external “head” (usually the subject of the main sentence) as subject which could yield a compound predicate, and, in the second group, a subject and predicate parallel to the main sentence which could yield a compound sentence. In effect, I am arguing that both groups are predications manqués, and therefore verbal in effect. (The first group are adjectival structures of modification, but I’ve found no strict description of the second. Are they the “absolute” constructions of traditional grammar?)
My point in stressing the seeming verbal effect here is the difficulty I have in trying to apply Rulon Wells’ nominal-verbal distinction to Faulkner’s style. The preponderance of co-ordination rather than subordination, and of phrase-elaboration rather than clause-proliferation, as well as the repetition in sentence structure evidenced by the two forms cited, all suggest a nominal style. So would the relative importance of adjectivals over adverbials (even though so many of the adjectivals are derived from verbs:

“a hulking youth” [p.169]
“the half-risen client” [p.170]
“a strained, baffled gaze” [p.171]
“his sweating face” [p.171]
“unflagging aunt” [p.173]
etc.)

Against this I can only oppose a “strained, baffled” intuition that the style is more verbal than nominal, and intuitions aren’t very satisfying.
The topics remaining to be discussed are all to some degree “violations” of traditional grammar, and that I should save them for last suggests perhaps some lingering influence from years of proscriptive teachers. First, Faulkner’s syntactic “looseness”: for this the first paragraph also provides a good example. What is the relationship of “attacked, insulted, frightened” to the rest of the sentence? The meaning seems clear, but the closest I can come to a formal connection is to consider the three words as short-form notations of possible answers if the final “what had happened” were a question. And that is not very close.
A second is Faulkner’s personalized version of “sequence of tenses”: “When she was young she had had a slender, nervous body....” Once again the meaning is clear, but one might be tempted to substitute a “usage note” for the out-lawed extra-linguistic “logical” criticism of the proscriptive grammarian.
But a good deal of Faulkner’s stylistic inventiveness occurs near the border between syntax and morphemics: for instance shift of “rove” from intransitive to transitive (“roving his gaze,” [p.172] “He roved his gaze”), which seems to be an invention. At least I’ve not found evidence of its being either a dialect usage or an archaism. Or the use of derivational affix in “the street lights hung nimbused as in water.”[p.176] Or: “He cursed, long and steady, pointless.” [p.172] “Long” is certainly a bare adverb, and “steady” probably is too in colloquial usage. But “pointless”? And are we to consider that Faulkner is creating an adverbial, or that all three are possibly adjectives, in “loose” syntax modifying a noun “curse” that simply isn’t there?

There are two huge sources for dissatisfaction with this draft: I feel I was able to get more said about Faulkner’s prose style in a purely metaphorical treatment, for Mr. Stern, of “Spotted Horses,” “Old Man,” and “The Bear.” Of course the fault is mine, not the method’s. And secondly I have a strong suspicion that the simplest of statistical checks would show that all my observations are really only prejudices.




* * * *


[These are Jim’s notes for a series of lectures on the victorian era, literature and life. Some of them are bare notes, the skeleton of the lecture, but others are fully written lectures that he clearly essentially read to his students. These were humanities classes that were apparently team taught, so you must imagine lectures by other professors on other related subjects interspersed with these of Jim's. I believe these lectures may have been delivered relatively early in Jim’s ‘tenure’ at Reed, 1966 or 1967.]






Captains of Industry!
You may remember from our tour of the Crystal Palace a passage from John Ruskin—

Taste is not only a part and an index of morality;--it is the ONLY morality.... Tell me what you like, and I’ll tell you what you are.

Ruskin’s dictum is a lot less simple-minded than you seemed to think it, or, to be fair, less simple-minded than our rather pointed selection invited you to suppose. So perhaps it would be worthwhile to try to recover some of the context of his statement.
The passage is near the beginning of a lecture, delivered in 1866, and entitled “Traffic.” (The word is used, not in the sense of “traffic jam”, but in that of “drug traffic”—trade, with implications of multiplicity, immorality, the primacy of the profit motive.) And the lecture was delivered to the assembled members of the Bradford Chamber of Commerce—sitting, one supposes, considering the direction the lecture takes, in stony silence.
The captains of Bradford industry had decided to build a new exchange; they wanted, of course, “the right thing for their money”; they had heard that Ruskin knew all about architecture; they invited him to speak; he accepted their invitation, and quite possibly their honorarium, though that I have not been able to establish. He began politely enough by asking their pardon:

I cannot speak, to purpose, of anything about which I do not care; and most simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, that I do not care about this Exchange of yours.

He knew they expected to be told “the leading fashion...what is...for the moment, the newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles.” Instead, Ruskin delivered a sermon on his usual text:

All good architecture is expression of national life and character, and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty....good taste is essentially a moral quality.

But the sermon was not limited to architecture. His sermons were never limited to anything. He was once mistakenly advertised as intending to lecture on “Crystallography” when his subject was actually “Cistercian Architecture”. But, as he said, it didn’t matter.

For if I had begun to speak about Cistercian Abbeys, I should have been sure to get on Crystals presently; and if I had begun upon Crystals, I should have soon drifted into Architecture!

So Ruskin moved on, before the Bradford industrialists, to education:

For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time to come they like doing it.... And the entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things.... it is not an indifferent nor optional thing whether we love this or that; but it is just the vital function of all our being....to teach taste is inevitably to form character.

He then demonstrates in rather short order that when you have taught taste you have elim[in]ated social classes and the armaments race. Then back to architecture, but with a slightly different emphasis: the decay of institutional religion. Ruskin notes that for the first time in western history, ecclesiastical architecture is supposed to be something different from domestic and commercial architecture.

But now you live under one school of architecture, and worship under another. What do you mean by doing this? ....at the root of the matter it signifies neither more nor less than that you have separated your religion from your life.

But as Ruskin develops his distinction, this separation turns out to mask a substitution. If we are to speak of

the real, active, continual, national worship; that by which men act, while they live; not that which they talk of, when they die....the practical and earnest religion, to which we devote nine-tenths of our property and six-sevenths of our time....I think you will admit that the ruling goddess may be best generally described as the “Goddess of Getting-on,” or “Britannia of the Market.” .... It is long since you built a great cathedral... But...your railroad stations, vaster than the temple of Ephesus, and innumerable; your chimneys, how much more mighty and costly than cathedral spires!...all these are built to your great Goddess of “Getting-on” ...and it is quite vain to ask me to tell you how to build to her; you know far better than I.

Ruskin’s only practical suggestions for the proposed Exchange are that the frieze should be decorated with pendant purses, and that the pillars should be broad at the base to give lots of room for signs. Instead of advising, he questions:

Getting on—but where to? Gathering together—but how much? Do you mean to gather always—never to spend?

And didn’t the captains of industry realize that they worship “the Goddess—not of everybody’s getting on—but only of somebody’s getting on.”?

Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it should be passed in a pleasant undulating world, with iron and coal everywhere underneath it. On each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, with two wings; and stables, and coach-houses; a moderately sized park; a large garden and hot-houses; and pleasant carriage drives through the shrubberies. In this mansion are to live the favored votaries of the Goddess; the English gentleman, with his gracious wife, and his beautiful family... At the bottom of the bank, is to be the mill....in this mill are to be in constant employment from eight hundred to a thousand workers, who never drink, never strike, always go to church on Sunday, and always express themselves in respectful language. Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, the kind of thing you propose to yourselves? It is very pretty indeed, seen from above; not at all so pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to one family this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand families she is the Goddess of not Getting-on.

Here is Disraeli’s “two Englands” with a vengeance—but the proposed cure is certainly different.
So, the morality of taste has led ineluctably to Ruskin’s pointing out to the captive magnates the necessity of cocialism:

You will tell me I need not preach against these things, for I cannot mend them. No, good friends, I cannot; but you can, and you will; or something else can and will. Even good things have no abiding power—and shall these evil things persist in victorious evil:... Change must come; but it is ours to determine whether change of growth, or change of death.... Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal one, and soon no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be possible. Catastrophe will come; or, worse than catastrophe, slow mouldering and withering into Hades.

So. I can’t see that Ruskin’s peroration had much effect on the Bradford industrialists. Captains of industry seem to be capable of taking a masochistic and covertly proud pleasure in hearing themselves damned. But for Ruskin himself there was no escape from the social implications of his aesthetic—he spent the quarter of a million pounds inherited from his wine-merchant father on various projects to remake the world—reclaiming slum housing, a shop for selling unadulterated tea, a street-cleaning crew, a hand-spinning and hand-weaving industry, famine-relief in Paris, printing and selling his own books as a boycott of the fair-trading agreements of British booksellers, giving his Turners to museums.




* * *


[This seems to be part two of the above lecture.]






I suppose that most of you are at least vaguely aware that someone called Newman, an Anglican and a brilliant preacher, was one of the prime movers in that “Oxford Movement” which Mr. Baker referred to; that he was received into the Catholic Church; and that he wrote an Apologia explaining why. I don’t propose to tell you much more than that about him, but I would like to suggest to you that there is indeed more than that, and, that that something more may be worth the effort required in apprehending it.
The Rev. Charles Kingley, the dedicated sanitary reformer and the author of “Water Babies”, did us all another service almost by accident: he accused Newman of “approving the art of equivocation, in other words of lying on the proper occasion.” Newman responded with his Apologia Pro Vita Sua, which can stand as the passionate and virtually impromptu complement to the calm and beautifully reasoned Grammar of Assent—or, to give it its full title, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. The contrast I mean to suggest is that the Grammar is an impressive intellectual achievement, the Apologia a great human document.
I don’t think you can do much close reading of Newman—in the Grammar of Assent, or in the Apologia, or in On the Scope and Nature of University Education, without realizing that his was one of the most subtle and powerful minds of the century. But first you would need to do the reading. There are several reasons you should—for instance, you may find in him, as I do, a more attractive statement of the conservative emphasis on organic society, on the necessity of tradition, than in Burke [*motive, not style? Jim’s note], and find in him, also, an instance of the scholastic mind more accessible than the mediaeval schoolmen, since the world Newman is responding to is more nearly our world.
The main reason you are most of you unlikely to read him, and I suppose the reason he is not on your reading list, is that none of us now read much theology. I think this assumption—that Newman is, or is only, a theologian, is a misapprehension. Although what I am now going to say would have struck Newman as obvious heresy, and certainly no compliment, at this distance in time theology seems only his mode of discourse, not his entire meaning. [Maurice on 1848—“theological revolution” meaning: ideological?]
Speaking of his state of mind when in his twenties, Newman wrote in the Apologia that “The truth is, I was beginning to prefer intellectual excellence to moral; I was drifting in the direction of liberalism.” If you examine the statement closely, you discover that Newman was appalled, not at intellectual excellence, or even at liberalism, but at drift. The whole course of his development turned out, paradoxically, to be a constant struggle against all avoidable instances of drift, and an exultation in the one great drift that he was powerless to combat.
But I intended not to speak of theology....
Let me mention instead his ideal of a university. This was principally a response to his sense of the danger of “doing as one likes”—[Arnold’s anarchy,] protestantism, cut off from the necessary restraint of tradition. The orderly mind fears anarchy. So he sees the ideal university as the home of “a wisdom safe from the excesses and vagaries of individuals, embodied in institutions which have stood the trial and received the sanction of ages, and administered by men who have no need to be anonymous, as being supported by their consistency with their predecessors and with each other.” I should have stressed the word ideal, since Newman also said that “Living movements do not come of committees.”
Let me try to suggest, briefly, what I meant a moment ago by calling Newman’s mind scholastic. He read Hume on miracles at the age of fourteen, with, one supposes, much the same response as he felt at the same time to Voltaire’s speculations against the immortality of the soul—“How dreadful, but how plausible!” But within a few years, he had decided that Hume’s either/or was too simple:

Miraculous accounts were to be regarded in connection with the verisimilitude, scope, instrument, character, testimony, and circumstances, with which they presented themselves to us; and, according to the final result of those various considerations, it was our duty to be sure, or to believe, or to opine, or to surmise, or to tolerate, or to reject, or to denounce.

Not either/or, but the entire spectrum.
You will notice the same sense of spectrum emerging in the degrees of belief enumerated in the Grammar of Assent, nicely summarized by John Holloway in The Victorian Sage—

Newman contrasts the credence given to a proposition in logic, science, or mathematics, and to a proposition of practical concern in human life. To the former kind he gave the name “notional assent”—it is assent to a general, abstract proposition, lacking the indefinite richness of experience because somehow held away from it; but possessing, instead, a clear and definite minimum of meaning.... Assent like this does not give full and certain knowledge; it is too much and too deliberately restricted. It yields various degrees of belief, which Newman calls Profession, Credence, Opinion, Presumption or Speculation. The mental activity which contrasts with these Newman calls Real Assent. This kind of Assent is directed towards assertions based on the whole trend of our experience; and because of this foundation, their meaning is too rich to be sharply limited, always liable to be unfolded further, and likely to vary from one person to another in exact content.

This concept of Real Assent is obviously something that has particular relevance to our study of sages—since they are all seeking from us an assent that comes not from syllogism, or definition, or categorization, but from particulars.
Newman is here maintaining, what he elsewhere demonstrates, that there are forms of truth and knowledge closer to art than to science—forms gradually apprehended, by diction, by metaphor, by tone, by gesture—by irony, even at times by a communicating silence—so that the recital of a catalog of abstractions or of sequences of reasoning is grossly insufficient.
But judging from what seem to be rather general misapprehensions about what these Victorian lectures have—we can’t say achieved—attempted, I’m afraid such a recital may be the only thing one can successfully do in a lecture.
Before you decide to dismiss what I’m talking about as mysticism, or anti-intellectualism, or irrationalism, try immersing yourself in Arnold or Newman. Immersion and absorption. There are minds that are themselves works of art, minds that as much deserve and as much require to be closely studied and fully imagined as the tragedy of King Lear does. [George Eliot: “how ideas lie in other minds...”] As Newman says, in the Grammar of Assent:

I do not want to be converted by a smart syllogism: if I am asked to convert others by it. I say plainly that I so not care to overcome their reason without touching their hearts.

Don’t be put off by the dated language (“convert,” “hearts”)—the idea is far from dated.




* * *


[Two index cards with further quotes from Newman meant, i think, to be part of this lecture, perhaps a sort of coda.]






From Apologia Pro Vita Sua: [about the period before his conversion to Catholicism]

When we took leave of Monsignore Wiseman, he had courteously expressed a wish that we might make a second visit to Rome; I said with great gravity, “We have a work to do in England.” I went down at once to Sicily, and the presentiment grew stronger. I struck into the middle of the island, and fell ill of a fever at Leonforte. My servant thought that I was dying, and begged for my last directions. I gave them, as he wished; but I said, “I shall not die.” I repeated, “I shall not die, for I have not sinned against light, I have not sinned against light.” I never have been able to make out at all what I meant.”

My respect for the honesty and thoroughness of Newman’s self-analysis is so great that it would be impossible for me to argue that he was at all able to make out what he meant; but I would argue, partly for the same reason—my respect for his honesty and his intellect—that at the time, in the different honesty of fever, he did know what he meant by “the light.”
It was during the return voyage from Sicily, becalmed in the Straits of Bonifacio, that Newman wrote the verses, “Lead, kindly light.”

Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home—
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene,--one step enough for me.

I was not ever thus, nor pray’d that Thou
Shouldst lead me on.
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.

“Now the day is over” is by Sabine Baring-Gould, who also wrote “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

Your America is here or nowhere.




* * *


[The order of the following parts of the lectures is uncertain, but they're thematically connected dealing as they do with the novel as victorian art form.]






Dickens is generally taken to be the most representative novelist of his period. It is because of this admitted representative quality that you are reading Hard Times in this course, rather than say, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, which I think we would most of us agree to be a greater novel—and a much longer one. And I will say some more in a minute about just how representative Dickens’s life, as well as his novels, are; but first I'd like to suggest, as something that comes very close to identification with the period, the career of Anthony Trollope.

Quick summary, with quotations from the Autobiography.

I hope this slightly exaggerated picture will make you more sympathetic to what I have to say about Dickens.




* * *




Let me suggest an analogy to sum up the position of the novel in Victorian England—it was their version of television.
It was available to the literate, the semi-literate, and the illiterate. Many of the literate considered it either immoral or vulgar or both—but most of them sneaked a look at it. And for the less privileged masses it was both a source for much of their information and a reflection of many of their attitudes. You remember Josiah Wedgwood: “we produced what the public wanted.” The television executives say the same thing today. But the Victorians paid at least sufficient lip-service to the idea of “non-commercial” to be shocked by Trollope’s Autobiography where the money standard was openly used—


Now that there’s T.V. in Saigon, we can claim that we have brought at least one aspect of civilization to Indo-China.




* * *




Lord David Cecil, son of the Marquis of Salisbury, commenting upon this passage from his rather elevated and aristocratic perspective:

This is a dreadful passage in many ways. You could not find a more blatant piece of cheap rhetoric at a Revivalist meeting; yet it is not unmoving. Dickens’ indignation at the state of society that allows an innocent boy to die thus in penury is so profound that he does not care how vulgar are the means he uses, if they help to bring it home to the reader. And in consequence he does bring it home.

Of course it’s vulgar. Life is vulgar. Death is vulgar. We’re vulgar. I suppose it’s vulgar to achieve a feeling of finality by ending a prose passage with a sentence in iambic pentameter—

“And dying thus around us every day.”

But it works, doesn’t it?
As for blatant pieces of rhetoric: you are all familiar with LITOTES, “a figure of speech in which an assertion is made by the negation of its opposite.” “Yet it is not unmoving.” Translation” “It is moving.” But he has still used the word unmoving, hasn’t he....




* * *




I’m afraid you are about to be subjected to yet another cubist lecture on Victorian England. I have all the hard facts promised by my lecture blurb, but much of the interpretation will be left to you.
“Give me your definition of a reading public.”
“Girl number twenty unable to define a reading public.”
I can’t define a reading public either, but I can tell you something about it.

--I suspect you will get more from this lecture if you don’t try to take notes. If you want a title, a date, a number, a page reference, you can ask me later.




* * *




DICKENS AND DEATH


If you were listening attentively to Mr. Baker on Friday, you have already had this lecture in a nutshell: Everyone read Dickens. But since you are doubtless unable to accept a generalization that gross, no matter how true—I intend to spend a large part of this lecture talking about the sociology of mid-Victorian reading. (By sociology here I mean—well, I don’t know exactly what I mean—I might just as well, in appropriating the name of a discipline for the information I plan to offer you, have called it the history of mid-Victorian reading, or the economics of mid-Victorian reading.
Taking the long view—the novel is the dominant art form of the British 19th century. This fact is usually explained in the metaphor of supply and demand, which will do as well for a framework as any other.




* * *


[Regarding a scene from Hard Times.]






“Ah, Racheael, aw a muddle! Fro’ first to last, a muddle!”
“See how we die an’ no need, one way an’ another—in a muddle—every day!”

“I ha’ seen more clear, and ha’ made it my dyin’ prayer that aw th’ world may on’y coom toogether more, an’ get a better unnerstan’in’ o’ one another, than when I were in ‘t my own weak selm.”


Idealist. Visionary. Christian. Socialist.
Like Auden: “We must love one another or die.”
No answer at all. We must die whether we “coom toogether more” and love one another or not. But it’s also the only answer, isn’t it???




* * *




Quote from the opening lecture, from Ford Madox Brown’s description of Carlyle and F. D. Maurice in his painting Work”

In the very opposite scale from the man who can’t work, at the further corner of the picture, are two men who appear to have nothing to do. These are the brainworkers, who, seeming to be idle, work, and are the cause of well-ordained work and happiness in others.... Perhaps one of these may already, before he or others know it, have moulded a nation to his pattern, converted a hitherto combative face to obstinate passivity....




* * *




OLIPHANT AND THE FORBIDDEN CITY


The suppression of the Boxer Rebellion in Peking by European, English, American, and Russian troops was a quintessential expression of 19th century imperialism. To protect a few diplomats and their families from this anti-colonial insurrection the Western powers sent troops and artillery to ravage Peking—the seat of a Mandarin dynasty that we the curator of a civilization already old when the British were blue-painted savages. That civilization was no match for efficient Western firepower, however, and the tiny band of Englishmen besieged in their legation building successfully resisted assault until their rescue. The attitudes given poetic form by Kipling appear somewhat more explicitly in the diary of a young British civil servant who helped defend the legation. Nigel Oliphant, a sturdy descendant of Scotch war-lords, was 26 the summer of 1900 when the rebellion broke out. When the first shots were fired, he turned to his diary with a fresh zeal, and from a hum-drum record of bureaucratic trivia it was transformed into an extensive description of a military campaign, complete with casualty lists, battle maps, and strategic theory. Not even the death of his younger brother, shot while felling a troublesome tree in the legation yard, interrupted the narrative. Oliphant’s account was so colorful, and so clearly illustrative of English fortitude and loyalty, that the great scholar Andrew Lang wrote an introduction to it, commending the author for his service to the crown. We quote a few excerpts:




* * *




This is a straight lecture. Seriously.

Today’s hopeful theorem: The whole of a lecture is greater than the sum of its parts, and equal to the product of its digressions. I am assuming that you all know how to multiply.

A prefatory digression on the study of history.
Whatever you may have been taught about intellectual history in this course, you have also, automatically, if not painlessly, acquired direct knowledge of two of the limitations of our efforts at achieving remembrance of things past: the unreliability of documentary evidence, and the extreme complexity of individual motivation that is subsumed in all generalizations of unitary movements. Both these bits of useful wisdom derive directly from the nature of Humanities 210 as presently constituted. In Marshall McLuhan’s characteristically gnomic and much-explicated statement of this phenomenon: The medium is the message. For “the unreliability of documentary evidence”, consider the syllabus of this course. In some instances, the lecture outlines are accurate summaries of the lectures actually delivered. Others are pious profession of intention which—mea culpa—turn out to be less reliable reflections of the lecturers actually delivered. Still others—and again, mea culpa—are fallible predictions based on past performance. The resumé you have of today’s lecture is a reasonable account of two lectures which Mr. Baker and I gave last year, but it cannot at all points be trusted as a synopsis of today’s. For “the complexity of individual motivation subsumed in generalizations of unitary movements”, you need only reflect once more on the variety of disciplines represented on the staff of this course, and the variety of professorial viewpoints within each of these disciplines. Yet we are all officially teaching something called Modern Humanities. I trust that your ingestion of these scraps from the tree of knowledge results in tolerance, not cynicism. As for future historians of the ‘climate of opinion’ at a ‘small liberal arts college in the Northwest,’ I just say, good luck.

Second digression: Complex derivation of an independent variable, in three steps, or, what this lecture could be, what this lecture should be, and what this lecture is.
What this lecture could be: A seeming life sentence of sociable confinement in institutions of intellectual servitude—or, to be somewhat more objective, I should say “of higher education”, has conditioned me to respond with certain tics of intellection when I experience a stimulus like Middlemarch. These mental tics are habits of analysis and association which I like to use—that’s how well conditioned I am, which I like to use in attempting to understand and communicate the nature of my aesthetic response to a literary text. (I am sufficiently Victorian myself to assume, with Ruskin and Arnold, that this process is also an exploration of something called MORALITY.) But that is theoretically what we are all doing in conferences; the investment of lecture time in the same attempt would, again “theoretically”, be an uneconomic duplication of effort.
What this lecture should be: According to the Humanities Creed, which is based, ultimately, on the apostolic succession, today’s lecture should be both the fruit of all that has been read and said, “to date”, and fertile seed for what will follow. The relation of this to Platonic and Hegelian traditions is too obvious to require extended explication: the creed has already been criticized, by implication, in the discussion of “generalizations of unitary movements.




* * *


[The previous section of this lecture is on two pages marked 1 and 2, while this next part starts on page 6. There appears to be a section missing, though it’s also possible that the above sections are all Jim’s portions of the lectures in perhaps a jumbled order. It’s hard to tell.]






Seventh Digression: In which the lecturer confesses the inadequacy of digressions. New readers start here.
I would like to play the game to the end. It would be fun. The nineteenth century is, by modern standards, the first digressive century, and maybe the first switched-on century, and the only difficulty in using up the hour would be selecting which digressions to allow precedence. I have plenty. As Brook says, “I have documents behind me. I went into all that once.” But as he also says, “I discovered it wouldn’t do.” And that re-discovery here we might as well label by George Eliot’s now rather archaic-sounding term of “duty”. I think Middlemarch is a good novel; I think it is one of the best novels produced in a century and a country which gave us a lot of good novels; I think Lionel Trilling is right in maintaining that, I’m quoting, “For our time the most effective agent of the moral imagination has been the novel of the last two hundred years.” If I think that, playful digression would be worse than self-indulgent, it would be irresponsible. So my duty is clear, isn’t it? My thesis is the value of Middlemarch, so I should attempt the work of discovering wherein that value resides. And if I’m to go on pretending to be a college professor, I’d better accept the present conventions of discursive prose, and relegate experiments in other media that are other messages to summer vacations. See? We’re all agreed that if a job is worth doing it’s worth doing right—we just don’t know what right is anymore.
Middlemarch is a good novel. Because, for a start, George Eliot gives us a large, intricate, accurate, thoughtful, thought-provoking, self-conscious, and tantalizing vision of a stage in the history of human consciousness. I will try to explain what I mean by all those nice general terms. They are, in fact, only an expansion of Virginia Woolf’s observation that Middlemarch is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.
First: a large view. The title of the novel is symptomatic of two of the senses in which Middlemarch is a large view: first, that George Eliot set out to create a society larger than the consciousness or ramified actions and interests of a single hero or heroine could encompass.... and did so with such success that one could argue that the town of Middlemarch, or perhaps more explicitly, human society, the idea of social man, is the hero of the book. Second, isn’t there the suggestion that the “march” here is not only the Midland Marches (that is, borderlands, disputed territories) but also the kind of march involved in Pilgrim’s Progress? Large in pages and time—kind of time-geological.
An intricate view. Consider the elaborate explication of causality throughout the novel, and the parallel development of the four principal plot elements (Dorothea and Will, Lydgate and Rosamond, Mary and Fred, Bulstrode and –Raffles?, rather Nemesis? or Middlemarch?), four elements which are not only subject to parallel development, but each of which impinges upon each of the others. Do you remember how Mr. Garth is related to the dowager Lady Chettam? His daughter Mary marries Fred Vincy, whose father’s sister is the second wife of Bulstrode, whose first wife’s grandson is the first cousin once removed of Casaubon, whose wife’s sister is married to Lady Chettam’s son.... Or consider the recurrent metaphors for intricacy and organization within the novel: the metal mirror covered with innumerable scratches which seem to organize themselves about a reflected light, no matter where that light is centered, and the similar image of a spider’s web. Or the central theme of the possibility, and limits of, reform.
An accurate view. By this I mean that George Eliot is a novelist who can be trusted in the cultural history she offers us. And by cultural history at the moment I mean something like what Trilling defines, if I may quote him again, as “manners...a culture’s hum and buzz of implication....the whole evanescent context in which its explicit statements are made....that part of a culture which is made up of half-uttered or unuttered or unutterable expressions of value. They are hinted at by small actions, sometimes by the arts of dress or decoration, sometimes by tone, gesture, emphasis, or rhythm, sometimes by the words that are used with a special frequency or a special meaning.” The source of this accuracy is only partly her painstaking and careful research—we know, for instance, from her notebooks that she thoroughly investigated such topics as the stages in the passage of the Reform Bill and the state of medical research in 1830. More important is the fact that she was writing of the temporal and geographical setting of her own youth, of precisely those impressions that are for many reflective people the most affecting and the most indelible.
A thoughtful view. I mean by this those habits of analysis and generalization which are both most characteristic of George Eliot and most antipathetic to our present fashion in the writing and criticism of fiction. Fresh from a reading of the novel, I am convinced that intelligence of precision and tact complements, rather than subverts, the central dramatizing mode of fiction. (Of course, I have to admit that when fresh from a reading of Dickens I’m all in favor of sentiment.) And a thought-provoking view: because analysis invites our agreement or disagreement at each step, and generalization invites comparison with our own observation.
A self-conscious view: because I don’t think the discussion so far has fallen into that popular swamp of the intentional fallacy. There is ample evidence in her letters and reviews that these were precisely her intentions.
A tantalizing view: here the case is much less clear, since I am in a sense talking about what is not in the novel, though indications of its absence are. That sounds rather confusing: I mean the deliberate limitation of self-consciousness, the arbitrary choice of limits for thought and feeling. “Forbidden knowledge”, “suppressed hysteria” are both too dramatic, perhaps; that the process of doubt and scepticism which led to her powerful rationalist and intellectual capacity might subvert even that result is perhaps an oversimplification. But isn’t this strongly suggested in the passage in Book Two where she says: “If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.”
The point of thus recounting at some length some of the observations you have been making about the novel in conferences, is to try to deal with what several people have suggested to me is the biggest stumbling-block in the way of our present apprehension and appreciation of Middlemarch—all I’ve said so far is related in one way or another to the presence of George Eliot in the novel. And this, I am told, many of you choose to refer to as the author’s intrusion in the story. I hope you can be convinced that the word intrusion is inappropriate. Let’s start by choosing a word that doesn’t prejudge the case. How about George Eliot’s presence in the story, which would leave undecided the legitimacy or felicity or value of that presence? We can then remember the fact of literary history: that the author’s presence in a 19th century novel was as conventional as his absence in a 20th century novel, and spend our time arguing about how well a convention is used, rather than the abstruse philosophical question of which of two arbitrary conventions is right or natural.
I think the convention of the narrator’s presence is used so well in Middlemarch that it would be no exaggeration to say that George Eliot is the heroine of the book, that the most real, most realized character is the character who does all the realizing. Admittedly, this is a mental or spiritual rather than a physical presence, one that was succinctly described by Henry James as “her deep, strenuous, much-considering mind, of which the leading mark is the capacity for a sort of luminous brooding.” But it can be un-physical and still the most real: this is an hypothesis which you can test as time passes and your memory of the novel fades. I am confident that the character of the narrator will be the last to lose definition and go out of focus. Even at the moment it may be the sharpest image you have of the book.
If you go along with me this far, my next ploy is to argue that one worthwhile way of approaching Middlemarch is to play with the possibility that the novel form, in this case, is an even closer analog for spiritual autobiography than is usually the case. Of course, any novel is, to some degree: fantasy and creativity are permutations of desire and experience, anticipation and memory. Remember that Flaubert said he himself was Emma Bovary. But what he seems to have been referring to was the creation of a character from within, by empathy. I am not merely making the equivalent suggestion that George Eliot was Mary Garth or was Dorothea Brook, but that she was the whole of Middlemarch, the objectification of a curious fantasy: she once said, “it would be better if my life could be done for me, and I could look on.”
If my metaphorical equation here makes any sense, then possibly we should make a deliberate effort to see the novel with triple vision. Two of these visions: Coventry in 1830 and your reading in 1967 are virtually automatic when you read with close attention to the text before you and your own consciousness filtering it. But the third—what I will call “London, 1870”, --is not automatic. By “London, 1870”, I mean the sum of George Eliot’s education and experience that Middlemarch drew upon, and here any fragments of information I can get across to you may be useful. Fortunately, that information may serve the incidental function of suggesting why Middlemarch is an appropriate text for a humanities course. Basil Willey’s summary emphasizes that relevance: “Probably no English writer of the time (i.e., the 19th century), and certainly no novelist, more fully epitomizes the century; her development is a paradigm, her intellectual biography a graph, of its most decided trend. Starting from evangelical Christianity, the curve passes through doubt to a reinterpreted Christ and a religion of humanity: beginning with God, it ends in Duty. George Eliot’s representative quality is due largely to her unique position, amongst imaginative writers, as a focus for the best (and the worst) that was being said and thought in her time, in Europe as well as at home.” Later in the same essay he says that “She succeeded, better than J. S. Mill, in uniting what he described as the two main streams of the nineteenth century mind—its two kinds of one-sidedness—the Benthamite, which stands outside and tests all received opinions, and the Coleridgean, which tries from within to discover what is true in them. We see this action and reaction going on both in her own life and in the novels.”


