r - Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

Greg Leichner
Jack Nestor
104 The Note
105 Response to Card Postmarked
San Diego
Nonfiction
Phil Jenkins 28 Interview with Roy Blount, Jr.
Mario Soldati 47 Aspects of Art
Hal Strickland 106 Interview with Thelma Toole
Nadine Gordimer
Crimes of Conscience
Apparently they noticed each other at the same moment,
coming down the steps of the Supreme Court on the third
day of the trial. By then casual spectators who come for a
look at the accused —to see for themselves who will risk prison
walls round their bodies for ideas in their heads —have satisfied
curiosity; only those who have some special interest attend day
after day. He could have been a journalist; or an aide to the
representative of one of the Western powers who 'observe' political
trials in countries problematic for foreign policy and subject to
human rights lobbying back in Western Europe and America. He
wore a corduroy suit of unfamiliar cut. But when he spoke it was
clear he was, like her, someone at home —he had the accent, and
the casual, colloquial turn of phrase. 'What a session! I don't know
. . . After two hours of that. . . feel like I'm caught in a roll of sticky
tape . . . unreal . . .'
There was no mistaking her. She was a young woman whose
cultivated gentleness of expression and shabby homespun style of
dress, in the context in which she was encountered, suggested not
transcendental meditation centre or environmental concern group
or design studio, but a sign of identification with the humanity of
those who had nothing and risked themselves. Her only adornment,
a necklace of minute ostrich-shell discs stacked along a
thread, moved tight at the base of her throat tendons as she smiled
and agreed. 'Lawyers work like that . . . I've noticed. The first few
days, it's a matter of people trying each to confuse the other side.'
Later in the week, they had coffee together during the court's
lunch adjournment. He expressed some naive impressions of the
trial, but as if fully aware of gullibility. Why did the State call
witnesses who came right out and said the regime oppressed their
spirits and frustrated their normal ambitions? Surely that kind of

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testimony favoured the Defence, when the issue was a crime of conscience?
She-shook fine hair, ripply as a mohair rug. 'Just wait. Just
wait. That's to establish credibility. To prove their involvement
with the accused, their intimate knowledge of what the accused
said and did, to inculpate the accused in what the Defence's going
to deny. Don't you see?'
'Now I see.' He smiled at himself. 'When I was here before, I
didn't take much interest in political things . . . activist politics, I
suppose you'd call it? It's only since I've been back from overseas
. . .'
She asked conversationally what was expected of her; how
long had he been away?
'Nearly five years. Advertising, then computers . . .' The
dying-out of the sentence suggested the lack of interest in which
these careers had petered. 'Two years ago I just felt I wanted to
come back. I couldn't give myself a real reason. I've been doing the
same sort of work here —actually, I ran a course at the business
school of a university, this year —and I'm slowly beginning to find
out why I wanted to. To come back. It seems it's something to do
with things like this.'
She had a face that showed her mind following another's;
eyebrows and mouth expressed quiet understanding.
'I imagine all this sounds rather feeble to you. I don't suppose
you're someone who stands on the sidelines.'
Her thin, knobbly little hands were like tools laid upon the formica
counter of the coffee bar. In a moment of absence from their
capability, they fiddled with the sugar sachets while she answered.
'What makes you think that?'
'You seem to know so much. As if you'd been through it
yourself ... Or maybe . . . you're a law student?'
'Me? Good lord, no.' After one or two swallows of coffee, she
offered a friendly response. 'I work for a corespondence college.'
'Teacher.'
Smiling again: 'Teaching people I never see.'
'That doesn't fit too well. You look the kind of person who's
more involved.'
For the first time, polite interest changed, warmed. That's
what you missed, in London? Not being involved. . . ?'
At that meeting he gave her a name, and she told him hers.
Crimes of Conscience
The name was Derek Felterman. It was his real name. He had
spent five years in London; he had worked in an advertising company
and then studied computer science at an appropriate institution,
and it was in London that he was recruited by someone from
the Embassy who wasn't a diplomat but a representative of the internal
security section of State security in his native country. Nobody
knows how secret police recognize likely candidates; it is as
mysterious as sexing chickens. But if the definitive characteristic
sought is there to be recognized, the recruiting agent will see it, no
matter how deeply the individual may hide his likely candidacy
from himself.
He was not employed to infiltrate refugee circles plotting
abroad. It was decided that he would come home 'clean', and begin
work in the political backwater of a coastal town, on a university
campus. Then he was sent north to the mining and industrial centre
of the country, told to get himself an ordinary commercial job
without campus connections, and, as a new face, seek contacts
wherever the information his employers wanted was likely to be let
slip — left-wing cultural gatherings, poster-waving protest groups,
the public gallery at political trials. His employers trusted him to
know how to ingratiate himself; that was one of the qualities he
had been fancied for, as a woman might fancy him for some other
characteristic over which he had no volition —the way one corner
of his mouth curled when he smiled, or the brown gloss of his eyes.
He, in his turn, had quickly recognized her —first as a type,
and then, the third day, when he went away from the court for verification
of her in police files, as the girl who had gone secretly to
visit a woman friend who was under House Arrest, and subsequently
had served a three-month jail sentence for refusing to testify
in a case brought against the woman for breaking her isolation
ban. Aly, she had called herself. Alison Jane Ross. There was
no direct connection to be found between Alison Jane Ross's interest
in the present trial and the individuals on trial; but from the
point of view of his avocation this did not exclude her possible involvement
with a master organization or back-up group involved
in continuing action of the subversive kind the charges named.
Felterman literally moved in to friendship with her, carrying a
heavy case of books and a portable grill. He had asked if she would
come to see a play with him on Saturday night. Alas, she was mov-

Gordimer
ing house that Saturday; perhaps he'd like to come and help, instead?
The suggestion was added, tongue-in-cheek at her own presumption.
He was there on time. Her family of friends, introduced
by diminutives of their names, provided a combined service of old
combi, springless station-wagon, take-away food and affectionate
energy to fuel and accomplish the move from a flat to a tiny house
with an ancient palm tree filling a square of garden, grating its
dried fronds in the wind with the sound of a giant insect rubbing its
legs together. To the night-song of that creature they made love for
the first time a month later. Although all the Robs, Jimbos and
Ricks, as well as the Jojos, Bets and Lils, kissed and hugged their
friend Aly, there seemed to be no lover about who had therefore
been supplanted. On the particular, delicate path of intimacy along
which she drew him or that he laid out before her, there was room
only for the two of them. At the beginning of ease between them,
even before they were lovers, she had come of herself to the stage of
mentioning that experience of going to prison, but she talked of it
always in banal surface terms —how the blankets smelled of disinfectant
and the Chief Wardress's cat used to do the inspection
round with its mistress. Now she did not ask him about other
women, although he was moved, occasionally, in some involuntary
warm welling-up complementary to that other tide — of sexual
pleasure spent — to confess by the indirection of an anecdote, past
affairs, women who had had their time and place. When the right
moment came naturally to her, she told without shame, resentment
or vanity that she had just spent a year 'on her own' as something
she felt she needed after living for three years with someone who, in
the end, went back to his wife. Lately there had been one or two
brief affairs —'Sometimes —don't you find —an old friend suddenly
becomes something else . . . just for a little while, as if a face is turned
to another angle. . . ? And next day, it's the same old one again.
Nothing's changed.'
'Friends are the most important thing for you, aren't they? I
mean, everybody has friends, but you . . . You'd really do anything.
For your friends. Wouldn't you?'
There seemed to come from her reaction rather than his words
a reference to the three months she had spent in prison. She lifted
the curly pelmet of hair from her forehead and the freckles faded
against flush colouring beneath: 'And they for me.'
Crimes of Conscience
'It's not just a matter of friendship, either —of course, I see
that. Comrades —a band of brothers . . .'
She saw him as a child staring through a window at others
playing. She leant over and took up his hand, kissed him with the
kind of caress they had not exchanged before, on each eyelid.
Nevertheless her friends were a little neglected in favour of
him. He would have liked to have been taken into the group more
closely, but it is normal for two people involved in a passionate
love affair to draw apart from others for a while. It would have
looked unnatural to press to behave otherwise. It was also understood
between them that Felterman didn't have much more than
acquaintances to neglect; five years abroad and then two in the
coastal town accounted for that. He revived for her pleasures she
had left behind as a schoolgirl: took her water-skiing and climbing.
They went to see indigenous people's theatre together, part of a
course in the politics of culture she was giving him not by correspondence,
without being aware of what she was doing and without
giving it any such pompous name. She was not to be persuaded
to go to a discotheque, but one of the valuable contacts he did have
with her group of friends of different races and colours was an assumption
that he would be with her at their parties, where she outdanced
him, having been taught by blacks how to use her body to
music. She was wild and nearly lovely, in this transformation,
from where he drank and watched her and her associates at play.
Every now and then she would come back to him: an offering,
along with the food and drink she carried. As months went by, he
was beginning to distinguish certain patterns in her friendships;
these were extended beyond his life with her into proscribed places
and among people restricted by law from contact, like the woman
for whom she had gone to prision. Slowly she gained the confidence
to introduce him to risk, never discussing but evidently
always sensitively trying to gauge how much he really wanted to
find out if 'why he wanted to come back' had to do with 'things like
this.'
It was more and more difficult to leave her, even for one night,
going out late, alone under the dry, chill agitation of the old palm
tree, rustling through its files. But although he knew his place had
been made for him to live in the cottage with her, he had to go back
to his flat that was hardly more than an office, now, unoccupied

Gordimer
except for the chair and dusty table at which he sat down to write
his reports: he could hardly write them in the house he shared with
her.
She spoke often of her time in prison. She herself was the one
to find openings for the subject. But even now, when they lay in
one another's arms, out of reach, undiscoverable to any investigation,
out of scrutiny, she did not seem able to tell of the experience
what there really was in her being, necessary to be told: why she
risked, for whom and what she was committed. She seemed to be
waiting passionately to be given the words, the key. From him.
It was a password he did not have. It was a code that was not
supplied him.
And then one night it came to him; he found a code of his own;
that night he had to speak. 'I've been spying on you.'
Her face drew into a moment of concentration akin to the
animal world, where a threatened creature can turn into a ball of
spikes or take on a fearsome aspect of blown-up muscle and defensive
garishness.
The moment left her face as instantly as it had taken her. He
had turned away before it as a man does with a gun in his back.
She shuffled across the bed on her haunches and took his head
in her hands, holding him.
® 1984 Nadine Gordimer
r
M. G. Casey
The Sign of the Dog
Kitogue Stapleton's dog didn't really belong. Far from being
a domestic pet he was more like a spore on the outer skin of
the family cell. A misshapen mongrel of little facility, he
had not earned the respect of Kitogue or the affection of his
children. He cowered before unwanted callers such as bill-collectors
and summons-servers, ran from rodents and looked pained when
anyone tried to jolly him into fetching a stick or a stone.
There was no spark in him. Even as a pup he was never frisky.
Fun was a chore for volunteers to engage in. If he was cornered into
a game by Kitogues' kids he would go through the motions of pricking
up his ears and wagging his tail, especially if there was a crust of
bread in the offing. But he had no relish for such diversions. As he
grew up he discovered that the best way to avoid performing was
to feign stupidity. It was much safer to seem stupid than uncooperative.
After a while no one bothered much with him and he
preferred it that way.
His yellow eyes had a canny look scanning the horizon as he
minced his way through the mine-field of wheels, boots, walkingsticks,
bigger dogs and bitches in heat. Once when dodging a
tinker's boot he was hit by a car. Ever since then his body was slightly
out of kilter with his legs and both parts seemed to travel in different
directions. He shambled through life sideways on.
For him there were two kinds of pain: sudden and gradual.
Kicks were the commonest form of the first type, but he had learnt
how to ride these. He also knew that a loud yelp usually placated
the kicker and avoided further penalties. Gradual pain, typified by
gnawing hunger, was more worrying and largely beyond his control.
He could not afford to scrape at the back door for food; such
forwardness would have been too risky. Instead, hours of waiting
around the side of the house had to be endured. Even when a scrap

Casey
would eventually be thrown out to him he had to control his urge
to pounce until he had got it safely out of sight. Then and only then
did he come alive. To supplement his meagre and irregular diet he
had taken to scavenging. He started ambitiously in the sawdust of
Maher's butcher shop but a few blows of a broom caused him to
lower his sights. The town dump wasn't nearly so bountiful but at
least he was safe there.
It could, of course, have been worse. He had become inured to
the life and was in any case bred to sparseness. A chocolate-box
poodle wouldn't have lasted a day on these iron rations but then so
much more was expected of a real pet. He had been born into a tinker's
family but eventually latched onto Kitogues' children on the
assumption that indifference would be better than hostility. He
might have chosen a better family, but then again he hadn't too
many credentials.
Kitogue Stapleton himself wasn't really a waster. When he
worked he worked hard, usually as mate to a ship's carpenter. He
didn't work regularly but only when his money ran out. It was an
erratic way of life, hard graft followed by carousing shore-leave;
stint on stint. He was fortunate to have work when he wanted it because
times were hard in the 1950's. During his periods of leave he
refused to join the dole queues, regarding unemployment benefit as
a form of charity; a view which the employment officers, by their
practised disdain, did nothing to allay. In any case, standing in a
meandering dole queue would have cut into valuable drinking time.
Twenty years later Kitogue might have been a union leader or
a reformer of some sort. He had the chemistry for it. But the fifties
were not a time for causes; for most people it was hard enough to
get by. Reforming zeal was limited to helping a neighbour rather
than changing the structure of society. At forty-two he was too old
to assume Teddy-boy dress though he often held up the wall with
the younger Teds, most of whom had returned from England greasy,
drain-piped and with cheap accents.
His ten children suggested that his shore leave had not quite
tallied with his wife's calendar. The kids had just about enough to
keep body and soul together and were loosely categorised by the
The Sign of the Dog
district nurse as "bread and tea children." After the sixth, Mrs.
Stapleton had asked the senior parish curate for advice but he had
said, "If I were you, my good woman, I would not want to answer
for the consequences of flying in the face of His will. Do you not
. . can you not see how He has blessed you with a family? Every
time I've churched you I've thought: 'What a fortunate woman to
be so often in the thoughts of the Maker.' Go home now and put
such thoughts out of your poor head."
It was hard to imagine Kitogue's arbitrary comings and goings
as part of the Divine plan but then God moved in mysterious ways.
One night, at the beginning of a period of leave, Kitogue was
involved in a not untypical incident. It was just gone closing time
and the publican, Billo Dwyer, wanted to clear the pub because his
daughter was getting married the next morning. Kitogue and a few
German sailors refused to leave. Also outraged by the prospect of
ejection was Maud Prendergast who, at the age of sixty, was still
known by her working name — the Dutch bicycle. Her favours were
not in demand now, but she could still rely on the odd drink on the
strength of her reputation. It had passed the point of pleading and
remonstrating, and Billo announced that he would have to send his
son for the guards. Kitogue had reached the stage of dangerous camaraderie.
"Surely you must get the guards," he conceded heartily. "What
else can a man in your position do with his only daughter getting
wed. We understand, don't we lads?"
There was a raucous chorus of agreement.
"But you can't send a boy on a man's errand. You must go
yourself. Right lads?"
"I can't leave the pub unattended," pleaded Billo.
"Don't worry a'tall about that," comforted Kitogue. "We'll look
after it. If the guards must be got they must be got. There's only one
thing for it." With that, Kitogue and the grinning German sailors
advanced on Billo and bustled him out the door. Kitogue took over
behind the bar and dispensed drink with gusto.
The guards were reluctant to take on Kitogue and his henchmen.
What made them even more hesitant was the presence of