Last year, representative quality was Dickens. Inaccuracy in specifying what is being represented: the great “philistines” or the clerisy. (saving remnant)




* * * *


[An undated page from a notebook that contains what may be notes for ‘Spider God’.]






the implicit sequence: rape upon rape
imposition of his sexuality on me, leading
immediately to symmetrical counter-
impositional fantasies—

why ‘rape’? resistance a necessity,
in one sense or the other

and the traitor within the gates:
the pride of the narcissist at being chosen
the rape-prone character type—
resistance just sufficiently impaired for the
crucial traumatic act to occur

associates with apocalyptic mentality—
sees consummation as end rather than beginning—
violation, and signal (i.e., non-recurrent)

my middle-way seductive course is fraudulent if it
applies itself to the unseducible ____ since either
the object is raped, or the theorectically-seductive [sic]
ego is itself traumatized.

predictively: one must ask both how strong the urge
itself is, and how unbearable the present situation

and the shadowy incest barrier imposed by the first
impression—

the earlier [?] specified two directions of topple from the
middle way fleshed out in the crisis image of
extinction of the flame—

a) through triumph of the will: the rape sequence
b) through extinction: the masochism sequence

and the two can and do merge – the crisis
becomes precisely the test of the strength of the will :
the death of one will or the other?




* * * *


[This from the same notebook:]






I have arrived at a fiction for the next stretch of time / in time / before me: a reading of the runes ___

[I can only approximate these three runes: first is a sort of back-slanted X, second is an X with ^ on top, and the third is a sort of angular P.]

/ X />
thralldom or possession content
necessity ----> ---->

I set them in action arrogantly, selfishly : now I am learning their power. By seeking to enthrall, I am enthralled; by trying to possess I am possessed. So: I must endure and trust in eventual content, must await the completion of the cycle in one form or another.

The third he sees between us is the third I see around us.

There was another storm the night you left. Or perhaps the same storm.

No one ever tells me what to do : their energy is consumed in telling me what not.

A little respect. A little rigor. For a change—

Or say: it’s over, done, finished. As full as it can or will be. Past. Ended. Gone. Failed. A mistake from the beginning....




* * * *


[An essay from Reed College QUENCH, Spring 1968.]






Private Language Systems: Dangers and Redemptions
~ Or, why I built a cell in my house ~

Some notes for an eventual statement.... about (all around us) what’s happening and not happening.
Language inclusively: words, signs, signals, images, tastes, environments, blows and caresses, snorts, sighs, gestures, tics, touches, scents, clothes, lights, darks, patterns, chaos....
General statement: Fantasy (non-real world and un-real worlds) is the danger and the redemption.
For contemplation, private language (in its purest form, the null language) is enough. But if contemplation is not enough, we must publicize the language.
* * *
Some of the dangers.
Isolation. Autism. Verbalism (the fetish of the word). All: Insulation. Communally: stagnation through absence of currency.
“Arrested development.” For intellectuals, regression.
Of misunderstanding, of being misunderstood: over- and under-communication lead to over- and under-response. (At many levels: 2 people, 2 disciplines, 2 age groups, 2 life styles, the 2 cultures, the n cultures, East-West.)
Institutions to which you get committed, “locked up.” They come and get you and they carry you away. Insulation, padding. All cells are “padded.”
* * *
Some redemptions.
Discovery: New knowledge is first private. Revelation: When a new language imposes itself. “Shock of recognition.” Epiphany. Communion, involving community if not communication. Transcendence: from the word to the Word, which is often non-verbal.
The redemptions seem either to depend upon, or to lead to, the language’s renouncing its privacy. A new dispensation finally dispenses with privacy. (And achieves: identity?)
How? Three major models:
1) Analysis, investigation. Critical reading. Discursive prose. The liberal arts as pre-professional.
2) Love, imitation, empathy, absorption. Poetry, felt fictions. Falling in love with a native speaker is still more efficient than a language lab. The liberal arts as faith.
3) Imposition and subjection. The Sado-masochistic pattern. Regimentation. The liberal arts as “status.”
* * *
An illustration for the three models: consider Genet. His method, in the novels and plays, is “sado-masochistic,” springing from his homosexuality. Sartre’s monumental Saint-Genet for “analysis and investigation.” A classic instance of translation from one private language to one somewhat more public—inaccurate, inadequate, as even the best translations are, but increasing the accessibility of the documents. And for “empathy and absorption”—obviously, I don’t intend to tell anyone how to love. Well, I mean, who can? But: Why I built a cell in my house....
* * *
The imitation fallacy, which has interesting similarities to the experimental method. Trying to deal with the problem in the problem. A private language discourse on private language. but it’s a tactic, i.e. one of the tactics, for redemption: spreading one’s language, leading an overt life. Make the language as accessible as possible to anyone interested, but not impose it. This is the ideal of openness—in personality, in society.
And I claim as virtue for my own language that it includes wide areas of theory and practice. (Compare the American and English usages of “linguist”—the former, a theoretician of languages, the latter, one who knows the languages themselves.) Both are important for recognizing, living with, removing language “barriers.”
* * *
Why I built a cell in my house. No one is very happy with “why” formulations, so, what does the cell mean? (A small improvement in inquiry, but a crucial one: part of an answer is better than none. Freewheelin Frank, secretary of the S. F. Hell’s Angels, says: “Everything in my room has a meaning.” A minimal, and not an exhaustive, statement, and one that obviously causes problems, that assumes a 1:1 correlation that isn’t there. Rather, more accurately, “meanings” —Mine. Yours. Theirs.
* * *
What does the cell mean? (I’m distressed that most people call it a jail, a 1:1 correlation that I resist.)
Mainly, for the visual ambiguity. If you have a language, why not a rich one? So, for structure, not for accuracy, let’s subsume the meanings as elements in ambiguity:

1) For incarceration, obviously. But we can differentiate a number of penal purposes—
hospitable, I had no guest room.
punitive, though it’s unlikely, someone might violate my standards of behavior.
therapeutic, (see, here, Nabokov’s subtle analysis of the nice spacial discrimination between “therapist” and “the rapist.”
preparatory, as training for the concentration camps (see Senator Aiken’s queries quoted in I. F. Stone’s Weekly).
All the above are probably felonies, but new languages often requires civil disobedience....
2) For self-control. This is a pun of sorts. I sometimes feel the need for something to protect me from the world. And sometimes for something to protect the world from me.

3) For cell meetings. On the C. P. pattern.

4) For living on a cellular level. Old style: contemplation.

5) For the bee-hive image. A study: factory and store-house for honey, a place to write in old and new languages.

6) For the cheap shock. This is at worst childish, and at best neo-natal.

Obviously, there’s no limit to a meaning trip. How far do you want to go? The ultimate standards are taste and stamina.
* * *
So. Here we are in the center of my exemplary private language, which indulges itself in the ambiguity of “exemplary.” Where do we go from here? Or, can you get from here to there? The prime meaning of my environmental construct—what I have said in the language, as opposed to what the language says—is that the exit (or the entrance) is locked. Not No Exit, but the necessity for either a key or grace, to use the exit that’s there.... The key is mine. Though anyone who wants a duplicate can have one. But the grace is—
Since, as I said above, the meaning trip is endless, let’s add another step:

7) By divine inspiration. An angelic messenger descended upon me and said, now see here Webb, the Lord needs him a cell, and he wants it nine cubits wide and nine cubits long.... And the Lord only knows why he wants it at all.
* * *
The pursuit of grace, then, begins with the consideration of implications (in the analogy, hatching escape plots).
The escape through education. Obviously, my personal preference is for “love, imitation, empathy, absorption, poetry, felt fictions....”, as my loaded language indicates; I prefer it even when each spectrum is expanded to include its negative limit: love—hate, imitation—parody, empathy—disgust, absorption—rejection, poetry—science, felt fictions—this is a teaser....accepted facts? But for general program, I submerge my preference in the necessity for synthesis: various proportions of pre-professionalism, faith, and “status.”
It’s the old system, with a lot of successes and failures entered on its account. But it’s possible. Whereas my next implication may not be:
The escape through therapy. What I propound here is utopian, millennial—on the pattern of Marxist-Leninist “withering away of the state,” a withering away of psychiatry. (Though not as millennial as it first appears, since, when I conceive of life as the disease—i.e., a dislocation in the normal inertness of matter—the ‘cure’ must be postponed as long as possible. Therapy is then a strategy for maintaining chronic disease.) This “withering away” will occur, not when the shrinks disappear, but when we all become shrinks. The dichotomy of patient:therapist (man:God, moved:unmoved-mover) will decay into interaction, into unified field, and psychic rehabilitation lose the accidental association with sanitation, with the sterile, which it presently retains from its genesis in medicine. It seems to me the seed of decay is at work: in non-directive therapy, in gestalt, in the marathon session (though the last image and practice is insufficient—for life-long therapy, Marathon is too close. Perhaps “orbital”?)
Obviously—though indirectly—I’m close to claiming that the seed of decay is working, also, through me. My internal evidence for this is the anger I feel in myself when I discover people are occasionally described as being “under the influence” of me. As if I were a dangerous drug. Or an illegal one. Or available by prescription only. When, as a matter of objective and subjective fact, I am interactive: influenced as much as influencing....
* * *
Where would we be without the poetry of jargon? Silent? Or dull?
We should all be advertizing. “HELP WANTED. Simultaneous translation. Bi-lingual, tri-lingual. Omni-lingual. An equal opportunity employer.” And answering ads.
* * *
There may be time for a few questions.... If anyone would care to.... Yes....?
Q. The personality cult again, Professor?
Webb. Of course, but then I’d also claim to be representing, as cult figure, my constituents. My parts. Have you looked at Love’s Body? The book, I mean. Norman O. Brown?
Q. But, sir, why don’t you let your students write papers like this?
Webb. You seem to do it whether I like it or not. But, if you’ll permit a light-hearted (headed?) threat, I have a few things up my sleeve yet.
Q. Jim, you know, I was just wondering, why make your confusion public this way? Whatever happened to good taste?
Webb. Good taste very nearly did me in. (Ignorant laughter.) No, seriously. Redemption comes in strange ways. If it ever comes. But since it may come, to or through a group or an individual—you see I don’t specify—you have to try to keep the lines of communication open, and that’s why—I mean in addition to the aesthetic effect, and to moderate anxiety—that I installed the telephone in the cell.
Q. Instead of answering, aren’t you just extending the confusion?
Webb. Answering the question? Or the telephone? Ah, you want me to end on my usual note of summational and vatic hubris. Sure. After all, the new faculty constitution specifies that behavior must be flagrant to be significant. And I’m conscientious.... and well on my way to specializing in flagrancy.
(To Be Continued?) ~JKW




* * * *


[A note on Reed College Information Services Office stationery:]






October 24, 1968

Jim:

I have gone through all the Where-do-we-go-from-here talks to make them seem like written presentations rather than spoken pieces, and I feel yours suffers most by this kind of editing. A lot of the punch it had came from the very personal talk.

Why don’t you look it over with that in mind, and see how you feel about it. I have another copy of the transcript, too, if it would be of use to you. I would hope we could maintain the light but pointed touch you had in the verbal presentation.

Tom
Thomas K. Worcester


jan




* * *




We are all involved in an orgiastic and sacramental investigation of self-interest. Where are we going? I am obviously invited to represent the “kook” point of view. The point of being the kook point of view is I am institutionally certified as being allowed to be irrelevant. I am supposed to think the unthinkable and speak the unspeakable. I will see if I can.
First, I agree with everyone. I am over 30, I have a large investment of affect in words. I am ready to lie for students or to students, whenever the necessity develops. I am ready to betray them. I have exhaustively investigated my own imagination. I have discovered (a) few original sins.
My students are generally quicker than my colleagues to discover my judgment on something they must get beneath the surface solecism and look attentively at the difference between a mushy and a resilient adjective. My colleagues are less open to varieties of communication and I put on a better show for the students than for my colleagues, possibly because they are a better audience.
I am doing my job. I intend this year to have my 97th nervous breakdown in full view. I intend to make it the most excruciating educational experience available, because the college is paying my salary, thus providing also the context in which I will have a nervous breakdown. They are telling me that I am hired as a teacher because I know something and that I am to direct conferences in which students can discuss their innermost truths. I am working very hard at that.
This whole thing is dull. We are seeking a majority in consensus—this is the Reed ideal.
Let me mention leave-taking or research. I solemnly renounce both.
Where Reed is going is going to happen after all of us are gone. Speculatively, we can all be concerned sympathetically about it but few of us will be here. Some will remain. I may even remain. One advantage to Reed students is an intensely moral faculty.
All of us represent conscientiously God’s will—even the pragmatists are doing it because it is the right thing to do. Another way of stating that is that each one of us has a broader view that includes those of all our colleagues. I am particularly guilty in responding to fashions—you can walk down the King’s Road—you can buy a pair of trousers—a shirt—a jacket—an overcoat—a vest. If you are not careful you will not have a pocket. This leads to dispossession. I call that the morality of fads. I assimilate it to Buddhism. Reed students sit in this teaching hospital, and have on display living symptoms of the Reed disease, or more generally the educational disease. Their only recourse is to look at it .... As Mr. Wheeler has suggested, after a while none of us will be here. In the meantime possibly we can be forgiven for being representatives. I am, representatively, the faculty nigger. I embody the liberalism of my colleagues. I take my job seriously. I have discovered that life becomes progressively complicated. Last year I lived in a world of tomorrow. People came up to me and made suggestions and I said, “tomorrow would be a good day.” I discovered that this year I suggest the day after tomorrow—tomorrow is full. It will take three or four years for me to get to the point where I say, “We must get together sometime.” You see what I am saying—I am well aware that this is probably going to be one of those years when I come on very Messianic—I have a gospel, too. I don’t mean fanatic—that’s pretty extreme—that is beyond the boundary. I will be fanatic one year or another—but not yet. Chastity and continence. Right now it is Messianic. I would offer my subversion as the model for institutional change. I think it should be quiet—I think it should be successful, and I think it should be moderately fast. If you add those together you get gradualism. I am not going to complain about the label—so it happens. Speculatively, I can see next year’s convocation. Two or three people turn up with shaved heads and saffron robes. The year after, a few more people. Now I think that most people will agree that Reed surely is not the sort of place where one would be criticized for his style of dress. (Actually my notes here say where anyone would be openly criticized for style of dress.) I think we should quietly use the scene to bring about change. What is the existing scene? Reed College is an institution—there are lots of institutions around the country. Mental, penal, educational—in all of them there is a choice of christs. In very few of them will you find more than two or three. There are at least a hundred at Reed, and each has strong medicines. I have some comments on things such as attrition. There are two forms of attrition—students and faculty. Half of the students go away—the faculty goes. Many students should go away, but they should tell their friends to come here. I will go away and I will tell my friends to come here. Attrition is some kind of desacralized cow. Given the mobility of our culture, I can see considerable justification for two years at Reed followed by two years at Berkeley. Two years at Harvard followed by two years at Reed. One year at Swarthmore, two years at Reed, and one year at the Wurzburg Institute. The four-year liberal arts degree is obsolescent if not obsolete.
We all have a chance for innovation; students in their private lives—I in my classroom. Fortunately the classrooms at Reed have a considerable degree of sanctity. No one has ever walked into one of mine without invitation or announcement yet. The Catalog says we are innovating. We are innovating. But we probably should not tell anyone. We consider the possibility of an arts campus, a college of political concern—I must admit I am interested. I am at Reed obviously because I like people who analyze, criticize, discover, structure. I find when I am away from Reed that I also like people to perform, interpret, create, change, mess things up in general. I would be willing to share my table in Commons with an actor. I probably will not have the chance. We are caught in structures. We exist in departments. One of my versions of Utopia is that sometime in the next few years, I would be allowed to give some of my attention to interdepartmental courses. Levich’s course in esthetics and mine in practical criticism are a natural combination. I think Kirk Thompson and I could discuss the philosophy of institutional change. Nick Wheeler told me a few days ago that it freaks a lot of people to discover that his subject—physics—is a metaphor. My subject is a metaphor. I think we could have an interesting class together.
I shall end with a note about guilt—the kind of guilt that I feel. Obviously I think I am right. If I think I am right I should not say a word about it. Subversion does not occur in public. A number of you have probably already reached the obvious conclusion that I have blown it by talking about it. It is probably unbecoming of us to let them know what we are doing, but I have already done it. This puts us in a mess. We have always been in a mess. the only solution I have to offer is magic. This is assimilable to the irrational, the charismatic, the MacLuhanish. The strange thing is that I thought I had a lot more notes than I had. Have you ever had that experience?




* * * *


[An undated lecture, Reed College:]






The Ritual of Pleasure and Pain



Pleasure and pain is.

I am tempted to stop here. It is. So the rest is only a game of “what is it?” If you don’t know, maybe you find out; if you do know, you play the game well.

Pleasure and pain is a symmetry. They balance exactly or they destroy the system. Therefore: mutual dependence.

(Blake: “Thus one portion of being is the Prolific, the other the Devouring: to the Devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains; but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole. But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the Devourer, as a sea, received the excess of his delights.)

For pleasure and pain, the physical:psychic dichotomy is irrelevant: they are neither/both.

Pleasure and pain is an answer if to feel is a problem. It is also an answer if the problem is not to feel. (Because of secondary elaboration, in each, in each case?)

Pleasure and pain is a proof of existence (Q.E.D.?) and an internally self-proving system: “painful proofs” and “pleasant proofs”....

Pleasure and pain are complementary: like active and passive, initiating and completing, monster and prey.

Pleasure and pain is communication more accurate, more real, than words: then, perhaps, ultimately, essentially physical? Truth perhaps often but not only in the contact of bodies?

Neither pleasure nor pain is death: death is the boundary of the ritual, can be approached but not consummated; can be ritually counterfeited, since that yields rebirth, and allows consciousness of the processes of derangement: derangement of identity, derangement of time, derangement of the senses. Derangement of consciousness? Yet consciousness of derangement?

Pleasure and pain is a descent into thingness—a night journey—an initiation. Never the same again; ever the same. Externalization of the mind, internalization of the whole universe.

Pleasure and pain are reflexive: i.e., reversible like mathematical signs—the pleasure of giving pain, the pain of receiving pain, the pain in paining, the pleasure in being pained.

Therefore: empathetic. A communion.

Love is destruction. Datum: To be filled with your seed is to subject God to the power of death. Interpretation: this is the utter self-abasement of nightmare. Because deep down I know I am sterile. No creation. Mustard seed on stony ground. Stillborn.

(Notice that I have deliberately chosen data that merges the sexes—after all, I’m talking about love. This implies both a minimal platonist distinction between love and sexuality, and something like Eliot’s use of Tiresias in The Waste Land. But perhaps I should cite a more reputable source: Professor Pock recently observed in the sauna—in one of the sauna seminars where the Socratic dialogues are necessarily brief and to the point—that one aspect of the hippie posture is confusion of sexual roles. And when someone observed that he hadn’t noticed too much confusion, Mr. Pock delivered one of his classic exit lines: “That’s not what the data says.”)

Or a simpler dualism that can stand for them all. Two myths (see above for when you can legitimately read “delusions”). I am Christ. I am Satan. (Notice, in passing, the historical identity of the martyr and the rebel: both words are operationally defined by the established order—which may refer either to the social order or the nature of the universe).

I am Christ. Datum: “I” feel my participation in God-head. Interpretation: Come unto me. The atonement I offer is vicarious but real. All you have to do is want it. But if you want it, you have to follow me. This is usually referred to as a “mixed blessing.”

I am Satan. Datum: The smallest of pacts with me dooms you to eternal hell. Interpretation: You are right to avoid me. Don’t come around too often. Trust your fears and your diffidence, because they’re true: I will either seduce you or rape you. And I will be glad I did. And so will you. Hell is unending sensual fire. (But then so is Heaven. And in either case.... ramble on for a while here about how both are simply our constructs). So: for God’s sake and yours, keep your distance and your sanity and your innocence.

I am Christ. I am Satan. It’s a nice joke: in either case, in one sense or the other, there is all hell to pay.


Well. Now we must start the process of relaxation, of re-entry. Obviously I made it all up. It’s fantasy. Creation. Imagination. We’ve just been on some kind of intellectual trip—I have, I hope you have.... Nothing I’ve said should disturb your sleep. I am thoroughly convinced that I am neither Satan nor Christ. God, I’m even tired of the words—I’m not the Marquis de Sade. I’m not Socrates. All I want is to be myself.
[Page torn off.]


SOME PERSONAL MYTHS
which the persona (“I”) interprets—
i.e., to the extent that I am “I” I can testify to their truth (they are to that extent real “myths”), but to the extent that you (“you”?) are not “I” they are only “myths” (read “delusions”). Thus: any dualism you care to suggest. (Definitely not in quotation marks: if the I has separate existence from “I” it is as pure intellect. The suggestion here—pick a dualism, any dualism, don’t show me your card—is a suggestion to pure intellect)

A first dualism: two myths. Love is creative. Love is destructive.

Love is creative. Datum: “I” want to fill you with my seed. (“you”? This could get tiresome....) Interpretation: I want you to be creative? productive? maternal & comforting? to me even? At least—creative. And I want to be—paternal, proud, responsible for but unpained by creation.... (as close as I can come to merging unleashed sensuality and contemplative withdrawal. But am I getting close?)

Love is creative. Datum: “I” want to be filled with your seed. Interpretation: first the easy symmetries. The will to create—and willing to be pained. To be chosen for creation—“God, use me!” is the ultimate prayer. Donne’s “Batter my heart....” But the inversions: not irresponsible, since I want to will it. But unable: since passivity is the datum. And there is the pride in being chosen.

Love is destructive. Datum: To fill you with seed is to be God. Interpretation: For me, in full consciousness, to will your pain with your creation. For me to say “so be it”, to assent, to affirm, your pain is necessary.

The basis is: Trust. Recognition.

The process is: Exploration. Displacement. Testing. Revelation.

The result is the gift of self, through loss, through extension.

(The result is love: recognition of essential conflict, mutual victory through mutual submission—in all, release....)

The pleasure, and the pain, of giving up control equal the pleasure, and the pain, of taking control.

The paradigmatic statement of the benevolent/malevolent sadist: “Strange....I want to steal pleasure from you, and make you a gift of complicated pain—to see you make something beautiful out of it.”

Reflexive again: I (the “I”) must have what I give or the gift is empty gesture. Knowledge and knower are one. Just as you (the “you”) must possess pleasure before it can be stolen.

Rousseau was wrong: people say it and mean it. Or mean it better than by saying—“I make with you a convention wholly at your expense and wholly to my advantage: I shall keep it as long as I like, and you will keep it as long as I like.”

And the “you” makes the convention too....

As in the brain: Pleasure centers. Punishment centers.

Pleasure domes. “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately punishment center decree....”

So the handcuffs, chains, locks, leather straps are real props, to the extent that the play is a real play (i.e., ritual=means something).

Thus the paradigmatic statement of the strong masochist: “I have submitted to the monster and survived. I am not only all I was, but also something other....”




* * * *


["Spider God", the movie, directed by Will Baker and essentially a close Baker/Webb collaboration made as an experiment in biography-autobiography, was shown as a work in progress May 13, 1969 and had its premier in September 1969. The following is the text for the poster worked up to promote the film on campus.]






Spider God


Mental masturbation coupled with scenarios of sensual Mexico …….
Sinking deeper into depravity, dope, nudity, peace, love, grapefruit, flowers, colour, black & white, set in lurid detail at notorious Reed College … starring an ill-fated cast of several, plus extras, including professors profoundly propounding, students slyly snickering, flagrant little boys & girls, this film reaches the heights of ecstasy only to conclude on another note … listen to the reviews: “Visually a delight… a complex undertaking … a good deal of the film’s effect lies in the layering of sound … psycho-cinema … a mind-blower! … there is more to this film than meets the eye.”
The Willamette Bridge… “…whether Webb exists or not is beside the point.
… Outstanding!.. captures the world-weary know-it-all feeling of the hip…”
Ann Arbor Film Festival




* * *


[This is a transcript of the soundtrack for “Spider God”, with corrections and notes in Jim’s hand.]






this is the post script


David Fronfield: Wuh buh I told you, Webbism is a peculiar and interesting phenomena. (giggle) It is a barrel of… shit.

Lloyd Reynolds: Because there’s nothing banal about Jim Webb at all.

John Rennell: Freshman year it seems that I heard how Webb is an ex-RAF fighter pilot…

Unidentified voice: Webb is crazy.

John Rennell: …fountainhead of all evil. I didn’t think Webb was.

Andrea Stapley: I did.

Don MacRae: I love the son of a bitch so much that I don’t want to let him down. (cackle)

Fronfield: Don’t let this movie fool you. (laughter) This movie is made by a bunch of lunatics in Mexico.

Jack the Grocer: John, would you catch this carry-out please? Well, they’re asking me about one of our neighbors here. Uh, we have a store just about a block from where Mr. Webb lives, and they’re curious as to what his grocery purchases are, what his shopping habits are. As far as that goes, I don’t think there’s any difference between Mr. Webb and any of our other customers. He uh buys about the same items that almost any other ones. About the only thing that I really notice that he purchases a little bit heavier than some of our regular customers is the uh produce. He seems to eat quite a few fruits and vegetables and I believe that part of this is because he was a little bit heavy here about a year or so ago and uh got on this fruit and vegetable deal trying to keep his weight down. But other than that why his normal shopping habits are just the same as anybody else. Once in a while when he’s in here shopping why some of the neighborhood people who don’t know him they wonder who, who he is, because he does dress uh kind of beatnik or hippy, whatever people would like to call it.

T.C.P. Zimmermann:
(Latin text about John the Baptist?)
The impression that I have of Jim Webb overall, I think, is of a luminous cloud moving through this campus, stopping from time to time to discharge some lightning in the form of an epigram.

Webb: (SCOLD LECTURE TAPE) In fact this is not several lectures that I was going to give.

Zimmermann: Although I must say that uh sometimes, seeing him after his daily sauna, he looks more like a rolled up turkish carpet uh on its way to be beaten. I think that where Jim uh exists most fully uh is in the nineteenth century. Yes, I think that uh his house, which is clearly the lair of nineteenth century esthete, uh is the most uh solid part of his environment. And this of course is the area where Jim’s critical sensitivities are the most profound, I think.

Marvin Levich: I’m sorry, uh, I thought there might be an opportunity for me to answer some questions, but I gather that I can just begin on my own. Uh when I uh reflect on the Reed union in which I participated and Webb participated, one of the first things that strikes me is that it’s really difficult for me to identify exactly the point where I can say I explicitly took a position which Webb rejected or that Webb explicitly took a position which at its very foundation was one I had to repudiate, because it was very unclear to me as to what position he was taking. I suppose that when one thinks about the overall questions of education that one has to reflect on the possibility that it may well now be true that the description of stands on education can be couched in a language elusive, and so difficult to identify, that in fact obscurity and rhetorical impact can be construed as some kind of appropriate substitute for what might ordinarily be considered to be substance. That might not be true in Webb’s case, but the problem is it’s very difficult to find out whether it is true. And if the veneer of disciplinary learning is to be substituted for the content of disciplinary learning, I suppose one very good way of doing it is to create a façade so brilliant and so sophisticated and so elusive that it’s very difficult to make a judgment as to whether or not anything is beneath the façade, and I suppose in that respect Webb in some cases I suppose functions as a kind of paradigm of some overall problems of education, where it’s getting to be very difficult to determine whether uh education is all mask, all talk, all frivolity, all a bunch of brilliant jakes [sic], or whether there’s anything going on underneath the surface….

Andrea: As far as I can tell, this movie is art because it’s all fantasy. We’re using our imaginations trying to figure out who we are, sort of.

Baker: Yeah.

Andrea: And then we get to decide.

Baker: Uh huh.

Andrea: And that’s all it is. And it’s fun.

Baker: Yeah.

Andrea: And we get to be famous. (laughter)

Baker: And we make a lot of money.

Andrea: People get jealous (laughter). And we get to see ourselves after it’s all done. Everybody else gets to see us.

Baker: Yeah.

Levich: Whether that’s true or not in the case of Webb it’s difficult for me to judge, uh, but the presence of intelligence does not ordinarily guarantee, and in many cases does not guarantee I suppose some understanding of the educational issues to which intelligence is directed, and I must say that I think overall …

Fronfield: My own thing about the transcendental evaluations can never be uh ipso facto proved by the information solicited by students. It seems to me, and I repeat, it seems to me

Unidentified voice: Marvin want a cracker? (Laughter)

Levich: O.K. Is that the sort of thing you wanted?

Owen Ulph: Oh I don’t know, you shouldn’t have asked me, really, I wonder why you asked me… I consider him… an unscrupulous intellectual scoundrel. (Laughter) He has an absolute insidious influence on students. Yep, he has a hypnotic effect. He fascinates them like a snake. I’m all in favor of this of course (laughter).

Mary Pedersen: What does it tend to do to the students?

Ulph: Well, they’re sort of entranced. He doesn’t really have students, he has disciples, he stupefies them. And the trouble with students, you see, they’re very impressionable, and they don’t, they don’t understand…

David Lipson: What do you think about Mr. Webb?

Female Student: I’ve never taken any classes from him, so I don’t really know. But it would be a hell of a lot more boring if he weren’t here.

Lipson: What about the way he dresses?

Student: Huh?

Lipson: What about the way he dresses?

Student: Like I said, it would be more boring if he wasn’t here.

Webb: SCOLD: First the two epigraphs for this lecture, both from Paul Goodman….”The trick is to get other people to cooperate with your fantasies.” And the second: “When the devil quotes scripture….

SCOLD OBITUARY: The entire college community was shocked and grieved when, after twenty seven years of dedicated teaching…

Webb: SCOLD: ….it is not with the intention to deceive, but simply that the masses are so ignorant of theology that somebody has to teach them the elementary texts before he can seduce them.

SCOLD OBITUARY: ….Associate Professor James Webb (laughter) collapsed during a humanities lecture in the Chapel, in the midst of one of his famous epigrams. When he died a few minutes later, classes were immediately canceled, and the students formed a memorial march, with black djellavas, candles and incense. St. James, as the students affectionately called him…

Webb: SCOLD: Pleasure and pain… it is … if you don’t know, maybe you find out … if you do know … pleasure and pain is a symmetry, they balance exactly … therefore …

Dr. Gooding: …want me just to sort of free associate or react to … my interpretations or feelings or reaction to …

SCOLD OBITUARY: … the return of Webb and his class, after five months in Mexico …

Gooding: … the wish to be glorified, perhaps, and perhaps destroyed, as a god. Elevated, and then destroyed. He is …

Obit: tanned, beatific, with new and interesting approaches

Gooding: … the center of the last supper….

Webb: SCOLD: Two myths … legitimately read “delusions”: I am Christ. I am Satan. Notice in passing the historical identity of the martyr and the rebel. Both words are operationally defined by the established order.

Webb reading Genet: … not to arrange it … desperate with love deeply sinks his smooth heavy prick, as polished and warm as a column in the sun, into the waiting mouth of the adolescent murderer, who is pulverized with gratitude….

Gooding: … as passive …

Webb: SCOLD: I feel my participation in Godhead. Interpretation: come unto me….

Gooding: … really is a sort of Christ-figure …

SCOLD: The atonement I offer is vicarious but real. All you have to do is want it. But if you want it, you have to follow …

SCOLD: Quote from Blake: … prolific, the other the devourer … the devourer has the producer in his chains, but it is not so … he only takes portions of existence … but the prolific would cease to be prolific unless the devourer …

SCOLD: I am Satan. Datum: The smallest of pacts with me dooms you to eternal hell. Interpretation: You are right to avoid me. Don’t come around too often. Trust your fears and your diffidence, because it’s true, I will either seduce you or rape you, and I’ll be glad I did, and so will you. Hell is unending sensual fire. But then so is heaven. So, for God’s sake and yours, keep your distance.

SCOLD: …. PLEASURE and pain is an answer if to feel is a problem. It is also an answer if the problem is not to feel.

Voices: (gabble, gabble) Let’s take a vote (gabble, gabble)

SCOLD: There is a certain reluctance to admit my presence on the faculty.

Voices: What? What? Now are we all clear that this vote is on whether to substitute (gabble) the substitute amendment for the amendment to the motion before us… What was the question before us? What is the question? (gabble) Everything is open. (gabble) I want to get out, I want to get out, I want to get out….

SCOLD: … and you’re going to feel that you are a focus for some kind of love that you don’t deserve on the one side, and that you’re a focus for some kind of hate that you don’t deserve on the other. You end up feeling undeserving on all sides. You end up in fact with a recurrent sense that you are being torn into too many pieces by too large a number of people. It’s not that anyone wants too much, everyone just wants an essential part….

SCOLD: I’m thoroughly convinced that I’m neither Satan nor Christ. I’m even tired of the words. So I’m not the Marquis de Sade, I’m not Socrates. All I want is to be myself.

(Procol Harum: ‘(Outside the gates of) Cerdes’)

Fronfield: Well it’s true you’re a multifaceted projection screen. You’re also our mind-masturbating spiritual teacher from Malta, a fat, generous, latter-day dharma-daddy who’s been there already, our subversive associate professor, neighbor, friend, balding thirty-seven year old freak American unconscious, our hot-rod anarchistic angel fantasy on seven silver wheels flying eternally forever … our sweet dharma prophet, apocalyptic visions, visions of Meier and Frank, visions on Burnside, visions of Shelley, Levich, T.S. Eliot, visions and revisions, our golden lama father who once fucked Christ, Blake, and the Devil seven times over while day-dreaming in a laundromat, our eccentric, our eccentric fag savant from New Mexico who has willfully forgotten himself somewhere in Malta, who stands straight, raw, honest, gaping at himself before a mirror, weeping to himself on the back porch, he hears voices, we are all with you, we are all with you, we are all weeping with you on the back porch, weeping with you, someone knocks on the door, he gets up and talks psychodrama until morning….

Baker: There’s this debate around between the people who think you’ve got a central mysterious core, never revealed to anybody, and the other people who think that there’s nothing in there.

Webb: I’ve got several of those. Do you want one of those?

Baker: Yeah. Just one, we should have for this …

Webb: The real spiritual leader …

Baker: uh huh …

Webb: … taking us all to salvation

Baker: All right. Now, wait a minute, wait a minute….

Webb: It’s hard to tell, of course….

Baker: “Taking all of us.” But I’m talking about: Get rid of, get rid of this house. Get rid of these clothes. Get rid of this …

Webb: Cut, Jim.

Baker: … particular manner and style you have to deal with uh the world. There’s nothing left but you and …

Peter Livingston: The dream was that Webb had died.

Baker: Now, there. That self. What’s that like?

Livingston: It was, uh, some sort of, first of all I wake up a lot of times, and instead of going back to sleep, I kept thinking of calling to find out if he’d really died or not. He had died, uh, and I remember seeing his bed, and it was a thick bed,

Baker: Yeah.

Livingston: … with a velvet-type of cover, and there was the impression of his body, but he wasn’t there.

Baker: And the pillow?

Livingston: There wasn’t a pillow. It was just a satin-type, down bedspread, and the impression of a body, there was just the impression of his body, his body, his presence was there but his body wasn’t. The next uh scene was at school, someone was running a mimeograph machine, they were notices that Webb had died and that the whole school was … spiritual loss … And my feelings were that now that Webb was gone there was no point in being in school anymore, that the sun had ceased to exist, in fact the spiritual center of the whole school was just … lost … that was the general feeling….

Baker: Okay, tell me again that same story.

Gwen Taylor: The same story? Don’t you get tired of hearing the same story over and over again? As I remember, you came in and said—I asked you what you were making a movie about, and you came in and said you were trying to make a picture of the inside of Mr. Webb’s mind.

Baker: Right.

Taylor: And I said, oh dear, that sounds rather startling, I don’t think I’d like to have anybody make a picture of the inside of my mind.

Mary Pedersen: How do you feel about Jim?

Andrea: Well, I think my dreams are the best record of my feelings. It changes. What I experience. Like the first night I slept with him, I dreamed that I had my breasts removed by a skillful surgeon. And it was all planned by my mother.

Webb: SCOLD: Pleasure and pain are complementary, like active and passive, initiating and completing, monster and prey. True, perhaps often but not only, in the contact of bodies….

Andrea: After that I dreamed that I was making a string of beads and uh somehow I was told that the pattern of the beads wouldn’t be apparent until the beads were finished … in Mexico Jim and I were asleep in the back of the bus, and we were holding hands, and I dreamed that while we were asleep a golden chain was created between our hands …

Mary: Huh.

Andrea: It blew my mind when I woke up here and it was all the same in the morning as in the night, I mean with the candles going….

Baker: … had some kind of illumination when he was in Malta, after having had, on two or three successive days, uh big hits of psilocybin and acid.

Andrea: And this place that he described to me as the place where all the life forms are so basic that they begin to merge, and you can’t really tell what’s alive, what’s rocks, what’s water, and they’re all the same….

SCOLD: Neither pleasure nor pain is death. Death is the boundary of the ritual, can be approached but not consummated, can be usefully counterfeited and in fact yields new birth … derangement of identity, derangement of time, derangement of the senses …

Andrea: … he gave me what was called the large crystal….

SCOLD: Pleasure and pain is a descent into thingness, a night journey, an initiation. The result is love, recognition of essential conflict, mutual victory through mutual submission.

Fronfield: They’re eating grapefruit down there … (laughter)

Andrea: Ultimately there’re destined to be marriages, but in this case it’s not especially appropriate, or desirable, or … I guess lots of people think he’s their father.

SCOLD: To fill you with seed is to be God.

Andrea: Uh, I don’t know, lots of people are in love with him.

Gooding: There’s something he has, a charisma that somehow says to people, gather around. (gabble)

Baker: Well, yes, that’s partly my theory about this house, which would be impossible to uh to cover, even a little of it, because I don’t remember enough of it, but practically every picture and article in it is the source of uh very intricate anecdotes that connect up threads of his life, so I think of it sometimes as uh a spider’s web …

Gooding: Uh huh.

Baker: not just because of the pun, and divorced of most of the pejorative connotations, but uh people come in here and they notice one thing out of the many, and remark on it, and that is then the occasion for beginning to spin out the anecdote, and then you’re sort of in the world….

Kerry Pataki: I began to think when I saw him lying there about why it had happened and what it meant to him, and I thought: for once Jim had really reached out beyond the points that he sometimes reached to. I mean, this was no macrobiosis in Malta, you might say, this was at the very edge, the very edge. He might have landed on his head. And I thought: did he really fall? He was lying there, Jane’s metaphor is quite good, about the fish. Did he jump? And I thought, horrible thought!: Would it happen again?

Jane Ru???: Hm, that’s funny, I didn’t get that idea at all. I didn’t think that, ha ha, that he had any conscious part in it. It was as if all the forces that he had set going in this house over the past two years had suddenly joined against him, and, uh, his crowning touch, which was hanging Jesus Christ from the ceiling, had, uh, had precipitated him out of heaven, you know, and, and, everything just fragmented for about two weeks, and, I mean uh, when we went in, I had the impression that everything was in pieces, I mean, everything was all over the floor, and he had landed in a bowl of fruit, you know, and all these tangerines and everything. And he was all dark and dirty, you know, and, and when we were taking him out, you know, and he put on his blue jeans, I mean he was just, just little, little pieces, you know, just all kind of dusty.

Pataki: Except the, the child, this charming cursed child was hanging from there, and that was very much there, I saw it when I came in, uh when we went out.

Jane: I mean, that’s fortunate in a way.

Pataki: The hospital was irrelevant, in a way.

Jane: Well, it was just Jim in pieces on the floor, instead of, you know, instead of that.

Andrea: It may never have happened. No one was there. No one really knows.

Mary: He was hurt.

Andrea: No one saw him. Uh, he had this theory he told me about when, when I first started coming over, which was, that you had to walk the edge, all the time, and you had to do it blindfolded, because if, if you looked … you would fall.

Mary: Uh.

(song: ‘Honey Child’)

Gooding: I think Jim is appealing to, uh, to the followers need for a mystic, so there’s a beautifully balanced symbiosis there: Jim needs an identity, and his followers need a saint or mystic.

Mrs. Gooding: Forward to the scene of him floating in the ocean, he didn’t die, he stayed there, he didn’t disintegrate, he didn’t need those people.

Fronfield: I uh I saw it as draining him.

Gooding: Draining him, yeah.

Kirk Thompson: But you see it wasn’t that way in Mexico, and if Mexico is the future, then maybe it wouldn’t be that way in the future, uh, because people were very independent of Jim. I thought that there'd be a kind of jealous and petulant monarchy, a kind of despotism of mind … and there was a great deal of freedom in that community. The people who, of the dozen, you might find dependent upon him here, were not dependent upon him in Mexico for anything more than inspiration.

Gooding: I think one concern, one concern one feels watching the film and thinking about Jim, is, uh, uh, kings and Christ-figures nearly always have a precarious position, sort of vulnerable, and of course the scene of him being cast into the sea could be prophetic.

Zimmerman: He is the new pied piper.

Fronfield: Can you imagine it? They had all kinds of equipment, all kinds of money, and they’re going down to Mexico to film the future. (laughter) These people belong in jail, ladies and gentlemen, law and order, these are the people, these are the outside agitators….

(song: ‘Why don’t we do it in the road?’)

Male voice: I think Jim Webb is one of the most benevolent, the most …

Another voice: Despots!

Webb: It’s devious, it’s sly. It’s the kind of thing you wouldn’t expect. But it might work. If you listen, um, carefully enough, you would comprehend….




* * * *


[The following piece of writing was carefully typed—there are no corrections and perhaps it was typed from a longhand draft—on the backs of four pages of a handbill for a ‘Baker, Webb, & Co.’ presentation called Projection and Fantasy: Notes toward a Manifestation of Psychocinema, the date of which was (to be) May 13, 1969. I have no way of knowing if that date had passed and Jim was using this as scratch paper or if it was coming up and he simply used the paper that was to hand at the moment.]






Tonight. It seems I fell asleep over my book. For there was someone at the door, which brought me suddenly, all awake.
It was you. You had come back. You came in more strongly than you usually do, and sat down in your place (I saw you wore your strength round the wrist nearest me), and said—I’ve made a decision.
I said—good.
And you—I’m through with hesitation. I want to chain my self to the bed.
And I—Don’t talk about it. Don’t think about it. You know where the chain is. You know where the bed is. Do it.
There followed a period of fifteen or twenty seconds during which I saw your life in your face. Rather, I saw the life grow in your face, for it’s hard to limit it to yours.
We both moved at once. You took off your boots and started up the ladder. I locked the door and began the circle of the house (which you have often made for me) and turned off the lights.
As I made the progress of the house (there are thirteen switches) I heard your progress. Your clothes came off of you and on to the floor. The links of chain clicked against each other. The two successive snaps of the two locks were loud and final, like: One. Two. And brought me to the last light at the base of the ladder.
And the keys fell through the space (I know that fall through that space) and hit the floor. To pick them up I knelt.
Again there was a period of some seconds. I rose and walked up the ladder, at each step aware of each step, and saw you on the bed.
The tawny lion was fully in your eyes and face. Was light. Was clear.
My clothes came off too, and literally I joined you on the bed.
It was a single action. I say: my vision entered in your eyes. Or say: my prick slipped up your ass. But I can not discriminate.
And I heard myself speak in a voice I had never used before, telling us what it meant for me to fuck you.
I knew it was my voice, because my body produced it. It had no words, but was the shaking, the vibration of my body.
Which was meaning we had not heard before. Which was life at last deciphered. The true, original, plain style.
So I woke again. And write this down: a strong, lucid, overt, simplistic dream. So strong I will not be surprized when you say you had it too. Since here it is.
For when you say—I have to go—I know you also have to come back.

With love.


Two

You read it intently, carefully, as always. And you are silent at the end.
Then turn to me and say—Can I have this? Or—Is this for me? (I’m not sure of the words.)
And I—Of course, of course, of course.
There is a period of silence, during which an uncountable number of meanings are exchanged.
We both move at once. You take off your boots and start up the ladder. I lock the door and make the listening circle of the house. I hear, of course, only what I want to hear: your clothes coming off of you and on to the floor, the links of chain clicking against each other, the two successive snaps of the locks loud and final, like: One. Two.
And the keys fall through space. I kneel to pick them up and remain for several seconds. And they say, giving thanks.
But when I turn at the top of the ladder I see what I have chosen not to hear. Your clothes are on the floor. You are on the bed. But the chain is not on you. It’s on the door.
And I see that the lock is not one for which I have a key. And I don’t know where it comes from.
I see your prick is stiff. I see your lips are parted. Your tongue is moving and I hear sweet moans. I see the muscles in your thighs tremble.
I do not know whether you are more aware of your reflection in the mirror or of me beyond the bars. But I know you show me what you will not give me. The pain spreads from my eye through my body. The trembling is strongest in my knees and I sink to the floor.
So worship is all that is to be left me? Then I remain kneeling at the railing: full of doubt but waiting. Thinking: you may relent at last. At least thrust you prick through the bars (my mouth is open, the trembling is there now), that sacrament be given to my thirst. In the hot sun.
The beach in August happens all the time.



Three

“Vicarious atonement’s not your line?
The pain I feel is yours, the tears are mine.”

But sometimes you cry for me

I see the tears in your eyes

Indeed
for you to see how much I want you
for you to know I cannot have you and
for you to be you

for you to love me and deprive me as you do

is enough for tears



Four

The “tawny lion” is not a metaphor or a fantasy, but a physical presence, a being or spirit I have seen six times.
He occupies the space of your flesh without displacing it.
He is thoroughly male. And eternally young. His strongest and longest manifestation was the night you accurately refer to as “the night we were gods.”
He has astounding strength. And is a spirit of play.
I cannot say where he comes from. Sometimes it seems from a great distance: a descent in to you. Sometimes from your inner depths: there all the time. But I can say how he comes: it is ecstatic technique, it is with my help, it is by the will of, and in the place of, your usual self. And it is your power, whether a separate self or a reflectional one.
I have felt his nearness several times when he did not get through. Often after a sauna. Several times in Mexico. That he never appeared in Mexico disappointed me deeply, because it showed the magnitude of the ego defenses being used against him.
His repression makes me ache with concern, because his presence, his power, are an integral part of the you I love. (I have had sufficient experience with such beings to say with absolute certitude that he is not simply my projection.)
So I must use those powers I have—slowly, surely, for as long as necessary or for as long as I’m here—to help him through.




* * * *


[In the same stack of handbill sheets is this poem handwritten in red ink in what may or may not be Jim’s hand.]






The promise awaits you
At the expected end
Of your assumed journey.
As you draw closer,
The transparent seduction
Becomes more clear:
A sudden draining disappointment
Reveals it as the crystal
Formula of your own mind.
Then you turn around
And your shadow falls
In front of you again.

A promise has to be made
Before it is kept—
You bring your own
With every step you take
Into your growing shadow,
Knowing that darkness will fall
At a foreseeable horizon.




* * * *


[This is dated november 1, 196__. I should think it’s 1969.]






President’s Office
Reed College
NAME: WEBB, J. K._____
DATE: November 1, 196 .

FACULTY PERSONNEL FORM
ANNUAL CONTINUATION SHEET

(November 1, last year to November 1, this year)

Append sheets with description according to the following outline.

Section I. NEW DEGREES, if any.

Section II. NON-REED TEACHING EXPERIENCE DURING PAST YEAR.

Section III. PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES:

A. Grants – purpose, amounts, and dates.

B. Offices held in professional societies with inclusive dates.

C. Papers read and/or service on panels at professional meetings, giving name of society, place of meeting, and date.

D. Publication activity:

1. Status of work in progress.

2. Work in press as of November 1.

3. Citation list of printed works.

E. Other professional projects.

Section IV. PUBLIC ACTIVITIES in the past year:

A. Organizations in which you hold office or other special responsibility.

B. Significant public appearances, as in lectures, television, radio, exhibitions, musical events, drama, etc.

Section V. SPECIAL HONORS AND AWARDS not appropriately listed above.

Section VI. EVALUATION:

Your thoughts or evaluation about your own work and role in relation to Reed.




I. I do not have a new degree. I have some old ones. If I had no old ones I would probably never have any. It is hard to believe in degrees—if degrees are necessarily structured hierarchically.

II. Non-Reed teaching experience: Is there such a thing as internal non-Reed teaching experience? This is my style, for I am a known advocate of subversion.
I have had a great deal of non-Reed experience.

III. Professional activities: yes . . . well:

A. No, I’ve had no grants laid on me.

B. I am Shaman of the Tribe. I make rain, sanity, and madness. In no particular order. You have all recently met one of my major accomplishments, who has made appointments to come round and see all of you. He has clear brown eyes and a lingering handshake, very steady fellow. Eyes as people ordinarily have only if they’ve been to India. Wide open, clear, brown, hypnotic. . . .

C. You all hear from me all the time. I appreciate your effort to keep track of the messages, but if you understood how far they reverberate, you wouldn’t have to ask in the first place. Be very calm for a moment and you will see that you already know. About everybody’s messages.

D. But why have you asked the same question again? A commendable perseverance, and I will mention it in my evaluations of each and every one of you.

1. In progress? Well, of course it’s not finished. If you think ABOUT IT FOR A MOMENT YOU’LL understand that by this criterion I actually have a tremendous amount of work in progress.

2. I have nothing in press, as a result of large quantity of work in progress.

3. Quench, vol. I, no. 2. You may of course come to see for yourself, if you don’t want to bother to read it. It is arbitrary whether you consider the printed version or the constructed one to be the more authentic.

E. If only you wouldn’t bar yourself from entry by using that word “professional,” I’d take you out in back to see where I keep my real projects.

IV. Public activities: We cannot get far in this discussion if it is not clear to you that either all or none of my activities are public. Nevertheless we will try to proceed:

A. If I told you how well we’re organized you’d be scared to death. We are doing all right down here and it is really better for us as well as you if you just leave us alone. Keep track, though, of how often you see the sign of the muted post horn.

B. All of my appearances are public and significant. I am a mixed medium and within myself I embrace and transcend lectures, television, radio, exhibitions, musical events, drama, and et cetera. I am especially good at exhibitions. Just give a wink if you want me to show you.

V. My work and Role: I Am The Resurrection And The Life.
God bless you.




* * * *


[There’s another page with this one that seems to be another draft of the same evaluation. I get the odd feeling though as i read and reread this one that it was written by someone other than Jim, written for him perhaps by Lance Montauk, to whom there’s a note on the verso.]






hi Lance
I came to visit you but you have disappeared
see you maybe at supper
Karen




I. I got the first, and then the second, but the efficacy of third eludes me.

II. Learning and teaching combine: Reed disappears; I have been trying to teach some plants where to grow, they have taught me about the independence that does not relate to motile: sessile.

III. Do amateurs spend less money or make more mistakes?

A. From various social agencies I have received various wavers of responsibility regarding health on both counts: Nuisance Abatement and State Board of Health.

B. You haven’t taken my office away have you?

C. Again service rendered:received. The interaction fails to allow distinction. The reading changed the service, the services have gotten longer, more numerous, and attendance is up, although the collection plate has been abandoned.

D. S. Hurok has expressed an interest.

E. Projected outward.

IV. Distinctions still: excluding what (private) – the water closet?

A. Again: see Nuisance Abatement Records, County, Planet, Galaxy (this)

B. Significance is not mine to judge. There have been times that I have not remained silent. (see tapes). The other times may be more important.

V. I would not stoop to inappropriate listings.

VI. Habeas Corpus.

Addendum:

II. Exchanged some professional notes with phosphorescent denizen of coastal Log, gained and lost, gathered that there are places with physical plants exceeding in comfortability that of Reed, but lacking sorely in opportunities for frequent communication.

III. Established habitat for Timber B. in my living environment in order to accelerate the impending cataclysm. A vital experiment in sharing, give and take, feeding.

VI. !@#$%^&*()_+ Making recognizable the everpresent possibilities that lie waiting in dust, unused; promoting outward and upward development (09) (^&%$#!@_)+ accelerating the growing awareness of latent capabilities
PREVENTING ATROPHY OF THE DORMANT
(* !
*) ++ !
(* ! +
*) ++ !
(* !




* * * *


[A typed rumination or draft of a statement, probably a response to the above Reed College continuation sheet, but i’m not sure if this was written before or after the above more facetious ones. This is a more measured consideration of the pluses and minuses of his employment at Reed, and ultimately a positive evaluation.]






I did not complete continuation sheets during the past three years, because of the inaccuracies and frustration involved in trying to describe unorthodox activities under a set of very orthodox headings. “Section VI. EVALUATION”, which I believe is a new addition on this year’s form, does however seem to offer some latitude in my response—less frustration, and I hope at least subjective accuracy.
Reed seems to me an exceptionally good place to teach, and I think I get a lot of teaching done. The basis of this seems to me to be the college’s generally effective commitment to autonomy and pluralism for all members of the community. This commitment often gets described in terms which suggest license and anarchy, but I don’t think such terms are accurate. I’ve been particularly pleased at the chance to develop my own interests, perceptions, theories, both in my upper division courses and independent studies, which is not surprising, but also in Humanities 210, which is surprising, since a large staff course entails much covert but strong pressure toward easy compromise. I am especially pleased at the number of students I get to work with individually, and at what I consider to be a high percentage of “good results”, since, I suppose as a result of my relatively high visibility, many of them reach me as “problem cases.”
But if I look at conditions more cold-bloodedly, in terms of my own professional advancement, my feelings are more mixed: Reed is not a good place to try to finish a dissertation on quiet afternoons and long weekends. It’s a little shocking to find myself looking forward to a sabbatical or to writing my dissertation in a panic state as preparation for getting a job elsewhere. But I wrote “mixed” above, rather than “negative”, because I am confident my work on Eliot’s Four Quartets will, if it ever gets written, be much better for the collaboration of several classes of good students. And if I never get it written, perhaps one of them will. So I don’t at the moment contemplate denying the legitimate demands of my students for my time and energy just to finish another degree for myself.
This sounds unfortunately a little as if I considered my students responsible for my own inadequacies, and that would be only a very partial truth—I also have too many projects under way. In addition to the Eliot study: exploration of aphoristic style; an investigation of conversion mentality, centered on Cardinal Newman, and drawing on cultural anthropology and comparative religion; depth psychology, particularly the uses of fantasy for therapeutic ends; during the past summer continued pursuits of baroque architecture, pre-Raphaelite painters, and Van Gogh (the college’s $600 got spent in England, Amsterdam, and Malta); practical exploration of environment as art form, which rises from filling my house with interacting collections of junk and students; and an attempt at autobiographical fiction, which began as journal entries over the past year and has now been assimilated to Ed Baker’s movie-making in the humanities research project in autobiography.
On the ultimate institutional question of whether the connection between the college and me can or should continue indefinitely.... Though I think both the college and I are continuously and radically changing, at the moment I think the connection is beneficial to both. I hope, and expect, but cannot guarantee, that that will continue to be true.




* * * *


[The following document i include because it’s relevant to the apparent alteration in Jim’s aims as a professor at Reed. It seems to me that when he started at the college in 1965 he was a hip, young but fairly traditional professor, and by 1968 a change had set in and he’d subsequently ‘gone native’ and begun to identify more with his students and less with his colleagues and the institutional aims of Reed College. There had been a paradigm shift among the youth not only in the US but in most of the developed world, and education seemed to be at the heart of it: the purpose and function of education was in question and going through a radical transition, and Jim’s thoughts were bent on these issues to the exclusion of most others. His literary ambitions had gone by the boards: he no longer wrote poetry or fiction or even literary criticism. In light of that shift, the following assignment sheet for Professor Watson’s winter 1969-1970 class (where Jim is mentioned with Churchill, Jesus, Socrates, Malcolm X, Einstein and Stephen Dedalus) shows the forces or trends that Jim was aligning himself with, or at least the potential scope of his ambitions.]






INNOVATION AND TRADITION, 1969-70
Section G: Watson

Second Portfolio Assignment


The first component of this course and of the portfolios was concerned with innovation in relation to subject matter, with the way in which facts and even the world are transformed as they are seen in different ways. As Kuhn remarks [Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 1962] (p. 110), “Examining the record of past research from the vantage or contemporary historiography, the historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them. Led by a new paradigm, scientists adopt new instruments and look in new places. Even more important, during revolutions scientists see new and different things when looking with familiar instruments in places they have looked before. It is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet where familiar objects are seen in a different light and are joined by unfamiliar ones as well.”

The second component of the course has been concerned with innovation in relation to motivation, with the way in which active orientations to the world are generated and transformed. Weber remarks, for example, [Max Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, 1947] (p. 363) that charisma may result in “a radical alteration of the central system of attitudes and directions of action with a completely new orientation of all attitudes toward the different problems and structures of the ‘world’.”

We have discussed several general accounts of the genesis of motivation (Aristotle, Weber, Erikson), and a number of examples of motivational reorientation or of attempts to effect such reorientation (Churchill, James Webb, Matthew’s Jesus, Plato’s Socrates, Malcolm X, Einstein, Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus). Select three of these examples, and analyze and compare the ways in which motivation is generated in these cases. As in the first unit, the more theoretical works should help you by providing devices to use in the analysis of motivation.

Length: about five pages.

Date due: Tuesday, March 3.




* * * *


[A page of undated notes in Jim’s hand, probably notes worked up into the essay which follows.]






The whole truth is
that I don’t know
the whole truth yet
Besides, no one seems
to be ready for
the whole truth
(to be continued)
dialog: what is the question to the answer?

Where does responsibility lie? Can one responsibly lie? If it’s part of the whole truth?

Mexico Malta Myth: life as art form

I: May I quote you?

paranoia: If I’m not careful, I say what you want me to.
grandiose paranoia: Even if you’re careful, you say what I want you to.

But if we’re in this together....

When you get excited, your penis is your most apparent projection.

I’m beginning to suspect this is all leading somewhere, and I’m not sure I know the way back—




* * * *


[An essay that appeared in a journal or one-off publication called Track 1, the title page of which says: Realized in March, 1970 for the Reed Festival ‘Out Of Dark Corners’. It’s put together like a sort of scrapbook with notes and fragments and newspaper clippings apparently pasted together. Unfortunately i cant reproduce the format, only the words, so i hope it wont lose too much in being transcribed in this strictly text format.]






THE WHOLE TRUTH IS
THAT I DON’T KNOW
THE WHOLE TRUTH YET,
BESIDES, NO ONE SEEMS
TO BE READY FOR
THE WHOLE
TRUTH!

james k. webb


CONFIDENTIAL
Not to be returned to this student
under any circumstances.

The whole truth, as Joyce nicely demonstrated, is made up of lots of little bites and peirces. But somehow it holds together.

It holds together, somehow it wholes together. (Not an exhaustive whole, but a microcosm.)

Bites and pierces? Letting bits and pieces of the conscious/unconscious collaborate if they will. Occasional rational critical voices: occasional murky monster metaphors: a fantasy parade. The end of 8 ½: ‘Now come down the stairs.’ Just put it together as you will, and call it the whole truth. (No one can prove you’re lying). (Except for yourself. So I guess you better do it right.)

Why media? Why mirrors? One of those great universal trip ingredients, the simultaneity (movie is just a little slow) of objective and subjective vision of self. Or of selflessness, it doesn’t matter which.

a cheap trick? (again: Joint
a necessary tool? therapy)

Narcissus had the living water. But we live indoors.

Thinking your way into Greek myth is not enough. You have to act it. Learn it from the inside. No matter which: Narcissus, Dionysus, Apollo, Hermes.

Just so with the archetypes of the brothers (no matter which): disciples, apostles, evangelists, conspirators, revolutionaries, utopians. Learn it from the inside.

From the STUDENT’S NOTEBOOK again:

Mirrors: particularly for seeing one self do something one has never done before. (Or much fantasized before?) Revelation. ‘Well really! That too! And that! I’m doing that. Those dilated eyes are watching me. There’s no denying it, it’s happening to me’—a dilation of the mind.

PATIENTS TELL
TROUBLES TO
ROBOT MACHINE

Robot consultations were suggested by Dr. J. L. Gedye, lecturer in psycho-pathology, Cambridge, when he spoke to the Engineering Section yesterday.
“Patients with gynaecological problems, sex problems and so on might be much happier with a device of this kind than talking face to face with a human being, he said.
Experiments to establish communication through machinery were already being made with people who were mentally subnormal, people with head injuries and very old people who had undergone mental changes.
At St. Anne’s, the Bury St. Edmund’s geriatric unit, devices had been installed through which old people gave responses to pictures they saw on a screen by pressing buttons. The information was stored in a computer.

_____

One always has to answer people in their main function, otherwise no contact is established. So, in order to be able to show my patients that their reactions have arrived in my system, I have to sit opposite them so that they can read the reactions in my face and can see that I am listening. If I sit behind them, then I can yawn, I can sleep, I can go off on my own thoughts, and I can do what I please. They never know what is happening to me, and then they remain in an auto-erotic and isolated condition which is not good for ordinary people. Of course, if they were going to prepare for an existence as hermits on the Himalayas, it would be a different matter.
(From C. G. Jung, The Tavistock Lectures, 1936)

_____

The anonymous egg throwers. They’re actually my kind of people—sure that attention must be paid (Blanche DuBois) but: stupid, technologically inept.

If any of you happen to be reading this: Next time you need to break an egg, knock on the door and tell the startled householder you feel this urge to break this egg.


WEBB:
I KNOW
YOU HAVE
HAD
CARNAL
KNOWLEDGE
OF THE
DEVIL...


N.Y. Times
MOVIE STAR TURNS
TO CHURCH CAREER

Humberto Almazan Intends
to Work Among Lepers

SYDNEY, Australia (UPI) –
Nine years ago, Humberto Almazan gave up a dazzling career as an international movie star to become a Roman Catholic priest—but there is still a lot of actor left in the padre.
He talks up a storm when reviewing his unique life and describing his ambitions. His eyes flash as he speaks, expressive, never-quiet hands punctuate his words.
And he tells his story well, with something of a scenarist’s expertize.
The padre was interviewed while on a tour of Australia that included lectures at various schools, including the University of Sydney. Although the idea had been to speak to him of his unusual switch in careers, he insisted first on telling about his summer, which he had spent at a leper colony in Bali.
“Lepers are, I hope, the people I will devote my life to in the future,” he said, and added earnestly, “do you know there are about 17 million lepers in the whole world—and in Mexico there are nearly 7,000!


The Learning Community
For Publications Taskforce

Take-home exam. March 13, 1970

1. How and when did the Community begin? What has it been doing since then?

a. In the collective unconscious in the beginning. Coming to consciousness.

b. By meeting at the first meeting. Meeting and meeting.

c. In response to Reed hierarchic conservatism. Subverting and relabeling.

d. On the Faculty Washboard Band of our liberated-from-grad-school youth. Chasing that dying echo.

e. With the discovery by Pedersen, Thompson, Baker, and Webb, on location for “Spider God” in Mexico, that teaching and learning roles are difficult to discriminate, difficult to ignore. Trying to learn to float in that force field. Almost forgot about Burg—see what I mean?

2. What is it trying to do (purpose)?

See answer to question 1. I assume, in some not so obscure sense, we are doing what we are trying to do. Or vice versa.

3. Who, in eight lines of less (typewritten, elite typeface), are you? Please give a fairly factual statement, that expresses your background, interests, talents, and designs; and please remember that it’s intended to make sense to strangers and financiers.

J.K. Webb. Born October 19, 1934, in El Paso, Texas. Spinning out my name in various forms ever since (motto: “All or nothing, bit by bit”). B.A., Harvard, 1956, in American history and literature; M.A., Columbia, 1958, in 19th century English literature. Fulbright Scholar, Queen’s College, Cambridge, 1959-1961. Teaching literature and modern humanities at Reed since 1965, but moving in the direction of myth and media. Enlightened. Designs: Psychocinematic synchroscenarios.


Boredom Takes Over On Island
Indians Seek Basic Plan For Use Of Alcatraz

By EARL CALDWELL
(c) 1970 New York Times News Service
ALCATRAZ—In the afternoon they sit restlessly at the wooden tables in the dining hall and pass the time playing cards and listening to their music.
Most of them are teenagers who came here to join a cause. They have been living on Alcatraz for nearly three months and there is nothing left for them to explore.
They have been through the old cellblock. They have slipped down to The Hole, and they have climbed the decaying towers where the guards once patrolled.
Three months have passed since the Indians reasserted century-old treaty rights and laid claim to the island. Several hundred were here at first, but no more than a hundred have stayed. Getting enough money and food is still a problem, but not for the youngsters in the dining hall. For them the novelty is gone, and excitement has worn away.
“Let’s face it,” one youth said bluntly. “The people out here are getting bored.”
There is boredom now, but mostly because the work that could be done has been completed.
The kitchen and the dining hall have been built. The portable toilets are in. The old prison buildings that were found unsafe have been placed off limits. A school has been set up and is functioning. A medical center has been built. An old handball court has even been turned into a gymnasium suitable for basketball.
However there is still much more to be done. But the Indians cannot do those jobs. What they need now are professionals—plumbers and electricians and planners and builders. And for that, they need money.
But while the teen-agers spend their afternoons in leisure, in a quiet room in another of the old buildings, the elected council is busy in an effort it hopes will make the Indians’ dreams for Alcatraz a reality.
At present the council is putting together a proposal for a series of grants to plan redevelopment of the island. The Indians want an educational and cultural complex and they also talk of an ecology center.
Earl Livermore, an Indian artist who is coordinator of the effort, said the indian people on Alcatraz were providing the basic plan. “The people,” he explained, “are saying what they want and how they want it. The people are the ones who decide.”
Once the basic plan is complete, Livermore said, it will be presented to Robert Robertson, the director of the National Council on Indian Opportunity, a federal agency that is under the direction of Vice President Agnew. Livermore said the agency “is optimistic that we will be funded.”
While awaiting funding, the Indians are also creating a national advisory committee of experts.
Although the government is being called on for the basic funds, plans are also under way to submit proposals to the nation’s major foundations.
S.F. Chronicle


The only way to avoid being a dirty old man is to live a dirty youth. I discovered that too late—I’ll have to sully my middle age. And that’s more difficult—it’s like life insurance: the later you start, the higher the premium.