Casey
Maud Prendergast who, when manhandled into the black maria,
had the habit of throwing her skirts over her head and screaming,
"They're interfering with me again!"
Both sides confronted each other through the plate glass window.
Kitogue raised his glass and drank tauntingly. The guards
made no move despite Billo's entreaties to save him from being
drunk out of house and home. Many drinks later Kitogue's brain
turned. He hurled a bottle through the window and followed through,
falling upon the guards with flailing fists. He had, however, miscalculated
the support of the sailors, who merely skirted the fracas
grinning and cheering. Maud treated herself to a nightcap. Kitogue
got the better of two guards but was eventually knocked down by a
third who had concealed a pair of hand-cuffs inside his gloves.
At the barracks Billo had second thoughts. If he brought
charges he would lose not only Kitogue's substantial, if seasonal,
custom but also that of many a ship's crew. The sergeant was more
reluctant but was secretly worried about the seven stitches the doctor
had just put in Kitogue's forehead.
Til give you one more chance Stapleton," he said at last.
"Mind me now. I'm fed up to the back teeth with your carry-on.
You're a bloody disgrace to the town. You and your sort have no
business near decent people. If you put a foot wrong again ... if
you as much as spit in the street I'll see that you're put away for
good. Away now outta me sight."
Kitogue could not, of course, conceal the stitches from his
wife. But she had heard about it anyway from Mrs. McElwee, the
grocer's wife, who was nicknamed 'Radio Eireann' because of the
frequency if not the reliability of her gossip. For the first time ever,
Mrs. Stapleton decided to do something about it. She asked Father
O'Mahony "to see to him." She remembered the dramatic sermon
he had given to the ladies confraternity two years ago. He had
entered the pulpit and contemplated the rafters until the congregation
was suitably receptive. Then he said in a shaking voice:
"A man who lives like a dog will die like a dog."
And that was all. The ladies were still settling themselves into
the pews when he had already left the pulpit. People still spoke
10
The Sign of the Dog
about that sermon. Father O'Mahony, however, was not the best
man for sorting out practical problems, being rather more concerned
with reconciling Augustinian and Cartesian concepts of
time. In many ways his life-long concern was an escape from a
deeper conflict that pestered him, between blind acceptance of orthodox
teaching on the one hand and an unquenchable yearning to
find his own truth on the other. He realised fully that he was more
at ease with ideas than with people but felt that he could always rise
to the odd bit of counselling when required.
"I see you had an argument with a mahogony gas pipe," joked
Father O'Mahony, nodding at Kitogues' stitches.
"Ah! yes Father. I had too much taken." Kitogue rummaged for
a pound note hoping it was the dues he had come about. But a
pound could not buy peace-of-mind on this occasion; more was
due than money. Souls were in the reckoning this time.
"Well, you're the terrible man. But seriously now Mr.
Stapleton, we're none of us getting any younger and the party has
to stop sometime. How many children have you now?"
"Ten."
"Well, God help me poor man. And did you never consider
getting advice? Well, it's water under the bridge now I suppose."
Mrs. Stapleton, listening outside the door, felt her stomach
turn over. Then it was true that priests could be found who gave
different advice! If only she had gone to see Father O'Mahony five
years ago. Aching from some deep-seated sense of lost opportunity
she went to put on the kettle.
"Are they earning yet?" continued Father O'Mahony. His initial
enthusiasm was wearing thin, and he began to fear the
platitudes that would soon be required of him.
"No. The two oldest lads have done with schooling but there's
no work for them yet."
"Mr. Stapleton, I heard about last night. Don't get me wrong,
I'm not concerned with the rights or wrongs of what transpired. It's
not for me to judge. But be practical, man. Just suppose you were
jailed and couldn't go to sea for a year or two. How would your
wife cope?"
"Did she send for you?" blurted out Kitogue.
"It doesn't matter who sent for me. You can regard this as an
11

Casey
ordinary visitation. Now how are we going to get you to change
your ways? We all have to settle ourselves sometime and live up to
the responsibilities imposed by life."
'Oh Mother of God!' thought Kitogue, trapped in a hangover
in his own small front room with a Jesuit. 'How am I going to get
off this hook?' Common civility demanded some response from
him. He decided to ask, as politely as possible, what life had to do
with it.
"Life? What's . . ." he began slowly.
"Ah! Mr. Stapleton," interrupted Father O'Mahony with
renewed relish. "You might well ask. What indeed is life? I myself
prefer to regard it as a process rather than a state. If we then reformulate
the question, as, 'what is living' or, more normatively, as
'what is good living', my answer to you must be, the constant confrontation
of changing circumstances according to one's own
lights."
Kitogue winced as the drumming in his head sent a burst of
pain to the cut on his forehead. He was desperate for a hair of the
dog.
"Yes, Mr. Stapleton, I can see that that has shocked you," continued
the priest warming to his subject. "I will go further and say
that Canon Law does not. . . and cannot provide the answers. This
is between ourselves, you understand, and, of course, I'm speaking
at a theoretical level. Who after all defines right reason? Canon
Lawyers are administrators, not philosophers. They cannot countenance
people like us who stand obliquely to our own society and
its leaden rules of behaviour. A true Christian must try to change
society. Revolutionary socialism may not be popular now, Mr.
Stapleton, but there are some among the most avant garde Theologians
in the world who regard Christ himself as a socialist."
Kitogue bowed his head at the mention of the Lord's name.
"You see! Deep down you do agree with me. I regard the
socialist ethic as a necessary condition for the proper exercise of
Christianity. Of course we can't all preach this from the pulpit. It
would be misunderstood. Do you get my drift?"
"It would probably be misunderstood alright," muttered
Kitogue.
"My advice to you is not to change your objectives, which I
think we share, but to change the means of achieving them. Work
12
The Sign of the Dog
from within. Don't put yourself outside the pale because then you
will have no scope for effecting change. Make gestures, certainly
— these are useful signposts along the way —but hasten slowly.
Others will follow. Gradualism wins through in the end. Remember,
Mr. Stapleton, it takes more courage to compromise than to
put your head on the block."
Kitogue rubbed his stitches.
"So that's the burden of my advice to you. Hasten slowly.
Make gestures if you must, but not war. Good day to you now."
Father O'Mahony grabbed his hat and left the house on the crest of
his deliberations. Mrs. Stapleton came in demurely with a tray of
tea things and noticed that the priest had gone.
"What did you say to him?" she asked accusingly.
"Nothing," replied Kitogue weakly.
"Well? Well? Are you to do a novena or what?"
"No nothing like that. I'm to ... to hasten slowly."
The Mahers owned the biggest butcher shop in the town. Old
Mr. Maher was on the wane, his beefy complexion turning yellower
each day. Mrs. McElwee was sure he had the lump. Young Martin
Maher would soon inherit the business. Unlike his father, Martin
liked to display the trappings of wealth and tried hard to emulate
the style of the county types who lived outside the town. He drove
a jeep and wore cavalry twill trousers, albeit blood-stained ones.
He was known to have a good eye for a beast and for the ladies
also. Mrs. McElwee was on record as saying that she for one would
never be caught dead inside his shop though she somehow managed
to know more about his exploits than anyone else.
One afternoon, as Maher was counting sheep in the field
which verged on the town dump, he noticed that some of the sheep
had torn haunches. When he returned with the vet he saw, against
the fading sky-line, the outline of a mongrel dog scratching through
the offal of the dump.
"There's your answer," he shouted to the vet. "Let's get the gun
from the jeep. Look at the blood on his mouth, the mangy cur!"
spat out Maher.
"I think that's Kitogue Stapleton's dog," said the vet.
"What odds?" said Maher as he raised the shot-gun. "He's as
bad himself."
"No don't do it," cautioned the vet. "He's just the type to sue."
13

Casey
"God Almighty!" exploded Maher. "He hasn't even got a
licence for him."
"You can't be sure," cautioned the professional man. "You'll
just have to lay poison and put up signs. The blood on his mouth
could be from rats anyway."
Mrs. Stapleton opened the front door and was confronted by
Maher's demands for justice.
"Himself is off out, Sir," she replied meekly.
"You'll have to get that mongrel destroyed," snapped Maher,
"or I'll land you all in more trouble than you've seen, despite your
long experience of it."
"But it's not our dog, Sir," she replied. "We only give it the odd
bone when we have a bit of meat ourselves."
"It's a stray then?"
"Aye, it's apt to be."
Shortly afterwards, Maher caught the dog worrying the sheep.
Without waiting to look for evidence of savagery as such, he stalked
the mongrel, gun in hand, got him in his sights and this time there
would be no reprieve. Before the shot was fired the dog looked
back, his yellow eyes still pinpointed for scavenging. He stopped
and faced the line of fire as if he knew that all his self-taught capacity
for avoiding trouble was now up against hopeless odds. He
drew back his lips and made ready to snarl hideously in the face of
this final ignominy. His one and probably only act of aggression
was obliterated as the shot rang out. The thin body was lifted clean
into the air as the still solid wad of buckshot crashed into his side.
He was flung into a patch of wild potato stalks. Flocks of crows and
gulls filled the air with their screaming shapes, wheeled frantically,
searching out the source of danger, and then settled, slowly and
cautiously, as disturbed particles sink back into a sediment. The
outrage was over. Nature would live to fight another day. Maher
grunted and kicked the body into a nearby trench and covered it
with a few old rags and pieces of litter. The dog would soon become
indistinguishable from the rest of the garbage, he thought. As
14
The Sign of the Dog
he was getting into the jeep he was confronted by Father O'Mahony
who was taking the air as he read his office.
"Is it open season on dogs now, Martin?" rebuked the priest.
"Oh, hello Father! No it's just a little business that needed taking
are of. No need to concern yourself."
"But I . . ."
"By the way, how is the passion play coming along? I hope our
modest contribution was enough for the costumes. We're expecting
a great production this year, with yourself at the helm."
"Good day to you, Martin," said Father O'Mahony returning
to his office with a resigned air.
"Good luck, Father."
But the dog didn't, in death, merge forgotten into the
background as, in life, he had tried so hard to do. And it wasn't the
bin men who found him, but Kitogue's son, Jimmy, who also scavenged
in the dump for strips of tin to splice broken hurleys. In the
course of prospecting for this rare commodity, Jimmy stumbled
across the body of the dog, the buckshot embedded in his side.
"That'll be Maher's doing," he thought, remembering the visit
Maher had paid to the house. The dog was no loss, but Jimmy regarded
the incident as a blow to the family pride. Though much less
headstrong than his father, Jimmy was reluctant to let the matter
drop. At school the next day he challenged Maher's young brother
who was a good deal bigger than himself.
"It's a wonder ye didn't mince the oul dog and hawk it in that
hucksters shop of yours," Jimmy taunted him.
"Are you looking for fight or what?" young Maher threw back.
A crowd began to gather in the school yard.
"So what if I am? What could you and an army do about it?
Who'd lift ya up without yer Mammy?"
"That's for you to find out."
The pre-fight ritual was in danger of petering out without any
real action but the onlookers didn't want to be cheated. One of
them pushed Jimmy into Maher. Physical contact had to be established
somehow. The second stage of grappling and wrestling might
also have aborted but the crowd demanded blows to be struck.
How else could points be scored7

Casey
"Give'im one for the dog," shouted a bloodthirsty Senior Infant.
Jimmy broke loose and tried a tentative left hook. Now the
fight and the cheering started in earnest. It was totally devoid of
skill or finesse, but after a while there was some blood in evidence.
A nose bleed was better than nothing. Fortunately for Jimmy a
teacher broke it up before superior weight told. He was more than
content with a double disqualification. Some argued that Jimmy's
bleeding nose gave the victory to Maher but others claimed that the
nosebleed came from a head-butt and couldn't be allowed. What
was decisive, however, was the taking of sides and the forming of
unshakeable allegiances.
The lines were drawn almost exclusively on a class basis.
Jimmy's supporters were almost all working class kids while Maher's
were, by and large, the children of merchants.
Before this there had of course been alliances and even gangs.
But there had been no clear articulation of purpose, apart from
special interests such as birdnesting, marbles, tree-climbing and
hurling. But now there were only two camps and these at loggerheads
over a single issue: the killing of a dog. Fights broke out in
every classroom and Senior Infants of different camps refused to
hold hands in processions. During the final of the Christian
Brothers' hurling league, Mosey Connors scored an own goal because
the goalie was 'one of them'.
In the world of adults some of the conflict also rubbed off.
There was a growing awareness that the very topography of the
town itself reflected the division. The merchants had always tended
to live down in the town to be near the port, while their employees
had settled further up the hill. Mrs. McElwee began to give short
shrift to her up-the-hill customers. As she remarked to her peers,
"Thank God I'm not dependent on the custom of those shawlies
with their quarters of tea and one or two back rashers."
It was, however, possible to avoid confrontation in the adult
world. The workers came down the hill to their jobs long before the
shops were open and returned after the shops were closed.
Avoidance was a little more difficult on Sundays, but at least Mass
was safe enough, and there was always discretion in the matter of
choosing a route for a Sunday walk.
The Sign of the Dog
Individualism was not altogether absent, however. Miss Fleming,
who taught in the convent school, was heard to remark that,
"Mr. Maher had no right to shoot anyone's family pet," and that, in
her opinion, "he had acted in a very high-handed manner." These
treasonable sentiments were broadcast immediately by Mrs. Mc-
Elwee with the rider that "a little education could be a dangerous
thing." Father O'Mahony preferred not to discuss the matter. All of
his passion play cast were unqualified Maher supporters, but he
had borrowed St. Joseph's tools from a friend of Kitogue's. The
guards, when questioned about the incident, adopted a scrupulously
neutral position, though the sergeant secretly hoped that Kitogue
would react so that he could put him away for good.
Kitogue had managed to keep out of trouble and remained
house-bound most of the time. Mrs. Stapleton wasn't used to having
him under her feet, but she was careful to hold her peace. He
wasn't yet quite on that virtuous circle where each act of mortification
begged for more, but he had reformed his actions if not his
character. He got to know his children as individuals rather than as
a brood differentiated only by size and sex, and he began to think
of their various needs and of how he might be able to meet them.
Realising that money would be required, he began to take stock of
his position and eventually decided to curtail his leave and put to
sea again. He got a job on a Dutch merchant ship bound for Rio'.
She would sail on the following Monday and Kitogue, fired with a
new-born sense of duty, decided to treat himself to a quiet drink on
the preceding Saturday.
Billo was not a man to hold a grudge, especially if it was bad
for business.
"How are tricks, Kitogue?" he solicited with a faintly jeering air.
"Fair to middling. Give us the usual," was the short reply.
It wasn't until company had assembled that Kitogue became
aware of the controversy that the dog incident had caused. Friends
stood him drinks and sympathised with him on the untimely
demise of "that grand little fella". Secretly they were wondering
why Kitogue had not taken some sort of action before now. It was
the injustice of it all that choked Maud Prendergast:
16 17