From the STUDENT’S NOTE BOOK
PUNCHED FOR FILING

‘fading to a glowing blue’
the superstition—suspicion?—that somehow writing it all down,, makes it all right. (I guess I was even trying that in writing home about Helen.)

4 ½ hours: sense of being very much leveled-off. Fed on steak, chips, lettuce, tomato, egg, coffee. The streetlights come on in a pearl dusk: a patient fisherman in the bay. If one could catch the fleeting instant—‘things disappear before I get to them’ Andrew Wyeth.
Japanese woodcuts: pictures of the fleeting world. (my eyes welling with unshed tears.)
the scene darkens in the bat of an eyelid—Beckett (as Fronefield now remembers) on how it is in this bitch of a universe.

So what is there? Not that you’ve done anything—that’s—literally—no thing, nothing. But that you have done it for someone.
And I guess it doesn’t matter who—
(Picnicking in Montmartre: happiness? ambition? to show that it can be done. the self even as observer—finally—transcended seen to be no thing-- (displayed: final judgment irrelevant)
I think I will sleep.


Dynamic of masturbation fantasy and art quite similar: effort to establish, to ‘realize’ out of nothing, a magical connection. Then the ‘function of the orgasm’ in art? To end it.

As an image for active fantasy life: ‘several large baskets of eggs, each containing all.’ And nothing to eat.

The examined life becoming the predicted life—a considerable intensity: if every second should be electric with the intensity of deja vu. Another form of double-vision, and shamanism.

Europe. I was 25 years old before I ever saw it. If I had not come I might well never have matured—intellectually, emotionally, aesthetically. (Might never have lost my mind....)

Maya: doubt everything. Especially orderings.


But not yet. 5 ½ hours. Back at the hotel.

When you see that everything you do can have as much significance as you choose to give it, it can be hard to decide where to piss.

St. Julian’s Bay, Malta.
High on a drug I’m not even sure how to spell.
An ordering of ideas in the mind:
I don’t know whether it’s sensual,
aesthetic,
moral.
But ready to cry at the beauty of being alive.

THINK ABOUT ALL THE THINGS THERE ARE TO
THINK ABOUT ALL THE
THINGS THERE ARE
TO THINK
ABOUT

HMOHMOHMOHMO
OWHOWHOWHOWH

Focus: integration at a point. rays—

It doesn’t matter....

Give in to natural enthusiasm.


Half the last nine years in Europe—and half in America—and yet schizophrenia surprises me!

Focus: integration at a point. Rays—

Give in to natural enthusiasm.

It doesn’t matter....

On so many shorelines. Almost instinctual?? Thought. Thinking. On another shoreline. Lapped by past and future, sometimes in one, sometimes in the other. Mind at any instant (any mind?) the thinking edge of man—the toe dipped in whatever sea.

Anti-formalism, anti-genre, finally anti-personality: we are all writing it.

All that capital and I can’t touch it, since it’s all in trust. People come to trust me so much they’d do anything I wanted; I can’t want things, because they trust me; so I just have to live off the interest?


Nine years for a spellbinder

From GEORGE ARMSTRONG
Rome, July 14
A British entry, Michael Reeves’s “The Sorcerers” won the first prize last night at the science-fiction film festival in Trieste. A few hours later, an Italian court in Rome proposed itself for another prize in the incredible.
The court condemned a man to nine years’ imprisonment for having “spell-bound” two youths, making them, by his superior intelligence, walking zombies. Professor Aldo Braibanti (46) was accused by the State prosecutor of having “plagiarised” the free-will of two (then) 18-year-old small town youths, and he had asked the court for a sentence of 14 years.
Both alleged victims testified (they now are 26 and 28, one is married with a child) and both admitted to having been mesmerised by the professor’s brilliant, unorthodox mind. One “victim” spoke strongly in defence of this his mentor, who had taught him how to paint and introduced him to literature.

Authority on ants
Professor Braibanti once held his own seminars in a medieval tower near Piacenza. He has appeared on television as an authority on ants, whose social structure, one witness said, he admired more than that which the court before which he stood represented. He regarded the family unit as a “fossil” and harmful to mental growth, it was said.
The verdict, which was given at two this morning, was denounced by the youthful spectators in the courtroom with shouts of “Shame.” A hostile crowd waited outside the Palace of Justice to shout more insults at the jury and chased them back inside when they tried to leave.
Similar insults were directed at the parents of one of the victims (who twice had their son committed to a mental home because he preferred the professor’s company to his own, proper hearth). The court also ordered the guilty man to pay costs and damages to the parents for the grief he had caused them.

Fascist code
This is the first time that the “plagiary of personality” law, one of the many remnants of the Fascist penal code, has led to a conviction.
Professor Braibanti’s defence councillors said that the case would never have come before the court had the alleged victims been female. The State prosecutor repeatedly emphasised that the professor was not merely an anarchist and an enemy of society but a homosexual as well, even though that charge was not pertinent since homosexuality is not a crime here. The defence mentioned the “tragic” trial of Oscar Wilde as having been prompted partly by public outrage at the Irishman’s natural sexual preference.


More from “STUDENT’S NOTEBOOK”
(1968)

Partly in reaction to the “Art and Mental Health” Exhibit at Commonwealth Institute: August 10th.

“fantasy therapy”
“utopian therapy”
“communal therapy”

necessarily: willing to impose upon one’s other members, since the “working out” is a joint effort—
so: “’joint’ therapy”?

American pragmatism: and Dewey:
learning by doing

so: build a fantasy world
and find out how it runs,
what it does, does it work?
how much does it cost?
how long will it last?
how many colors does it come in?
does everyone want one?
I’m saving towards a down payment—

There seems to be some doubt: whether I take the sun, wind, sea, people; or give myself to them—and I don’t guess the conceptualization of it matters very much.

Asking myself: ‘What more is there to say?’ and realizing that the line before that, in the Yeats poem, is ‘Man is in love and loves what vanishes....’ And then remembering: that the poem does go on from there.

In erotic fantasies: how a point in a ‘scenario’ could be (seen) (mirrored) (photographed) (made vision) (communicated). The real center of all my circling: incarnate. In flesh.


FRAGMENT

Unhappy on Big Night
“But the night of the presentation, when all the ceremonies were over, I drove home thinking, ‘this was the biggest night of your life, Humberto. Everybody was there. Lights, cameras, all for you. Why are you not happy?’
“Lying in bed that night, I suddenly remembered the face of Pope Pius XII. I remembered the serenity, the happiness I had seen in his face.
“I thought, perhaps that is it. Peace of mind is happiness and to be happy one must be a Pope, and to be a Pope one has to be a priest—so I might as well start straight away.”
The actor Almazon sold all his belongings and entered a monastery in Washington for seven years of study.
“I have missed nothing, except, perhaps, dancing,” he said. “To a Mexican, it is a way of life. I still dance in the mornings when I am shaving.”


dialogue, (not alone) bites and pierces? letting bits and pieces of the conscious/unconscious collaborate if they will. some dialogues between you and i (obviously not you and me written by us)

you: did you realize then what i meant?
i: no. I didn’t but i could now persuade you i did.

you: do you really mean what i think you mean:
i: its hard to say. you could take off your clothes and find out.

you: you know i love you
i: and I love you. But i’m afraid for once we’re both talking about the same you.

you: where have you been?
i: i’ve been away, and i want to be more of one. (more of a way)

you: they tell me that takes a long time, like longer than it takes five pinches of incense to burn.
i: i guess there are some things i don’t believe anymore. i don’t think i can really change the whole world. and i’m not sure the whole world together can really change me. and i don’t know whether that’s growing old, or just growing up.

you: how about growing out, and fading.....then turn around drop into the pool, carrying everything you can with you.

the end of 8 ½ ... “Now come down the stairs”

i: do you really mean what i think you mean?
you: no one can prove you’re lying
i: except for yourself......


Shit. The whole creation has got out of my hands. And into yours. Where it should have been all along.
(To be concluded.)




* * * *


[In the summer of 1970 Jim spent at least a month in Mazatlán. From july 7th through august 7th he rented a place in the Freeman Apartments (Apartamientos Freeman) for $1,500. His notes are fragmentary but tend to be laceratingly self-critical. It would appear the Spider God persona and his leadership role at Reed was beginning to hang heavy on him.]






a ripple fugue of
flap and glide—
but the lead bird
can’t see back—
no language—
but feeling—




* * *




all of us rather anxious to
see if I would die
could? should?

the lifelong blind spot....

repetition
Satan tempting: flight.
Milton. Regained.

Lance’s re-enactment—
trying to be me.
and his flash ‘Webb’—

amplifications of the student notebook:
fantasy therapy
‘folie à deux’




* * *


[The beginning of a draft of a letter.]






Apartamientos Freeman
2 de Julio

Hans—
It’s taken Mazatlán and me a while to get in the right state for writing. There’ve been a couple of rains (not real ones—no thunder & lightening) to wash the streets dirty and everything else a little cleaner.




* * *




Goodwill Silver Indian Bracelet.

Andrea found it. Paid $1.50. Kerry Petaki claims to discern oral birth images—too much Levy-Strauss? But I do think it’s N.W. Indian work




* * *




serve them right. Just put in a whole lot of it. Not all of it, of course, just all that anyone else either needs or wants, call them DOCUMENTARY FOR THE PRESECUTION AND DEFENCE OF SOCRATES IF YOU GO IN FOR THAT SORT OF THING—




* * *




DOWN HERE
UNDER THE FLOOR

Friends in the OLD-UNCONSCIOUS now—seems I invested so much of my ego defense energy in so many different people that when I get away from all of them, and then they go silent. Out of TOUCH—then there doesn’t seem to be any conscious left over for me. And I fall into this place where everything means so MUCH even I don’t even know just WHAT SOME FEW THINGS MEAN. THESE CARDS ARE MEANT TO BE A CATALOG OF ALL THE DAMNED THINGS—




* * *




so let’s assume there are 12 people in this room who cannot successful[ly] fight back a rising ecstasy of PRIDE throughout their being—since their identity is secret, we can’t recognize them for sure—so we simply set their existence to one side. Now—that leaves you. How do you feel? Outraged at the evil spirit that would make me do something so awful? Watch it, folks, you may be projecting.... Cheated? Really, now, aren’t twelve enough.... Just plain excited that such a beautiful scenario just might indeed have occurred?? Welcome to the tribe, friends....

When the powers of light are at their greatest, above and below....




After the auction. Free. Beyond good and evil. Beyond my own dreams and desires. Revolution into the receptive. A good state of being waiting in the wings. If I can just last until then.... Truth is going to help....

A state of being coming up in which I can enable other people to create their dreams.... on any scale.... Because I’ve learned in this one—




* * *




Thursday, July 2nd

Burg—

The typewriter just consumed its own innards, contemporaneously expelled as noxious smoke. Dead motor or transformer.

consulate again: repairs? rental??
send a motor?
off-chance message to Phoenix?




* * *




Thursday, July 2nd

Things continue to fall apart out here on the edge: the typewriter became non-functional this afternoon in a small wispy cloud of noxious smoke—looks like burnt-out motor. Just happened, so I haven’t investigated the possibility of repair/replacement here in Sunny Mexico, but I’d guess it’s mighty slim. Ditto on renting another—well, back to the old-fashioned written-out mss. And will just have to trust my correspondents to keep their letters.* Hudson’s typewriter in my basement? Or: my old Olivetti Lettera 22 down there? Weinburg? Wallach? Hans too late??

* Well, let’s have some imaginative solutions here. Hire a secretary? Talking at a distance? Andrea’s typewriter in Phoenix or the old granddaddy one at the farm--
SO. LINED PAPER? CHUCK’S THERMOFAX? TAPE MORE?

write out more?



* * *




lights & camera: someone’s going to notice every twitch we make. So they have to be the right twitches from/for each of us

working it all out in public: white light of publicity—our demonstration year, the great year—renewal. pi-po papers.

psychoanalytic theory: I’ll write more when I practice less.
grand scenario: “Webb’s Cancer”
Chronos. And eating up me? or my time?
a specialization: now move on
(but sum up – demonstrate – first)

possession by not fucking people (around)
but: deliberately demanding the impossible
without a script and with no clear rules

leaving my mark behind me: crypto-sadistic education....
Prospero’s wand— I don’t have the text!
giving up the magic force (--into air into thin air--)
Sycorax, Ariel, Caliban, Duke/King of Naples?
Meditation for Porter – make the Tempest his test, and [break?] down the scene! Transcend?! Move on—call it a day—
prove to myself I could by making it all up—
the triumphs behind me, the scholarship ahead
action – contemplation
as with Goethe end of Faust: sudden crystallization: Shakespeare experienced longer—[?] expected it longer --




* * *




clean break
personal scenario -- Reed
E. C. endowment

multi-media review –

settling of accounts –
Kunkel
Rheingold
Laura & Dan
Neidhardt
Andreas
Rennell
Burg, Lance
Baker
me enjoying
everybody’s work
schedule
mechanics
financing

possible subjects

some things I’ve thought of—




* * *




past and future
what I’m doing and what I need –

death of Socrates –

fucking around with the heads of the students –


say: plan on San Francisco in April –




* * *




larva, pl. larvae (Latin, ghost, specter, mask; akin to Latin lares.)

1. A ghost; a spirit. Obsolete
except:
a. Roman religion: A ghost or specter, especially a malevolent spirit.
b. Medieval occultism: A species of supernatural monster.
2. The immature, wingless, and often wormlike form in which holometabolic insects hatch from the egg, and in which they remain with increase in size and other minor changes until they assume the pupa or chrysalis stage. Various kinds are known as caterpillars, grubs, maggots, etc. In many lower groups of insects the larvae, more properly known as nymphs, differ but little from the adult in form, but they are wingless.

3. Zoology: The early form of any animal which, while immature, is unlike its parent and must pass through more or less of a metamorphosis before assuming the adult characters; --applied to later stages then embryo. Organs for the performance of many or most of the bodily functions (usually excepting reproduction) are already formed in the larva, as in the tadpole. In animals which are permanently attached in the adult stage the larvae are commonly capable of locomotion.

Websters, 2nd International....




* * *




some big letters


grace & the unconscious
(sun, sand, sea)
last but not least
the secret catalog
the collector’s guide to junk & people

well pleased with the permutations of the collection: but it’s time for something else—




* * *




if I were serious –
-- transference: psych. theory
-- education: state of college & L.[Learning] C.[Center]
-- movie making
-- scholarship
-- aesthetics (environments)
-- revolution
-- travel
-- religion
-- drugs
-- magic
-- memory & forgetfulness training
-- economics
-- philosophy: aphorism & permutation
but of course I’m not serious

spiderish mentality
patience




* * *




should insert somewhere the L.A. Free Press Manson goodie: which I’ll have to quote from memory: “Warning. And coming as a by-product of the study is a warning to people who dig taking other people’s trips: your friendly neighborhood guru just may be an incredibly persuasive schizophrenic with paranoid delusions and not a genuine mystic at all. Goethe had a very good memory too: crystalline structure models are the secret.

And everyone wondering forever whether it really happened, of course. Always trying to sneak a look at one of the certified naked buttocks. But obviously no one will see your ass and live, little godling! All the little godlings will immediately band together and brand his obnoxious profane snoopy ass and coopt him to the blood brotherhood. The band that brands together stands together.... Gimme a shot of that Double XX Standard Brands motel-[?] you know you can rely on an old name brand--




* * *




No guilt. doing what you choose
Exhilaration?
Andrea: I just feel mortal, I guess.
A long stretch of feeling mortal ahead—

fast—



clear: he needs more than I
you need him more than me




* * *




BALANCE SHEET—
June 21st, 1970


Given:


we know where you want to be next:
with Lance

we know you want it to be:
soon

Necessary to deal with:

Jim? O.K. Functional without attendants for the next 3 months. As far as we need look at the moment

Lance? How can we have any doubts? If we need the safety factor we can phone?

Andrea? The I Ching guides its votaries according to their proper understanding.

Every body else? Irrelevant!

money schedules

So. Looks like a clean, right move.
After all, what does the body matter? You owe me nothing as a man, the allegiance you owe me as a principle is eternal anyway. One of the most difficult and beautiful snaps of my career. May even write it up for the chosen few—




* * *




Clearly it was my cancer all along
“the cancer of Jim’s desire for males”
I just tried to persuade you all I was your projection screen—
But then the Cancer Andrea is yours.
And the cancer collection is part yours: I’ve taken a lot of it (the shit) off or out of your hands

There is a finished feeling. the used-up magic. Good old reliable Double XX Cross STANDARD MORTALITY—But it sure used up a lot of people. Wonder how many we have left—
Damn you, Lance, you made me frighten Andrea
Why the hell couldn’t you frighten her yourself, SHITHEAD! Think I like doing your dirty work for you?? You know I have this double standard, and only like to frighten men.

FAMILY HISTORY: WHO YOUR BROTHERS WERE IN THE DREAM TIME (in the beginning was the drivel—titans – vomited by Chronos—

Latest reports from the inner darkness of unexplored MASTER SLIME BRAIN. Recommended for mature audiences only. Triple XXX SPINE-SNAPPER. Sweet holy JESUS: responsible for every broken bone the tribe has seen or sees or will see, before my time and after, SPLITTING APART.

He is a sucker for a smile—




* * *




a lab report written in white heat: before the vision fades—

Dusseldorf – All obvious next node in the Hitler sequence: counting on L.L. to bring me all these fucked up young heads, and bodies, and then really fucking them over into something a little better....
RED ALERT, RED ALERT! I CHING!

IT’S O.K. SHE SAYS IT’S JUST TRIVIA—

Left with nothing but these pure ex-CELL-ences, these platonic paradigms, these archetypes, these fictims: the Pi-Po People!
Flash from Holding Together to Splitting Apart and Back again, in the bat of an eyelid—

He taught “Greats” at Oxford.
Oh yeah, well I taught “Excellences” at Reed.
Like “Moral Philosophy”?
No, more a kind of “immoral analysis.” No nonsense:
REALLY FUCK THEIR HEADS AROUND ALL THE TIME. NEVER A DULL MOMENT.
(A dull moment is the devil’s workshop—
A dull moment in time saves the masses—




* * *




---- ---- ---- ----
--- O --- ---- ----
---- ---- ---- ----
--- X --- ---> -----------
--- O --- ---- ----
---------- -----------
60 36
Limitation Darkening of the Light


Andrea says I look: shrunken
old (several thousand years)
Her only prediction: “I suspect it will come clear.”

I say we will all three be impossibly smug.

giving them up, one at a time
account of a
secret journal of the
open book exam




* * *




That’s too easy:
we both won various amounts from each other in that game. we’ll start the next one even again.




* * *




djellaba vs. straight-jacket vs. handcuffs....

Given my habits, tastes, and perversions, my mental confusions and my spiritual and physical weaknesses, my irrational arrogances and diffidences, I will probably—when stripped of the support of all the people who protect me from my self—pretty quickly get into one hell of a mess.

All my significant relationships are insane (or to put the best face on it: transcendental), but the sum of them keeps me somewhere near sanity and safety—

my memory is so strong: it will be hard to forget.

telepathy, suggestion:

dreams & nightmares: some will be true so I must urge selectivity when possible—

(but those with shamanic vocation cannot choose....)
so: celestial & infernal traveling—

what was or is or will be happening to me, or through me.




* * *




why the auction, when property is theft--?
I could give everything to my friends, but—
I don’t know who wants what most—
and I haven’t even met some of my friends yet.

so the commercial dimension seems to be necessary--

everything fitting together to help make a fresh stop

spreading the shit around

written bidding instructions will be accepted to the capacity of the organization....

cash, check, credit by arrangement....

punctuation, breathing, digestion, elimination

manuscripts, books, letters,

what is all this shit?
what are we all doing here in the middle of the night....

39 hours—
Fri. 3 p.m. to Sun. 6 a.m.

icons
investments of meaning in objects—

return/conversion convertible assets....
work study? xerox? for a secret archive.




* * *




dream catalog:
car out of control
logic to the beam
explosion in the heart
flying saucers
getting the man out alive: objects take their edge



vision catalog:
Sept. 1, 1968
1971 on the beach (Jan 5?, 6?, 1969)
Arnold ’69 – heads of students
Aug. ’69 – Todos Santos
Sept. ’69 – premiere




* * *




Private Scenario No. 2 (response to Lance’s No. 1)
WEBB’S CANCER “Please Fuck”

The standard procedure for Private Scenarios—
If any one mentioned in a scenario prefers for it not to appear in the catalog, it does not appear.
Guess we’ll have to send around a script with a sheet for initialed approval. Wonder how long that would take??
VERY rough draft, of course—but could be polished up, toned down, and fleshed out, covered over and flushed away. What shit.
By acts of magical fucking around one does indeed set scenarios loose in the world. It is therefore incumbent upon us to check what state of mind could be incarnated by such an act before deciding to perform it.

PICK YOUR CANCER AT THE DOOR
(TICKETS WILL BE TAKEN AT THE DOOR)
“Get your tickets early to the Jesus Christ Ball”
Mary K. is making an appt. for my annual chest x-ray in September.
(see how the names creep in? Burg, could you get a list of all the names.... Libel laws. You know Lawsen [?] won’t print until....
To leave my own mark behind me and behind (oops) you all.
Are you sure there’s nothing more you want, beyond a cancer of your own? Good: It is correct: You both itch for a chance to play the central role, to make a breakthrough on your own. That’s JEST FINE. I really am pleased. I’m only sorry I won’t be around to see you do it. Maybe years later we can get together some time and reminisce about the difficulties of the part.
A good thing to do with past parts, as a matter of fact....

You mean to say you didn’t know it was really going on all the time? But haven’t I always told you what I was intending to do before I did it? You want out now? We’d have to re-shoot a lot of footage....
a little refrain could be [?] several points along the way




* * *




Don’t you see I’m being absolutely ruthless about leaving my mark on you all? I will plant designs on the very flesh of your bodies if you let me. (And of course you may not realize this at the moment, but it’s going to hurt me worse, and longer, than it hurts you, son. It’s what the most devious sadists always claim--)

FUCK & “PLEASE” YOURSELF! THIS IS WEBB’S CANCER WE’RE DEALING WITH—
you and hans, who are closest to my mind, label it so. So I guess it must be. BUT, I REFUSE to OVERSIMPLIFY?
What kind of cancer? Malignant? Benign? How about zapping it with some radiation? or doing an operation?




* * *




Reader’s Comment Sheets


They haven’t got one chance in a million of actually getting it filmed.... Too many of the parts are too difficult to play.... Admittedly the Nuremburg Rally did get filmed (Triumph of the Will) with a much bigger cast, but then they were all following orders, and here (unless I’ve misread the script) everyone is free to improvise his own part.... Hopelessly utopian (N.Y. Review of Books).... one more turn to the screw of pornutopia (Grove Press).... What kind of shit is this anyway. You been eating anything STRANGE?.... This will get you tenure for sure (Gail Kelley).... I couldn’t make head or tails of any of it. Are you sure the pages are in the right order?.... Clearly either an invasion of privacy or an evasion of publicity.... (J.K. Webb) Looks like some kind of 20 page monster epic of the insane state of the western mind (John Barth).... Andrea, you know they’re just using you in that movie for your looks (Ann Kashryu).... Makes me sick to my stomach (Lance)

“Sun Son of Spider God” Story Conference No. 1

Transcript—
July 21st, 1970
Larval Stage Company
Mazatlán Summer Seventy Scenario Workshop

Confidential.




* * * *


[An undated and apparently undelivered note or draft of a letter from Jim:]






Frank—
Six months ago you (consequently, we) decided that we could not have the kind of relationship I wanted or needed. Finally I (consequently, we) have decided the kind you want or need is also impossible. Although it is still painful not to see you, it is possibly more painful to see you as I have recently (I’m glad to have your testimony that that pain was not too obvious, since it shows that I was trying to make it work). We’ve always agreed that we had no future together. Now we seem to agree that we can have no present. That leaves the irreducible minimum of the past. But the past can be either distorted or forgotten. Distorting is more artistic—Forgetting is probably more honest. And less painful.

Good luck. Keep busy. Make things. Don’t take acid without a good guide.




* * * *


[The following notes in Jim’s handwriting are certainly from the Reed College days, probably from the period of the summer of 1969 through summer of 1970. It’s a series of notes written on a small legal pad. It bursts right into its subject and Jim was clearly agitated when he wrote it. Hans is almost certainly Hans Löfgren, a Reed student from the class of 71.]


some notes on a state of mind called Hans. I’m not sure whose mind it is. But I know I’ve been out of my mind for much of the last three weeks, and that I label my condition ‘Hans’. The pain of not seeing him is continual and excruciating. And getting worse: the attempt to ‘write it down’ is a desperation effort to get some counterfeit sense of clarity and control about the state I’m in.

It is eight days since I last saw him. The only thing that has kept me in some sense ‘living’

the renewed bare cell
the re-ordered house for next year
the displacement : work
the chest of drawers
the harpsichord
maybe : the brass bed
and making myself worthy :
exercise, diet, concentration :
care for people. hands. patience.
the moldings: the deck

curtailing my fantasies :
desire for genuine collaboration

transference sequences….
(eradicating evil from the house)
the wasps. repentance & magic.
baja map.
medicine bag. keys.

The flashes of hate : he set me up for this. Made me love him so he could reject me. Narcissus. and worse : that I played his game so well. and so willingly.

The beach in August.
I have been more honest with him than with anyone in a lifetime of conscious loving : and when the state of mind Hans fails a large part of me will indeed die. And I don’t want to die until his rejection recurrently makes me want to --- release from the necessities of strength and self-denial.

mescaline.
levitation.
may continue as long as we live.
I will always be attempting
cosmic forces.

‘how hard, easy, to come, to stay
away’

and that I am constrained not to
pursue. and that my own
weakness will undermine me ….

he’s fearful of the forces I unleash in him
and at him.
cannot be imposed, but:
giving : knowledge, love, power
defense : narcissus on both sides

displacement activity in-
vested with thought =
investment in future
(prospective déjà vu –
how he will feel….
predicted  accomplished

to have to wait…. to be
able to…. requires self-
deceiving stratagems.

The ninth day. I will sur-
vive which ever…. only
the form or avatar of the
end varies.
(I can see for miles and
miles, oh yeah---)

spiteful fantasies.

the required delays on house.
the necessary staying at home.
centering. there when
needed…. available –
.: humble – patient –
minimizing self-seeking

caring for other people in the
meantime….

the power is within – he should
not fear it – Not the intensity
of the wrestling : because he’s
fighting himself.

Therefore let him win
(therefore concentrate so hard on
being what I am).(the most
important being in his life)

he who is willing to wait : only
able to wait through an act of
will . Self-denial =
affirmation of communion

tremendous projective awareness.
concentrate on using it.
Spending the summer again
making the next year happen –
making Hans as valuable as
Lance : by investing love with
no return ??

preparing for the new revelation,
the new incarnation.

scraping the cell floor. The chest,
the chest---- back 10 years….

binding them to me with
threads of thought, of
conscious thought.

(the will and the wave ….)
acting out their fantasies :
the black really felt,
the spider able to move---

(visions, re-visions, déjà vu )

the aspirin box : ‘Well, you
knew it would come to this.’
And so many people could have written it!

discipline. compulsion.

I want to think his thoughts while
he thinks mine. Transmission.

the awareness of the spider :
knowledge of : tastes, value of the
bait, fears, reaction times,
probabilities, traffic patterns,
in short : approach/avoidance….
reflected by : quiet seduction.

symbiosis.

a new page

‘at the both time’
As :
“They same did it
at the both time__”
“--- to other each.”




[The writing ends here as does the pad of paper, the rest of the pages having been torn out, though this has the feeling of being the end of these entries on the Hans theme.]
* * * *


Another ruminative note in Jim’s hand on the Hans theme:






Love, when it is spread out to a large number of people, gets discriminated into art, education, religion. Conversely, when art and education and religion become precisely focused on an individual it is undifferentiable love. I am sick with love for Hans—every fraction of my body and thought and life aches with his image. My life is infected with the beauty and potential of Hans. If I misjudge the sequence of the illness, it will kill important parts of my life or of his—thus this effort at conscious assessment.
(A significant interruption. I got this far and Nancy and Bill arrived for what was immediately announced as a “social call”.)




* * * *


A letter from Hans Löfgren to Jim:






H.L. [Hans Löfgren]
3604 SE Clinton St.
Portland, Oregon

J.K. Webb
Lista de Correos
Mazatlán
Sinaloa
MEXICO


July 7 [1970]

Dear Jim

Your letter dispelled some reservations I had about making the Mexico trip. In view of our communication last semester I wasn’t sure how I could find you on the trip that has been forming itself in my mind. But I feel that we have gone as far as is possible with self- and mutual destruction. I want to remember last summer, not be haunted by it.

Susan came back to this side of the globe on the 18th of June and flew up here the next day from S.F. She stayed 3 days, and during that time we acted out a scenario—composed but not realized during our separation—which comprised a year’s experience and more. We found each other completely and lost each other completely. I think we gained a sense of an ending and lost some doubt and ambivalence.

I am not engaged in anything which could be called work, discipline or a consciously constructive activity. Just trying to let myself breathe and grow. The myth exploration I never started—and the story I laid down when therapy began to interfere. I have very little sense of what is happening with me and Forman, except that I want to keep at it seriously for some time. I am not sure how an interruption for three or four weeks is going to work out yet. I guess what remains is making an arrangement we both find satisfactory.

I ran into Andreas a few days ago at the Reed pool. He asked me if I really had terminal lung cancer. Said that you were really upset about it. I told him it was a misunderstanding, I had been talking about a dream. I suppose I am very cruel sometimes when I am “out of control.” Acid vibrations from you and a fantasy on a heavy sleeping pill. For some reason I felt I had to tell you the fantasy as if it was true, as if it was happening. But I still thought you would know differently. Didn’t it at least become clear the next time we met?—I was terrified to think you had actually believed it all this time. But didn’t we talk about it as a fantasy the day of the beach trip? --Please translate as: I wanted to eliminate the illness which [was] hurting both of us. –But I have no faith in that method anymore.

Let me know if you need an electric typewriter in early August.

Love,
Hans




* * * *


[From an october 28th 1970 handout or flyer on Reed College stationery regarding various slime events and Larval Stage Company events including a revival of “Spider God”, headed:]






AN OPEN IVITATION TO JOIN THE LARGE COMMITTEE TO EXXXPAND THE COLLEGE..... HELP THE LARVAL STAGE COMPANY (CREW?) SPACE OUT THE CENTER AT THE SLIME ENVVVIRON MENTAL WORKSHOP, REED COLLEGE COMMUNITY CENTER, NOVEMBER 2 TO 9

[at the end this announcement from Jim (aka Edgey Head):]

From a recent interview:

“I don’t like the way the college is going to shrink, so I for one intend to split. But there is some deep irrational moral urge to show how we could exxxpand the place. First we would have to exxxercise all our senses, and we’d better start with vision.”

Educated Head
The Edgey Head Managing Director, L. S. C.
EH/jkw

28-X-70




* * * *


[A letter or declaration read at a faculty meeting November 9, 1970:]






Since noon on Monday November second an informal and fluctuating group of faculty, students, alumni, drop-outs and friends of Reed College have been running a 24 hour a day open door environmental workshop in a portion of the Community Center. The use of the fireplace room and room “A” during the hours when the upper level of commons is normally open was authorized through the normal channels for me to mount an art show. The use of those two rooms at night and of room “B” when it was not requested for other uses constituted an unauthorized use of college facilities. For whatever such a claim is worth, I would like to maintain my responsibility for this unauthorized occupation from Monday, Nov. 2, to Saturday morning, Nov. 7. The occupation of the workshop space since Saturday morning has been the joint responsibility of all the people working in the environment. Consequently, I cannot predict when the workshop will withdraw from the Community Center. But my impression is that few of the people working there find it a convenient facility, and that we are all hoping to move to more functional locations as soon as such facilities can be found. So I personally implore all members of the faculty—and indeed of the entire Reed community—to assist in finding under-used space—wherever it may be. The workshop is open at all hours, and I hope you will stop in and find out what sorts of projects and people are currently utilizing the workshop. When commons is closed, the door from the deck behind the bookstore to room “A” remains open for access. Unfortunately, the workshop cannot presently be reached by telephone.
Though I cannot predict how the workshop will develop in the future I would like to make some brief observations on how it has functioned in its first week. Several hundred students and friends have spent varying periods of time in the workshop—many only observing, but many also contributing time, talent, intellect, materials, work, and money to developing that environment. More important—to my point of view—although a lot of work has been done there during this past week, there has been no deterioration or damage to the college’s facilities, and although at times there has been as much as $15,000 worth of borrowed equipment in use, and a lot of people flowing through, nothing has been stolen.
Also, there are catalogs and posters of the environment for sale—cheap or expensive as you prefer—all the income from which is being used to support the workshop.


Read at the Faculty meeting, November 9, 1970—J. K. Webb




* * * *


[I have to say that though i’ve never been in sympathy with people who conduct their lives through consultation with the I-Ching, Jim was certainly one of these. He seems to have picked up the habit in his Reed College days and continued his consultations for the rest of his life. Jim, though a seemingly boldly decisive revolutionary figure at Reed, had a real passive streak in his character which the I-Ching became a crutch for. He would, when he felt stuck, consult the Ching, though he appears never to have felt compelled to act on what he found there, and i think consulting the Ching became a kind of symptom of his paralysis in the years after he left Reed. The following is typical of the notations strewn among his papers, this from 21 november 1970, if i’m reading the roman numerals correctly.]






--o-- 9
-- -- 8
----- 7
--X-- 6
XXINOVLXXMRH

--o— --- ---
------- -------
------- -------
--- --- ---> --- ---
--- --- --- ---
------- -------
25 17

INNOCENCE FOLLOWING
[THE UNEXPECTED]


QUESTION: MY PRESENT SITUATION









XXINOVLXXMRH


--- --- --- ---
------- -------
--- --- --- ---
------- ---> -------
---o--- --- ---
---o--- --- ---

5 39

WAITING OBSTRUCTION
[NOURISHMENT]

QUESTION: PROJECTÍVE USAGE




* * * *


[Letter to Ross Thompson, acting president of Reed College.]






8 December 1970


Dear Ross—

Could you send Gwen Taylor the necessary note to authorize my east coast trip from Thursday, December 10, to Tuesday, December 15? I will be stopping in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco to confer with film-making colleagues about our current “HEAD COLLEGE” production, and I assume the Business Office could bill me for the additional expense, above the Boston round-trip fare, which would be involved in a circle flight.

I believe my memory is accurate that my last east coast trip was two years ago, and that I didn’t make a trip at college expense last year.

Thanks,

J. K. Webb




* * * *




REED COLLEGE [logo] Portland, Oregon 97202
OFFICE OF
THE PRESIDENT



December 9, 1970


MEMO TO: Gwen Taylor

cc: Jim Webb


This is to authorize round trip jet coach fare to Boston for Jim Webb, December 10-15, to participate in conferences relative to film-making. I gather that Jim is making his own ticket arrangements and that his trip will include stops at several cities in addition to Boston. He will reimburse the college for the extra fare. Please charge this to account number 882, paragraph 2, and count it as Jim’s eastern trip for 1970-71.


Ross B. Thompson

RBT:r




* * * *




REED COLLEGE [griffin logo] Portland, Oregon 97202

Office of
THE PRESIDENT

PERSONAL


December 18, 1970

Mr. James K. Webb
3680 S. E. Knapp Street
Portland, Oregon 97202

Dear Jim:

This is to advise you that with the concurrence of the Faculty Advisory Committee, I have recommended to the Board of Trustees that you not be granted tenure and that the 1971-72 academic year be your terminal year at Reed. The terminal year appointment would be at your present rank no. 45 with an annual salary of $10,100. The Board has approved this recommendation.

If you wish to accept the terminal year appointment, please sign and return the enclosed copy of this letter.

Please let me know if you would like to discuss any aspect of our decision and your appointment for next year.

With sincere regret but with all best wishes for your future,

Sincerely yours,


[signature]
Ross B. Thompson
Acting President


_________________________
Signature




* * * *


[Probably enclosed in Ross Thompson’s letter was the faculty salary scale coming into effect january 1971, which is rather a startling document because it indicates that for the two previous academic years Jim’s salary as an assistant professor with five or six years service to the college had been a less than grand $9,650. If he’d gotten tenure his salary for the 1971-72 academic year would have been $14,000, which i believe would’ve been less than my father was making at the time as a grammar school principal at a public school. The highest ranked professor’s salary at Reed for that year was $22,000. Jim and his colleagues at Reed clearly werent in it for the money.]


* * * *




REED COLLEGE [griffin logo] Portland, Oregon 97202


December 21, 1970


Dear Ross—

Thank you for your letter informing me of your recommendation that my association with the college be terminated, and your offer to discuss that decision. However, the failure of our past conversations leads me to feel that perhaps we can proceed more effectively if we restrict our intercourse to these letters.

I shall need to know whether the decision not to grant me tenure is based on the college’s financial difficulties, or is a reflection on my competence as a teacher. I do not see how I can make a responsible decision regarding my future activities at Reed without this information.

I would appreciate hearing from you soon, since I will be leaving town in a few days.


Sincerely,


J. K. Webb




* * * *




REED COLLEGE [griffin logo] Portland, Oregon 97202

Office of
THE PRESIDENT


December 21, 1970


Mr. James K. Webb
Reed College

Dear Jim,

In response to your note of December 21, 1970, the decision not to grant you tenure was based solely on the criteria stated in Article III, Section 2, of the Faculty Constitution.

Sincerely,


[signature]
Ross B. Thompson

RBT/cw




* * * *




REED DISUNION NOTES : HOME BASE

XXXI – XII – LXX
SERIOUS GAMES

THE COLLEGE IN EXXXILE :
--HEAD COLLEGE
--ENVIRON MENTAL WORKSHOP
--TWO-TRACK AMPEX TECH
--EDGE CENTER
--LARVAL STAGE COMPANY
--SMALL CHANGE COLLEGE
--EDGE PARTY QUARTERLY CONGRESSES
--THE TRUSTEES: SUNDAY NIGHT MEETINGS
--CORPOFLOW


REGRESSIVE CONSERVATISM
DEPRESSION MENTALITY

STUDENT RESPONSIBILITY

SIX YEARS IS ENOUGH
FULL-TIME & INTENSE
A SABBATICAL WOULD BE NICE

NON-TENURE IS A TWO-EDGED JUDGMENT

MY FEELINGS ARE HURT

ADMISSION STANDARDS

TENURE AS MIND-ROT




* * * *

PRE-LATE-JAN-MEMOS I

ALTHOUGH THE COLLEGE IS OBLIGED, BY ITS CONSTITUTION, TO OFFER ME A CONTRACT FOR NEXT YEAR, I AM FORTUNATELY NOT OBLIGED TO ACCEPT IT. MY FEELING AT THE MOMENT IS THAT I SHOULD NOT ACCEPT THE GRUDGING CHARITY OF AN INSTITUTION WHICH HAS JUDGED MY CONTINUED PRESENCE TO BE CONTRARY TO ITS BEST INTERESTS—
BUT: PECULATIVELY:
ETC. ETC. ETC.

COPPERS

1. CANCEL THE PRE-REGISTRATION
2. NOTIFY PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS THAT THE COURSE IS SUBSTAN
‘SUSPECT’ IN EXXXILE
TIME AND PLACE T.B.A.
NORMALLY ETC.


SMALL CHANGE UNIVERSITY ?
S.C.U. ---> SKEW




* * * *

PRE-LATE-JAN-MEMOS II

NATURALLY WE WELCOME YOUR PARTICIPATION AND YOUR SUPPORT


RADICAL SURGERY

CONSERVATIVE SURGERY

THE SMALL COMMITTEE
THE LARGE COMMITTEE

ELECTIVE
NON-ELECTIVE

SPREAD IN SPACE AND IN TIME

THE IMPOVERISHED TRUSTEES :
LITTON OMARK TECHTRONIX
VS. THE DISNEYLAND TAKE-OVER




* * * *


[On a page of random notes with the heading: THIS THAT AND THE OTHER, written backwards and slantwise across the page (so you can only read with a mirror or from the back of the page:]






YOU’D BE WISE TO DECLINE . . . .




* * * *


[This letter to the editor from Jim was published in The Oregonian.]






THE COLLEGE IN EXILE

3680 S. E. Knapp St.
Portland, Oregon, 97202
February 11, 1971


To the Editor, The Oregonian:

I am rather disturbed that your news columns have described me on two successive days as a “former instructor” at Reed College. I have explained with some care, to those reporters who have spoken to me about the College in Exile, that I am under contract to Reed College for the rest of the current academic year and am entitled to a terminal contract for next year if I choose to accept it.
Should the Administration decide that my determination to perform my teaching duties off campus constitutes, in the wording of the Reed Faculty Constitution, “service falling significantly below the standard which the College may reasonably expect of a person holding the academic rank attained, as such standard is defined” etc., they may present formal charges to the Committee on Tenure, at which point Section F of the Rules of Procedure specifies the formal investigatory and judicial processes to be followed. These are much too complex to summarize fairly in a brief letter. From my point of view, since my salary currently provides much of the support for the College in Exile, two points are of some importance:

“The burden of proof of the charges shall lie with the initiator of the proceeding.”

“The president, after consultation with the Committee on Tenure, may suspend a person charged during the proceedings only if immediate harm to himself, the College or others is threatened by his continuance. Any suspension shall be with pay.”

Naturally, I intend to fulfill my responsibilities to the Reed Community to the best of my ability, even if that means enduring the elaborate procedure for “Termination...of Fixed Term Appointment Prior to Expiration.”
The College in Exile, in short, seriously claims to be performing legitimate functions of Reed College: the “Constructive curriculum development” necessary if the College’s educational program is to be responsive to the changing needs of its students, and the attempt to generate additional sources of financial support.


Sincerely,


James K. Webb
Assistant Professor of Literature and Humanities
Reed College

A Larval Stage Company Production




* * * *




THE COLLEGE IN EXILE


3680 S. E. Knapp St.
Portland, Oregon, 97202

February 14, 1971


Dear Marsh,

In response to your note to the Faculty announcing the Shell Company Foundation grant: I’d like to apply for $150 to cover most of the expense of putting together “The Oral Examination” section of the “Head College” movie. The filming was done at Jim McConnell’s anthropology thesis oral last fall, with the explicit understanding that the movie would not be released unless everyone who was present during the examination (McConnell, Gail Kelly, Les Squier, Yvonne Hajda, David Lipson, Lance Montauk, and I) approves the print as a fair use of what occurred there. Lipson is doing the cutting to McConnell’s specifications, and what I’ve seen and heard of it gives me no reason to suppose that anyone will disapprove of releasing the result.

I guess I won’t argue the case for movie-making being a “scholarly professional activity,” though naturally I think it is; instead, I’ll argue that being able to pay the bills for this small project would “encourage...the general well-being of faculties in a contemplative atmosphere.” The College in Exile is deep enough into deficit financing—precariously balanced on the brink of bankruptcy, in fact—that I would be able to contemplate the next few months with less anxiety if we could pay some of the bills.

I know there are probably lots of applications, and will understand if the committee decides against this application, but I would at least like to know that the application reaches them, so I would appreciate your sending me some kind of note acknowledging that you received it. I hate to have to ask for that Marsh, and want to assure you that I don’t mean it as a reflection on you. I’m convinced you’re an honorable man. But I can’t trust the people you’re working with. I sent a letter to Ross Thompson last fall asking to be considered for the Howard Foundation nomination, only to read in the F.A.C. minutes some weeks later that there were no applications: a sequence that made me feel pretty rotten about the whole set-up.


Thanks,


J. K. Webb

A Larval Stage Company Production




* * * *




DRAFT II: KIRK THOMPSON

THE COLLEGE IN EXILE


3680 S. E. Knapp
Portland, Oregon
28 February 1971

Mr. Ross B. Thompson
Acting President
Reed College
Portland, Oregon

Dear Ross:
I am pleased to hear that you regard my relationship with Reed as a matter of importance, for I have always regarded it in this light myself. My understanding is that your December letter and my recent reply constituted the offer of a terminal contract for next year and my acceptance of that contract, and so I assume it is some other aspect of my relationship with the College that you wish to discuss.

I shall be teaching on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and every evening next week, but am free on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. Wednesday has been proclaimed—as I assume you have been informed—a day of silence, so I would be able to communicate with you on Wednesday only in silent meditation. If you would be pleased to share this experience with me, I cordially invite you to join me on Wednesday afternoon. If audible communication seems more appropriate to you, I would be ?equally pleased to have you drop in on either Monday or Friday afternoon. You are also ?equally welcome to participate in our classes at the times I have mentioned.

I have also been asked to inform you that it is a convention in our sub-unit of the College to make transcripts, usually on tape and sometimes on film, for purposes of subsequent self-advertisement and self-examination. We trust you will find this aspect of our discussion profitable and promise you a copy of the tape or film.

Should your secretary wish to call us to set a specific appointment time, we have enclosed a business card with our phone number.

Sincerely,


James K. Webb


A Larval Stage Company Production




* * * *




DRAFT III: MODICA

THE LARVAL STAGE COMPANY


Ross—


I perfectly agree with your sentiments. It was unfortunate to see you on television but thank god that doesn’t happen often. A hope the faculty as a whole takes more interest in your business. Please keep those faculty minutes coming.

As to our meeting, I would suggest that the best time might be sometime in late April, when I return from pursuing my scholarly activities abroad. I am sorry that I have missed a few of these meetings—I am no less guilty in this respect than many of my colleagues. I can only plead that my work at this time demands a great deal of attention, but I can only hope that it will also benefit the college.

If next week is not convenient for you, as it is not for me, then allow me to send you any number of postcards you might need in the near future. If you should need anything from me please feel free to drop by, as there is always a head around to deal you some small change.

--Jim


PS You haven’t seen the Po Panel, have you?




A College in Exile Production




* * * *




DRAFT IV: LIPSON (SENT)

THE COLLEGE IN EXILE
Office of the Figure Head
3680 S. E. Knapp St.
Portland, Oregon, 97202

1 March 1971


Ross B. Thompson
Office of the President
Reed College

Dear Ross,

My recorder reports that what we seem to have here is a failure to communicate. The gist of the message is as follows:

I am afflicted, unfortunately, with a sore throat, so although I am flattered that you feel that my relationship with the college is of sufficient importance to require prompt attention, I regret that I will be unable to meet with you early this week.

Wednesday, as you surely know, has been declared, by the members of my Thursday evening conference of Critics and Criticism, as a day dedicated only to experimental and non-verbal forms of communication, so I am uncertain if you would be able to derive any satisfaction from a meeting with me on that day.

On Thursday, however, I find that my schedule, although taken up by classes both in the afternoon and evening, is open between about 12:30 and 2:00 PM.

If this time is convenient to you, I would be pleased to meet with you informally over lunch. The members of the various office staffs recommend Davidson’s (formally Lee and Al’s) very highly. I am afraid the budget of The College in Exile does not allow me to offer you a meal, but I do hope that you can manage to join me anyway.

If I do not hear from you further, I will expect to see you then. In the meantime, I shall remain, of course,



James K. Webb
Assistant Professor of Literature
and Humanities, Reed College



A Larval Stage Company Production




* * * *




THE LARVAL STAGE COMPANY


3680 SE KNAPP ST
PORTLAND, OREGON 97202

standard oil company of california
western ops inc

Customer Service Div.

DEAR COMPUTER-TYPED, MACHINE-PRINTED SIGNATURE

Alright, so you can get nasty.

Well I can get just as nasty.

I have written you twice, spoken to you on the phone. When you make the adjustments you have promised to make, I will pay what I owe you.

I will not send back my card, nor will I pay money to anyone who alternately mellifluously promises and pusillanimously threatens.

It seems to me, Mr. Computer, that if you can’t keep your own head together, you’re not much use to soc.

I would be delighted to speak to any human representative of your company. Since you have already called me, I know you have my number.

Give my regards to your wife.



JAMES K. WEBB



A College in Exile Production




* * * *




THE COLLEGE IN EXILE



ALRIGHT. IF IT COMES TO THAT. WE WILL
BEG YOU.

YOU HAVE THE PO PANEL. AND YOU, OR SOMEONE ELSE (TO WHOM THIS IS ALSO ADDRESSED) HAVE THE PI PANEL.

NOW WE’VE BEEN VERY COOL, WE THINK, CONSIDERING. FIRST, THESE PANELS ARE NOT REED (COMMUNITY) PROPERTY, THEY ARE LEGALLY THE PERSONAL PROPERTY OF JIM WEBB. THEY WERE LOVINGLY HAND MADE FOR HIM IN ENGLAND BY DIEDRE LAW, AND MARY PEDERSEN PAID ALMOST $100 IN DUTY ON THEM WHEN THEY ARRIVED. SECOND, TO MOST OF THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE COLLEGE IN EXILE, THE SLIME MOVEMENT, AND ADVENTURES OCCURING AS EARLY AS THE MAKING OF THE FILM “THE MILKMAN” IN 1966, THESE PANELS HAVE A VALUE FAR GREATER THAN THEIR APPARENT WORTH AS WORKS OF ART. THEY ARE SYMBOLIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE MYSTICAL DIRECTION OF OUR TENUOUS BUT VERY REAL ORGANIZATION—FOR MANY OF US THEY HOLD GENUINE SPIRITUAL SIGNIFIGANCE.

WE HUNG THESE PANELS IN ELIOT 314 BECAUSE WE FELT THAT IT WOULD BE UNFAIR FOR US TO KEEP THEM TO OURSELVES—WE WANTED OTHERS TO BE ABLE TO SHARE THEM. IF THEY MEAN AS MUCH TO YOU AS THEY DO TO US, WE CAN UNDERSTAND YOUR WANTING TO HAVE THEM TO YOURSELF, BUT WE CAN’T FIGURE OUT HOW YOU CAN JUSTIFY THIS THEFT TO YOURSELF.

WE ARE SO CONCERNED FOR THE SAFETY OF THE PANELS, WE ARE NOT ONLY WILLING TO BEG FOR THEIR RETURN, WE ARE WILLING TO BARGAIN. IN RETURN FOR LETTING US KNOW WHO YOU ARE, FOR ALLOWING US TO SEE THE PANELS, TO EASE OUR MINDS, WE WILL AGREE TO LEND THEM TO YOU FOR ANY REASONABLE PERIOD.

TRY TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOUR CONTINUED PERSISTANCE IN REFUSING US ACCESS TO OUR PANELS IS CAUSING US CONSIDERABLE PAIN—PAIN FAR BEYOND THAT WHICH MIGHT BE CAUSED BY THE LOSS OF MOST MATERIAL POSESSIONS. TRY TO BRING YOURSELF TO RETURN THEM TO US.

THANK YOU.



A Larval Stage Company Production




* * * *




HOTEL CHAVEZ
CREEL, CHIHUAHUA
EL 26 DE AGOSTO, 1971
TIME TO CAST A CHING- -
WHAT SHOULD I BE DOING WITH MY LIFE?

8 --- ---
8 --- ---
7 -------
7 -------
8 --- ---
8 --- ---
62

THE SMALL GET BY
THUNDER OVER THE MOUNTAINS

CHANGING LINES




* * * *

[undated]






SAYINGS OF CHAIRMAN WEBB




november 10

academic freedom means you have trustee status. you have relatively free run of the institution to which you are committed. but you better not try to have any communication with the outside world.




* * *




Private Language

The new faculty constitution specifies that behavior must be flagrant to be significant. I'm conscientious, and well on my way to specializing in flagrancy.




* * *




Private Language ellipsis per Dick

Institutions to which you get committed...most people call it a jail.




* * *




June 20 Dick

Amazing what some rest, seclusion, attention, fasting, sun, speed, grass, celibacy, deliberate, hard THOUGHT can do for the mind!


expand :
...possible ?




* * *




Private Language

When I conceive of life as the disease – i.e., a dislocation in the normal inertness of matter – the ‘cure’ must be postponed as long as possible. Therapy is then a strategy for maintaining chronic disease. The ‘withering away’ of psychiatry will occur, not when the shrinks disappear, but when we all become shrinks.


Dick endorses
last line.




* * *




Edgetape 1-1

I assume it’s a matter of theory that whenever a revolution does happen, it will already have happened before anybody like us recognizes it, because the reason it will be a revolution is that it’s so unprecedented that we don’t know what it is.




* * *




Hudson Bay

Once you’ve seen one cult, you see them everywhere.




* * *




private language

The ‘withering away’ of psychiatry will occur, not when the shrinks disappear, but when we all become shrinks.




* * *




Aesthetics is the politics of the future.

Lenin?




* * *




June 23 Burg

“If Society is to go on, daughters must be disloyal to their parents and sons must destroy (replace) their fathers. Here then is the irresolvable unwelcome contradiction, the necessary fact that we hide from consciousness because its implications run directly counter to the fundamentals of human morality.”

Edmund Leech on
Lévy Strauss




* * *




Whole truth

Maya: doubt everything. Especially orderings.




* * *




Private Language

Good taste very nearly did me in.




* * *




from Chairman Jones

The chairman acknowledges his incompetence and his gross scholarly negligence.




* * *




Journal of the XXX Spaced-Slime Scientists

Sure better than nothing, folks—at least now we know what we’re poor ass facing next few years.




* * *




Burg June 23

St. Louis is out of reach. And so am I.




* * *




Whole truth

Europe. I was 25 years old before I ever saw it. If I had not come I might well never have matured—intellectually, emotionally, aesthetically. (Might never have lost my mind....) Half the last nine years in Europe—and half in America—and yet schizophrenia surprises me!




* * *




whole truth

‘There’s no denying it, it’s happening to me.’




* * *




The Lance Letter

Summing it up

That’s just the way it is. There just are secret plots afloat in the mind of man. And some of them work. And we see that. And then we blame somebody. And he’ll usually agree. Because he knows he’s had bad thoughts. Because we all have, you know, that’s just the way it is. Even good people sometimes have bad thoughts. And if you really convince people of that they walk correctly into their concentration centers—Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen, Portland, St. Louis, Mazatlán, Montana.




* * *




june 23 Burg

Say, friends, did you ever wonder how a doctor of the dark arts operates? How the mystic faith healer does IT? Ever find yourself feeling all sorta BLAH! in the morning and asking yourself just what kind of elaborate internal consistency would be necessary to make a paranoid delusion really functional? Ever ask yourself, Why Hitler? Ever ask yourself, Why not me? Ever ask yourself, Why me? I tell you you got to stop asking yourselves all these questions. Take a couple of aspirin and they’ll go away.




* * *




Go to the devil! He can give you a much better deal than I can.




* * *




June 12 Roger

Remind him I’ve always sounded crazy, and that they haven’t locked me up yet.




* * *




June 29 MK

I’m toying with the idea of giving up magic. Prospero throwing away his wand. Vanishing. “Into air, into thin air” Ariel, Caliban and all those SHIPWRECKED people—




* * *




Michael O’Neill June 12

Fetishes aren’t ever actually very useful.




* * *




Lanceletter Sum

It is equally clear that feeling guilty is not what is going to make us do better.




* * *




Hudson Bay

Q. Do you feel you owe a debt to Freud?
A. Yes, but he’ll never collect it.




* * *




Hudson Bay

The ecstasy of a yogi’s nirvana is a permanent state, but then so is lobotomy.


Editor’s revision.




* * *




Hudson Bay

Pleasure and pain is an answer if the problem is to feel. It is also an answer if the problem is not to feel.




* * *




Edgetapes 1-1

I buy knowledge all the time – it’s probably the cheapest way to get it.




* * *




whole truth

The only way to avoid being a dirty old man is to live a dirty youth. I discovered that too late—I’ll have to sully my middle age. And that’s more difficult—it’s like life insurance: the later you start, the higher the premium.




* * *




Burg June 23

The only way I know of to help anybody get better is to DEMAND the IMPOSSIBLE of them. And on my standard operating procedure: Use whatever is available and try to have it ready.




* * *




whole truth quote from Jung

One always has to answer people in their main function, otherwise no contact is established.




* * *




June 12 Michael O’Neill

Everything’s out in the open these days, it’s all the craze: openness. I think you ought to try it. It’s a great cover.




* * *




Lanceletter Sum

So you’re worried we don’t admit we’re prostitutes? I’m worried we don’t admit we’re teases...




* * *




L.A. Free Press article on Manson

...your friendly local guru just might be an incredibly persuasive schizophrenic with destructive paranoid delusions, and not a mystic at all.




* * *




June 19 Roger

I wasn’t really meant for this spiritual leader business, never really had the inner resources and strengths. So on that level I’ve always had to fake it. But there you run smack into the seductive magic of the whole vicarious atonement trip—if I fake it, other people won’t have to.




* * *




whole truth

The whole truth is that I don’t know the whole truth yet, besides, no one seems to be ready for the whole truth!




* * *




June 29 Amexco

I don’t like to be HASSLED!




* * *




June 23 Burg

Hell, I’m just not up to thinking revolution just now.




* * *




June 12 Roger

Do me something good. Anything you want, but the latest style. Just do it up right, and make it make sense.




* * *




23 June Oregon driver’s license

...I’m afraid it all sounds immoral and irresponsible but it isn’t actually.




* * *




June 23 Burg

...once got high in the coffee shop on the pattern of the space surrounding print—Wow! Paradigmatic-figure-ground-black-white-reversal HIGH!




* * *




Private Language

Fantasy is the danger and the redemption.




* * *




whole truth

so: build a fantasy world
and find out how it runs,
what it does, does it work?
how much does it cost?
how long will it last?
does every one want one?
I’m saving towards a down payment—




* * *




Whole truth

Just put it together as you will, and call it the whole truth. No one can prove you’re lying. Except for yourself. So I guess you better do it right.




* * *




June 12 Roger

JUST THE TOTAL MESSAGE IS ALL THAT’S REQUIRED, ROGER. MESSAGE THAT WE ARE ALL THE MEDIUM. ENTIRE LIFE STYLE AS ART FORM__THE ART FORM OF THE MOMENT (THE TIMELESS MOMENT) EGREGIOUSLY CALLED BY ME AT THE MOMENT “PSYCHOCINEMATIC SYNCHROSCENARIOS” PUT IT ALL TOGETHER AND IT WILL ALL BE ALL RIGHT AND OTHER SUCH MYSTIC FAITH VISIONS.




* * *




June 12 Roger

The Messianic scenario is so popular these days that there aren’t enough crucifictions to go around—we end up staging ritual versions of our own.




* * *




Edgetapes 7-1

I have been one of the great doodlers—credit given and taken—hollow at the core...




* * *




June 29 MK

All certified-useful historical consistent psychotheoretical educational poly-personalized medium=message=massage obvious-displacement SHIT! But SHIT! all the same....




* * *




Whole truth

I assume, in some not so obscure sense, we are doing what we are trying to do. Or vice versa.




* * *




June 23 Burg

So of course either someone is going to come along and save me, or someone isn’t.




* * *




June 23 Burg

I got too many of these timeless moments on my hands.




* * *




private language

Redemption comes in strange ways. If it ever comes.




* * *




Of the moment re: Reed

We just want to make it fine.




* * *




whole truth

The whole creation has got out of my hands. And into yours, where it should have been all along.




* * *




Lanceletter Sum

Fortunately for our boredom, the world is built of simple binary choices. And fortunately, we are totally free to choose.




* * *




Private Language

As a matter of objective and subjective fact, I am interactive: influenced as much as influencing.




* * *




whole truth

There seems to be some doubt: whether I take the sun, wind, sea, people; or give myself to them—and I don’t guess the conceptualization of it matters very much.




* * *




June 19 Roger

I seem to be very near using up desire, or being used up by it, through the simple habit of perpetually directing it at ambiguous people, objects, ideas, who are incapable of either accepting or rejecting it, and consequently simply wear it away. But in the process hone it to a razor’s edge.




* * *




Private Language

I sometimes feel the need for something to protect me from the world. And sometimes for something to protect the world from me.




* * *




Lanceletter Sum

Oh, I don’t know if I’m ready for that.




* * *




Burg June 23

There is this positively EXCRUCIATINGLY positive EXHILIRATION about trying to live your life truly enough that any of your words could be your last.



Very good – but for the beginning or the end? MK




* * *




June 12 Roger

I now openly teach the unknowable, and know the unteachable............




* * *




whole truth

I don’t know whether its sensual,
aesthetic,
moral.
But ready to cry at the beauty of being alive.




* * *




Edgetapes 1-1

Most of my friends are con artists. They’re trying to learn something from me. That’s obviously the only thing I have to teach.




* * *




15 June Mrs. Bickerton

I finally realized a couple of years ago that the first of September is my real new year’s day....




* * *




Edgetapes 7-2

... why don’t you start something else before you learn this all and get caught in it. Look what happened to me.




* * *




June 17 MK

I sneak around eavesdropping.




* * *




June 12 Roger

...this sly old oriental sage really is sly—




* * *




Private Language

An angelic messenger descended upon me and said, now see here Webb, the Lord needs him a cell, and he wants it nine cubits wide and nine cubits long.... And the Lord only knows why he wants it at all.




* * *




June 20 Dick

It does at least all look possible. Optimistic though it is, it sounds almost sane compared to the sky high euphoria that preceded it.




* * *




June 12 Roger

And to achieve some satisfactory sense of an ending I need to sum it all up—bring it all together—and then let it all fall apart.




* * *




nov 9 on the sayings of chairman webb

There are too many of them for that! And it’s very hard to pick only the best ones.




* * *




Private Language

Anyone who wants a duplicate can have one.

Burg




* * *




notebook

‘Hey people, this is written on judgement day.’




* * *




Burg June 23

Because if you are meek and inherit the dying earth it will be exactly what you deserve, pal—Sackcloth and ashes, and down to dust.




* * *




Nov 6 Chase film

Welcome to the movie. I’ll bet you thought it was real for a while. You were afraid that those bastards really had been plotting it all along. Worse than that you were afraid that they might be able to do it, because deep down you knew that there was an awful lot of truth in what they were saying.




* * *




June 12 Roger

Man, we’re getting devious.




* * *




november 2

So maybe if we let people know what we want we might get it.




* * *




Will, Jane

I probably have no better sense than you of the state of the great beast, and what’s in store for our country/civilization/culture. But the things that do keep running through my mind.... In my classes we keep exploring the recurrent apocalyptic modes of thought, since it does look likely that the rest of our lives will be played out to that tune: end of another millennium, without the millennium achieved, fìn of another siècle, the end of North Atlantic political hegemony, the end of a specious economy of abundance, and on and on.




* * *




June 16 Maurice

So I’m going to close down the Reed version of the operation at the end of next year, and move on to the next thing—as yet totally fluid and undecided, though it runs the gamut from holing up in a mental hospital to infiltrating the C.I.A.




* * *




(1) charisma as focus for opposed forces: positive-negative—

(2) tenure as mind rot

(3) H. James: Try to be someone on whom nothing is wasted.




* * *


[The following are turned aversely in the bundle of half-sheets, slightly separating them from the others.]


* * *




June 17 Chevron

Sorry to have gone on at such length, but you know how it is—you have to write a letter about one thing, and one thing leads to another....




* * *




coloring book

DON’T SKIP PAGES, OR YOU MAY GET IN REAL TROUBLE LATER.




* * *




coloring book

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DESERVED.




* * *




Alamos Conferencia

If they’re green, call them jade. We don’t have much time to argue about names. Besides, I’ve been expecting the jaded edge for some time.




* * *




Edgetape 1-1

The center has all the power, and it has very little space.




* * *




Edgetape 2-1

The Larval Stage is going to end up coming out for law and order.




* * *




Your full-scale re-make of the sense of the accident sounds like a good step. Probably necessary to make the pastness-of-past valuation process occur.




* * *




June 16 Maurice

But where to begin? Ah. Your first sentence sets off this total side-trip of the last couple of years and the one ahead—I was indeed having movies made of my mind.


...it’s hard to decide how I feel about having a conscious but fixed and repetitious media version of my mind moving about in competition with my sense of present existence here—wherever that happens to be.