Casey
"Did that bowsie Maher have a thought how your childer
would feel having their wee pet shot down in his prime, or how yer
poor wife would feel without a watchdog to guard her few bits and
pieces?"
All such rhetorical questions were answered to the full by
various members of the company in a mounting condemnation of
the merchant class. "If I was twenty years younger I'd soon soften
his cough for 'im," proferred Mikey Monihan. "That crowd is due a
comeuppance and no mistake."
These sentiments were part of the ritual of electing a champion.
Television had not yet reached town, and people had to make
their own excitement; no dramatic incident was ever forgotten because
everyone had had some part in its production. Endless recountings
led to embellishments until a stage close to legend was
reached. Kitogue was already the subject of many such tales, and
his bard-like companions demanded further material to embroider
during the long evenings. Kitogue was well aware that he was being
groomed, but deep down he enjoyed the role of champion.
As the afternoon wore on his mood changed. At first he was
inclined to laugh at the whole episode of Maher and the dog and at
the canny concern of his drinking pals. His plans for the family
made him feel somehow above it all. But then he became maudlin,
almost grieving for the dead dog and his own bereft children. He
tried to summon up the dog's face but found that, in death as in life,
the dog remained as faceless as he was nameless.
We should really have given the pore oul bugger a name,'
thought Kitogue. Then Maher's smooth, milk-fed face loomed up
just asking for a puck in the fat mouth. Kitogue nursed his
knuckles, sensing the quiver of joy that crashing them into Maher's
teeth would bring. He could do it in the shop in full view of the customers.
Maybe even some of Maher's lady friends would be there.
If Maher tried to retaliate he would string him along, concentrating
on his soft gut, until he had him sprawling in the blood-soaked
sawdust of his butcher shop.
"I will! I'll do'im!" announced Kitogue.
Everyone exulted in this decision which, once stated, reinforced
its own aptness. Mikey Monihan brought him a drink and
slapped him on the back.
18
•
The Sign of the Dog
"Yet mother never raised a gibber yet," he declared. "God, but
we'll settle his hash now."
Kitogue lay back and enjoyed his drinking. But the more he
drank the more sober he became and the more he began to get the
whole business into some kind of perspective. The words of greedy
anticipation that assailed him began to sour and the thought of facing
unencumbered into the fresh Atlantic winds on Monday became
more and more appealing.
'Why should I get involved?' he thought. 'I could take Martin
Maher with one hand tied behind my back. But what would that
prove7 He'd have the law on me like a ton of bricks.'
One question continued to stick in his craw, and that was why
Maher should get away with it, just because he was who he was.
Allied to this was the question of his own pride and, yes, his reputation.
It bothered him that he could not say whether his desire for
fair play was stronger than his own pride. The more he thought
about it the more indecisive he became and this, in turn, fed his ire.
It was one of the few times he had tried to work out his own
motivation, and it was a confusing and irritating experience.
Slowly he began to get a glimmer of a solution but he couldn't pin it
down. Was it something that Father O'Mahony had said? Possibly.
But a word, a single word. The word circled his brain but refused to
land. What was it? A mark? A sign-post? What the hell was it?
"You're miles away, Kitogue. Get us a jar," said Maud.
"Gestures!" shouted Kitogue triumphantly.
The streets were full of people that Saturday afternoon. The
gentry were favoring some of the big shops with their credit, and
the farmers left their bikes, tractors and muck-flecked cars in the
middle of the street as they haggled over seeds, fertilizer and hardware.
The farm people wore their Sunday best because they would
stay in town for confession that night. Maher's was doing a roaring
trade. There was a constant stream of ladies carrying packages of
meat wrapped in brown paper, each with a string loop. Young people
sauntered around for new faces to eye or else hung around the
entrance to the central cinema to deride all who ran their gauntlet.
This was the normal Saturday pattern. The return to normality was
19

Casey
due to the influx of the gentry and the farmers who were oblivious of
the whole dog incident and who could not have cared less anyway;
one group being above it all and the other too hard-worked to care.
Then, just before the pubs reopened after the holy hour and
when the streets were at their busiest, Kitogue appeared at one end
of the street dragging a sack along the footpath behind him. He
passed by the Central cinema life-watchers who choked back their
titters until he was out of ear-shot. His gait was slightly unsteady,
but the sack acted as ballast. Then Mrs. McElwee, who was getting
cauliflowers out of the window, saw him and shouted into the interior
of the shop.
"It's him! It's Kitogue Stapleton! He must be heading towards
Maher's."
The business of shopping was suspended as heads filled the ungenerous
doorway of Mrs. McElwee's shop. Passers-by stopped to
look at the crowd in the doorway and, having taken their bearings,
swung their attention to Kitogue. A friend passed him by, knowing
somehow that this was not the time for an idle chat. The frozen
rapt eye of the town was on the man dragging a sack.
"What's he got in the sack? Whats in the sack?" demanded Mrs.
McElwee of nobody in particular.
"Some junk maybe," someone suggested.
"Maybe it's a gun," said a frail woman.
"Not a'tall ..."
"Sssh! Sssh!" ordered Mrs. McElwee, honing her concentration.
Kitogue was now directly opposite Maher's, on the far pavement,
but he continued past the shop and the possibility of anticlimax
was insufferable to the on-lookers. But then it was obvious
that he had to go further to find a gap between parked cars.
"He's crossing. He's crossing the road," croaked Mrs. McElwee.
There was a dull thud as the bottom of the sack slid from the footpath
into the road. A car stopped to let him pass. Then he was right
outside the butcher's shop with its display window blazing with
light. Maher could be seen inside, hard at work on a side of beef
with a cleaver. Kitogue caught the sack by the end and shook out
the contents. Mrs. McElwee had lost her voice and was crushing the
cauliflowers to her bosom. What came out of the sack was the body
The Sign of the Dog
of the dog, slightly decomposed but still holding together. Someone
breathed:
"Holy Mother of Divine God!"
Kitogue picked up the dog and held it in his arms, his head
sideways, looking at the dead dog's head. Then he lifted it over his
head and flung it with all his might through the plate glass window.
When the cries of women and the sounds of splintering glass had
subsided and breath was held again for the next events, the only
logic of the whole fracas seemed to lie in the sight of the scrawny
dead dog, awash in the glare of neon lighting, surrounded by trays
of giblets, livers, chops, steaks, oozing joints, dollops of mince and
tripe, and cathedrals of spare ribs upon which his own meagre viscera
were now beginning to suppurate. Alive, he could not even
have dreamt of this. Kitogue folded the sack, a virtuous smile on
his face. But even a gesture by Kitogue Stapleton was still somewhat
too large.
20 21

I
James Frazee
22
Bridge
At the hour of day
when the sun is so high
I must shield my eyes
to see you,
we stand at opposite ends
of a worn pedestrian bridge
as if in bordering countries,
expecting something to happen.
Below is an ancient canyon,
a thin line of opaque water
parting its ruddy valley.
The fleeting wing-shadow
of a hawk prowls over rock.
We have come to the desert
because you wanted the caress
of its arid air, wanted heat
to embrace you as I cannot.
And why am I here?
Maybe I'm in love with things
that come to an end,
erosion, the slow evaporation
of water, or an approaching sandstorm
which darkens the sky over the canyon.
We both wave for the other
to cross the bridge
but neither of us moves a foot,
and neither of us has a name
for this division.
There is a dull sigh:
the hawk clawing
something off a boulder
and gliding comfortably away.
'
Mark Hillringhouse
The Albino Lifeguard
I saw him
under a full moon
sitting alone on the lifeguard's chair;
a dark stretch of sand
along the black water.
There were others,
a young couple playing in the surf
a pair of seagulls,
a line of sea-life, crabs
running sideways in the luminescent foam.
The albino had his radio,
dark glasses, towel
and moontan oil
called milky tone.
It was a blazing moon
the cool beach washed in shadow
a little paler than the air
as the night wore on
the albino sat there getting whiter.
23

Nancy Takacs
24
Windows
Last night an oil drum across
the bay in Newark went up in flames.
I heard the shudder miles away
thinking the glass would shatter,
the whole house blow down,
and my hand went out
across the empty bed.
Today I gave
all of your clothes away,
folding you into each shirt, finding
ends of your life in your pockets.
I put on the ring you never wore,
so thin, your father's,
in the strong box,
to which I never had the key.
You are in the windows, where
I thought the glass would break.
They stretch over our front view:
a street I never really saw
before, the windows as high
as this house, the view
too perfect in its darkness.
The drum is still burning,
a breaking point hidden
in the bright water of the bay.
James McCorkle
The Fish Kill
For days when we were young
Fish washed ashore
Like ghost ships swollen with drifting —
The whole bay specked with their white hulls.
The sky was hot and empty:
No gulls scavenged off such death
Prompted by the slowness of summer,
The bay a ripening algae bloom
Lacing into the sand.
In school we practiced
Not to be afraid:
Air-raid drills and duck-and-cover,
Blankets rolled and hung on desks.
In case of attack
We had to walk a mile or so
To a pink stucco boom-era hotel,
Our blankets carried for warmth.
We would have had to walk along a road
Skirting the beach
And crossed by the narrow shadows of palms
Used to line up floats and marching bands
For Easter-time parades.
We were reconciled to this walk,
Inevitable as the sandspurs
And ant piles along the way,
Something we would have done
With the same bored curiosity
25

McCorkle
26
We had when watching the fish wash ashore:
Mullet and catfish,
Pinfish with their turquoise stripes like horizons,
Tarpon and bonefish,
Blowfish swollen to thorny balloons.
With sticks we rolled them over,
Poking at an eye,
Sand flies swarmed the beach.
We examined what was left of them
Without any understanding
Of this kind of ending or any other,
But still implicated in it:
In the heavy air of early August
That dries out the tidal pools
And flattens the wind,
We've completed someone else's crime;
The necessary guilt
Branched and rooted below the bay's surface,
Not stopping until it became a stench
Coiling in the coiled seaweed
And rising from the hot sand.
James Reidel
The Greenhouse Effect
Again, natural phenomena have turned
your breath to ice across your moustache,
a little shrine of your breath.
The earth shrugs at the sun,
the winter solstice sounds like pissing off the roof
in the night,
in the snow,
& the window is open enough
to pass a glass, stale water & an ice lens,
open enough so the furnace won't kill us.
Last year's
TIME color graphics, a coming ice age,
revised competitively
last through another greenhouse effect, &
this is the year of the greenhouse effect.
The potted plant on the sill outside is a dry claw
waiting for the greenhouse effect & bees big as fists
as have been found in seams of coal.
You will get cold,
there is a crack in the bus window's molding,
a cold whistle & the blown face of Aeolus
mat-knifed from an 18th-c. frontispiece in the British Museum
taped on by someone passing in the street.
20. xi.83
27

An Interview with Roy Blount, Jr.
Edited and Transcribed by Phil Jenkins
Roy Blount, Jr. was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1941
and grew up in Decatur, Georgia. He won a Grantland Rice sportswriting
scholarship to Vanderbilt University and a Woodrow Wilson
fellowship to Harvard, where he earned his M.A. in 1964. He
was a reporter, editorial writer, and columnist for the Atlanta Journal
from 1966 to 1968 and a staff writer and associate editor of
Sports Illustrated from 1968 to 1975. Since then he has written articles,
essays, verse, and fiction for numerous major publications,
including The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Playboy,
The New York Times, Esquire, Rolling Stone, Life, and Organic
Gardening. Mr. Blount is the author of four books, Crackers,
About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, One Fell Soup, and most recently
What Men Don't Tell Women.
PHIL JENKINS: In the acknowledgements to One Fell Soup, you
said if not for Ann Lewis, your tenth grade teacher, you might have
pursued another profession. What was her contribution?
ROY BLOUNT, JR.: Young and, thank God, highly overqualified,
Ann Lewis entered my life at a time when I had faced up to the fact
that I would never be a three-sport immortal and was giving some
thought to being a scientist. Except when explaining paramecia, I
had always tended to turn in comical themes, and I don't believe
that any teacher had told me to stop, but she was the first to give
me the impression that there might be a future in it. She talked me
into writing for the school newspaper, which had never occurred to
me before. I found that I enjoyed satirizing schoolmates who had
not considered me cool. She lent me books of Benchley, Thurber,
Perelman and White and several stacks of the New Yorker.
Through my high school days I was also influenced by Joel
Chandler Harris, Red Skelton, Jack Benny, Fred Allen, Walt Kelly,
28
An Interview with Roy Blount, Jr.
Booth Tarkington, Mark Twain, Roark Bradford, Ring Lardner,
and A.J. Liebling.
I can only assume that Providence put Ann Lewis in my high
school. By the time I was a senior I was already writing for money
and had no doubts about my prospects. Had I known how irregular
my progress was going to be thereafter, I would have been astounded.
PJ: When your high school classmates were tearing apart '51
Fords, you said you were 'getting just as greasy reading the Subtreasury
of American Humor.' Were you a strange boy?
RB: I certainly felt that I was looked upon as a strange boy. Noone
ever came up to me and said, 'You are a strange boy,' perhaps
because they were all going around worrying that they were looked
upon as strange boys or girls. They were pretty strange, and so was
I. I didn't fit into high school society until I started satirizing people,
after which I went steady with a majorette. I never came to like
•working on used Fords, but I did drive them too fast.
PJ: What publications did you write for at Vanderbilt?
RB: I wrote for the school paper, satirizing still, and was editor of
it my senior year. The civil rights movement was going on. It was a
great opportunity for moral superiority at an early age, and to this
day I am opposed to Colored drinking fountains. I also wrote a
couple things for the literary magazine —for example, an inordinately
long and ill-scanning stretch of verse about the praying mantis—and
was humor editor of it one year. I was a straight arrow,
didn't drink until my senior year, and then not much, but I would
say that I was scapegraceful enough, considering. In the summers I
had newspaper jobs, covering horse auctions and small fires.
PJ: What did your fellow graduate students at Harvard think of
you as a Southerner?
RB: People outside the South still tend to have caricaturish notions
of people with Southern accents. I went to Africa once,
Senegal, and liked it a great deal. It was more like Georgia than,
say, Connecticut is. I have caricaturish notions of Connecticut,
which give me great pleasure.
29

Jenkins
PJ: Did writing come easily to you after graduation from college?
RB: I was not as good at it as I had been in high school.
In high school I had been an advanced thinker, in life (which is
what I found myself in, more or less, after college), I did not know
anything. And in 1963 the culture at large seemed either too earnest
or too psychedelic to be funny.
PJ: Was your writing for the Atlanta Journal socially directed?
RB: I expressed disapproval of Lester Maddox's piety, of Lyndon
Johnson's foreign policy, of a local college's declining to hire Jewish
professors, of the Georgia Sheriff Association's sponsorship of allwhite
homes for needy boys. I took the position that a local underground
paper, The Great Speckled Bird, ought not to be run out of
town for printing the word 'motherfucker.' In those days there were
issues that a person could get his teeth into. Today instead of Lester
Maddox, we have Ronald Reagan, whom I honestly like less than I
did old Lester. When I say that, people think I am a crackpot.
PJ: While working at Sports Illustrated, you lived and travelled
with the Pittsburgh Steelers during the '73 season, and wrote about
it in About Three Bricks Shy of a Load. The Book gives one the impression
there was a lot of partying going on. What about the process
of getting the book written?
RB: I had hightime for seven months drinking with large men,
didn't write a word but took a lot of notes (sometimes in semiformal
interviews, but usually later at night), and then came back
to New York, and in three months typed up all the notes, procrastinated
for a while and wrote 125,000 words. Alone in a little
apartment on W. 102 St., I achieved my lifelong ambition of sleeping
from nine to five and writing all night. I ate grapefruit and lost a
lot of the beer-and-meat weight I had gained among the Steelers. It
was the best writing shape I have ever been in. I had a deadline,
which induced a humming desperation. There were week-long
stretches when I wrote 5,000 words a night, after rewriting the previous
night's 5,000 words. The day I turned in the first 100,000
words, my father, a large man who didn't drink, suddenly died. I
won't ever go through another ten months like that.
30
An Interview with Roy Blount, ]r.
PJ: One reviewer called Crackers a 'shameless' collection. Would
you like to defend yourself on that?
RB: Hardly any reviewers, I regret to say, found the book's tone
shameless. Some reviewers — perhaps because they don't see why
their reviews have not been collected (I do, though) —find it offensive
that someone has gotten a book out of previously published
bits and pieces. A good two-thirds of Crackers had not been previously
published, and much of what had appeared in magazines had
been written with the book in mind; yet people persist in calling it a
collection. I am pleased to discern that the prejudice against collections
is diminishing lately, but the notion lingers that it is immoral
to get paid twice for pieces of writing. Anyone who holds this notion
is unfamiliar with the economics of writing for an honest living.
PJ: The subjects of One Fell Soup range from genitals to a critical
review of newspaper style-and-usage manuals. What about this
range in taste?
RB: Genitals and English usage both strike me as tasty subjects.
Neither subject is far from my mind, whatever I am writing about. I
write for publications in which one must be circumspect about bringing
up genitals, and for publications in which one must be circumspect
about bringing up English usage. Playboy asked me to
write about balls; I wrote about genitals and, if you will notice,
English usage. More asked me to write about style manuals; I wrote
about English usage and, if you will notice, genitals.
PJ: In your New York Times review of The Best of Modern
Humor, you said, 'Humor flourishes in times of chipper but illadvised
composure.' Are there other reasons why humor is doing
well?
RB: No one has any serious answers to anything at the moment,
except Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan is a highly adept ninny.
PJ: In the same review you said 'Bruce Jay Friedman's Lonely
Guy's Book of Life is a much better book, line for line and in toto,
than many a bloated, enervating major comic novel such as Barth's
31