* * *




June 12 Roger

from Webster’s 2nd International – last sentence

In animals which are permanently attached in the adult stage the larvae are commonly capable of locomotion.




* * *




10 november re: ideas found in his undergrad thesis

Don’t follow them too far, I’m sure they go in the wrong direction.




* * *




Coloring book

THE LARVAL PARTY PLANNERS SUGGEST YOU ORGANIZE THE WHOLE DAMNED BASH AROUND MOUTHWATERING EASY AS Pi Pie Pos




* * *




coloring book

I HAVE TO ADMIT THERE’S A THEOCRATIC AUTHORITARIAN STREAK IN ME A MILE WIDE, LIKE GOD THE FATHER AND I JUST HAPPEN TO AGREE ABOUT WHAT’S GOOD SLIME, AND IT SURE LOOKS LIKE EVERYBODY OUGHT TO SEE IT OUR WAY.




* * *




June 16 Maurice

But I want to do the catalog right, I want it to be authenticated junk. A memorializing instinct. Plus of course the subversive intent of spreading the authenticated junk around like some kind of nasty proliferating spore culture, letting it loose in the world. I talked this out in a lot of fanciful detail with several friends this spring in the course of deciding to do it, and then made the heartening discovery—not for the first time, either—that I was proposing to parody something I didn’t even know existed: Discovered while passing through Los Angeles, from an ad on a taxi-cab, that the Hollywood studios have been auctioning off all their use up props and sets. So there’s a well-publicized majoritarian-culture money-grubbing paradigm to play around with.




* * *




coloring book

SHOE*STRING AND BOOT*STRAPS AND ALL THAT, BUT IT WOULD BE NICE TO HAVE SOME DECENT EQUIPMENT TO WORK WITH FOR A CHANGE, SO MAYBE YOU COULD SEND MONEY?




* * *




whole truth

circular drawing from student’s notebook—think about all the things etc.




* * *




spider god

I’m thoroughly convinced I am neither Satan nor Christ.




* * *




spider god

There is a certain reluctance to admit my prescence [sic] on the faculty.




* * * *


[This is probably late Reed College period, 1972 dates noted in same notebook.]






SO FAR OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM OF REED LIFE THAT THE PERSISTENT PROBLEM OF DISCRIMINATING FACT FROM FANTASY IN THE QUEST IS NOW BEYOND MY CRITICAL POWERS. CONSEQUENTLY…. EXPLICATION & SELECTIVE DISSOCIATION….




* * * *




LAST YEAR 
REALLY GETTING INTO THIS RELIGIOUS TRI



SHAMANISM- - -ELIADE- - -
NAVAJO WITCHCRAFT- - -KLUCKOHN


HARE KRISHNA
CHILDREN OF GOD & GLUE SNIFF
TIBETAN YOGAS
NITROUS OXIDE
HELIUM MATHEMATICS
STARSHIPS




* * * *




IN PURSUIT OF INTERPRETATION: THE TRIP IN THE RAIN FOREST….LOTS OF ELK …THEN A TREE…A REALLY WEIRD NOISE…PANIC…SQUIRREL…EYE CONTACTS. ...MUSIC…ASCENDING IMPULSE…WOW… CRAZY…SOMETHING SHOVED ME…I’M AT THE TOP…CLOUDS RUSHING BY…STARING…DIRECT COMMUNICATION WITH: GOD, DEVIL, UNIVERSE, SPACE BEINGS, SOMETHING…L.S.D. STILL TEACHING ME…




SENSORY DEPRIVATION BOXES BEING BUILT
SEEKING E.E.G. MACHINE- - -HOWARD?




* * * *




Mazatlán again – March 14, 1972 –
and it looks like I’m going to try writing it all out again : another crisis self-valuation to accompany a three-week sun : diet : exercise trip. And this time it’s closing down Portland on my mind. Which requires some heavy meditation : the 7 year cycle. Plus : places, schedules. Permit. Procurement. Some methodological queries : Does touching bases get one any nearer the foundations? Is self-analytic of more than minor utility? Should I try—for once—to avoid the inventory-evaluation-of-personal-relationships format? Or say : Could I?

Dangers: Depression.
Brain-storms.
Self (over & under) indulgence.

What am I looking for?
What if I find it?




* * *




March 15. On my own. Hotel
Freeman #37. Feeling better for : a little restraint, a little solitude, a little freedom. The collective boat decision now looks right to me, and Lance and I wrong : small groups and old friends I have enough of. And cramped physical (as well as psychic) quarters. So: a few days here to get strong, and brown, and intense : & then some travel.
(A slime survival : the red & green color coding for the traveling disciple’s self-discipline kit)

Walked the length of Playa Norte to Camerones. New 64 room Hotel Hacienda and “Family Coffee Shop.” Beach lights being installed. El Bucanero enlarged. Hotel Las Flores looks finished. But the beach looks pretty much the same.




* * *




Thurs. 16th – Sunset – Scored some good meta [?] this afternoon and—suddenly—I don’t want to read a book, or write one : I want to look at the sky & sea and fuck around with people’s pasts, presence, and futures, bodies, heads, souls. Which makes me want to get REAL STRONG & ACTIVE-->




* * *




Friday 17th -- & St. Patrick’s Day too –
When you’re lost in the sun—
OFFICIAL CULTURE DAY IN PORTLAND. GRADES. MOVIES.

ACTION AT A DISTANCE.

THE MEXICAN FUTURE NOW PAST?

AND THE EUROPEAN PAST?

El Bucanero – a joint out on the point. The same edge stones. Beatles on the jukebox in their several forms. Let it be.
A una canción mejicana. “Tengo dinero quada que más.”

Seems to be good color & ideation high.




* * *




18th – 1 a.m. – How now?




* * *




RANDOM NOTES AFTER A SOLAR
BURN

REED
WEED
MOSS
PLUS ÇA CHANGE
PLUS C’EST LA
MÊME CHOSE

THE LAST WAY-OUT FESTIVAL
EXIT
BEAD GAME

NUITS DE ST. GEORGE

REED RETRO FILMS

THE UNDERGROUND
WORKER PRIESTS
LET IT ALL HANG
OUT RACE DAY


TIME FOR CHANGING THE SCENES.




* * *




19TH EVENING—

RESERVATION & SEMI-PACK?
PUERTO VALLARTA Y DESPUES,
FERROCARRIL CHIHUAHUA AL
PACIFICO—CD. CHIHUAHUA A
CD. JUAREZ ?? ARIZONA ???

PRESENCE OF
GRINGO FOULBROOD

BUT: THE REGULAR REGIMENS WOULD BE
EASIER HERE? SO WHAT IS ‘EASE’ ANYWAY?
MATCH IT WITH ‘CHALLENGE’?




* * *




20 MARCH – WHY DOES
MONDAY FEEL LIKE DECSION
TIME?

APARTAMENTO :
COFFEE, KOOK FOODS,
PRIVACY, EXERCISE SPACE,
MAYBE : WATER COLORS?

PUERTO VALLARTA :
NOVELTY, MOTION,




* * *




20th – Playa Gaviotas

The family – as universe :
mushroom vision reported on beach.

Books: Aztecs
Anarchists
Span. Eng.
Chief
/$80 M.N.




* * * *


Jim’s last semester at Reed ended in may 1972.


* * * *


[Preparing to clear out of Portland, Jim jotted notes in his slime style regarding the sale by auction of his accumulated goods, the ones he didnt want to move.]






CONTINUOUS MORAL
BANKRUPTCY AUCTION REED COLLEGE CULTURE DEALING CREDIT
CLEARANCE SALE . . . . LOST OUR FRANCHISE . . . . LEFT-OVERS . . . . OUR WHOLE STOCK OF USED-UP CULTURE FOR SALE . . . . BACK TO THE BARE WALLS . . . . DEALERS WELCOME . . . . DEFINITELY ENDS BY AUGUST 31, 1972. . . . BUY EARLY FOR BEST SELEXXXION . . . . ARCHAIC ARTIFACTS, ANTIQUE JUNK, DECAYED & FRAYED ELEGANCES, PICTURES, PARABLES, POSTULATES, VARIOUS TEXTILES, SUMPTUOUS SYMBOLISMS, PARTS & PARCELS, ODD LOTS & BROKEN SETS, GOOD BOOKS




* * * *


[1972: When Jim was preparing to move from Portland to Anthony, New Mexico, he held an auction of the furnishings from the Knapp Street house that he didn’t want to move. A fourteen-page newsprint ‘catalog’ was published by the Larval Stage Co. to commemorate the occasion, with photographs from the auction by Kirk Thompson. The auction was a festive event held out on the vast lawn in front of Reed College. The furnishings consist mostly of pictures, photographs, prints, with a few chairs, a lamp, some mosaic tiles, a banner with the Spider God logo silk-screened on it. Jim is already in his New Mexican sage mode, pretty much, with beard and stocking cap, dark glasses, a little heavier than in his earlier Spider God, amphetamine days. Brother Steve, thin, bearded, christ-like, can be glimpsed in the background of quite a few of the photographs—mostly done with an extremely wide-angle lens. Dogs wander in and out; Jim entertains and amuses the crowd.
On the back of the catalog, printed, is Jim’s new address, Route 1 Box 180, Anthony, New Mexico 88021, and hand lettered, above a triple cross—Jim’s signature symbol of the slime art phase, which was about to end—is a quickly scrawled invitation:

In a rut?
Inertia got you down?
Try a working vacation at
the EXILE DUDE GOAT & YARROW FARM




* * * *


[Retired to New Mexico, fall or winter 1972 (?)]


* * * *




THE COLLEGE IN EXILE

Route 1, Box 180
Anthony, New Mexico, 88021
October 14, 1972

Dear Reed President’s Office:

This is about the president’s $50 fund for Junior faculty to entertain students in their homes. In sorting through my papers I’ve finally come upon the receipts, but now I can’t find the memorandum explaining who in the president’s office is taking care of reimbursements—hence the impersonal salutation.

The receipts enclosed cover the greater part of my expenses for two culinary efforts: vegetarian pea soup served on the true St. George’s Day weekend, and chili con carne muy picante served on the false or so-called “reformed” St. George’s day a fortnight later. I affirm that I didn’t spend any of the president’s money on alcoholic beverages or other addictive mind drugs. And I did feed something over a hundred students in my home. The left-overs were also served to students, but on campus—the pea soup was a warm and nourishing breakfast for the students occupying Eliot Hall, and the chili went even faster at the renaissance fair; but since I always felt pretty much “at home” in Eliot Hall and on the Commons lawn, I assume those subsidiary uses were within the spirit of the president’s junior faculty student feeding fund.

I must confess to feeling rather petty about sending in a claim for the money at this late date—it’s a little like licking green stamps, since it represents less than one percent of what I spent entertaining students in my home during my seven years at Reed. But that was when I was drawing a salary from the college, and my sense of proportion, fiscal and otherwise, has shifted now that I have to maintain myself as a professor in exile. That fifty dollars now represents a month’s net income from the rental of my Portland house.

I trust you’re all having a pleasant year on campus, and that the college can continue to find enough tractable students to keep the professors happy and busy. It’s warm and sunny here, and I’m finding gardening very soothing for my mind.


Sincerely,

[signature]

James K. Webb
Assistant Professor of Literature and Humanities in Exile



A Larval Stage Company Production






[This letter i found among Jim’s papers attached to a copy of a fifty dollar reimbursement check from Reed College.]


* * * *


[The story of Christopher J. Meade (philosophy major, Reed class of 74), who after Jim had left Reed came down to Anthony and offered him $10,000 to write his thesis for him. Jim was tempted but eventually refused. Christopher jumped on him and tried to strangle him. Members of the Bridge Club were there and took Christopher out in their car to cool off. They asked Jim on their return if he wanted them to blow Christopher up. He declined their offer. Later on the saga came to involve the Secret Service and other authorities as Christopher Meade had made threats on the president’s life in the classic Travis Bickle manner.
The following letter was probably written in 1973 as the ‘last august’ must refer to august 1972, which was the last summer Jim spent in the Knapp Street house.]






Dear Dean Dudman,
Last August I went to Mr. Webb’s house on Knapp St which was a neighborhood drop-in center. Ask Stephanie Rick. I talked with Mr. Webb for a while on a lazy summer day and neither of us had much to do. I spent several afternoons there talking with him and neighborhood kids. I saw him as an ex-professor of mine, and he was friendly. I suppose I was naïve because he had (in retrospect) a predatory homosexual interest. Perhaps you know that I was living alone with Jeannie at that time and was a decidedly and exclusively heterosexual man.
Webb literally hypnotized me and has psychologically broken me down and abused me for the past nine months. He caused me such anguish that I took a strong dose of tranquilizer one night which almost killed me. Ask Stuart Potter. He subtly influenced my mind (I didn’t know he was the one controlling me until New Mexico) and made Jeannie and I go crazy in this house. [One sentence heavily scratched out here.] He made me violently abusive toward her and told her it was me. Ask her if I was ever abusive to her in the past. He told her I was an unfaithful man in ways that I was not. Finally he made me threaten you with a gun. To Webb; this is was his revenge on a college that fired him.
He pulled me to New Mexico and then proceeded to thoroughly break my mind down. When I was nothing more than an animal he sexually abused me (violently) and commanded me to kill the President of the United States. I don’t know if his parents or brother would testify to this but they and an unnamed man witnessed the breakdown and the intensity of the commanding.
When I returned to Oregon, he had my friends (he is a convincing liar) continue to break me down and I had my best friend Stuart take a gun (a family relic) away from my house for fear of his brain washing. I saw a psychiatrist and he can give you his opinion of Mr Webb. The problem is that every one near me comes under Webb’s power and listens to him and not to me. Jim McConnell and you have both done this. I understand Webb is fascinating, but he is dangerous.
I spoke with you on the telephone and tried to be polite but Webb told you he was driving me mad.
He caused me tremendous pain and tried to make me violent and assaultive one day with a punk friend of his on Knapp St.
Mr. Squier accompanied me on a flight to Honolulu and again Webb caused me great pain. He tried to make me violent again. I tried to evade him with distance but he even controlled me on Guam. I talked to the police there. In Honolulu, he again tried to have me throw myself out a hotel window.
Mr. Webb is a brilliant, eccentric radical college professor who has of late turned his power to evil. I hope that you believe me when I compare Webb to Charles Manson, because this is the man he has been to me. Help me.
Sincerely,
Chris Meade




* * * *


13 December 1974:

[Jim had been getting rid of his Portland holdings, had sold his car to someone (Mike Reagan i think) for $600, and was working out the sale of the Knapp street house. He talked to Barbara Haines, a friend of our family, who’d become a real estate agent when her kids left the nest, and she’d told him: I could cash you out ($14,000 was the figure I think she’d mentioned as the market value of the house). And Jim had felt a little insulted by the tone of that suggestion, preferring to sell it for less to a worthier party known to him. He offered it to my parents for $10,000, and they discussed it but my father had balked and told my mother: If we bought that house you'd be living there within six months. That had ended the discussion. So Jim, who’d been renting the Knapp street house to Richard Crandall for fifty dollars a month now (winter 1974) decided to sell it to him. At this point Jim had been living on the farm in Anthony for almost two years.]






WARRANTY DEED


KNOW ALL MEN
BY THESE PRESENTS

That JAMES K. WEBB, a single man, hereinafter called the grantor, for the consideration hereinafter stated to the grantor paid by RICHARD CRANDALL, reputedly a single and certainly a singular man, hereinafter called the grantee, does hereby grant, bargain, sell and convey unto the grantee, his heirs and assigns, that certain real property, with the tenements, hereditaments, appurtenances, and trees thereunto belonging or appertaining, situated in the County of MULTNOMAH, State of OREGON, described as follows, to-wit:

Lots 1, 2, and 3, Block 15, BERKELEY in the City of PORTLAND, also known as the LARVAL STAGE COMPANY, the COLLEGE IN EXILE and the SPACE-OUT EDGE CENTER,

To Have and to Hold and to Cherish the above described and granted premises. Forever. And grantor hereby covenants to and with grantee and his heirs and assigns that grantor is lawfully seized in fee simple of the above granted premises, free from all encumbrances save and except:

The burdensome encumbrance represented by the goddamn sidewalk lien,

And that grantor will warrant and forever defend the said premises and every part and parcel thereof against the lawful claims and demands of all persons whomsoever, except those claiming under the above described encumbrance. The true and actual consideration paid for this transfer, stated in terms of dollars and sense, is $ 12121.20. In construing this deed, or where the context so requires, the singular includes the plural and the past includes the future. In Witness Whereof, the grantor has executed this instrument this 13th day of December, 1974.


State of CALIFORNIA
County of ALAMEDA
13th December, 1974
Personally appeared the above named JAMES K. WEBB and acknowledged the foregoing instrument to be his voluntary act and deed. Before me:
(SEAL)
.............................................................
Notary Public for CALIFORNIA
My commission expires:


James K. Webb
PHASEPLACE
Anthony, New Mexico, U.S.A.
GRANTOR’S NAME AND ADDRESS

Richard Crandall
c/o ERG, 22 Mill St.
Arlington, Massachusetts
GRANTEE’S NAME AND ADDRESS

after recording return to:
Richard Crandall
c/o ERG, 22 Mill St.
Arlington, Massachusetts

[torn] change is requested all tax statements shall be sent to the following address.
Richard Crandall
3680 S. E. Knapp St.
Portland, Oregon, 97202

STATE OF OREGON,

County of ...................................................
I certify that the within instrument was received for record on the ................ day of ......................................., 19 .........., at ....................o’clock ......... M., and recorded in book ............................. on page ................................ or as file/reel number .....................................................,
Record of Deeds of said county.
Witness my hand and seal of County affixed.


........................................................................
Recording Officer
By ..................................................................
Deputy




* * * *


[Written circa 1990. I would have entitled this account: RICHARD CRANDALL IS A DICK.]






THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CRANDALL FUTURES

Fifteen years have now gone by since my acceptance of the Crandall Futures option. How much longer will it take for them to mature? Will they ever mature?? Never mature???

THE ORIGINAL DEAL

In 1975, Richard Crandall asked me if I would accept, in lieu of the last $2,000 due on his purchase of the Knapp Street house from me, four investment units of Crandall Futures. I decided to do so after hearing the verbal prospectus and receiving contradictory advice from two trusted lawyer friends. (Richard Lee said don’t be a dummy, or at least get it in writing. Lance Montauk said gee I wish he would let me buy some.) I can’t claim to remember the prospectus in complete detail, but the major points remain clear:

Benchmark—a 1975 dollar would buy a loaf of whole-grain raisin nut bread.

The investment would not pay interest.

But it would, in a finite yet unspecified amount of time, produce significant, who knows how tremendous, appreciation.

The units were redeemable, not on demand, but by negotiation.


A QUERY

Would it be accurate to describe this as an instance of blind trust?


THE CURIOUS CASE OF THE CRANDALL FUTURES, CONTINUED


ATTEMPTS AT NEGOTIATING REDEMPTION

Over the years I’ve made three attempts to initiate some form of discussion that would lead to, or at least towards, the redemption of my investment units. I don’t feel like I’ve made much of a beginning, much less what could be called significant progress.

The first time (I forget what year, but if we put our heads together we could figure it out) I wrote to Richard, in casual italic calligraphy, a Reed tradition, asking how much my units were worth, and whether I could convert any of them into something more immediately useful, like cash. A few days later he phoned me at the farm and told me he figured they were now (then) worth about $3,000 but he was fresh out of cash, having invested in a thousand copies of his rock music. He did send me two copies of the record.

A number of years passed. Then sometime in 1988—in what I must say seemed the fullness of time—the news reached me that Mother Reed had crowned Richard’s career with tenure. This clearly was the future, so I wrote a congratulatory note and again suggested redemption, offering as an informative analog that $2,000 invested in 1975 at 10% compounded annually, would now (then) be about $7,000. No response.

Then, early in 1989, I spent a rare few days visiting friends in Portland and heard that Richard had an off-campus office a few doors from Lutz’ Tavern. The door was ajar and I walked in. Richard rose from his terminal and after some hesitation noticed that I wouldn’t retract my hand until he consented to shake it. He said he gathered from my letter that I figured he owed me something; that upon considering the matter he had decided that perhaps he did; that he had no money to offer; that if I contacted his assistant some used computing equipment might or might not be available; that he was busy and the interview could proceed no further. At most, five minutes had elapsed. I went on to Lutz’ and watched the SuperBowl. I must admit my feelings were hurt, and I didn’t seek an appointment with his assistant.

So there the matter stands, or rests, or festers. I don’t know what my next move should be, but I’m not reconciled to resigning the game. So, as at other puzzling junctures of my life, I solicit suggestions from my friends.


GOOD WORKS WORKS GOOD : CRANDALL FUTURES

hello, i’m jim webb pool, you can trust me, i’m a friend of professor richard crandall. this works. i have tested it on the reed college library.*
if it is to continue to work, we must all protect richard’s interests.
by the way, i make the market in 1975 issue knapp-house-secured investment units. i presently own 1490 of the 1500 loaves not yet retired.

(more)

*
NOTE. THIS TEST WAS MORE THAN TWO YEARS AGO. NEW TRIALS ARE NEEDED TO DETERMINE IF “ADJUNCT PROFESSOR” WORKS AS RELIABLY. THESE NEW TRIALS HAVE NOT YET BEEN SCHEDULED.

1969 25TH CLASS REUNION MEMORANDUM, JUNE ‘94

i hold these investment units as fiduciary for the health benefits fund at temple dog school, and have been instructed to divest and liquidate.

fiduciary / not for profit

certified friends &/or colleagues, swear oath or affirm

the limit 1/100 i.u.

the registry: projects & project director

the newsletter file: addresses of fiduciaries


crandall class conference

how can we no-load it?

BLUES GUYS: BLUE SKIES




* * * *




12 a.m. January 6, 1980

Angel, who has recently been talked to by his god in his church, this moment celebrated the feast of the three magi by throwing his beer bottle at the Buddha.




* * * *


[Jim's mother, Faye, developed alzheimer's and Jim became her informally designated caregiver. From 1983 until her death in 1988 Jim made occasional notes of Faye's sayings. I've transcribed all the notes i could find. Some of the comments were made directly to Jim, some to herself and some to the various dogs, mostly chihuahuas, around the place that Faye was very fond of. The following are the notes from 1983.]






you don’t have to
go to school, buddy
you’re here in the world
the world is all school.


and they’re off on their own,
listening, learning
they can enjoy it.


and we’ll be leaving—living—enjoying it
tomorrow won’t we—
faye oct. 22, 83




what
can i do
where
can i go
23




* * * *


[Jim calligraphed the heading and typed the following page.]






Winter Solstice 1983

the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the s
try again
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic,m the patience of a saint
try again
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignatt
try again again again again again again again again
again again again again again again again again aga
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resg
try again
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint
the resignation of a stoic, the patience of a saint




* * * *


[Probably calligraphed in 1983.]






our tales of the brave chihuahuas
must include
hard times for honey
trying to deal with
dementia
when even the wisest
humans can’t




* * * *


[1983?]






up to here
what are we
up to here




* * * *


[1983?]






resources at a low ebb:
social
physical
spiritual
financial
retrench to survive


bare necessities:
water
food
shelter
warmth
sanitation
security
human touch
sleep

work for those
who can




* * * *


[1983?]






my brother phones before he leaves el paso for the farm : this gives me thirty minutes to prepare faye, myself, and the environment to receive a visit, or to tell him if there are exceptional circumstances or if another time would be better.
if he knows the night before that he may be visiting, he phones then (which is helpful) but still phones before starting for the farm.




* * * *


[1983?]






three old buddhas
in a blossoming
pear tree



rose colored
spectacles




* * * *


[Faye comments:]






may 25, ‘85
i’m so tired.
oh help me. i’m so old.
i’m so afraid. i don’t
know what you mean.
i can’t see at all.
i love you. you’re so nice.
i don’t know what to do.
i’m just so tired. oh, i
don’t know what to do.
c-a-c-a-c-a r-o-r-o-r-o
i’m too old. look here
why don’t you. i can’t
do it. oh, oh, oh, i don’t
know. i’m so tired i don’t
know anything. i don’t know
anything. c, a, c, a, c, a, uh-uh
i don’t know about me. i
don’t know what i can do.
i cain’t, i cain’t, i cain’t, oh, oh




* * * *


[Note written on an envelop postmarked 29 july 1985:]






faye’s 81st birthday

i don’t know what to do
oh i wish i knew more about things.
i’m afraid i’m afraid & so forth & so on just too long for anything
that figured me you know
i’ll go there but i don’t know when i’ll get there




* * * *




oct. 11, ‘85
oh i can’t just kill me




* * * *




oct. 13, ‘85
oh it’s cold where is he the man
oh my goodness that’s cold out there
i don’t know anything. what for.
oh, i’ll be so... i don’t know where
i’ve got a thing. oh, oh, c, a, c, a, c, a,--
who’s this other one now. got to have
some. see a , see a, oh pshaw. uhn, uhn.
oh, my, looks like that would be burned
now. oh i don’t know what i wanted
to do. oh my it’s awful, c, a, c, a, r, a, r, a,
uhn. i don’t know what to do. it’s cold.
i’m tired, oh, unh, the babies with me. i
was asleep. uhn, he was looking at that
rock, working with the dog. it’s cold.
it doesn’t i guess it would there its so
cold oh i don’t know, c, a, r, a, i’ll be gone.
i guess my mama was here with me. i
wish the man would come. where’s the
little boy? i can’t see him. just a little
doggy. he’s a pretty thing. i don’t know.
i wish you were here. uhn. i just don’t know.
oh my, mama. you’re not mama, are you?
i wonder if jimmy’s coming here.




* * * *


[written circa 10/19/85]






THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW PROGRAM


BEGINNING
BOOK
KEEPING

(late in life, advanced edition)
(of course, if you can start younger,
is that necessarily better?)

CONSTANT EXIT: ASK JIM WHAT HE REALLY MEANS

PROSPECTUS: THIS IS NOT THE PROSPECTUS
(& shall not be construed as offering etc.)

Although everything is theoretically for sale, nothing is offered for sale in THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW PROGRAM. After all, the purpose and necessity of BEGINNING BOOK KEEPING is to figure out how to keep the books, not sell them. The ideas are free, and easy. However, notice is given that BEGINNING BOOK KEEPING intends to be a model program for JOINT STOCK BOOK KEEPING. Who can deny that as this new program develops and ramifies, various OPTIONS will be presented, by which options contributors to the BEGINNING BOOK KEEPING JOURNAL MAY ARRANGE (ASK JIM WHAT HE REALLY MEANS) EXCHANGES OF CAPITAL, LABOR, AND INTELLIGENCE FOR JOINT STOCK OF VALUE IN VARIOUS SUB-SECTIONS TO APPEAR IN AN OPEN AND LOOPED FREE SERIES BELOW

THIS IS NOT THE END OF THE PROSPECTUS

THE PROSPECTUS BEFORE US

Chapter One

“First Will and Testament”

In which Jim, 51 years old, a here-to-fore intestate bachelor without known issue, a conscientious bankrupt, gainlessly unemployed for the past thirteen years, is forced to recognize that he can no longer pay the bills.

Chapter Two

“Sorting Things Out”

In which Jim receives a seductive dream vision: the THREE GREAT PILES. He begins to sort the tangled webs of his life into WHAT IS GONE, WHAT REMAINS, AND WHAT IS TO COME.

Chapter Three

“What’s the Beginning Balance? Or where?”




* * * *




jan. 6, ’86. a teeth-grinding day.
‘have you been feeling pretty good, faye?’
‘oh all right. i think i’m doing better than i have been... oh, i’m so tired.’


jan. 9. a biting day. alternately cheerful/angry
‘and mama’s doing better too, i think.
and smarty me, when mama and papa
begin driving they begin crying, don’t you
think?’ looking & talking to people not there,
maggie, mama, all of us. now be careful.
seems like there’s nobody here... and i want
to see that show this time... and that jimmy
was cute, gramma what does he want (3 times)
so that’s the rest of this day. how do you get me too
(eating clothes & furniture)
you want what you get. so that’s the way it
goes. did everybody get in the house. and
milly with pretty dresses. mama,
please, i want you to. poor children, big
children. you’re all going to get right
up here & work. yes, uh huh. everyone of you
can have it.
T.V. ‘Prevent child abuse. Get hold of yourself
before you take hold of your baby.’




* * * *




feb. 19, ‘86
umh—i just don’t know it. umh, umh.
oh, it doesn’t make much difference
oh, oh, i’ll be scared. umh, oh i don’t know
what i’m going to do. oh see i can’t do it.
oh my. oh, honey, what are you doing now?
oh, you don’t try. oh oh. aren’t so, of you.
umh. (DON’T BITE, FAYE!) i never get anything, oh.
un, un, un. are you? un no. this doesn’t
work. oh. i don’t know. oh it gets old all the
time. i don’t like it. didn’t understand. oh.




* * * *


[More notes of Faye’s sayings, undated but possibly 1986:]






how is papa pool? maybe he’ll come tomorrow. stay a few nights, wonderful. maybe you too? do you ever see jimmy?

what are you doing, just trying to live, like i’m doing. i was teasing.

pretty, pretty
i’m so glad you came

red knit, keeping the different one, & we didn’t know.
lennis came after me.




* * * *


[undated Faye note:]






CAN I HELP YOU, FAYE?

EVERYTHING IS ALL RIGHT—
NO PROBLEM


good thing
i was thinking
not thinking




* * * *




zen pacific arts
regretfully announces
the termination
of temple dog school.
august 31, 1985.

a thirteen year experiment
concluded
inconclusive.

the premises will be
under the temporary care
of workers’ hostel
movement.
until
gopher broke studio
can figure out
how to pay
the rent.




* * * *


[undated but perhaps 1986]






those who have
the goals
make the rules




* * * *




July 28, 1986
sausalito is a nuclear
free zone
if i don’t call the police my neighbors will. 11a.m. wed. july 30, 1986. drinking a large cappuccino at cafe trieste, out and down in our sausalito corner of bridgeway & caledoma. rita and howard both busy defending their castles, trying to expel their respective defective trades/craftsmen: the disorganized non-workers, cautionary timmy the tiler & cautionary deane the foreman/knight, the subtle/heavy hired joker imported from distant past & future border-zone retirement, side-lined, benched by psycho-physical car trouble, and wondering at the progressive complexity of the world plotline: living on the edge of time, watching the continuous permutation of the possible. it is a cliff-hanger, but i’m down at sea-level retirement, without the potential energy of gravity involvement. i am curious and concerned at, why complicate it: what happens next? i advise and consent. whatever. que sera.

blue skies. blues guys.

all of august before us.

i’ve turned in my key, but expect i’ll be given another.




* * * *




wednesday, september 3, 1986

the end of the first sausalito campaign, sitting in the south bldg. at S.F. Airport, waiting for my s.w. flight to phx/elp, wondering how i feel & what i’m up to.
warnings not to get stuck at the farm again from steve & chris.
‘el abuelito’ stashed at cloudview, ‘baby mac’ with chris, jim’s cpier at rita’s, ‘temple dog at carolyns.
rita’s warning: loss of faith, and advice: being a little beyond the law prevents brain death.
mamie’s cut nose.

two hours to wait, people-watching preferable to reading or writing.




* * * *


[probably 1987]






hector is unhappy.
life seems not worth living.
many dreams, sailing the seas
this place, the chihuahuas.
alcohol abuse, tough sad talk.
wanting to fight, arm wrestling,
skinny little wimp. whypartner.

called next morning to ask:
what happened?
wife & father came & carried him away.

numb space.




* * * *




Temple Dog School
Rt. 1 Box 180
Anthony, NM 88021
505/882-2637

August 2, 1988


Dear Richard:

I heard a rumor that you have been awarded tenure (on which I sincerely congratulate you) and that my Crandall futures have matured in the nick of time.

I need to negotiate conversion of my four thirteen-year investment units (par value: 2,000 loaves), into cash or usable credits. Sizable chunks in the next six months so I can invest in my new projects.

For starters how much do you think they are worth? I’m guessing $5,000 +/- 5%.

I had hoped to meet you at the Reed reunion and discuss this with you, but my truck blew up before I even got across the Continental Divide. So could you phone at your soonest possible convenience.

Still yours in exile



Jim Webb Pool




* * * *




form letter #1—andy: thanks but no thanks.


Temple Dog School
Rt. 1 Box 180
Anthony, NM 88021
august 2, 1988

Dear Mr. Haight:

Regarding your request for a reservation the present residence committee has informed me it is very unlikely that any long term accommodations could be offered you.

We do, however, still offer our refresher short course. The course is significantly different from any short course you may have taken here in the past, in that the present directors do not tolerate substance abuse, and are no longer in joint communion with the Bridge Club. Unfortunately, no scholarship help is available.

If you think the short course could be of significant value to you and your family, I will be pleased to pass on your request to the blackball committee.

We appreciate your continuing interest in our community.


Sincerely,

jim
[calligraphed signature]
Jim Webb
Reservations clerk
505/882-2637




* * * *


[A page of figures for farm income 1977 through 1987, from a notebook with mostly 1989 dates in it.]






net farm income

’77 13,504
’78 101
’79 2,013
’80 6,161
’81 6,983
’82 7,175
’83 6,571
’84 13,346
’85 12,484
’86 1,795
’87 8,907
’88

$79,133 over 11 years
$7,193 ann.




* * * *


Jessie Faye Webb died December 23, 1988


* * * *




december 31, 1988

the gravity
of the situation:
i remain intestate,
but following faye’s
death & will
i become legal steward
of the south fields
and the house.
i choose to establish
in this my last
will and testament
a center and
a foundation,
temple dog school,
zen pacific arts.

jim webb pool

to be governed by
their friends
their students
their teachers






[a post-it attached to this page:]






holograph not
recognized in n.m.

must name and
address an exec,
some execs




* * * *




you know what simon bolivar
said at the end—
i have built
on shifting sands
and plowed
the sea


edificado
sobre la arena movediza
y arado
en el mar




* * * *




although it has its flaws
my garden is an image
of the earthly paradise




* * * *


[The draft of a note to the Reed College class of 1969, which was having its twenty year reunion summer of 1989:]






TO THE REED COLLEGE CLASS OF 1969:
an epistle mendicant.

DEAR CLASSMATES,
it’s an awkward rôle, ghost at your banquet, but that’s what i am. in sadness and anger i picket your festivities with a placard reading “END ALUMNI/AE APARTHIED FULL MEMBERSHIP FOR FORMER FACULTY.”
as perhaps the oldest determinedly-articulate member of our class, i will allow myself to be up front about this: i think you should all of you, individually and collectively consider the possibility that you should feel ashamed of yourselves for not inviting me to our reunion.
i am quite aware that the gang of however many in charge of the alumni directory refuse to include my name and address, but you could have sent me an announcement c/o Reed College—the mailroom operates under federal guidelines and still forwards my mail.
i shouldn’t have said “ashamed”—make that you should feel a little silly—here you have gathered to celebrate your vintage Reed education: which taught you to think for yourselves, and now your absent cohort chides you for having, either thoughtlessly or mindlessly, accepted the revisionist party line that i was never a student at REED, when you all know from your own experience that i arrived when you did and spent the next four years as a full-time participant in the life of the college.
i freely admit

[The text breaks off here, but the following page contains an apparently related paragraph.]


i would also, when you get around to arrange it, like to be eligible to vote in alumni elections and for alumni overseers to kick ass and shape up the unreformed faculty and trustees.




* * * *




monday, october 16, 1989

this is the latest version
of jim’s book
in media res
an index of unfinished business
attempting to keep clear
the points
that processes
are at.

this wants to be an open book.
the contents aspire to
truth & accuracy




* * *




pockets
working on a will
probate
survey
money
leases
farm accts.
memorials
mortgage
taxes
loans, tiaa-cref
utilities, expenses
addresses, phone numbers




* * * *


[Rough notes apparently on Jim’s assessment of his financial situation after his mother’s death, probably sometime in fall 1989:]






dr. dinero 503-299-4000
loren 503-774-7364
scholar impecunious but not mendicant
assets but insolvent
short-fall: $5,000, 2 to 3 mos.

no established credit-line.
resigned Amer. Excess after 20 yrs.
productive farm-land, habitable houses.
assets in probate until:
survey.
fees.

tiaa-cref : unassignable death benefit.

living sans diagnosis
sans prognosis


Hilton: albuquerque
thurs. nov. 30 sun. a.m.




* * *


[Next page contains one note:]




andy: back in AA
back to jean’s




* * * *


[A new notebook with dated material from september 1989 through summer of 1990, though mostly undated.]






cuate tries to enlist me
in red guard again
this time in la union
but general yang
i’m not

luis rides shotgun
we jeep the drainage roads
and discover: urbanity—
the houses are empty by days

the beautiful season

falls




* * *




steve calls from s.f.
as part of his job, he rents
a chapel in las vegas
for the marriage
of mac & ibm



ah, sunday—
marty fires bud for his getaway—
taping the spare chevy coil
to the mercury marquis



space : time : mind at willy’s
looking
through
levels
space
bud

time
jim




* * *




at the club friday—
unexpected pleasure—
looking for seeds
and finding peyote pups
self-sprouted



i send
sinicuiche seeds
and ‘a pattern language’



school room
food preparation
gazebo back alleys
bunk house
work shops
long porch




* * *




la muchacha cha cha cha
el muchacho mucho macho
os celosa tina turner
simón simón simón quetza
cara máscara hermanoso
primo primero chachita
josé chope cholo
los cuates pablo y pedro
la honey tina la sordo
julio catorce



la sombra eros niños heroes
mickey big buddy chavo
samuela dixie chaco gamusa
negrita otoño




* * *




all sublimity
is founded on
minute discrimination
--blake


i discover myself
on the verge of
a usual mistake
--whitman




* * *




juan bautista sánchez navarro
was one of those commissioned
in 1698 by the governor of
coahuila to build the misión
de dulce nombre de jesús de peyotes
north of monclova.




* * *




big boquilla
Jum Bo
peter macdonald &
the navajo nation


the land sales ‘flip’

trial on jan. 21st?

racism?



loggers, tree hoggers,
& the view from the plane
treasure & wealth
resthomes & kindergartens




* * *




new glasses
i can see clearly now


4 jan. ‘89




* * *




and now they say:
the power to spend
with no pre-set limits.
american express



this attention
originated in idleness
for which i have
a natural talent.
--conrad




* * *




dear fred:
irvin passed on to me your generous decision about the boundary discrepancy. pool and i are both very grateful. moving the ditch would have been an extensive & expensive project. i’ve several times in my mind’s eye seen your father and jim pool smiling that family friendships can persist for generations, that the cottonwood & the mulberry can disappear and the common line survive. the lawyer who is probating faye’s will says a simple quitclaim is all that is necessary. pool & i will see about getting it drawn up and sent for your scrutiny and approval




* * *




long lost last
daily diary telex
thursday last supper
rest of the weekend
everything
open

(file : jesus)

long lost last
daily diary telex
thursday last supper
rest of the weekend
everything
open




* * *




02 : 20 jue doce de julio XC


the easter illiteracy
is finally over:
devoting some thought
to split bamboo—

gabacho conejo
what’s up doc.

el sistema de
la señora



the kind of beauty
expressive in repose

mild hypnosis




* * *




playing sleepy toes
with calicos

snorting alfredo

conchis

crossing the river
to the dock

the great water

[two chinese characters]

it will be advantageous
to cross




* * *




no hay pedo

no mas que matamoscas


gabacho chihuahua

hasta ahora, muy bien

puro cotorreo


caligrafia y coreografia








sunflower
‘velvet queen’
multiple red blossoms




* * *




the rest of my life.

zen gardening
for the rest
of a life time



doble sentido




* * *




RIO GRANDE GAZETTE TUES. JULY 10 1990

Nightjar Press Competition
A competition what [sic] will result in the publication of a book by a New Mexico author age 55 or older is being sponsored by Nightjar Press at New Mexico State university.
Nightjar, which is an old world word for firefly, “a tiny creature with a great light burning in it,” specializes in the publication of works by older New Mexico writers. It publishes the literary anthology, Serape, each spring and sponsors a book competition every year.
To be eligible for the competition, manuscripts must be 50 or more pages in length. They may be works of poetry, nonfiction or fiction. Submission should be mailed to Nightjar Press, Box 30001, Dept. 3E, NMSU, Las Cruces, N.M. 88003. Entries must be typed and double spaced, and must include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. There is no entry fee. Deadline is August 20, and the winner will be announced by December.
The winning work will be copyrighted and published as a paperback book in the summer of 1991. Nightjar will bear all expenses of publication. Payment will be 20 copies of the book and 10 percent of the profits from each book sold.




all my life looking
for the perfect
small niche




* * *




open the floodgates




* * *




somehow
it wasn’t supposed
to end this way :
a strange way
to start.

where did it all go
wrong?

somehow
it wasn’t supposed
to start this way :
a strange way
to end
didn’t it all go?
right.
write.




* * *




with an apology to truman
‘the book starts here.’

there is this problem :
it’s supposed to be typed,
to be poetry or non-fiction
or fiction.

zen gardening is all three.
would you be bored if...
i explain myself.

whitman : he sang himself,
music without words,
fifty pages is little room,
to see the cherry trees
in bloom.




* * *




1990
catorce de julio
bastille day
many happy returns



everything
that rises
must
converge




* * *




1 creative power

2 natural response

3 difficult beginnings

4 inexperience

5 calculated waiting

6 conflict

7 collective force

8 unity

9 restrained

0 conduct




* * *


[Stapled to the back inside cover of the notebook is a box for twenty capsules of Prozac, no doubt purchased in Juarez because all the information on the box is in spanish. Tucked into the front cover of the notebook is a newspaper article from The Wall Street Journal for Friday, July 27th, 1990, with the headline: Eli Lilly Stock Plunges $4.375 on News Of Another Lawsuit Over Prozac Drug. The article describes violent attacks, suicides and attempted suicides carried out by ‘patients’ on Prozac who are filing suits against Eli Lilly for alleged culpability in their acts, as well as a lawsuit brought by the Church of Scientology against Lilly in pursuance of their beef and continuing animus toward the psychiatric and psycho-medical establishment. Jim, though he definitely had an ear open for criticism of Prozac and other drugs in the new constellation of anti-depressants, swore by Prozac as he felt it had been instrumental in getting him out of his chronic depression. It was to be revealed that there were other physical factors in his mental state, but at this point he was unaware of them and convinced he owed any glimmer of mental wellbeing to Prozac.]




* * * *


[1990?]






Thursday, August 30. Dear Chairperson Rita, What a lift to talk to you last Sunday. I’ve spent the last five days in a mildly euphoric fugue state, planning another Sausalito campaign. The continued availability of Cloudview is a blessing, and the Wing office on Union St. a bolt from somewhere distant stratospheric.

Wednesday, September 26. Well, Rita, another lift. That we should both have arrived, in our incongruent and independent ways, at Bao Ding Longevity iron balls! Excuse me, “palm planets”. I’m sure your outline will be full of elegant surprises. What other Zen Pacific Arts do you have up your taoist sleeve??

Talking to Steve later in the evening, full of sound advice. He promised to introduce me to his new machine friends. O brave new synthetic world that has such scanners and color printers and universes of fonts. I in turn committed myself to arriving in San Pancho by Saturday, October 6, to give him a ride to the Guinda Hoe-down. Now to work on the always problematical escape velocity.

(I trust you’ll forgive the antique appearance of this note—composed and printed on an antique Trash 80 and its companion Daisy Wheel II, using its weird idiolect of early WordStar. Hasn’t a lot happened awfully fast in the last ten years?)




* * * *


[probably written late december 1991]






the greater reed community:

powwow & potlatch

After some twenty years of persistent reflection upon my connection with, and my disconnection from, Reed College, i have concluded i should petition for official rehabilitation

a friend of the college

an alumnus of the college

an assistant professor
of literature & humanities
emeritus


powwow, potlatch, & profess
panwan

i know of no precedent for this process at reed
a proposed sequence.




* * * *




mid-night – may 26, ‘92


503-771-1112 X 255
tuesday night.
hello, richard,
jim webb calling from new mexico. despite my two months of agitation it appears that CREF LUMP SUM will not be released in time to finance my proposed trip to the reed reunions in june. this rather pisses me off, since i’m an honorary member of the class of ’67, and having succeeded in getting to portland for their 10th & 20th, i’ll be disappointed to miss the 25th . if there’s any possibility of another partial payment on the crandall futures in time to cover the trip, give me a call at (505) 882-2637. by the way, i’ve adopted a couple of phrases from the high-definition researchers to help me appreciate the elegance of the futures redemption sequence you’ve initiated: ‘multi-resolution’ & ‘graceful degradation.’
ciao.




* * * *




may 26, ‘92


503-777-7705

hello, mary ann, jim webb calling from new mexico, at the cheap late-night rate, with a couple not-so-idle questions that i hope you can help me with.

Did the trustees approve the release of cref lump sum at their may meeting? And if so, when can we expect certification of that decision to reach the CREF office in new york?


my phone number is
area (505)—882-2637.

thanks
and ciao.

dow ching :
33 64 . 21
546-9661 retreat : before the end : reform




* * * *




webb farm
route 1 box 180
anthony, n.m. 88021

may 21, 1993

re: ramon cuevas d.o.b. 07/12/72


to whom it may concern:

this is to attest that ramon cuevas lived at my house during his attendance at gadsden junior and senior high schools from aug. 1987 through sept. 1992.

if you have any questions, you can reach me at (505) 882-2637.

sincerely,

james k. webb




* * * *


[June 1994: Reed College reunion:]






reunion

the time flows by
we begin to see
we taught each other
more than we knew

the class of 1969


we made this poem on campus june 10th and i wrote it down late that night at a quiet house nearby. i say we wrote it collectively because i heard the four lines from different people in the course of the day. some permutations are also resonant.
jim webb
june 1994




* * * *


[Undated notes:]






this is beginning to
sound like a kidnap
plan masked as an intervention.




i am all backed up
and out of the loop
last words of buddha




* * * *




this and that

that is a
little learning
space

this is a
little
learning place


energetic
synergetics



paragrafix




* * * *




catch 22:

chairman of the bored
“if we are good teachers,
we will find
appreciative mature students”
--michael phillips




* * * *




program:
how do we create a
self-supporting
self-governing
school




* * * *




friday, june 11

the small change college endowment—quarters, dimes, nickels & pennies in a ‘patron’ tequila bottle—disappeared from the table over-night. i can only assume someone needed the capital more than we do, but i was attached to the bottle.
jim




* * * *


[Written on Howard Rheingold’s Clear Communications company stationery and with a Sound Advice business card (77 Landers, San Francisco 94114), which was my brother Steve’s company.]






looking for work: application for the stellar part.

CLEAR COMMUNICATIONS

james henry, james henry

james
henry james
henry
i want to impersonate
and revivify
as far of course as is in my power
this supremely interesting
old dead dude

Santiago
telaraña

as henry james, jr.

(and his older brother, willy)




Howard Rheingold – 1309 Cole Street – San Francisco, California 94117 – (415) 566-3867




* * * *


[Notes, written on scraps of paper, left in books, pinned to walls, etc:]






a typical
impatient
out-patient
suffering from what
the wall street
journal calls
pension
deficit
disorder




* * *




civility
is
essential


you know, don’t you,
that actually
all these things around us
go away, just go away …
--dudjom rinposhe




* * * *


[Notebook from the 1990s (1994 is a date noted in it, though perhaps not the date of the writing. Jim mentions the mexican economy’s collapse, which was probably in the news at the time.) The notes are calligraphed.]






‘un pasado duboso’
un futuro ramoso

‘sensitive dependence
on initial conditions’

la libre empresa
el testigo de vista




* * *




this attention originated in idleness
for which i have a natural talent.
--conrad.




* * *




mario ivan martinez
obra ala manera de shakespeare
monologo




* * * *




the cats insist
on sharing
their birds
with me

feather eludes broom
the cats insist




* * * *




what content there is is
here in the future now
what content there is
is here
in the future
now

now and then no content is
here now too

deep quiet chill
moon in the pines




* * * *




here in the future now

i find myself
late in life
sprinkling juniper
alert & mindless

i surprise myself
late at night
writing terse
verse
here
in the future
now

sometimes hummingbirds
come to shower




* * * *




apocalypse now.

are my methods unsound?
i don’t see any method at all, sir.
he reads poetry aloud
mas que nunca
the golden bough
the hollow men
tai chi
come on baby take a chance on us
at the back of the blue bus

todo podoroso
pandilla
all mighty
street gang.




* * * *


[The following are pages transcribed from three spiral notebooks, one of which has ‘1992’ written on it.]


* * *




‘a note is worth
a cartfull of recollections,’
--emerson
‘take notes on the spot.’




* * * *


[Here is Jim planning out his CREF Lump Sum campaign at Reed College (the retirement money CREF was holding for him and for all former employees), apparently December 1991]


CREF LUMP SUM

a quiet camp-out at reed college

sound synthesis
beautiful pots
coffee & chili



pochteca : birdy
revisionist history
amnesty for the sixties
end alumni apartheid
the reynolds chair
work-study alumni volunteer visitors

exile seeks amnesty
the right to hang out, study, & teach
34.7 x 106




* * *


the greater reed community:

powwow & potlatch

After some twenty years of persistent
reflection upon my connection with,
and my disconnection from, Reed College,
i have concluded i should petition
for official rehabilitation
a friend of the college
an alumnus of the college
an assistant professor
of literature & humanities
emeritus


powwow, potlatch, & profess
panwan
i know of no precedent for
this process at reed
a proposed sequence.


* * *


1610 speed map :
northamptonshire
in double-sided frame


re-usable shipping & storage case
james k. webb
petitioning for
cref lump sum
the tao at a new high

the gazette


warden, temple dog school
chancellor, zen pacific arts

on the road again
to powwow, potlatch
& profess


* * * *


warden
temple dog
school
phone explos.
lance gail
chris
esther

sound synthesis
ghost dancing

jim webb pool
chancellor
ZEN PACIFIC
ARTS

* * * *


denies candidacy, describes self as
untalented, untrained, inexperienced
and disinterested in v administration institutional

interested in academic “freedom”
to powwow, potlatch & profess

72 hour rule
theses for the reformation
c c
a preocupation with reocupation
occupational therapy
20 years in exile
keeping the faith




* * * *




pochteca permit
back-pack intelligencer


Dr. Richard E. Crandall
Howard Vollum Professor of Science
Reed College, Portland, OR
97202
Personal

an occasional gazette
of zen pacific arts


los esporadicos




* * * *


campaign to release CREF LUMP SUM
lobby benefits committee
lobby faculty

physics, anthropology, literature, arts, music
psych, oriental studies.
absolutely unavailable for presidency :
untalented, untrained, inexperienced
and uninterested in academic
administration

alumni affairs : END APARTHEID

staying with hector & beth
6780 hall blvd. (503)
beaverton, or 97005 643-0815

gail
crandall, bob, nick
roger, chuck
jimmy & denise
fred & amelia
kaspar & caroline


* * * *


quite seriously & more than once
advised by my board of elders to enquire
neither the resources nor the good intentions
subordinated debts,
necessary projects
the rest is jim’s to play with

my resolution to communicate more by letter
by letters by lectures by music
to entertain the thought
end of the road
groves of academe

powwow, potlatch and profess

we’re opinionated old men : we wake up.
we wake up opinionated old men.




* * * *




jos. glanvill’s book : Vanity of Dogmatizing
(scholar gypsy) 1661
1853 chap. 20



[the listing from UC Berkeley Library:]
Glanvill, Joseph, 1636-1680.
The vanity of dogmatizing: or, Confidence in opinions. Manifested in a discourse of the shortness and uncertainty of our knowledge, and its causes; with some reflexions on peripateticism; and an apology for philosophy. By Jos. Glanvill, M.A.
[1st ed.]
London, Printed by E. C. for H. Eversden, 1661.]

gratitude, affection & respect :
almost anything but administration




* * * *


warden, chancellor : caretaker, ceremonial
ghost dancing romantics : scholar-gypsy
a generation later.

no training, experience, interest
in academic administration
no Ph.D., no significant publications, no spouse
some old school ties but no suit, no rich friends
poor health, advanced age, prozac dependancy
(advocate of sacramental peyote ingestion)


what did you do with the last one?
why do you need one?
who’s looking?

stalking horse? lark!
gadfly?

release CREF LUMP SUM.




[the page is heavily water damaged and difficult to read]




* * * *




boxing day 1991
the tao at an all-time high

from: james k. webb
rt. 1 box 180
anthony, n.m.
88021

to: loren & judith wyss
3028 s.e. crystal springs
blvd.
portland, or 97202
oregon




* * * *




the lloyd reynolds chair
of oriental philosophy





i inherited it
from my grandmother
and i share it
with pride.




* * * *




i’m not a doctor but
get in, fix it, & get out


‘get rid of the words,
the labels are killing us’
mario cuomo



los esporadicos
a mis amigos




* * * *


sergio steph
gloria rita
marty howard esther
tony judy
lance
krystyna
chris
laurie
jim malinda kate, chuck
gerald will
robbie andy
hector

steve
jan
terry

pool
jill
sherry
lesley
pool




* * * *




practice charity
without holding in mind any conceptions
about charity,
for charity
after all is just
a word.

the diamond sutra




* * * *




mid-night , may 26, ’92
503-771-1112 x 255

hello, richard, tuesday night.
jim webb calling from new mexico.
despite my two months of agitation
it appears that CREF LUMP SUM will
not be released in time to finance
my trip proposed trip to the reed
reunion in june. this rather pisses me off,
since i’m an honorary member of the class of ’67, and having succeeded
in getting to portland for their
10th & 20th, i’ll be disappointed
to miss the 25th. if there’s any
possibility of another partial payment
on the crandall futures in time to
cover the trip, give me a call
at (505) 882-2637. by the way, i’ve
adopted a couple of phrases from the
high-definition researchers to help me
appreciate the elegance of the futures
redemption sequence you’ve initiated :
‘multi-resolution’ & ‘graceful degradation.’
ciao.




* * * *




may 26, ’92


503-777-7705

hello, mary ann, jim webb, calling
from new mexico, at the cheap late-
night rate, with a couple of not-so-idle
questions that i hope you can help me with.

Did the trustees approve the release of cref lump sum at their may meeting?
And if so, when can we expect
certification of that decision to
reach the CREF office in new york?

my phone number is
area (505)—882-2637.
thanks
and ciao.

dow ching :
33 64 .21
546-9661 retreat : before the end : reform




* * * *




the turning point is
the still center

live remote

vote for buddha


of disposing mind


day by day
stone by stone
like by like
the assorted world.




i snort & rant & whistle in my sleep.
the chihuahuas don’t seem to mind.




* * * *




10 character witnesses

crandall
danon
gillcrist
kelly
peck
porter
reynolds
rudolf
svitavsky
wheeler




* * * *




‘i have a distinguished connection
with to this college, and ^ i want the right
to confer.’ yet
Cref lump sum



‘i hope to be heard to speak’
cref lump sum




* * * *




THINGS WHICH
GO TOGETHER
NATURALLY
DO NOT HAVE
TO BE TIED;
FOR THEY WILL
NOT SEPARATE
EVEN WITHOUT
BONDS

[Lao Tzu]




* * * *


[An undated haiku:]






living here in
the cool, shady tree
house
with the north light
an artist’s dream




* * * *




you know, don’t you,
that actually
all these things around us
go away, just go away...

--dudjom rinpoche




* * * *


[1995?]






the great sudden turning point
for marty, sat. oct. 7.
lit up, seeing miracles all miracles
all smiles.

strange thing
to wonder at
wonderful

L. miraculum
mirari
mirus
IE. base *(s) mei—to smile, be surprised
Sans. smayati (he) smiles



NOLVADEX.




* * * *


[1995?]






aunt blanche young
aunt mittie lightfoot


canasta with the old folks
pitch with kids
hearts


thursday night poker
afternoon bridge


family portraits:
the natural museum of history




* * * *


[These appear to be notes for a bigger project, perhaps Jim’s response to Nightjar, the New Mexican publisher that held a contest for submissions from regional writers over 55.]






zen gardening: for the rest of a lifetime
la frontera
temple dog school: the first 100 years
talking to dogs: clever hans, dog patrol
colonia refugio: hipotecar
barefoot doctor
surveying: librado candelaria
pattern language
teatro nuevo magico de nuevo mejico
no hay pedo
the country club
the bridge club
rio bravo rio grande
berino chamberino
shalem colony
water serpent, three saints.
800 miles to the ocean.
chuco & juaritos
chile, algodon y alfalfa.
tigris-euphrates & nile
paquimé – chíchimecca.
escuela nocturna de ídíomas para trabajadores
el bosque,
uras. membríllos, granadas, nueccs, manzanas
mansus, micos,
natural museum of history,
adobe, piedra, ladrillo.
gentleman farmer, lover of weeds
drugs on the market
poetry, non-fiction, fiction
distant parts,
chihuahua & santa fe
alamos,
music & meditation.
families, generations.
where things once were.
carrizo
alert red dragon: the good communard.
the electric co. epec & epic.
the ‘
snorting alfredo.




* * * *


[undated]






and lone young palm
at tam junction


the global mind
is playing its game



the oranges of guinda
and full belly farm




* * * *




there will be people
who fall into the web
and do great things
all day long


--howard giving good phone to justin.
feb. 16, ‘95




* * * *


[undated]






‘o.k., but
i’m in charge,
and i’ll get used
to being
in charge,
and it’ll be hard
to deal with me
from now on
unless
i’m in charge.’

--young trey gates




* * * *


[undated]






the knock-down Juno seated table
is now a south-facing typing station.

CORRECTION TAPE IS AVAILABLE.
DICTIONARIES AT HAND.

TYPING PAPER IN STOCK.

THE TYPEWRITER SEEMS TO BE IN WORKING ORDER.

WHERE ARE THE GUIDING PILLARS OF LIGHT?


what’s it like here now, living
under the sign of the cock-eyed Buddha
who sees and who cares

I take refuge in the Buddha
I take refuge in the Dharma
I take refuge in the Sangha



unexpected duet with black cat




* * * *


[1997?]






i find myself just lately
finding myself more often




* * * *


[undated]






you are not
your mind




* * * *


[undated]







i believe in
interactive
systems
i believe in
objects
sometimes




* * * *




July 6, 1998

Scott Norton
UC Berkeley Press


Dear Scott:

My friend Stephen Haight tells me I might be able to do some part-time work in your stable of proofers. I've monitored the progressive deterioration of published texts for many years, can't resist marking up the books I read, and would be interested in taking your entry-level test, even if only to get an objective evaluation of my accuracy and some indication of what I should be working on.

I look forward to meeting you.

Sincerely,
Jim Webb

James K. Webb
1158 Webb Road, Anthony, New Mexico 88021
505-882-2637 e-mail: bi452@rgfn.epcc.edu




Education

El Paso High School, El Paso, Texas. Valedictorian, 1951. University of Texas Interscholastic State Champion in essay writing, 1950, and mental arithmetic, 1951.

Harvard College, A.B. 1956, magna cum laude in American History and Literature, thesis on Wm. Faulkner.

Columbia University, A.M. 1958, with highest honors in 19th Century British Literature, thesis on Thos. Hardy.

Fulbright Scholar, Queens' College, Cambridge, 1959-1961, reading Victorian social and intellectual history.


Teaching Experience

Reed College, Assistant Professor of Literature and Humanities, 1965-1972

University of Connecticut, teaching assistant, 1963-1965

University of New Mexico, teaching assistant in technical writing, 1958-1959

Bowie High School, El Paso, Texas, algebra, 1956-1957


Proof-reading Experience and References

Howard Rheingold: Talking Tech, Virtual Reality, and Virtual Community. E-mail, hlr@well.com

R. L. Wing (Rita Aero): Illustrated I ching, Tao te ching, Sun Tzu, Things Chinese, The Longevity Book, et al. E-mail, aero@wdw4adults.com

Will Baker, Shadow Hunter, Raven Bride et al. (fiction). Dept. of English, UC Davis, E-mail, webaker@ucdavis.edu




* * * *




Fourth of July in San Francisco-independence day.

Once more into the fray.I beginwork in my head to eventuaqlly produce an intricate exsplanatory fiction which justifies all the inattention devoted to seeing what a masterful creation Will Baker's "Spider God" was and remains. I'll call it "You may be surprized but 'Spider God Studies'!




* * * *




Subject: Proofreading Test
Date: Mon, 13 Jul 1998 10:40:39 -0700
From: Scott Norton
To: Stephen Haight

Dear Jim (via Steve),

I regret to inform you that you did not achieve a passing grade on the test, although your performance showed obvious strengths. About a third of your misses involved instructions to the compositor and thus might be attributable to a lack of experience with print publishing; but another third were failures to catch misspellings (e.g., "curvelinear"), typographical errors (e.g., "distict" for "district"), and substantive omissions (e.g., "in-" from "incompleteness").

Because you demonstrated an eye for detail by catching other, subtler errors, I would encourage you to continue to pursue a freelance proofreading career. Before taking a test with another publisher, however, you might want to avail yourself of one of the resources that most professional proofreaders have used to achieve proficiency. These can include courses in proofreading at local universities, or written resources such as Peggy Smith, *Mark My Words: Instruction and Practice in Proofreading* (Alexandria, VA: Editorial Experts, Inc., 1987). Of course, these resources can't impart an aptitude for proofreading, but they can introduce you to certain "tricks of the trade" that will enhance your performance.

Best of luck with your pursuit of freelance work. And give my regards to Steve.

Sincerely,

Scott Norton, Assistant Managing Editor, University of California Press
scott.norton@ucop.edu




* * * *


[A note probably to Dick (Richard) Burg and his wife:]



tues. aug. 10, ‘99
dear richard, dear Linda—
thanks for the prozac, and thanks to Phyllis Mason, to Dr. J. Hejinian, to the Kaiser Foundation, and to DISTA LABS. i’m chagrined and amused to admit it took me a couple of hours to realize that the recycled mailer with the intriguing bulge was actually a burg package art. unfortunately i had already awkwardly ripped it open. i could remember someone had a friend’s bottle, but i couldn’t remember who had a friend. i’m sorta under house arrest until Oct. it’s not punative, just therapeutic. i’m allowed, and encouraged to invite company. it’s beautiful here, wish you were, etc. all this month is purslane festival. we have a recycled swimming tank, hot tub by next week, a new/old zen garden, the “monsoon” season fireworks. i went to, and much enjoyed, reeds reunion 99. and have lots of vignettes to share with you. how’s healdsburg?
love, jim




* * * *


[The following material is from the Café Utne chat room for reedies, which in the summer of 1998 had a subject ‘Reed’ and a side topic ‘Jim Webb Lives!’:]






Jim Webb Lives!


Reed.43.1: John Sheehy (sheehy) Sat, 13 Jun 1998 12:56:45 CDT (21 lines)

I'm reporting live from "Reunion Central" at the Reed Reunion Weekend on campus where former assistent prof Jim Webb is camped just outside the door under two oak trees between the Old Dorm and the Commons. Webb was a lit prof here from '66 to '72 and formed a group that I understand met off-campus called "Reed Exile."

Jim's shrine outside includes various messages posted to the trees, including one sign announcing "Reed Exile," and another promoting the start of the Reed elderhostel, which Jim tells me he initiated last night sleeping in the oak grove in front of the old dorm block.

Howard Rheingold is sitting out there now with Jim and a couple of other alum. Jim's shrine has a mexican theme, with mexican prayer candles burning, and mexican sashes and dresses pinned to some of the trees. He's got a southwestern blanket on the ground with what looks like his sleeping gear. It's a comfortable looking hang, especially since the college looks so spankingly clean without the students here this weekend.

Who can tell me more about Webb and the history of the Exile group at Reed?



Reed.43.2: Suzanne G. Griffith (bwing) Sat, 13 Jun 1998 14:29:29 CDT (4 lines)

That started right after I left, John, but I can tell you that your reunion sounds like a hell of a lot more fun than mine!

Wish I were there...



Reed.43.3: Howard Rheingold (rheingold) Sun, 14 Jun 1998 18:47:51 CDT (7 lines)

Jim will be passing through my vicinity within the next week or so, and I will try to get him to sit down to give his version of the college in exile.

Was that a helluva pardy, or what? Let's talk about it in an appropriate topic. My feet were nearly bloody from dancing when I dragged my sorry ass back to Kerr 320 around 2 AM.



Dog-ear Bookmark

Reed.43.4: Mark McLean (bscob) Mon, 15 Jun 1998 02:13:03 CDT (24 lines)

I didn't know Webb all that well, though I had some friends who were in his classes. From what little contact I had with him, I thought he was OK, but he attracted an in-group that seemed to me to be obsessed with it's own hip-ness. There was one person in particular (I can't recall his name right off hand) whose greatest aspiration was "to be recognized as a genius by the 'beautiful people'", by which I gather he meant Webb's group.