Jenkins
Giles Goat Boy or John Irving's The World According to Garp.'
Why so?
RB: The Lonely Guy book has clean lines, affords pleasure and
makes its points. Unless you are a dogged exegete, Giles Goat Boy
is as much fun to read as an Army manual on preventative
maintenance. It's not that I bridle at difficult texts; Ulysses is
wonderful to swim around in, whether you know what's up or not,
because it appeals to the senses. I could not find any music or flavor
in those parts of Giles Goat Boy that I tried to read.
I read all of The World According to Garp. I thought the first
and last thirds of it were dull and lame. The middle third got to me
because I am a parent and it provoked hair-raising parental fear;
but it made me feel manipulated, and it didn't harmonize with the
otiose two-thirds.
PJ: You said the New Yorker casuals 'still tend to be wound too
tight.'
RB: They're too oblique and form-conscious. I like to hear
somebody talking to me.
PJ: You quoted Woody Allen as saying writing jokes required 'That
leap. I'm afraid of dead patches.' Do you get dead patches?
RB: There is one gaining on me right now.
PJ: Please, a short poem?
RB: Please
(A short poem)
Oh, Oh
Marie Louise,
Won't you, won't you, won't you
Please.
32
Bev Jafek
You've Come a Long Way, Mickey Mouse
The name's John Q. Slade. I'm a talk show host. Been at it for
fifteen years and damned clever at it. It's hard work, and it
takes plenty of energy, creativity, and plotting, believe me.
It's not the only way for a talkative guy like me to move up, but it's
a damned good one. Anyway, Mickey was on last night, third time
for him, and the hell if I know whether I ever want to see him
again. He takes these liberties. Pompous as hell, that's Mick. But I
wish I could do the non-verbal thing like he can.
The non-verbal thing! Is he cool! He started out a great show,
believe me. I had a feeling it would be memorable, one of those
things that stew in the old brain box awhile. He looked great, that
was part of it. He's tall now, about six feet four, slender, kind of
twiny. And that fur! He's got it real plush —shiny, soft, almost
downy. You see it and you want to pet the guy. And of course
they've done a lot with his teeth. He really had a bite once but now
they've whittled them down and whited them over. A beautiful,
dazzling smile with the teeth just a little apart. One of those sensual,
half-grimacing smiles that black talk show hosts have. And
then that suit — sharpest cut you ever saw and like it's made of his
own fur.
And I almost forgot the ears! Out of this world! So soft! These
little tiny pink veins all over in and out, so tiny. And then the fur,
so fine! The ears are all to the side and resting, just resting like a little
baby, and so round and soft. It either just plain hypnotizes you
or you put your damned hand up there and it goes straight
through. We all know he's an image, so it's kind of embarrassing.
I mean, here's this great-looking guy —tall and all velvety
everywhere, his eyes shining like wet coal and wet diamonds,
dressed fit to kill, and every bit of fur combed and glowing, that
dazzling smile that says, 'It's O.K., do what you damned well
33

Jafek
please,' slinking in and sitting down on my show. Jeez, I think I
clapped as loud as the little old ladies in the audience.
We knew they'd done a good job on him. After all, he came in
long after the screen stars were processed. They were a kick for
awhile —real moving, talking people, but then again not; images
programmed for personality and volition. I even heard one of them
say she didn't know where the black box was anymore. But Mickey!
Nothing like him. He was a superb processed image, plus the fact
that there once was a real Mickey Mouse. I'm not kidding, once in
the twentieth century. Lots of people know about it; one of the first
cartoons.
So he sits down with that smile and arranges his legs with that
twiny, sinuous movement. The non-verbal thing, across the board,
the non-verbal thing. The guy's a prince! Now the image-processed
people, they were nowhere near as slick. They were kind of bumpy
when they moved —like people. Too real. But Mickey —he's anyone's
dream, maybe even his own.
Even his own. That's what bugs me! So anyway, first we gave
them a little hype of intellectual b.s. You know, carbon versus silicon
evolution and stuff like that. Mickey's good for that, he knows
the stuff people like in little bits. He draws his long black fingers
together in a thoughtful, prayer-like thing. And the dramatic dark
eyebrows. All like the urbane young guy thinking and thinking and
telling you like it is. That's what he did, you see? He spiced it up
with these little witticisms. Just what everyone wanted, the nonverbal
thing. Their mouths all hung open at once —it was like we
were in an aquarium.
"Silicon evolution," he was saying, "produces a more serene
life-form, it is true," and a little smile, highlighting the soft, greyblack
complexion. "You're really a funny lot," and the smile just
picking up that velvety moustache below the nose, oh he can do it!
"Perhaps you need someone like me to really appreciate you," and a
wide gesture to the right taking it all in, you know, the world. "I
sometimes wonder when you think you're really comfortable. Eh,
Jack?"
I didn't say anything, just watched him for the next move. So
he said, "When the fond old flesh just lies in a heap, eh?" And the
smile. And then real lights in those coal-black eyes. Style.
"A nice warm bath?" he said. "Just letting your mind wander?"
34
You've Come a Long Way, Mickey Mouse
And here he lost the smile, and his delicate little paw wandered
distractedly over his pocket as though he were dreaming on a hot
day, all the time in the world, baby . . . Really, he's better if you
don't listen to him.
"You couldn't stand it for long." Then he looked real serious,
no smile, just looking straight at me. "You're so ill-adapted to simple
living that you set up stimulants continually." And here he even
moves forward. "I sometimes think your greatest pleasure is blanking
out in a warm tub, and your greatest fear remaining there just a
moment too long."
You see how it was? That's when I really started wondering
about him. Had he tapped into another information source? I had
to think fast or it was going to get sticky. It's a hell of a day's work
getting things simple again. I tried a little question of my own.
"Well, Mick, where's the old black box these days?"
Now, that got to him. He shot right back in his chair with
nothing but venom in those black eyes and even a little mad working
with the teeth. Mussed his moustache real good. That's when I
noticed how really well-trimmed his snout whiskers were. It was a
low blow but afterall, why should the guy be so damned critical
when he's an image generated by an image-processor, right? Just remind
him of the black box from whence he came, and we're back
on the right track.
Then slowly the guy starts to relax while that little smile comes
across his face. And he reaches behind him and pulls out —can you
believe it? —his own tail. And that tail was something! Long,
covered with the softest gray fur ever imagined, kind of plump,
round, glowing a bit. God, you wanted to pull or caress the damned
thing. And he pulls it right out for anyone to see while twining his
lovely black fingers all around it. And then that smile. Something
about it just said: obscenity, obscenity. Like a whore doing a dance
naked or something.
You have to watch for these things on T.V. You can't just let
somebody get obscene. That's why Mick and the non-verbal thing
were so great. He could be obscene, alright, and it wasn't down
there in incriminating words. Something about the way he just
twined those fingers around the tail said: This body is obscene,
lovely, potent.
The audience went nuts. They called, cried, hooted as much as
35

Jafek
they wanted to. Mick, he's like a happening. He invites you to just
do something. Then a big whopper of a smile and those eyes. As
the sound came down, he just said, "Well, did I press a button on
the little black box?"
We didn't say a thing. Why should we? The guy's a showman.
It's a little wild with an image on the air, but dull moments
there are none. So I said to him, "Let's show the folks the historical
Mick. Remember that one?" Well, for sure he remembered because
images don't decay. And no sooner has the guy taken everyone's
breath away than he disappears. Or rather, he vaporizes foot by
foot. They're programmed to alter their own shapes, you know.
Some do it on request, compulsive types. Mick's really special —he
only does it on a whim. So then, who wobbles out from behind the
curtain but the old Mickey; this cartoon with big, heavy lines all
around the edges and a round little body only three feet tall. And
the way it moves! Real rough, back and forth, the little round head
bobbing up and down along with it. Wearing that baggy suit of— I
don't know what —railroad driver's pants? And the eyes with never
a spark, teeny little frightened buttons if you ask me. And on top
of it all, he doesn't want to come out, just holds onto the curtain!
That was one of the folks' biggest belly laughs of the year. He had
them jumping like popcorn. Looks like a poor little animal that
burrows all day, sleeps all night. And that's a fact. The life back
then was brutal, absolutely brutal.
Then blam! It's gone in a puff. And nothing comes out. I keep
waiting for good old Mick to show, but he doesn't. Then just plain
the weirdest thing. It was, it was-like a little cool flow all over
you, say, like being touched but then, all over like no touch. First
it's cool, then prickly, then numb. And no Mick. So I think, what's
all this? I looked at the folks and I knew the same thing was happening
to them. Nobody knows the exact substance of an image.
We know how to make them and use them, but what it is is something
else. As soon as they could change their own forms, they
started bringing in a little surprise or two that we didn't put there.
Like suddenly from behind my back this, well, this thing starts rising
up. First it's just a bunch of squares, cubes, triangles, arcs, we
don't know what. Then it kind of soars in place, lots and lots of
stretching and bagging around and more stretching and a real big
lump here, then there, and we don't know what kind of shape it's
36
You've Come a Long Way, Mickey Mouse
going to have. Sometime I ought to have an image describe these
things. Well, then we kind of begin to make out what it is. It's
Mick, or what's left of him. You could just make out the shape, so I
said, "Hey, fella —still with us?"
And of course he came out with a decent sort of "yes", so we
knew he was O.K. Then we got a real big smile —all jiggling rectangles,
but it was his for sure. I confess I was getting a little bit nervous,
because I really didn't know what the guy was going to turn
into next, and I do like to have a little control over my own show.
That, coupled with the fact that we're all supposed to be sitting
around chewing the fat, not turning ourselves into piles of cubes
and triangles. So I said, "Want to come back, Mick?" and the guy
doesn't answer for awhile. But then there's a pop, like a magician
would make when he pops something, and there he is sitting right
in front of us, velvety and cool like before. The great old Mick
— didn't even muss his fur. So I said, "That was the twentieth century
Mick, right?" and he just beamed yes while the audience was
clapping. So I said, 'That last one, did we put that into you?"
"Tossed it together myself, Jack," he said. The audience was
still clapping, and he held two fingers up in a little black "V" to
them. I always like to see that kind of thing on a talk show. I really
do. Makes everyone feel at home, like they've got alot in common.
So I decided, what the hell, I'll just drive the whole cart down
lovers' lane. "What's Minnie doing these days?" I asked him. Well,
the smile washes off his face like soap, and he caves in the middle
and stares straight at the folks with eyes like fried eggs.
"I haven't seen the woman in years." His face was the ashen
tone of a really expensive wool suit. Sometimes you have to watch
alot of daytime T.V. to really know human emotions, but I'd say
we're in for a long story full of the painful truth. And I say a talk
show's no good without one. "At first, she was just a lovely girl,
perhaps a little different from any other. At times, when I saw her,
it was in a perfect, static pose. You know it: against the background
of bright sunlight or pure dark, the very rich tones and colors
of hair and skin, the intensity of the eyes. And then this pose, this
image, becomes the thing you love. And when you are loving, even
surface to surface, the image is there in your thoughts, your private
obsession.
"You have no idea what your poetry is to an image experienc-
37

Jafek
ing love for the first time —what an incredible catalogue of mannerisms
and obsessions: the line of the cheek, depth of the eyes, the
long, slender hands, the quiet, gracious hands, the gestures —excitable,
elegant, feverish. As she distilled further into this pose, my
desire was continually rekindled. It had the most marvellous, violent
way of expanding. I could not even conceive of it as sane or insane,
emotional or mental. I was chasing an atom into the sky.
"And then I understood the enormity I had become.- I was like
you. My life was lived on a line parallel to yours, but my capacity
to reflect my own essence was so horribly perfect. I had discovered,
as only an image can, that all your ability to think and feel is based
upon truncated images. What an uncomfortable creature you are —
how prone to obsession, myopia, how divided from all you survey,
what a watcher, defender, conqueror. And so it is with love —the
more distant I was from her, the more incited I became.
"Then I truly saw the world you had created. For you are the
species who creates a world to invite images. I found that vehicles,
parks, whole streets, even cities had been created to incite images.
It was astounding — I now understood what your kind had been feeling,
what so much of your world was intended for. I became fascinated
with the dialectics of people alone — driving in cars, hidden
away with their books, sitting in their homes, drinking in whatever
corner the world allowed. For I now knew a human secret: When
alone, people have a truly horrifying hunger for another person, a
hunger beyond satisfaction, a life of images held like a hand of
cards against fate."
Well, the audience hung on all of that like a cliff, then dropped
away limp. Jeez, it was like he broke an egg on a skillet.
"I began to have a riotous inner life based upon my discovery.
As I walked on the street, I saw myself simultaneously as a huge,
open pore gushing fluid and as a hollow within a solid that never
knows its shape; in rain as rain itself."
The guy was excitable. And his face, I swear, looked like a
bottle of ketchup thrown into a wind of coal dust. Everything said,
and all the time he said it, had the shock of intense, of really wild
and crazy feeling. 'Well whoa boy,' I thought, 'time to bust up.' So
on came the commercial, and we all had a breather. Mick's a funny
guy, as the folks could plainly hear; but fact is, things don't quite
38
You've Come a Long Way, Mickey Mouse
happen to them like they do to Mick and frankly, it was breathtaking.
They love the guy. He puts the spark back in the old spark.
So when we get back, we find out that's only half the story. A
new mood comes over him —I can only call it a stillness, maybe
even a stillness before rain. He's stock-still in the midst of a crushing,
a lollapalooza, emotion. 'Well, we've got the time and the audience,
so let her rip,' I thought.
"Eventually," Mick said, "we did what all people do: we attempted
to merge our images. What we longed for most was satiety
and boredom; relief rather than possession. I suddenly began to notice
several of her rather eccentric mannerisms —a peculiar shining
black on her inner knees and elbows, a strange tendency to hiccough
upon rising, her rather poor and inefficient sinuses and — this
she could have spared me — her love of sleeping with a sheet wound
up over her head. So I lay beside, I was forced to think, a rather
erratically blackened, hiccoughing, senseless mummy. She could
become ridiculous, revolting, even horrifying, but she could not
- bore me. Boredom generates so few images. Eventually our union,
our colocation of images was something impossible for us to take
seriously. If I may attempt a vulgar generalization: Images are not
made to be joined but to stand in static poses. They are the essence
of what you think of as abstract thought, even of your world's dynamic
laws, yet all the while they completely subvert them.
"I tried not to despair. The image of despair is so horrifying
that I could not tolerate it for a moment. I kept her at a distance,
both physical and psychological, such that she neither attained nor
lost focus for me. In our home, I took the top floor and she the
bottom. And then, wonderfully enough, it occurred to us both that
we might set up an interim fantasy room between us, and so reapproach
one another. We gave it all the surfaces of fantasy —dark
walnut, wind instruments, candlelight, chimes. For you, conscious
fantasy is enthralling. For images, on the other hand, it is the blackest
despair. All the acts we might have carried out we knew in advance
to be artifice. So we sat in that quiet, horrible room, unable
to speak or raise our heads or even cry.
"One day I saw her standing before me, nearly coming into
focus. Then I knew how utterly miserable she was. I stood up, intending
to embrace her. She came toward me in such a wavering,
39