At one point, he took over the east end of commons, claiming that students needed a place to socialize. (He was right about that -- the coffee shop was a lost cause!) The trouble is, he filled it with what he called either slime art or Humphrey's bog art, which may have been artsy to some people, but looked to me like someone forgot to clean up when they left.

Still, I found him rather intriguing, and would have liked to talk to him some time without his retinue of achingly hip people around him, but that never happened. Also, I was an extra in the spider film, being one of the guys in the human "+" that swallowed him up. I saw a rough edit of the film, but have never seen the final product.

I also recall that some of the faculty thought that he was the red menace, yellow peril, and black plague rolled into one. Another excuse to get out the crayons:-)



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Reed.43.5: Howard Rheingold (rheingold) Mon, 15 Jun 1998 12:26:44 CDT (6 lines)

I definitely had a problem with the cult of disciples, even though some of them were my friends. It took years to understand the irony of Jim's role as cult leader. From his POV, it was tongue-in-cheek. Some of the followers took it a bit more seriously. But I thought he did a great send-up of cultism, years before all the various real cults capture[d] people's minds.



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Reed.43.6: Tom Rossen (rossentj) Tue, 16 Jun 1998 14:46:00 CDT (13 lines)

I had never heard of Jim Webb, having escaped the year before he arrived (Bwing - are you saying you were in my class? - '65?).

But what struck me most was the chain-smoking and the being out of breath (which Jim Neidhart later told me was emphysema).

It made me think of how many people believe they are smoking as an act of rebellion, hipness, or even existential/revolutionary suicide, but don't understand that it is simply a physical addiction with psychocultural rationalizations.

(Not unlike the plethora of "death is natural, therefore cool" memes throughout the multiverse, says Rossen-of-course.)



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Reed.43.7: Suzanne G. Griffith (bwing) Tue, 16 Jun 1998 15:14:31 CDT (2 lines)

'66, Tom. I started smoking at Reed and was only able to quit two years ago, with some short relapses.



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Reed.43.8: Tom Rossen (rossentj) Tue, 16 Jun 1998 16:24:35 CDT (8 lines)

My wife smoked from the age of 18 to 30+ - and she's had asthma the whole time. She had tried to go cold turkey several times but always gave up when she just had one cigarette and went back to the "chain". Finally she was persuaded to treat the one lapse as just that and stay the course - that did it. I'm glad you gave it up - hope your relapses are little ones and don't cause you to give up on giving up.

So - '66 - why don't we know each other?



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Reed.43.9: Suzanne G. Griffith (bwing) Tue, 16 Jun 1998 18:23:52 CDT (3 lines)

My last name was Greenfield. I played bridge a lot. I lived (and worked) in the old coffee shop and then I moved to the new coffee shop.



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Reed.43.10: John Sheehy (sheehy) Tue, 16 Jun 1998 19:47:02 CDT (18 lines)

Mark, more about the "spider film," please.

They showed a video at the reunion of a film Webb made in the 60s at Reed. It started off with interviews of various professors sitting in their faculty offices looking very serious (the sound was garbled so I couldn't hear anything), and then seemed to move into students doing parodies of the profs, especially Levitch, after which a late 50s Mercedes picked up a fellow (the film's hero?) at Eliot Circle and took him to a Reed House where things immediately got psychedelic, both content- and film-wise with groovy double exposures and the like, and then suddenly we were in some foreign country, Mexico, perhaps Spain, with students dressed in black hooded gowns out of the Seventh Seal marching about, playing with candles and cruxification scenes, and then the hoods carryied some fellow (our hero?) down to the ocean in a wooden canoe accompanied by naked blond women tossing flowers, where they set him adrift, and the sun set into the water.

So what was this about? Anybody know?



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Reed.43.11: Pam Glenn (pg5943) Wed, 17 Jun 1998 10:18:41 CDT (4 lines)

John--thank you for the brilliant analysis, but I think we need to go beyond symbolic ambiguities and start dealing with profoundly superficial realities on some kind of quasi-literal level, as in film-qua-film....



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Reed.43.12: Richard Cuthbert (rcuthbert) Wed, 17 Jun 1998 11:20:51 CDT (9 lines)

I took a Shakespeare class from Jim Webb is last year at Reed. If my dull memory serves me correctly, we met for every class in the evening off-campus at Jim's home in Eastmoreland. The house itself was an art piece of the time: somewhat loft-like, most of the walls were stripped to the studs, and everywhere art and memorabilia were hanging. Quite busy, very engaging to an impressionable youth. I do recall discussing Shakespeare there, mostly in the context of what meaning Shakespeare's work had for the current times. If nothing more, it was fun and stimulating.



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Reed.43.13: Tom Rossen (rossentj) Wed, 17 Jun 1998 12:02:14 CDT (5 lines)

I caught the tail end of the film. There was only one naked blond women, as far as I could see, and the ocean scenes reminded me of Pasolini's film about the Apostle who was a fisherman (Mark - help!), which is fitting, because I believe the two directors shared certain tastes.



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Reed.43.14: Howard Rheingold (rheingold) Wed, 17 Jun 1998 18:19:19 CDT (4 lines)

The film was "Spider God," the filmmaker was Will Baker, another ex-faculty member, and it was, like Jim's cult, something that some people treated as a joke, and some people treated seriously. It was also a vehicle for a bunch of stoned hippies to go to Mexico.



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Reed.43.15: John Sheehy (sheehy) Thu, 18 Jun 1998 00:35:05 CDT (8 lines)

You're completely right, Pam, I fess up to being too quasi-literal—there was only one naked blond woman in the film as Tom has noted.

Richard, John Larsen '67 told me that Webb's house in Eastmoreland was completely painted black inside. True?

Also, where did the term "exile" that Webb uses to describe his cult derive from?



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Reed.43.16: Mark McLean (bscob) Thu, 18 Jun 1998 03:08:52 CDT (17 lines)

Peter is the apostle who is known as the fisherman, although several of the others fished at least part time.

I don't know too much more about the film. The description sounds somewhat like the rough edit I saw (crummy sound and all). The clip I was in was filmed in the student union, with the cameraman in the rafters, shooting straight down. They recruited a bunch of us who were hanging around after some other event (folk dancing?)

There were lofts in his house, and the story goes that while tripping, he fell out of one, and really got cosmic on the way down (landing with minimal injury). This had something to do with inspiring the film. To prevent a recurrance, he installed bars on the loft, and this led to some sort of flap about his having an (illegal) private jail. There was an exchange of notes on his office door about the jail and a (presumably fictional) Portland vice squad officer named Ironsides Pym.



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Reed.43.17: Howard Rheingold (rheingold) Thu, 18 Jun 1998 16:07:11 CDT (1 line)

Mark's account is the way I remember it.



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Reed.43.18: Howard Rheingold (rheingold) Fri, 19 Jun 1998 17:41:40 CDT (17 lines)

Webb at 1998 Reunion Week:


http://www.rheingold.com/art/Vipers/JimWebb.JPG


Me doing a light show:

http://www.rheingold.com/art/Vipers/HowardShw_1.JPG


One screen of the light show:

http://www.rheingold.com/art/Vipers/LeftLghtShw.JPG


Awaiting band pix...



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Reed.43.19: John Sheehy (sheehy) Sat, 20 Jun 1998 23:08:28 CDT (4 lines)

I wonder if Webb is wired? Maybe we should invite him online for a seminar?

Howard, any shots of the line dancing?



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Reed.43.20: Tom Rossen (rossentj) Sun, 21 Jun 1998 03:49:00 CDT (4 lines)

Howard - cool shot of you - almost cartoonlike.

The third image may be corrupted; anyway, I couldn't download about the last fifth of it.



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Reed.43.21: Joan Soderland Hommel (joansh) Sun, 21 Jun 1998 14:14:28 CDT (1 line)

Thanks for the virtual reunion, Howard! Wish I could have been there.



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Reed.43.22: Pam Glenn (pg5943) Mon, 22 Jun 1998 10:53:20 CDT (2 lines)

Howard--How fine! Thank you! Can't wait to see the band. Like Tom, I lost the bottom quarter of the lightshow pic.



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Reed.43.23: Howard Rheingold (rheingold) Fri, 03 Jul 1998 01:33:05 CDT (75 lines)

Hello. This is Jim Webb, sitting in at Howard's computer terminal. Since I don't have legal access to your discussion, he has kindly offered me the use of his (official alumnus status, that is). He suggested I might respond to some questions, but I gather I can just start on my own.

With some bare historical facts: I taught at Reed College from September 1965 to May 1972. Or, to put it another way, I spent 14 successive semesters, carrying more than a full load of classes. Had I finished my thesis, I would have graduated with the class of 1969. I consider that residency to have been the most rewarding part of my education, clearly more important than my years at Harvard (B.A.1956, magna cum laude in American history and literature), Columbia (M.A.1958, highest honors in Victorian Literature), and Queens' College, Cambridge (Fulbright scholar, 1959-1961). I feel in my heart that I am an alumnus of the college that Amanda Reed and Thos. Lamb Eliot had the foresight and the wherewithall to found. Unfortunately, the alumni association has yet to respond to my agitation, over many years, to end alumni apartheid and offer full membership to former faculty. I gather that, until that happens, I will have to sneak into this conference under the protective and permissive umbrella of a genuine member like Howard--even though the root meaning of alumnus is simply suckled or nourished by alma mater, which I claim to have been.

But enough recrimination. At least I have temporary access to a borrowed connection, and should use it to some worthwhile purpose, such as thanking the alumni community for inviting me to the reunion, which turned out to be the most satisfying I have ever attended. The trees I camped under were wonderful old friends but not, I think, oak. They were, in fact, the first and finest elder hostel I've ever visited, yet around four in the morning I did find myself thinking that, were it to rain, a roof over one's head would be reassuring. So I solicit the support of the alumni/ae for the elder hostel movement at Reed.

The staff of the college were considerably more courteous in dealing with my presence on the campus than they had been on any of my previous invasions and brief occupations. The lady in charge of conference planning did tell me I would have to remove my impedimenta because nothing can be offered for sale on the campus. (I assured her I had nothing for sale.) She said I would still have to remove the peyote shrine and its sheltering recreation of the original Webb site before the pictures were taken of the important event scheduled for the evening. (I explained that the important event was precisely what I was there for.) She suggested that I at least try to pack up and begone before dinner. (I said that probably after dinner some of us would sit and talk in the grove of academe, and she gave up trying to make sense of the situation.) The only time I really felt unwelcome was when the lawn sprinklers came on, a technique used in rest stops along the interstates to discourage over-night camping, but it was subsequently explained to me that the dampening of my spirits and my watercolors pinned to the trees was simply the result of an un-over-ridden mechanical timer and not the result of any human premeditation—not, I must say, an unfamilar explanation of things that happen from time to time at Reed.

I guess I might as well confess that I broke my implied promise of good behavior and sold two used Rush Limbaugh ties at a 4100% mark-up. One to Tom Rossen '65, and one to David Perry '73. But I don't think anybody ratted on me. Also, at David's suggestion, I stole the Alumni Master List Alpha hard copy from the registration lobby to use as my personal address book, so I can now (theoretically) track down anybody in Global Reed. What a sense of empowerment, but what a weight to carry around. Consequently, I am now agitating for a Post.Reed. system that will offer life-time e-mail forwarding to all alumni/ae, as Harvard has now undertaken to do. Then, when I am eventually if belatedly recognized as a Reed alumnus, any of you will be able to track me down.

Unfortunately, I have little experience at, and even less stamina for, keypunching into virtual conferences, so this little screed has exhausted me, and I must now let it (and me) rest. If there are any specific questions, I hope to be able to respond.

Later.



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Reed.43.24: Howard Rheingold (rheingold) Fri, 03 Jul 1998 02:17:56 CDT (17 lines)

Sorry, guys and gals. I just re=read what I guess you'd call my original posting and was shocked to notice I had understated the mark-up--it was 4900%, not 4100%. My son Sergio bought the ties for me at a garage sale for 10 cents apiece, and I felt somehow it would be demeaning to sell one for less than 5 dollars. They are, despite the signatures on back, beautiful and all silk.

Since I seem to have a little second wind: Tom Rossen, I appreciate your input on nicotine addiction. I think Dr. Koop is correct in observing that it is the most addictive naturally occurring substance on the planet. And being blessed and cursed with an addictive personality, I remain unhealthily under its sway. But I note with some hope that I am unable to toke up while both hands are actively engaged keypunching. I do believe if I could spend 5 to 7 days at a computer terminal or a responsive piano I could work through the physiological withdrawal. But what regimen would preserve me from relapse I'm unable to imagine.



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Reed.43.25: Howard Rheingold (rheingold) Fri, 03 Jul 1998 03:59:46 CDT (29 lines)

Sorry again. Gosh, this communicating stuff might turn out to be as addictive as not communicating has been in the past. I notice the insomnia and I'm enjoying it (this is Jim again, not Howard). John Sheehy: I love your breezy colloq keypunching but, to be precise, I was an assist-A-nt professor of literature AND humanities. The term exile comes, I believe, from the habit of the Greek polis, breaking pots and scratching on them to decide, democratically, who they would keep around and who they'd banish. I was banished by the Faculty Advisory Committee who decided not to grant me tenure. I was informed at the time that the decision was in no way based on my contemporaneous occupation of a couple of underused rooms in the not-then-brick-clad campus center but only, as in the case of my many colleagues banished at the same time, on the dire financial state of the Reed Institute. In fact, we were told that if we all quietly disappeared, money would roll in to the endowment accounts. They turned out to be right. I now see that placing the billboard along 99W asking if anyone would buy a used college from acting president Ross Thompson was probably just another example of bad manners and lese majeste. I would welcome the invitation to participate in your seminar. Unfortunately, I am not presently "wired" in the sense I take you to be using. Hopefully, that can be corrected.

Richard Cuthbert: I suspect there is a certain benign and romantic haze over your recollection of the evening classes on Knapp St. If you check your transcript and the class listings for 1965-1972, you will see that I was never authorized to teach Shakespeare, though that would have been fun too.

Even later.



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Reed.43.26: Howard Rheingold (rheingold) Fri, 03 Jul 1998 05:17:05 CDT (52 lines)

Ooops, even later. I just toked up a neat little roach I found in one of Howard's drawers and I notice I'm not really as mealy-mouthed and grateful as I seem to be trying to portray myself. I did get the pleasure of renewing contact with many old student friends, but I did not have the good fortune, during the seventy two hours I spent in the grove, of exchanging greetings with a single present member of the faculty or administration of the college. I was indeed invisible, a non-person from their POV (I'm learning fast, Howard).

On the other hand, I did get to exchange pleasantries with Owen Ulph, Professor of History emeritus, to the best of my knowledge and belief the only other former faculty member invited to reunion with me and the class of 1973. He in fact told me that he no longer has any lingering illusions about anything, and graciously consented to sign the Webb site hit list. (I'll append the text of his hit below.) But in the midst of doing so he looked up at me, with a distant and wistful look about him, and asked "tell me, do you ever hear anything of Jim Webb?" I assured him that I was in truth Jim Webb, and he said "no". As luck would have it, there were at least three people standing around willing to affirm that I was who I said I was. And Owen saw the tactical utility of seeming to agree with the surrounding real-life consensus.

So be informed: I have decided that I am in truth Assistant Professor of Literature and Humanities emeritus. As far as I can tell, the functional meaning of the hoary honorific is simply that someone taught as much as they were allowed to and reached retirement age without being arrested for some humiliating lapse or held liable for any sort of moral or academic turpitude. I affirm that I do meet the standard and will use the title whether the institution recognizes it or not. I will no longer submit to a Stalinist revisionist history that denies my positive contribution to the strength and integrity of the college's reputation (I rest my case) though I will try to listen with good humor to anyone's objections to my appropriation of the honor.

Nice to finally get that off my chest. Good night, all.

The promised appendage. Here follows the text of Owen's hit:

For Jim Webb—
One of the Three Sane Men
who served on the Reed College
staff when I was there.
Owen Ulph—I was the other two.
Bear Trap Ranch
LAMOILLE, NEVADA 89828
PH. 702-753-6453
P.S. I came back (but not to escape
from Chaos [underlined] !!!)

Thus ends the appendage.



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Reed.43.27: Howard Rheingold (rheingold) Fri, 03 Jul 1998 10:09”41 CDT (9 lines)

Howard—for your eyes only. Don’t embarrass me further by posting this. How do I, in my unlaptopped state, produce myself a hard copy of last night’s flow? What on earth is hidden posting?? Wrap??? Wrapped???? Autowrap turn-off?????

How about renaming this conference “Lives of Jim Webb”, since there seem to be various??

Yr. obt. etc., Jim



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Reed.43.28: Howard Rheingold (rheingold) Fri, 03 Jul 1998 12:29:38 CDT (6 lines)

Good old Webb! He lives! Personally, the privilege of hangin out with Jim once or twice a year has been one of the best long-term benefits of a Reed education. He skipped quite a few of our New Year's parties, but the last one was so good he as sworn to attend henceforth. Open invitation to any Reedies who are in the San Francisco Bay Area around that time of year.



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Reed.43.29: Tom Rossen (rossentj) Sat, 04 Jul 1998 02:18:28 CDT (8 lines)

I will attest to the elegance of the tie purchased from Prof. Webb (can't remember if it's visible in Howard's shot of Neidhardt and me onstage, but I was wearing it for the show), and can only regret that I graduated too soon to have known him during what he has styled his matriculation.

Also - I hope he does find one keyboard or another to help him kick that damned weed - the better to enjoy the blessed one.



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Reed.43.30: John Sheehy (sheehy) Mon, 06 Jul 1998 00:14:22 CDT (1 line)

Amen.




* * * *




Zen Pacific Arts
temple dog school
nov. 10, 1998
dear friends—
regretably, we have lost our capability to receive or initiate e-mail. for the foreseeable future we will be using the mail snail and the long distance phone system.
i quote from the official calamity report:

SPIKES SURGES & ZAPS
FORENSIC AUDITORS
“an ill-considered attempt to install a multi-stage surge protector resulted in the following dead: epson laptop, external modem, cordless speaker phone, TEAC tube amp, tuner, microwave, 9 incandescent bulbs, kitchen counter fluorescent, in-wall dimmer, various transformers, 60” x 30” x ¼” plate glass desk cover.
“among the fortunate survivors: TV, VCR, tape deck, 8-track player, roland synthesizer, visiting macintosh, guitar amp, printer-copier-fax, fridge.
“we were unable to determine whether this spectacular catastrophe, precipitated by “bien estupido” action of the director, resulted from residual professorial absent-mindedness, carelessness, chronic drug abuse, or intermittant senile dementia.”




* * * *


[And the following is from the Café Utne Reed archive, april 26th, 2001. Jim had died sometime between 3:00 and 7:00 AM that morning:]






{Reed.41.128}: Howard Rheingold {rheingold} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 11:18:51 CDT (58 lines)

Hello folks. I've been absent for a while, as seems to be my habit, and, as usual, I have every intention of returning soon. There are nearly 10,000 postings to catch up on!

I feel compelled to come here first, before calling people around the country, to announce the sad news that Jim Webb died suddenly last night. It's how he would have wanted to go. He was getting up for one of his many daily cups of very strong coffee with six spoons of sugar and a large dollop of cream, lit Pall-Mall in one hand, and fell to the floor.

Jim was a figure of some controversy during his tenure -- oops, I shouldn't use that word -- at Reed. He arrived as a freshman faculty member the same year I arrived as a freshman undergrad. I was 17. He was 29. He was a brilliant lecturer, unabashedly subversive, smoked dope and dropped acid and had sex with students. He turned his house into an Edwardian salon, created a mock-cult (which some disciples probably took too seriously), was the subject of a film by his neighbor and colleague, Will Baker ("Spider God"), more or less forced Reed to fire him. When Ross Thompson was acting President during a search for a new President, Webb paid for a large billboard with Thompson's picture and the caption: "Would you buy a used college from this man?"

He was a brilliant student from a tiny town in the corner of New Mexico near El Paso and Juarez. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Harvard, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Cambridge. After Reed, he returned to New Mexico. I never succeeded in talking him into resuming his academic career, or writing for publication, or even doing research. Jim preferred to live simply, drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, smoke pot, read, and write poetry. He took care of his parents as they died, including spending two years on a totally weird sleep schedule as he looked after his mother during late stages of Alzheimer's disease. I don't think he was interested in living long enough for the same thing to happen to him.

Of all the people I've known in my life, Jim Webb was the most stubbornly dedicated to doing what he wanted to do and only what he wanted to do. He was an unusual mentor because he was so non-judgemental. He never tried to guide or advise, unless pushed to it, and then, he was somewhat Rogerian.

He was a poet very much in the tradition of Han-Shan, the Cold Mountain poet translated by Gary Snyder, who left his poems on rocks in the mountains. I have scraps of paper tucked into books all over. I'll try to retrieve some of them and post them here later.

Right in front of me is a fading piece of paper, with a quote he wrote a few years ago, in orange calligraphed letters, from "The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying:

"You know, don't you, that actually all these things around us go away, just go away..." -- Dudjom Rinpoche

Goodbye, Jim. You were an original. Thank you for not burning down my house.



{Reed.41.129}: Howard Rheingold {rheingold} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 11:24:32 CDT (8 lines)

I have to add this. During the 30th reunion of the class of 1968, in June 1998, Jim showed up on campus and literally encamped under a tree between the commons and the sports palace. He looked as he did for most of the past thirty years -- like a derelict. Marianne Brogan, the alumni director, was somewhat taken aback, but he gently explained his story -- Jim NEVER broke character when he decided on a cover story -- and she very graciously decided not too bother him.



{Reed.41.130}: Howard Rheingold {rheingold} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 11:31:42 CDT (4 lines)

Here's a picture of Jim in his usual full regalia, during the 1998 reunion:

http://www.rheingold.com/art/Vipers/JimWebb.JPG



{Reed.41.131}: Will Morgan {morganw} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 11:53:39 CDT (9 lines)

Thank you very much Howard.

I'm blubbering just a bit, I met Jim that reunion and he was a very nice man, who made a great impression on me that weekend, building on my impressions from posts he made here. I've printed the picture for posting at meat smoke camp, I'm very glad to be headed to campus where some folks will be mourning around me.

"consider you might not be coming down, just getting used to it."



{Reed.41.133}: Bear Wilner {bearw} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 12:12:11 CDT (14 lines)

There was a Jim Webb topic here, and I was just looking for it (in the archive conference, too), but I could not find it. Appropriate, I guess, even though I would like to read some of his words right now: appropriate, I say, because now it's another poem on the wind. Jim, I enjoyed meeting you and your little dog at Reunions '99. Before that, I recall your FREE CREF LUMP SUM protest outside Eliot, and most of all your legend, surviving (in, alas, slightly attenuated form) in the Student Handbook even unto my days at Reed. You were an absolute original. We will all have to be more joyful and weirder in order to fill the hole now that you're gone.

There's a picture of Jim with us at Reunions in the August '99 _Reed_:

http://web.reed.edu/community/newsandpub/aug1999/assoc/3.html



{Reed.41.134}: Howard Rheingold {rheingold} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 12:32:24 CDT (17 lines)

Of all the things Jim was, "nice person" is indeed accurate. He was exasperating in many ways, but always gentle and kind.

He wrote this on the occasion of the 25th reunion of the Reed class of 1969


the time flows by
we begin to see
we taught each other
more than we knew

He noted: "We made this poem on the Reed campus June 10th and i wrote it down late that night at a quiet house nearby. i say we wrote it collectively because i heard the four lines from different people in the course of the day. some permutations are also resonant



{Reed.41.135}: esteban {g2imteb9} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 12:37:17 CDT (2 lines)

I met him @ reunions as well. He was someone who made quite an impression. Sorry to hear that his breath no longer shares our airs.



{Reed.41.137}: Adam Green {agreen} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 12:50:42 CDT (2 lines)

jim sounds like a really interesting guy. sorry i never got to meet him.



{Reed.41.138}: Suzanne Griffith {sggriffith} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 14:47:56 CDT (4 lines)

I'm sorry you lost a friend, Howard. Jim Webb came the year after I left Reed in '66, and I never got to meet him. I've heard many great stories though, and I'd like to read some of his poems if you want to post them.



{Reed.41.139}: Howard Rheingold {rheingold} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 15:31:21 CDT (7 lines)

Jim hid them in books. I'm going to make a concerted search, but I'm sure they will turn up for years to come.

One of his annoying and enlightening habits was to borrow my books without asking and lend them to others who he felt needed them. He also brought me books that I suspected were obtained in the same way.



{Reed.41.140}: Joseph Scott {jophus} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 18:33:27 CDT (8 lines)

It's a pity he is gone. He was a oner, and as others have noted, a strange and kindly man. He should have had me tarred feathered and run out of town for non-feasance in his Hum 210 class in 1966. Instead, he listened attentively to my incoherent plan for the paper I would have written called _Seventeen Contrary Interpretations of Kafka's Metamorphosis_ and let me pass the course without ever having seen a scrap of paper. He may have had an instinct I was not long for Reed anyway, even though I myself did not know it at the time.



{Reed.41.141}: Dina Kempler {reeddina} Thu, 26 Apr 2001 22:59:44 CDT (5 lines)

Thanks for posting that picture Bear. But it gave me an aching longing to be surrounded by Reedies again. I remember that Jim character. Wasn't he surrounded by strange and poetic signs? His signs seemed to be protesting something vague and complex, yet he was so blissful.



{Reed.41.142}: Bear Wilner {bearw} Fri, 27 Apr 2001 02:02:38 CDT (1 line)

Precisely.



{Reed.41.143}: Bear Wilner {bearw} Fri, 27 Apr 2001 02:02:59 CDT (1 line)

And you're very welcome, Dina.



{Reed.41.144}: Lance Montauk {lmontauk} Fri, 27 Apr 2001 12:46:17 CDT (13 lines)

With tears in my eyes, I post these faded words, calligraphed by James K. Webb, and pinned by him surreptitiously over the couch in my garage office years ago. As an emergency physician who frequently works overnight shifts, I sleep a lot on that couch, either afternoon/evenings before work, or late mornings after a shift.

"We are moving
at a dream's pace
this is dream space"

With love for Jim.

LM



{Reed.41.146}: Howard Rheingold {rheingold} Fri, 27 Apr 2001 16:44:23 CDT (4 lines)

Anyone whose life was touched by Jim in a way that makes you want to respond, contact me regarding an intimate (i.e., at my house) memorial event in the San Francisco Bay Area late afternoon and evening of May 12. hlr@well.com



{Reed.41.147}: Bear Wilner {bearw} Mon, 30 Apr 2001 01:00:56 CDT (4 lines)

Lance, thank you so much for posting that poem. Will put it up, along with a picture of Jim, in our Meat Smoke crew kitchen this year.

Howard, I hope the memorial is wonderful.




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OBITUARY: JAMES K. WEBB

Jim Webb appeared on the Reed Campus in 1965 as a new professor in Literature & Humanities and departed seven years later. His short career was memorable and controversial. Upon news of his death (April 26, 2001) from heart failure, former students, friends, and colleagues gathered in Mill Valley, California, to hold an informal memorial service for “Spider God,” as Webb was affectionately named in a 1969 film satire. An altar was created around such relics as a cup of coffee and a half-smoked cigarette, a carved staff, crystals, and effigies of Chihuahua dogs.
Professor Webb came to Reed with sterling credentials: he was valedictorian of his high school in El Paso, Texas, and Interstate Champion for both Essay-Writing and Mental Math in the early ‘50s; graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in 1956; took an MA at Columbia with Highest Honors; read Victorian Literature as a Fullbright Scholar at Queen’s College, Cambridge; and completed course work for a PhD at the University of Connecticut. This impressive scholarship was, however, balanced by an infectious sense of humor and a great flair for entertainment, expressed at Reed in a number of projects which fired the imagination of students.
Webb enlisted collaboration from certain colleagues and creative students in preparing a famous series of lectures on Victorian times, which combined paintings, photographs, lithographs, music, and living tableaux. He also inspired discussions on original and unprecedented topics (for the mid-1960’s): gay literature, the literature of war, and the politics of psychedelia. In the film Spider God he parodied many aspects of academic life, and deliberately mocked his own role as cult leader.
In his last three years at Reed, professor Webb began to hold classes at his home on Knapp Street. There the inner walls were painted black, and the windows covered with wallpaper, and even daytime classes were conducted by candlelight. A loft was converted into a jail, with wrought iron doors, perhaps as a mocking alternative to what he considered the drab and oppressive facilities of learning institutions. Then, in 1971, Webb launched a protest against a proposed candidate for the Reed College presidency. He rented a billboard beside a major freeway and filled it with an image of the candidate over the caption “Would You Buy A Used College From This Man?”
It was suggested to professor Webb that he was unlikely to be given tenure, because his presence on the campus could turn away potential contributors to the college. Webb responded with a proposal for a “College in Exile,” which he would conduct in Mexico; office conferences at Reed would be handled by means of a life-size puppet (which his friend Roger Law, eventual creator of England’s Spitting Image TV series, had offered to make) with a cassette player in its chest. (Tapes to be sent regularly from Mexico’s beaches.) The administration declined Webb’s offer, and their stormy but exhilarating association was thus terminated.
James K. Webb returned to his ancestral home in New Mexico, where for the next twenty-nine years he cared for his aged parents, assisted homeless Mexican immigrants in finding lodging and employment, gave advice and consolation to many former students who kept in touch, raised goats and cactus and Chihuahuas, read widely, did crossword puzzles, and wrote poetry. He died in his chair in the wee hours of the morning, TV going, a book, a cup of brew and a cigarette with a long ash on the table, and a tiny brass Buddha charm (given him by my daughter) around his neck.
--Will Baker
Asst. Professor of Lit. and Hum. 1964-1969




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[The following piece was read by Will Baker at Jim's wake at Howard and Judy’s on May 12th, 2001:]






WEBB MEMORIAL
By Will Baker

Soap operas and Henry James, both at 2 a.m., the Crystal Palace, the Queen Mother, and Pall Malls by the carload, the pure-finders and the born losers, geniuses without a cause, lambs in search of a lion, future CIA operatives who will eventually end up Buddhist monks, and vice versa, debutantes who will become waitresses, and vice versa, a Mercedes, a Fiat Spider, a Ford Pickup, a Geo, a Chariot drawn by dragons toward a dark horizon, beads, stained glass, leather, iron, bubbles, and bells, goats, yappy little dogs who drank coffee, a parrot; an old house with a jail inside, and inside the jail a one-eyed Texas gayboy, and inside him a huge heart, and inside the heart a sadness and madness, a badness and gladness, a fadness and dadness, a fashionable father who would never stop fooling with his brood, planning for his progeny, dreaming for his disciples, until the heart itself did, yes, in fact, stop--a rather startling moment, a thing to give one pause, the cup just poured after all, the cigarette just lit, and of course there must have been an impulse to deny, to do something; but some people have gone beyond just doing something, have arrived at a place where it is possible to do nothing in a new, creative way, such as being the target of a rumor that one has been an RAF pilot, or founding a college with a single stroke of the imagination, but without campus or president or faculty or funds, though fantastically successful at driving young minds berserk or tricking them into careless enlightenment, or persuading dozens of otherwise sensible adults to carry out bizarre enterprises for no apparent cause beyond sheer spectacle or the contemplation of another, unforeseen dimension of the eternal mystery of humanity; and so in the course of just such an amazingly creative effort to achieve effortlessness, the legend of Spider God arose-Spider God, who contained Spider Man and Spider Woman and most of all Spider Child--a sly, fey trinity that was at once immensely generous and immensely narcissistic, and which inspired a subtle, benign, implacable movement not just to question authority but to dissolve it entirely in laughter, to transform all high seriousness into hijinks, and everything pompous into pom-poms or piffle; but no sooner arisen, no sooner surrounded by acolytes devoted to his monstrous subversion, Spider God metamorphosed into a gentle shaman, showman, sham man, schemer, scammer, shucker, shaper, skimmer, scoffer, see-er, soother, and sand man, yeah, the one sand man who's sane, also a travelling act to San Fran, to Portland, to Berkeley, or sometimes, to nowhere--just home, healing, hibernating, and helping, always helping the needy to cross borders, day or night; helping the lonely to live, the lorn to laugh, the lusty to lay back. Yes, a Miracle Man, who helped us all, without turning a hand. So when the great wide heart stopped, after the startled pause, after the last urge to do something, our homebody helper surely greeted death with a familiar, arch smile through threads of smoke and whispered, "Pardon me for not getting all my things together. Afraid you'll just have to take me as I am."




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END
SPIDER GOD:
HIS WRITTEN WORD


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