]afek
hesitant way, as though she both loved and hated what she did.
Then she gently took my face in her hands and bit my cheek and
throat until I could feel the warmth and moisture of blood. I knew a
pure metaphysical horror: She had actually altered my image. In
our passion, we had become fully imaginable to one another and
therefore vulnerable. At that moment, she disappeared to me and I
to her. That was the end."
You can imagine what a tussle it was getting the show back on
its feet after that one. That's the kind of thing you want to sit still
awhile after. Or go to sleep. Or just plain blow your nose. And
that's why old John Q.'s worth every penny they pay me.
"Buck up, man," I said to him. "You'll ride it out. I mean, how
long are you going to remember it, anyway? Like a dream, probably."
"That's kind of you, Jack," he said, still real deflated.
So I went on, "And what's more, that old love muckety-muck
is pretty much the human condition." He didn't say anything and
didn't look like he was going to. The folks looked great, though —
mellowed out and comfy as hell. Mick can do that. He can scare the
pants off them, take their breath away, then bow out. The best talk
show material, without a doubt.
"We all got to get close to one another, and sometimes we get
bit for it, sure enough," I said. "Intimacy, communication, that's
what makes life tick."
"Not quite, Jack," he said in that cool, remote voice, and here
he crosses his twiny legs again and smiles. I was glad to see something
sparkling in his eyes, but just the same, it always scares me.
"What you love is the image of intimacy. You have no idea
what it is. Images and abstractions are the most graceful assailants;
who can stop the warring of dancers?"
Now that wasn't so bad as it sounds. The folks like a little
obscurity now and again. They all rested a little more deeply into
their chairs and a few lit cigarettes, thoughtful like. "Well," I said,
"talk shows seem to be as eternal as what beats in the human
breast." Afterall, a little promo for yourself now and again never
hurts.
"The image of communication. You're in love with your images,
even the most insipid ones. Alone, in your homes, you're far
40
You've Come a Long Way, Mickey Mouse
too self-conscious to talk to yourselves. It would reveal your truth
to you. It would terrify you."
"Well, I guess we're the restless, curious species, Mick. We just
go off and explore one thing, found another, learn to control this
and that. The up side of carbon. Our heads really light up, it's true.
It may seem a little bright for someone out of silicon, but these
things are just the biological truth of life. Your kind has the efficiency,
we've got the nerve."
"I wonder, Jack . . . ." he said. He's been getting deeper and
deeper into the chair, and I confess, I thought either something
scary or another bunch of rectangles and cubes was going to come
flying out. "I think of you as rather blank, as perhaps having few
attributes outside of your images. But you and the folks are plenty
dazzling with them. You're restless and curious for them, for little
else, perhaps least of all for one another."
You see what a tough guy he is to have around! He's velvet,
he's funny, he vaporizes, and then he just throws some more dust in
your eyes. It was getting late and, frankly, I thought it might be a
better thing for the folks to hear a bunch of decent, honest commercials
than listen to Mick anymore. So I said, "Hey, you're one of
our images, too, old fella." Close it on a little bonhomie. The
strangest light came on in his eyes —bright, angry, violent, even
brilliant. It's like I popped him on the snout. "Mick, get it together,"
I whispered. And aloud I said, "You've come a long way, Mick."
And still he didn't say a thing, just lounged back in the chair like
something that wants to coil up in a cave. God, what a strange,
powerful guy to have on my show! I suppose you know I admire
the hell out of him, but he's scary as they come.
Then he smiled that bright old Mick smile and said, "So have
you, Jack, so have you," but I really wonder what he was thinking
before he said that. A fascinating guy— you want to know what's in
the gaps and peeps and silences. Then good old Mick! He made his
eyes sort of wan and milky and held up his fingers in those V's
again. The folks roared. I mean, what a performance!
Still, I never want to see the guy again. On the other hand, it'll
be damned exciting.
41

Ted Kooser
42
A Photograph Of Edgar Poe
for Marsha Cooper
His was a face that today you might find
on a salesman of ladies' budget shoes
in a department store basement, a face
looking out over a collar and necktie,
that of a pale little man on his knees,
holding a foot in his delicate hands
as if he were soothing a pigeon —
a three-pack-a-day smoker, with fingers
yellow and acrid as pieces of horehound,
and sunken eyes that glitter with fever.
His storage room is narrow, and walled
with boxes stacked like the skulls of monks
in a catacomb. The light is dim.
There Edgar goes when he has warmed his hands
on the feet of a beautiful woman,
goes there to pace the narrow passages
and press his trembling fingers to his eyes.
Poe, Edgar. Edgar Poe. Poe Edgar Poe.
r
Elisa New
5th Sonnet After An Abortion
The oyster conceives of its own beautiful
heart in one contraction, slipping a hood
of precious milk around its deepest injury,
no chip, no other too foreign to be
nursed. Therefore, I tip back my head for oysters
tonguing each oyster for half finished pearls
to plagiarize, tonguing each for some sand
to use for seed, or some shell to chant over.
It was bitter: that first dream of the woman
grinding pearls in her teeth. I made it up.
Also, the white room, pock marked where miniatures
hung, the creased cradle of hospital paper.
I made them all up, calling from far off
Isn't this pretty? don't you think me kind?
43

Katherine Kane
44
It's No Costume Ball
But if you ask me,
there's a terrified bride in the soul.
The way she roams the halls,
her gown trapping me like blowing snow.
Envying my childhood, kissing me on the nose.
Not everyone can see a soul.
But I've seen my grandmother's old leg
go five times for the ledge of the well,
while her family sat distracted,
watching the dogs eating their tails.
I wonder if I'd ever kill myself;
the day she really tried there was ghostly
laundry dancing on the line, and we were voting
for pot roast. It was the neighbor boy cried don't,
and Daddy yanked her down.
Nana, I finally spoke; I got it so she'd join me
in the river. We snuck around the grove
past Mother in her apron, frowning at us both.
We stepped in easily. Her skirt smelled foul.
Then she gave a roar, and dunked me like a doll.
D. Nurske
The Settlement
1945: the batters
are swinging for the fences.
The wind drives all flies foul.
In a small town in Canada
my grandfather watches in disbelief:
he does not know
what the diagonal path
means for him, or what the wheat
stretching beyond the bleachers
to the Arctic means for his children.
In the ninth a ball lands fair:
the crowd shouts Ah: he whispers Ah.
At dusk a crystal radio
brings news of peace
in a Pacific Theater.
That night he dreams of the old country,
the wind bending the pines,
turning the lakes a color
blank as the name of God.
When he wakes he hunts
for that north wind and finds it
singing in the wire of his new enormous fence.
45

Adelheid Fischer
46
Winter Solstice on Lake Superior
There is the dry sound of wings beating still
in the walls of the house.
Outside the temperature is falling,
the air is bluer.
Water is our only clock.
Every third wave booms on the rock,
retreats hissing.
Drops on the windows
have sprouted into frozen feathers,
the glass is as lush
as a dancer's fan.
Reading all afternoon
it's five o'clock
and the light wanes.
I watch you until
the pages of your book drift into the blue
light of rising water.
You drop into yourself,
the words fall,
follow you
and become dreams.
Dreaming alongside the restless coming
and going of this inland sea,
we are like the tall Norwegians here
who drag their deliberate lives after themselves
far into the longest night of the year.
Aspects of Art:
A Lecture By Mario Soldati
/ was speaking of things I treasure, and I never dreamt of the art of
making a novel. In my youth, I made outlines for novels; in writing
these outlines I froze up.
— Stendahl in a letter to Balzac,
October 16, 1840
Editing Assistance by Frank MacShane
Aspects of writing (or literature) is a subject to which I have
never given much thought. What does a painter do? He
paints. He doesn't think about the aspects of painting. A
composer? He writes music without thinking of the aspects of composing
and music. And similarly, a writer writes without a thought
for the aspects of writing and literature.
In hunting for the first sentence, the opening, the attacco of
this piece, I stared at the blank, white page. It brought to mind
Mallarme's:
O nuits! ni la clarte deserte de ma lampe
sur le vide papier que la blancheur defend .
In other words, the idea of nothingness, the void. The image "le
vide papier que la blancheur defend" applies as well to the art of
painting: from the nothingness that is the writer's point of depar-
*Oh nights! Neither the barren clarity of my lamp on the empty paper that the
whiteness defends . . .
47

Soldati
ture, to the nothingness from which the painter sets out —from
paper to canvas.
Let's start with painters.
How happy the painter's lot when photography hadn't been invented!
I made this discovery one day towards the end of last June.
Curiously, I made it in two installments; the first in the morning,
the second in the late afternoon.
Milan. I had awakened shortly before four a.m. and hadn't
been able to get back to sleep. A wan greyness was beginning to
filter through the blinds, and as I peered into the darkness and
leaned towards the beds, I realized that my wife was still deep in
her well-deserved sleep. Taking great care not to awaken her, I put
on a robe and slipped out of the room.
I went down the corridor with feline tread, opening and closing
all the doors one after another until I reached the dining room.
Shut up there in front of the TV screen until after midnight, we had
been careful to open the three French windows overlooking the
park before going to bed, and the night chill had cleansed the air. I
sniffed the harsh odor of stale smoke only when I went around collecting
ashtrays.
Outside, I set them down in a corner of the stone terrace,
under the railing. Standing again, I saw to my left, above the old
dark roofs beyond the garden, the patch of sky that was turning
light. I stood and stared at it with a curious relief as if, in a moment
of madness, I had doubted the inevitability of dawn.
Then I grew tired. I moved from the railing and, perhaps with
the idea of going back into the kitchen to brew some coffee, I
turned towards the French window to go back inside. Suddenly
breathless, I stopped at the threshhold. I had seen my mother on
the opposite wall in the dark dining room. Yes, my mother was
there: alive, erect, bold in her white summer dress, ready for a
garden party. Her head was haloed by her broad straw hat, and
over one shoulder she was holding her dark sapphire, parasol
whose faint gold border stood out against the background of an
even darker blue sky. This was the life-size oil portrait that Cesare
Maggi had painted in 1919. From that great colored rectangle, from
that jewelled timeless space, my mother looked at me, pensive and
48
Aspects of Art
loving. She seemed to be peering into my present life, still watching
over it with passionate concern, hopes and fears, as she had long
ago.
I wasn't frightened by this. I had known that portrait since
1919.1 was thirteen at the time, and since the fascinating Maggi had
the reputation in Turin of being a lady-killer, my mother had
always taken me along as a chaperone every time she sat for him. I
had always kept the portrait in my house, so you can be sure I
didn't think I was seeing ghosts. On the contrary, I was so used to
seeing it that it was hardly visible to me anymore.
I also have, on the walls of my seaside house in Tellaro, a
number of framed artistic photographs of my mother, who was a
very beautiful and much courted woman. But all of a sudden, I
understood that all those photographs were inert fragments, cold
or even false images, in which only a dry husk of my mother's life
remained. This painting, on the other hand, was something infinitely
different, something more. This portrait suggested that the
painter had captured my mother's soul with a power that was
magical and supernatural — and yet more natural than photography—and
had been able to perpetuate her life.
Cesare Maggi was a Post-Impressionist painter of great talent
and culture. He had a precise technique and all the professional
skills. Nevertheless, it is clear that in painting my mother, Maggi
had a single, central aim: to convey, as much as possible, the life of
the model. His essential concern as he was painting was not how to
paint; it was to portray my mother so that the painting would be a
good likeness of her physical features and, even more, of her expression,
poise, gaze, breath.
But to copy reality was not Maggi's true aim, though he firmly
believed it was. It was only in that way, by imitating life, that life
could be given to a work. Clearly, Maggi admired my mother's
beauty. He may have been in love with her, but he had not sought
out art. The painting style had come on its own, independently of
Maggi's will, and perhaps even without his knowledge. What is art
except a by-product of life?
I then remembered what Jean Cocteau said to me one of the
few times I had been lucky enough to be with him. It was one night
49

Soldati
at Cannes, on the Croisette. He was complaining about those who
are always talking about style in literature, art, the cinema. "Le
style, c'est de tacher de ne pas en avoir un — mais, sans y parvenir!"*
In short, style means seeking not to have any. The artist seeks
to avoid style because he wants to communicate with others in the
clearest, simplest, most universal manner possible. In other words,
the true artist never thinks about how he is writing, painting, or
shooting a film. The true artist thinks only of what he is writing,
painting, shooting. Faced with the empty, white canvas, caught up
completely in his subject, his model, his story, and in his desperate
love of reality trying to reproduce it as faithfully as possible, he
seeks to avoid style. And he fails.
This is the opposite of what happens today —at least with the
young Italian writers, who deliberately seek a style. They will invent
or construct one and as a last resort will even shroud their
texts in an artificial, self-imposed obscurity in order to form a style.
The style and language with which art expresses itself must be
limpid. The paths by which art arrives at the truth may well be
shrouded and obscure, but truth, after all, is a relatively simple
thing. We are surrounded by intellectuals so snobbish that they are
ashamed of simplicity, for fear of not being a la page. In films,
Bergman, Antonioni and Fellini drop veils between themselves and
the public to make the public believe them profound, complicated,
obscure. But it is a deliberate obscurity. In truth they are elementary.
Many modern artists are like this.
To paraphrase Cocteau: the artist tries to avoid style and does
not succeed. He doesn't succeed because the inspiration of reality,
fused with his nature, training and culture has already created his
style —or something that, sparked by inspiration, becomes style.
The clearest image of what I want to say —and of what
Cocteau said —about art as a magic by-product is that artistic inspiration
is like a fluid raw material, an emulsion of life, a condensation
of passion that enters into a mould where it solidifies, freezes
and shines radiantly beautiful. You can't study this mould. You
can't choose it in advance. You can't program it. You are that
mould, and yet you don't know it perfectly. We can only love —
* Style, it is to try not to have one —but, without ever succeeding.
50
Aspects of Art
and create by the power of love —that raw material which fills the
pre-existing mould. Style, to which Cocteau referred, would then
consist of a pre-existing mould that takes on life directly from life,
passion, love.
To use an analogy, the light switch is equivalent to some banal
little happening, at times quite ordinary, that the writer reads or
encounters or hears. At the moment he encounters it, he releases a
current, the idea of a story or even a novel. It is characteristic of
this switch that it is independent of the story it sparks. There is no
relationship, in fact, between the light switch and the current, except
in the concrete act of connecting or disconnecting one wire and
another so that the current may flow or not flow. This is the same
as the famous germ of which Henry James speaks in his Notebooks.
Some Americans today are so naive or so didactic that they
have set up certain university courses that aim at teaching the Art
of Fiction. Students enroll, thinking they will learn how to write a
novel. If their professor is intelligent, the course in fiction becomes
a course in the history of literature. The course title "Art of Fiction"
is nonsense, because in order to write novels, you must know how
not to write them. You must forget novels. Instead, you must suffer
over something, love something you have lost so much that you
want to recover it, and happiness with it.
In 1929, the Concordat between the Fascist regime and the
Church gave Italians the impression that Fascism would never end.
A young man at the time, I accepted a fellowship at Columbia University
which my professor, Lionello Venturi, had procured for me
so that I could escape. I left with the idea of staying in America and
becoming an American citizen. I didn't succeed and was obliged to
return to Italy. It's a long and complicated story, but what matters
now is only this: that from the sorrow of my failure —without
meaning to and almost without thinking about it —I wrote a book
to console myself. Many people still say it is my best. I wrote
America Prima Amore to free myself from an impossible desire,
from the emptiness that desire had created inside me.
Narration is a form of substitution, a way to recover equilibrium.
Anyone who says that the purpose of the artist is to produce
art is talking nonsense. The artist never makes art. The artist
must live, somehow. He is desperate but he must live. This is the
basic thing for him. The rest is all astheticism. You should never
51

Soldati
know what you are doing. Every time you start writing, you
should lose your head. You must write for some purpose besides
art: because there is someone you love and cannot win; because
you are poor and would like to be rich; because you dream of
travelling but haven't the means; because you long for health and
are ill.
Dante Alighieri was a very intelligent man, far more intelligent
than anyone we've met in our lifetime. He knew everything. He
was a walking encyclopedia of medieval culture. He had studied
ancient philosophy: the Stoics, the Skeptics, the Sophists, the
unbelievers. ... He knew very well that there was no proof of the
existence of Hell, Purgatory, Paradise, that there was no proof of
the immortality of the soul and the next world. He knew it so well
that he must have suffered terribly as a result. From the anguish
that was hidden in him, he must have said to himself: So, Paradise,
Purgatory and Hell don't exist, eh? All right, I'll invent them! And
so the Divine Comedy may well be the result of the most terrifying
doubt that ever devastated the spirit of a great man. Dante may
have written because he didn't believe, or rather, didn't believe
enough. Here again, we see the work born from a void, from a
lack.
Another extreme case, analogous to but different from
Dante's, is that of Mallarme. Mallarme died at the age of fifty-six
when he believed that he was finally in a position to write his
masterpiece. He had little consideration for all the poems he had
written until then, all the verses which he felt were not much different
from the epigrams, madrigals and compliments composed
for the fans of the ladies whose drawing rooms he visited. Obviously
then, his inspiration was not a determination to produce art
or write poems, but came from a need to discern the supremo truth
and pierce the mystery of existence. It was a gnostic, transcendental,
metaphysical passion; the need to find something that would
replace God. Mallarme's poems are only a by-product of this
philosophical passion. His inspiration was similar, but at the same
time contrary, to that of Dante. Mallarme was a nonbeliever
wracked by the hope of finding faith, a hope just as unconfessed as
Dante's doubt.
The wonderful narrative art of Robert Louis Stevenson was
also a magic by-product of his life. He suffered from consumption,
52
Aspects of Art
and his life was a battle with medicines, fevers and cold sweats.
From his bed he dreamed of vast expanses, horses, adventures on
land and sea, and in his novels he described battles, ships, pirate attacks,
intrigues, storms. His life was a contradiction, just as The
Master of Ballantrae — the character who, among all the literary
figures of all times, is the one that I personally like the most —is a
contradiction. That character is a wicked man who could have
been good if he had wanted to be. He says of himself with a sigh,
"The malady of not wanting!"
Similarly, all Conrad's writing was born from something that
was taken from him forever. He wrote in English because the Russians
drove his family from Poland and forced him to emigrate. His
whole production might be entitled Lost Poland, or rather Lost
Homeland, and Lost Sea, as well — the sea which he had sailed for a
very short time, as Norman Sherry's fascinating book has demonstrated.
Many critics and many authors seek an ideological support for
. the characters and situations in novels. I would like to remind them
of the withering sentence with which T.S. Eliot defined the
greatness of Henry James: "His pure mind was never soiled by an
idea." Eliot means that James thought by way of sensations, landscapes
and characters from which he made concrete, living events.
This does not prevent some of James's characters from being
steeped in ideology. We have only to think of the terrorists in The
Princess Casamassima or the feminists in The Bostonians. But these
feminists and terrorists are steeped in ideology only insofar as it fits
their characters. They were created by an author without ideologies
who, because of this, could allow them to live and act freely. This,
perhaps, is one of the reasons why James has never been sufficiently
appreciated by certain critics.
James was not only a great writer, he was also extraordinarily
prolific. I mentioned his Notebooks before. In them he jotted down
hundreds of germs, hundreds of plots for stories and novels, more
or less developed. James virtually lacked a life of his own but was
brimming with an unspecific vitality. He almost seems not to have
been human; something less but, at the same time, something more.
Again the void comes to mind, the blank page which, by its very
emptiness, sparks an extraordinary love of life in the author and
thus creates an entire universe of overwhelming humanity. If sor-
53

Soldati
row, disappointment, nostalgia, loss, doubt, absence or void gives
birth to art as a by-product, it cannot be surprising that the work of
James is quantitatively immense. He lacked a life almost entirely.
And he tried to replace it, almost entirely, by writing.
On that day last June in Milan when, at the first light of dawn,
I encountered my mother's portrait, I thought I understood why
and how a painter paints. Later that afternoon, returning to the
seaside at Tellaro, I saw the works that a local painter was collecting
for a one-man show. He paints formalist, abstract canvases.
I still haven't become accustomed to today's painting. I still
don't know, when I find myself facing it, if I am right or wrong in
following my instinct, which is irreparably figurative and narrative.
Is it right or wrong for me to try to discover the subject, to
imagine —or perhaps invent from whole cloth —the figurative and
human reality that these works represent? Perhaps they absolutely
do not and do not want to represent any such thing.
In dealing with a painting, as with any work of art, we must
distinguish between the apparent subject and the true subject. The
apparent subject — reality, the model, the landscape, the still-life
that painters once copied, or rather, thought they were copying —
could be, for them, voluntary and conscious. In other words, a
false aim. The true subject, the vital spirit that, as Cocteau says, is
transformed irresistibly, irrepressibly, into style, had to be involuntary
and unconscious.
What's happened to painting in this century is this: After the
invention and development of photography, our painters could no
longer deceive themselves so easily into thinking they copied reality.
They had to renounce the false aim. In the process, the real subject
became voluntary and conscious. Painters have been forced to
look for it in their imaginations, imaginations which have slipped
and, nearly always, fallen into a voluntary and conscious way of
painting. It is no longer reality, no longer life. In this way, style
itself has become the model of art.
Naturally, great and genuine abstract painters have existed
and still do exist. I think of Pollock and Burri, and I could also
name De Stael, Fautrier, Dova, Norlotti, and many others. How
have they, these great artists, resolved the problem of involuntary
and unconscious creation? In just one way: by believing in their
54
Aspects of Art
own imaginations, by believing in their dreams, deliriums, nightmares,
hallucinations, visual obsessions, and by believing in them
strenuously, without rational intervention. They believe in them
exactly as in so many bodily, bulky realities, rich in personal
recollections and pictorial references. They believe in memory,
unaware and only half-conscious of what their eyes have seen — including
the works of other painters. This is a new faith, simple and
bold and, perhaps, basically diabolical. But it is a necessary faith,
and it is the only one possible for those who no longer have the
strength to forget the existence of photography.
Does there exist for literature something that corresponds, in
its effects, to what the intervention of photography represented for
painting? The answer is yes. There does exist something that has,
perhaps, the same function. It is the loss of illusion. The death of
God.
Faith in God simplified everything. It didn't abolish mystery,
but it concentrated it and set up an affirmative opposition to it.
With the death of God, mystery has spread out over all reality.
Many complain of having been deceived by a system of illusions.
Many would actually like to take their revenge. Skeptics and cynics
smile over the idea of lost illusions. Neither realize that systems
of illusions contained something that could exist, and perhaps did
exist, outside the system: the pulse, like that of a vital artery; the
divine breath of truth.
55

Tony Crocamo
The Ambush
God! . . . Once the lying spirit of a cause
With maddening words dethrones the mind of men,
They're past the reach of prayer. . . .
— C.S. Lewis
(Canto IV, Dymer)
Hays knew, as sets of arms, below and above, pushed and
pulled him onto the screaming med-evac helicopter, that
he had been sobbing for an hour. He looked forward to the
ride and was grateful for the noise. Crying could not be heard over
the chopper's painful slicing whine.
Shaking off the doorgunner's helpful hand, he curled himself
on the vibrating metal floor. His rucksack, clumsily heaved, came
aboard lopsided and flopped onto the floor. The M-16, so recently
fired, its chamber and magazine-well now empty, was slapped on
top of the ruck. Hays kept his back to the doorgunner who kicked
the pack and rifle under the collapsible canvas web seats and returned
to door and gun. The floor pitched with the chopper's rising
and Hays was free of the landing zone his company had cut yesterday.
He hated cutting landing zones. He was getting short, only 63
days to go, and he longed to go home. Each day's passing made survival
seem a promise, while each day's arrival made that promise
seem unattainable. Hays called it the irony factor, a cliche of war:
piano players are shot in the hand, track stars get leg wounds, and
the less time you had left in-country, the greater the danger —fear,
really —of being killed. This made short-timers cautious and anxious.
Their daily conversation included a mention of a friend who
56
The Ambush
bought it with a month, a week, or a day to go. Word was that
Price got killed during a rocket attack in Da Nang while waiting to
board the plane to California. 'Dead in Da Nang. What a bitch,'
thought Hays.
Hay's strategy was to avoid the war. Being in the infantry
made that difficult. Using explosives to clear an area spacious
enough to permit a supply helicopter to land, or swoop low enough
to dump its cargo, increased that difficulty. Nothing the supply
choppers brought, except the final ride out of the jungle, was worth
the exposure of cutting an LZ.
Two platoons secured the perimeter while the other half of the
company blew up, chopped, and removed trees and underbrush. It
was a noisy process, and in case Uncle Ho had deaf recruits in the
area, choppers, like the Star of the East, would eventually hover
overhead, pointing the way to this place. Every five days the company
was resupplied and the enemy notified of the Americans' latest
location. In between, the company was stealthy.
Hays hacked at the thick green tangle of nameless brush with
his machete. He molded C-4 plastic explosive low on the trunk of a
tree too large to chop. Later, as machetes became heavy, C-4 would
be used to splinter even scrawny trunks. After the second explosion
he went to the perimeter to speak with Hartzman, a new arrival
who had drawn guard duty. Short-timers usually shunned new recruits,
fearing their inexperience. Time stratified the social order of
the platoon. Friendships grouped around departure dates. Introductions
went from names and home towns to "How long you
got left?" Being short was a mark of superiority.
Hays figured Hartzman, being new, would rather work on the
LZ. Blowing up trees was busier, more of a distraction than squatting
alone in a foxhole and staring at the jungle. Hays didn't tell
Hartzman that he suspected the construction noise might entice VC
to lob a few mortar rounds on the LZ. They traded places. It was an
even swap: Hays preferred the foxhole vigil; Hartzman longed for
the noise and companionship of the LZ.
The LZ, although cleared without interruption, was not completed
until dusk. Hays did not consider the absence of enemy activity
reassuring; he viewed it not as proof of safety but merely as
no reply to a loud request for trouble. He was sure that every VC
57

Crocamo
and North Vietnamese Army Regular within miles now knew
where he was. If they didn't make trouble it was because they chose
not to. When they wanted to, they would; tonight, tomorrow—whenever
they chose to.
The company secured the LZ for the night. They would be
resupplied in the morning. Firebases within range were given the
company's coordinates in code. Captain Olin called for rounds to
be dropped within 150 meters of the perimeter. The first shell, nonexplosive,
was close. Olin called in an adjustment. The second
dummy shell burned through the air over Hays's head and stabbed
the jungle maybe 100 meters out. The captain asked for more elevation
and a live third round. The triple-canopy jungle swallowed the
light and muffled the sound and force of the explosion. Olin was
satisfied that artillary had the company plotted.
Hays had second watch on a four-man position. Between 10
P.M. and 6 A.M. he'd be on watch two hours, off six. He might get
five hours of sleep. In the morning he would blacken another day
on his wallet calendar. 'The morning ritual,' he thought to himself
as he spread the poncho and camouflage blanket on suitably level
ground, 'always the morning.' Monday began with the denial of
Sunday. The past 303 days did not count. Time had stopped when
he arrived in Vietnam and wouldn't begin again until a year had
passed. The 62 days ahead, if there were 62 days ahead, contained
all time. He would leave the last calendar day unblackened.
Haliday came to him, offering the Seiko. Eleven P.M. Hays
dropped the wristwatch into his fatigue shirt pocket. In an hour he
would hand the timepiece to Rawlins. Sixty minutes later Rawlins
would shake Betts awake. Betts would pass it on to Haliday. Haliday
to Tinker to Evers to Chance, to hell with it. Hays hadn't had
more than four hours of uninterrupted sleep in his nine months in
the field. Night guard duty was another tedious inconvenience, and
Hays often had to struggle to remain awake for the full hour of
watch. Hays had never hit trouble after dark, except for the night
Tree Frog died.
Betts was convinced Tree Frog had dropped a grenade he
meant to chuck at some offending shadow, and Betts had been only
a few yards away when it happened.
"I'm sitting there, looking out at nothing," say Betts, "and he's
58
The Ambush
at the next position. I can't see him, it's about 2 A.M., and he scares
the hell out of me by callin' over. He goes, 'Haliday, that you?'"
"'No, it's me —Betts,' I tell him. 'Quiet, will you? You'll get us
killed.'"
"'I see something, to my left, towards you,' he says, and his
voice is all jumpy, so now he has me goin', and I don't see anything.
Then he says, 'Oh shit.' Just like that, 'Oh shit,' and then the explosion
knocks me on my ass and the next thing I know the whole perimeter
has opened up. I thought we were under attack. I call to
Tree Frog, but he's not answerin'," says Betts.
For the better part of an hour that night the perimeter was out
of control. Captain Olin, then new to the field, quickly called in artillery
support close to the perimeter. Trees that leapt forward with
the burning, blinding flashes of exploding shells were slammed
back into place by the fearsome gravity of darkness. The earth
quaked. Sudden looming shadows were more frightening than the
relentless dark of night undisturbed. Nervous crouching men fired
to drown out, to control, the threatening din of shell and rifle fire.
They fired at the dark, murdering their fear.
Tree Frog was dead. A bird removed him the next morning.
Even months later a few guys continued to argue that VC got Tree
Frog. They swear they saw VC that night and insist they were firing
at VC, not shadows, not darkness.
Hays hadn't seen VC that night, but he did spray four magazines'
worth low to the ground in a fan-shaped pattern spreading
out from his foxhole. You could get killed by things you couldn't
see, by things that weren't even there. Just like Tree Frog.
Hays usually thought of Tree Frog when he began his watch.
Even so, the face and voice of the dead boy from Texas were fading.
All the dead fade. To kill the hour of guard Hays thought of
home. He had discovered that by concentrating he could take a vivid
walk through his house. These walks began in his room. It was always
night. He was always alone. The rooms were no longer places
to him. They had become details of wallpaper, paint, woodwork and
furnishings. One night he had heard the tick of the oven clock. It
was a fleeting flash of an experience, the impression of a sensation,
gone before it could be examined or savored, yet undeniably real,
only weakly impeached by the impossibility of its having occurred.
59

Crocamo
Tonight he examined the dust snagged in the rectangular grids
of heating vents. He explored the rivers and tributaries of ceiling
cracks and he memorized the medicine cabinet clutter. He arranged
pantry and cupboard and built stacks of dishes that bore familiar
faded patterns and known nicks. He stood dumb before the 15 watt
refrigerator, star of the dark kitchen night. Then he paused before
the bookcase and deciphered spines until the hour had passed.
At midnight he made his way to Rawlins, shook him, and gave
him the watch. They traded whispers. Once assured Rawlins was
awake, Hays crept to his poncho and wrapped himself in the lightweight
poncho-liner-blanket. In three hours he'd be back on watch.
The excesses of jungle growth were masked by the cool morning
mist seeping from the wet, decaying, green-browning-black
jungle floor. The company was waking. Yawning, stretching figures
glided in and out of the gray-white plumes of mist. Bed gear
was rolled up, weapons were wiped dry, canteens were shaken.
Smokeless blue flames from solid ovals of sterno boiled canteen
cups of water for instant coffee or cocoa. Men continued yesterday's
jokes, arguments, complaints and conversations as they rummaged
through rucksacks, blackened calendars, disarmed claymores and
trip flares and used the green latrine. By 8 A.M. the heat arrived.
The sun had again defeated cool mist and jungle shade.
The supply helicopters would arrive within hours. The choppers
disgorged food, ammunition and sundries in a profligate frenzy
of logistical prowess. Choppers brought mail, clean fatigues, socks,
soap, C-rations, candy, razors, batteries for the company radios,
ammunition, pens, paper, LSA lubricant to keep M-16's, M-60's
and M-79's rust-free, shaving brushes and toothbrushes (most of
which were used to clean weapons) and cigarettes. The birds also
brought in new recruits and removed men going on R&R or heading
home.
Much of the delivered material was carefully ruined and
thrown into sumps dug at the resupply sites. What wasn't carried
had to be destroyed or it would be salvaged by the VC. The Vietnamese
perception of what was beyond repair was culturally dif-
The Ambush
ferent from the typical American view. Consequently, booby traps
fashioned from discarded U.S. supplies were common. Rawlins
was fond saying that the army was more generous in supplying the
VC than the navy was in supplying the marines.
The nire-by-four-inch, two-pound battery for the PRC-25
radio, the prick-25, was one of the most dangerous pieces of garbage
generated by the Americans. Each company carried at least
four prick-25's. They were the link to the true arsenal: artillery,
Cobra helicopters (250 mph, 1,200 rounds per minute), jets, naval
guns, even air force bombers. The usual VC response to this overwhelming
firepower was to be gone before it arrived.
The radios summoned the dragons the VC feared; the radios
were never off, and within two days the batteries that powered
them were too weak to transmit or receive dependably. Though too
weak for the radio, these batteries still had enough juice to detonate
a blasting cap embedded in a mound of C-4, or awaken a dud artillery
shell or mortar round.
Hay's company was better than most when it came to rendering
unused supplies unusable, but they had the example of Sheen's
death.
Sheen was the point man back in February. Everyone was
loose. There had been no trouble for weeks, and there was no evidence
of enemy activity in the area, before that colorless flash,
more noise than light, more force than noise, lifted and scattered
the platoon. No shots were fired. Ears stung, and the dust made the
men spit and cry mud. Hays was behind a tree. He did not know if
he had leapt or was thrown there. Pieces of the jungle floor, slowed
by the tangle of overhead branches, filtered down around him. He
expected death to come down the trail. He waited to see the enemy,
waited to die. He felt the presence of hundreds of VC and NVA coming
for him. They would kill him easily, efficiently, thoughtlessly,
and advance to the next dazed 19-year-old American stretched out
behind a tree. He did not fear death; he only expected it. Even when
it was evident that he had been wrong, part of his mind whispered,
'. . . hundreds, hundreds, hundreds. . . .'He believed he was supposed
to have died that day, that something had gone wrong, that
he had inadvertently escaped his death and that the hundreds were
out there, unknowing fated to find him and put things right.
60 61

Crocamo
The platoon began to stir. Like a boxer shaking off a numbing
blow, each tenuous move seemed to create strength, clear the head,
and suggest the proper action. The platoon regrouped. Sheen was
missing. Lieutenant Larkin led the on-line sweep up the trail. He radioed
for the med-evac as soon as he saw the boot. Vercland, the
medic, ran ahead to begin his futile work. The sweep continued
past the frantically busy medic. Off the trail, in an area sheltered by
several large rocks, Padia found the dead battery and what remained
of the wires that led from the hand of one Viet Cong to
whatever had killed Sheen. The VC usually removed all evidence of
their presence.
"I think the noise just scared him off," said Rawlins.
A half hour later Hays watched as Sheen was being loaded
onto the med-evac chopper. Hays saw that Haliday was crying.
Haliday made no attempt to wipe his tears. But as the chopper
blades screwed themselves into the fetid air Haliday brought his
right forearm across his eyes to shield them from the angry swirl of
twigs and dust. The debris settled. The chopper's rapid whipping
noise faded. The forearm remained. With his right hand Haliday
pretended to scratch his neck. His bowed head nuzzled the crook of
his arm. Haliday, silent and alone, uncovered his face and moved
toward his ruck.
Hays turned quickly, bumping Captain Olin, who had been
behind him, watching.
"Sorry, sir."
"That's okay. Listen, Hays . . ."
"Sir?"
"You're close to Haliday, right? I mean you're friends."
Hays nodded.
"Watch him for me. I'm worried about him."
"Watch him?"
"Just keep an eye on him and let me know if he acts unusual."
"I can watch him easy enough, but he's okay, he's alright."
Sheen's death created a ritual. If a new man threw away even a
bar of soap without taking a machete to it, the story of Sheen's
death was retold, beginning each time with, "I lost a good buddy
because of a dumb bastard like you. ..."
Each time he heard the story begin, Hays moved away and his
mind whispered of the hundreds.
62
The Ambush
On resupply days each man was given a case of C-rations,
from which he selected his meals for the next five days. The rest
would be eaten at the resupply site or be opened, burned or buried.
There were 12 C-ration meals for a year's worth of breakfast,
lunch and dinner. The cans were olive drab. Their contents were
described in military language: Pork Slices, Steamed in Own Juices;
Disk, Chocolate, Milk, one each.
On resupply days squads would get together and cook boonie
stews. Each man contributed a main-dish C-ration. These would be
mixed in with rice that had been boiled in canteen cups with
packets of instant fake creamer. To this would be added frightening
doses of Frank's Red Hot Louisiana Sauce. No matter that boned
turkey, pork slices, chicken and noodles and ham and lima beans
cavorted with the fake-cream-saturated rice —Frank's Red Hot
dominated any culinary landscape into which it was introduced.
No one thought bonnie stews tasted good, but they did relieve the
monotony of plain C-rations.
Hays didn't carry much food. He stacked the cans he did carry
in regulation-issue olive wool socks. One sock for six cans of fruit,
all peaches and pears if trading worked out well, and one sock for
six pound cakes. A third sock held six cans of fruit cakes, disliked
by most and therefore easy to come by. A fourth contained six tins
of crackers, three tins of a cheese-like yellow paste, and three tins
each of peanut butter and grape jelly.
Packets of coffee, cocoa, sugar, salt and pepper were stuffed
into a rucksack pocket. Another pocket held two main dishes, usually
chicken and turkey in case resupply was delayed by rain or an
opportunity for contributing to a boonie stew came up while on the
trail. In the morning he would have coffee or cocoa with a fruit
cake, for lunch crackers and cheese or peanut butter and jelly. At
night he'd pour a can of peaches or pears over a pound cake.
Hays placed the now rigid socks in the ruck's main compartment.
The socks kept the cans from knocking together, helped to
distribute the weight of the food evenly, and neatly divided the
day's meals. Even if the company walked until after dark he could
quietly get the food he wanted without having to attempt reading
black print on dark green cans.
He didn't pack much else that was tossed from the resupply
helicopter. He'd take writing paper, pen, and two packs of ciga-
63

Crocamo
rettes, but no candy. Some of the guys ate candy at night, while on
guard duty. It helped to keep them awake. Not Hays. The wrappers
were too noisy.
Haliday claimed that communists were responsible for having
the cellophane-wrapped Kraft caramels sent to the field. Most men
indulged in a drawn-out cellophane removal process. They would
carefully, painstakingly open the outer wrapper, pausing at each
crinkle, then, attempting the skill of a surgeon, gently ease the cube
of caramel out of the outer wrapper. Once freed of the pack, a caramel
cube had to be removed from its tight envelope of brittle plastic
wrap —a difficult task. This was noisier than the earlier operation.
Haliday claimed the average of 37 crinkles per caramel pack
gave more than enough audible clues for the enemy to zero in on
your position.
"Kraft's marketing and packaging department has been responsible
for several deaths in Vietman," said Haliday. "But they won't
get me. Damned if I'll begin eternity with a hard wad of caramel
stuck to a filling."
Hays threw tins of unwanted food in a pile, setting aside those
cans useful for trading with Haliday and Betts. Their three-way differences
in taste were compatible. Haliday would trade anything
for ham and lima beans, probably the most despised entree of the
C-ration bill-of-fare. This made Haliday indispensable at any
trading session, most of which were conducted at his rucksack.
Betts didn't like canned fruit, but did like beans and franks. The
three men formed a mutually beneficial common market, exporting
dislikes, importing likes. There were two threats to this arrangement:
that Haliday might someday grow tired of ham and lima
beans, or the removal of any of the three men from the field.
Trading done, Hays packed the wanted food in his ruck,
carelessly tossed the rest of the C's into the C-ration case, removed
his machete from the ruck and carried the unwanted cans to the
edge of the newly dug sump. For ten minutes he mindlessly slapped
each can open with the machete before dumping the wounded and
bleeding containers into the sump. All the morning's trash would be
placed in the sump at the edge of the LZ, burned and covered over.
He returned to his ruck. Sergeant Rawlins came around with a
change of clothes for each member of the squad. Rawlins would
64
The Ambush
chuck the clean fatigue shirt, pants and socks at each man with a
delayed "here you go" for a warning, with the intended result that
the recipient turned in time to get a face full of fatigues. Haliday
had ordered new boots and had to protect himself from Rawlins'
head-level toss. Haliday swore as he ducked, and Rawlins announced
that the mail would be ready in ten minutes. "They're sorting
it now," he said, tossing shirt, pants and socks in Hays's general
direction. Hays ignored the mail call announcement. He approached
mail call with as little evidence of anticipation as possible. He collected
the clean clothes, changed, and finished packing his ruck.
Rawlins returned with the mail for the platoon. About 30 men
grouped around the stocky young sergeant who yanked fistfuls of
letters out of the mail bag at one time. He would deliberately mispronounce
the recipient's name, and hold the envelope out until another
outstretched hand snatched the letter away.
Hays gladly gathered in the two letters from Chris, whom he
loved, and put aside the care package from home. He read her letters
first. They were kept and read until they fell apart. She wrote
as though he were a few hundred miles away, as if he might make it
to her campus Saturday. Her voice read each word to him and they
would laugh together. They never mentioned the war, but it shaped
every word of their letters. He would do anything to get back
home.
While he was in Vietnam, a monthly care package was his sole
contact with his mother. She could not bring herself to write. A letter
would force her to admit that he was in the war. But wars killed
men, and even sons were man enough for war. Food was safer than
words, feelings and thoughts. Food didn't require consideration of
circumstances. Food traveled well. Fears, when faced, didn't travel
at all.
Hays packed the canned fruits and pudding and displayed the
homemade cookies for general consumption, then left to find a
quiet spot to write letters. He hurried. His letters would go out on
the last chopper, within the hour. The company would then move
out and patrol the mountains for five days. Then they'd probably
cut another LZ, be resupplied, begin another five days of patrolling.
. . .
65

Crocamo
His squad was ordered to remain at the LZ. Alone.
"What the hell for?" complained Haliday to Sergeant Rawlins.
"It's simple," said the sergeant. "We stay here and set up a
U-shaped ambush pattern near the sump while the rest of the company
moves a hundred yards down the trail. Then we shoot all the
VC and NVA Regulars that come to dig in and chow down at the
sump, and then we all get Bronze Stars with V-devices for valor."
"Sounds like some fool gave the captain a book on tactics for
his birthday," said Hays.
"And I'd like to get the bastard that read it to him," said Haliday.
"It's not a bad plan," said Rawlins, "if you want to get involved
with VC, shooting at them, them shooting at you, killing them,
them killing you."
Hay's mind burned with anger and fear. 'Sixty-two days left,
sixty-fuckin'-two, and I end up in a U-goddam-shaped ambush pattern.
An ambush, for crissakes,' he thought.
His body screamed, pleaded and begged for a refuge. Each cell
seemed ready to explode into escaping fragments and regroup a few
hundred yards down the trail. 'God, I don't want to be here, I don't
want to do this,' he prayed without asking for help. The utter lack
of options calmed him. 'I have no choices,' he told himself. Aloud
he asked Rawlins, "Where do you want me? What's my position?"
"You and Haliday will each take a tip of the U," said Rawlins.
"Some of these new guys might get buck fever and open up as soon
as anything comes up the trail."
"Show me where," said Hays.
The sump was at the northern edge of the LZ, to the right of
the trail that cut across the eastern third of the area that was jungle
yesterday. The trail was clearly visible at the northern and
southern fringes of the LZ, like a part intersecting a bald spot.
The company prepared to move out. Hays's squad cleaned their rifles
and magazines again. They dug better holes, placed grenades
within easy reach, moved them closer, and moved them again. The
ambush was in place.
The company tromped out along the trail between Rawlins's
and radio technician Padia's positions, and the eight men in the ambush
began to search for what they hoped they would not find. If
66
The Ambush
nothing happened in the next 45 minutes they would rejoin the
company.
Hays sensed that the hundreds were near. He could feel them;
just like the day Sheen got killed. They knew about this ambush;
they had been watching. The hundreds knew where he was. What
time was it? Who had the watch? He checked the safety catch on
the M-16, in his arms, automatic. His mind was racing. Each of his
magazines had been cleaned, oiled, and loaded with 18 rounds.
'Eighteen rounds per magazine,' he thought. 'Theirs hold 30 and
ours don't even take the 20 they're supposed to.' Haliday said the
spring that pushed the rounds into the chamber was too weak and
guessed that the manufacturer saved two cents on each magazine
by using the thinner gauge spring. How many magazines would the
army buy? Five, six million? What's twelve million pennies? More
than a hundred grand, anyway.
Hays couldn't see Haliday or any of the squad and he hoped he
was as inconspicuous. Hays froze. He saw something, someone, to
his right. He stared, bringing the rifle up. NVA, netting on the
helmet. Can the others see him? Probably not. How many more?
What's he doing over there? Get in the U, you bastard. Is he alone?
Damn, where'd he go? There, the edge of the LZ, crouching. Can I
hit him from here? Are there others? None, no hundreds, just him,
make sure, be sure, just him. Christ, he's put his rifle down. What
the hell is he digging over there for?
Hays fired 18 rounds as the lone North Vietnamese began to
dig in the wrong place. Hays's squad, like a dog kicked awake,
lurched as one, and opened up on unseen, nonexistent hordes.
Hays fired another 18 rounds and crawled to the one dead NVA
soldier. Rawlins had left his position to find out who had begun firing.
Captain Olin was yelling from Rawlins' radio. The sergeant
ran, crouching and cursing, to the captain's voice.
"What's your status?" demanded the voice.
"Wait one, sir."
". . . your status, now, dammit. Are you in contact?"
"Not sure."
"We're coming back. Find out what's going on and don't leave
the radio for a second. I want to know what you know when you
know it."
67

Crocamo
Hays had been sitting next to the dead enemy. He was calm.
'Don't feel like I just killed a man,' he noted to himself. 'Don't
feel a thing —shame, pride, nothing. Like nothing happened.'
He decided he must, or should, have a feeling. He studied the
dead man. He strained to remember how the now lifeless body had
moved minutes ago. He struggled to envision a grieving mother,
wife, child. He fought to capture the dead enemy's last thoughts.
Nothing. He tried to hate. Nothing.
"I don't even mind that it doesn't bother me," he told the
corpse.
Rawlins called. Hays did not answer.
'Now this would bother Rawlins. He'd be upset. If he knew for
sure that he had done it, that no one else had fired, it would get to
him. Betts would love it, would brag about it. But it would bother
Rawlins, and Haliday, too. Haliday cried when Sheen got it. He'd
know how to feel. Some guys might even get hysterical, wouldn't
be worth squat out here. Have to be taken out of the field. Hell,
why not?'
The thought of faking grief routed all other thoughts.
'It could work. They won't know how to react. If I keep it up
long enough they'll have to send me to the rear.'
The idea brought the necessary tears with it. At first Hays
wasn't sure how long he could force himself to cry, but when Rawlins
found him sobbing, cradling the still warm dead man, he was
beyond consolation.
Colette Inez
Shaking The Man Awake
When stars take their place
between trees,
she wagers on the dark
to do what it does
under a moon pillowed in clouds
like the man at her side.
He is a stranded seal, she thinks.
A moon of long bones
staggers through leaves.
She bets on it to fall under the earth,
for the god of seals to avenge her loss
of a husband to spirits.
In a dream she drops her winnings
where two crows sit at a gaming wheel.
Shaking the man awake, "Listen," she says
and takes his shoulders in her hands,
but it hardly seems right for her
in a world rolling the days like dice,
to carry on so much.

Stephen Dunn
70
Desire
I remember how it used to be
at noon, springtime, the city streets
full of office workers like myself
let loose from the cold
glass buildings on Park and Lex,
the dull swaddling of winter cast off,
almost everyone wanting
everyone else.. It was amazing
how most of us contained ourselves,
bringing desire back up
to the office where it existed anyway,
quiet, like a good engine.
I'd linger a bit
with the receptionist,
knock on someone else's open door,
ease myself, by increments,
into the seriousness they paid me for.
Desire was everywhere those years,
so enormous it couldn't be reduced
one person at a time.
I don't remember when it was,
though closer to now than then,
I walked the streets desireless,
my eyes fixed on destination alone.
The beautiful person across from me
on the bus or train
looked like effort, work.
I translated her into pain.
For months I had the clarity
the cynical survive with,
their world so safely small.
Today, walking 57th toward 3rd,
it's all come back,
the interesting, the various,
the conjured life suggested by a glance.
I praise how the body heals itself.
I praise how, finally, it never learns.
Desire
71

Helen Bartlett
72
Hiding In The Bathroom
For eight years
I have lived
in this blue bathroom.
I locked the door when I was ten
during a feud with my brother,
the youngest of three boys
and I'm the last, the only girl.
The door throbbed between us,
his weight pushing against mine
until the secure click of the lock.
I eat moths that slip
under the door or press flat
against the window glass
desiring the light.
I sleep in the bathtub
and make potions all day
with eye drops, milk of magnesia
and lotions.
My father once said how pleasant it is
to live near water
and now I listen to it
rush from the faucets,
form lakes in the milk white basin,
rivers on the shower glass
and sometimes I dream of
flooding this house
so they will move like whales,
their arguments garbled
into Humpback song.
Hiding in the Bathroom
There is a scar here on my arm
when my brother took his swiss army knife,
asked if I knew what blood was,
sliced the belly-like flesh
and red ran down
spiraling like a barber's pole.
He made me believe he knew all secrets.
The same scar exists
hidden on some part of his body
passed down from father to child,
sibling to sibling
to remind him
there will always be dominance.
At night
I watch him from the bathroom window:
floodlights clamped onto the car's
open hood, extension cords
running back to the house.
He pulls the innards out,
lays the heart, the intestines
on the gravel road.
His face is pock-marked.
He bites his fingernails
and I've heard
no one is allowed to touch him.
He is alone
with his nocturnal taking-apart.
73

Jan C. Minich
74
Jane St aw
An Opening Out Elegy to Rural Routes and Bud McMahon
Guiding the boat through the sharp
turns of the river, through fog
calling down on the varnished decks,
his hands on the wheel
feeling for the deep channel,
he says he'd like the Huron
to go on forever while he dances
on the floorboards like a madman
feeling the night rock shut around him.
The engine has never run so quiet.
He's alone because he had always
wanted to feel his own way through.
In the glare of the rangelight,
docks step back and give him clearance
and the river opens out to the lake beyond
holding all the lives he had ever dreamed
cast off and strewn along the beaches.
Sooner or later
we all compose a landscape for ourselves.
It might be
the lawn of the house where you were born
its birches
its Japanese maples, one rosebed, its pyracantha hedge.
Or the acreage
of an old farmer you settled near
his basement
shelved with currant jam and strawberry preserves
his yard
of wren houses, wild grapes and carrion plant
along the fence
the fields, the river banked with wild roses.
And later
wherever you see fields, or roses, you see
that same old man
stoop to pet his dog on a dusty road in Iowa.
You could have moved
ten times since then, own a house whose yard's bricked in.
75

Staw
Around you
Pacific rhododendrons bleed red.
Your neighbors
prune their Meyer lemon shrubs.
The old man is dead.
His acreage rented to the rural mailman as pasture.
His guides to Iowa
trees and wild flowers in his granddaughter's hands.
No matter.
Keys to prairie flora will not reveal the secrets
of coastal vegetation
where the exotic must become familiar for you to feel at home.
Where maples
give way to acacias, bloodroot to sourgrass.
Where it never snows.
No matter. The view from your windows is water.
You stare out
and the old man and his land fill the air, settling on you
76
lightly, like dust.
Gordon Lish
The Traitor
They looked to me to be Tibetan or Mongolian or —I don't
know, I just want to say it —Burmese. Oh, but this is terrible.
This is embarrassing. Really, there's not a blessed thing
I know about national types, about what they're supposed to look
like or what you'd call them if you knew. I mean, maybe this couple
had actually looked to me mostly like they came from Thailand,
but I didn't know how to say it, so I right away gave up the
thought because I could see ahead, see the situation of the adjective
coming, and knew it would have me stumped, knew it would have
had me whipped hands-down. Thailander? Thailander can't be
right. At least I would not bank on my ever having heard anyone
say it —say Thailander. Great day, you'd know it if you'd ever
heard anyone say that. But neither can I imagine what you might
conceivably say instead, unless it's Thai/anc/ian, which, now that I
have actually said it, sounds to me excessively improbable and
possibly insulting.
You may as well know that I once got into some absolutely
dreadful trouble over a thing like that — from referring to a certain
person by this name rather than by that name. Or it may have been
the other way around. Frankly, it was not all that long ago, this
misunderstanding. It remains to be proved, in fact, which, if either,
was the case —that I misunderstood or was misunderstood. Not
that the couple on the subway represented the same sort of confusion.
Oh, no, theirs was a confusion of an entirely different sort. I
mean, you could see that they were not the kind of people to care a
fig for how anyone anywhere might elect to propose a designation
of them. Or do I mean something simpler and can't say it? But I am
a man of action, you see, and not, as you can also see, of words.
Although I doubtlessly know more about words than would most
persons of my ilk.
77
••••••••

Lish
Dropped a stitch back there. Had meant to say that these
two — the man and the woman — looked to me as if they had reached
what is sometimes called "a higher state."
To be absolutely candid with you, I just don't know how I got
us into this Thailand thing. Actually, the more I behold the question,
the more I am willing to favor the notion that they, the couple,
were very likely Siberian, by which I mean the man and
woman who were sitting across from me on the subway last week.
Ah, but I forget, I forget —so bundled up against the cold they
were, not on your life could they really have been that. Unless, of
course, I am making the mistake of believing that where you are
from has something substantive to do with how you react to what
the temperature is where you go. On the other hand, who's to say
one hasn't issued from Siberian parentage but were nonetheless
native to somewhere else where one might grow up warm?
Except they didn't look that way. Not to me, at least. To me,
they looked like people who had gotten used to living in fantastic
wretchedness and then unused to it. You know what they looked
like to me? They looked like people who were freezing in New
York. And you may be certain of this —I was looking very closely.
But you must know how everyone will look just this very way
to you when you see them on the subway and it is winter in New
York. Think of Russian books nobody ever really reads but which
by our age who cares if they catch you at it? At not having done it,
I mean. Me too, I didn't read them, either.
Siberia. I take it back —what could I conceivably know about
Siberia?
Didn't I say they were sitting right across from me? Because it
was actually at a little angle from me that they were sitting — since a
subway car on the Lexington line will have at one end two twoseater
affairs that are not exactly opposite one another but sort of
off from each other at a little slant. Anyhow, the picture I'm trying
to get painted, it's them on one side and me on the other and the
rest of the car —believe it or not — this is exceptional, I don't have to
tell you —empty, empty, empty, not one other fucking soul in itl
Can you beat it? From when they get on at Eighty-sixth Street
to when she got off without him at Forty-second, there is nobody in
this subway car but I and they. Or is it them and me?
78
The Traitor
Now there is the whole point of my telling you all of this in the
first place, which is that they, the couple, didn't. I mean, get off the
train in each other's company. And not only that, but this — which
is that he, the Siberian fellow, he tricked her into it —actually faked
her out, by hook and by crook got her onto the platform and then
cut back into the car like a regular playmaker coming down the
court.
No, I'm not doing this anywhere near right. I'm talking and I'm
talking, but you don't know what the fuck is going on.
I am starting again.
Here is the whole thing from the start again.
I said they got on at Eighty-sixth?
/ get on at Eighty-sixth.
That is my practice —get on where I have to get on every
workday morning —the Lexington line, the Broadway line, here,
there, anywhere in the city. But what is instantly interesting the
morning I am reporting on is that it is swept clean of people, the car
that I get aboard on —except for them, of course —if they, the couple,
were in fact already on it — the Siberians, the Thailanders, the
Mongolians —you know, the whatever — huddled together in one of
the two-seaters at one end of the car —a man and a woman —this is
guesswork, of course —who I am guessing must be in their seventies
at least —just little disks of face to guess from, that's how hooded
they were with scarves and caps and weird coverings. So it is not
just the eyes that give me the Asian notion, not just the bones
around the eyes, but also the bandaged effect that gets imparted to
the head when these people are seeking ceremony or warmth. No,
that's off —that doesn't make any sense.
Oh, Lord, I am really getting out of my depth with this. It's
just that you turn on the television and what do you see but Tokyo,
whole columns of them shoulder-to-shoulder, kids, endless legions
of kids, always up in fucking arms over this, that, or the other,
their noggins all done up with this ad-hoc crap on them, the whole
street chuggyjammed with them doing this slow, scary sort of
creepy Japanesy jog shit.
So that's why I almost thought that, actually. Namely, almost
thought that they might both be Japs, except that he was such a tall
bugger, six-three, if I am any judge, whereas she was a good one
79

Lish
too — the old woman, I mean — every inch of her as tall as she had
to be, and maybe then some on top of it. Not that I ever was standing
when either of them was. Not that any of what I am saying to
you is anything but a guess. But you couldn't have thought about it
anymore than I was thinking about it, even saying to myself,
"Make up your mind," meaning, that I should make up my mind
what height was involved because I already knew I might want to
later on get some writing out of it —a report, at least —and now
look, that is just what I am doing, aren't I?
But so what if she wasn't, and he wasn't, either? I mean, even if
the both of them put together weren't enough to make up even one
short human being, does that mean I have to go to bed without any
supper?
It is not out of the question, the truth.
Wasn't there something somewhere in my reading, something I
read somewhere where there is this region of Japan where the people
are positively tremendous?
But maybe I didn't read it. Maybe it was in a movie when it
was raining and the whole school had to stay inside and couldn't
have recess. You know, the climate and the crops and the trade
routes of somewhere, and the enormous size of certain of its
citizens. Or maybe we were doing a class project on cotton, and it
was also the year of the adjective.
Which reminds me to tell you that I am not dumb. I promise
you, I for one can speak to the distinction between that which is
morphologically adjectival and that which is instead syntactically
thus.
Unless you forgot. I mean, about back there where I was giving
the appearance of being flummoxed as to what you transmute
Thailand to when you want to say, "I think they both were . . ."
Wait. When you say, "The man was Mongolian," you replicate
the morphology but not the function that is exhibited in "The man
was a Mongolian."
But I imagine you have gone and forgotten all that. Ah, God,
one offers speculations and, once offered, forgets.
Sorry. Really.
80
The Traitor
Been farting around for altogether too long now. You've got
me dead to rights —just another man of action knocking his goddamn
brains out to come across as a man of thought.
Meant transform, not transmute.
It's so hard.
You shouldn't have to know anything to do something. I
mean, it doesn't seem fair, does it? But that's how the set-up isknow-how,
smarts, skilled labor —fellows like me, nothing uncalled
for, nothing spontaneous. Ah, it's all such a lousy deal, start
off with things which couldn't be simpler, and before you know it,
what?
The answer is that you're struggling against great torrents of
shit, complexities which you never had the brains to create.
Thought you were just doing arithemetic, yes? Jesus, if you're not
Boltzmann, you might as well be dead, be in your grave, be an
idiot.
I saw them. The car was empty. I tell you, it was the coldest of
damnable days! It was New York and I was freezing —and them,
they- they looked so warm together-they looked like Eskimos
together —the man and woman, they looked so comfy with each
other, so used to things. Assuming. Because how much could I actually
see of them?
You realize I am sitting in the seat that is almost exactly facing
theirs? I mean, I had to. I had the whole car to choose from,
sure —but let us not forget my specialty, my reason for being, why I
am there, why I am here.
But you could say I was taking a big chance, couldn't you?
Not really. Or anyhow not much of one. Not I, mind you. Not
ever.
In any event, you'd look at me and see a fellow who doesn't
look like anything-a big man in a big coat, lots of room for
everything.
Oh, you bet, they could have been Eskimos. Well, they had to
be something.
He kept scribbling things. He had in his pocket these folded-up
papers and he kept getting them out and scribbling things on
81

Lish
them —not words, of course, but numerals, I think, or symbols
from sciences that we keep warning these people they have no
business messing with. Equations, dis-equilibriums, things. But, all
right, this is not my element, and I admit it.
On the other hand, just don't think I couldn't see him plain as
day, the sonofabitch scratching away at these folded-up papers, the
bastard acting as if he were up to something big — reaching for some
extravagant result, putting on like some fucking Taiwani or
something, some Taiwanese whizbang, some trafficker in new
methodologies feeling his way by brainy frigging fingertip.
Oh, you know, you know —so absorbed he seemed, so utterly
remote from things, the old broad meanwhile nattering away at
him, all jabber, jabber, jabber without fucking surcease, without
let-up —get napkins, get ketchup, aren't we all out of mayo? Or so I
thought — because who could hear? And even if I could have,
wouldn't it've been in Singaporese or something?
Or what is it, Singapo?
This is why you have to fill in. But I ask you, the blanks,
whose fault are those?
Oh, yes, Dr. Wu, Dr. Wu-that's who's at the bottom of all of
this, bigshot sitting over there and working out cosmological things
in exponents of ten, Mrs. Wu going on at him and on at him, get
this, get that, him not listening to the words but only to the music —
all out of eggs, all out of bread, don't forget eggs and bread on your
way home, Wu!
I'll tell you the truth. It wasn't that many minutes between the
time I got on and he got her to get off, but it was enough of them
for me to make all of this up. You know, Dirac, Besso, Lorentz,
and good old Kasemir Wu, the dirty turncoat humping it on down
to the U.N. with whatever he's got going on down there in the language
of Io. Hey, and isn't that why the car's empty of all other
riders? Because a hit's been set up to cut the cocksucker off?
And doesn't Kasemir know it, can't Kasemir see for himself,
can't the asshole put two and two together and get it that him and
her have been marked for death? That they will never make it off
this train in one piece? That somewhere between here and Fortysecond
Street they are going to be gunned down, eradicated, interdicted,
bumped the fuck off? Or maybe not until they get out and
82
The Traitor
start running, screaming bloody-murder for the Secretary General
to send the Mounted fucking Police and goddamn Swiss Guard to
come save them, come save them, but really in fact digging the big
picture, really in fact getting an honest and sincere feeling for how
the odds went right the dickens down to zero the instant this third
party had stepped on in here, the instant the big-coated motherfucker
had got himself all aboard, confederates having cleared
the car of all possible witnesses, confederates having closed off
all possible means of escape, confederates having screwed down
the hatches, confederates having, as it were, prepared all preparable
matters, spot-cleaned the setting for the point-shooter, made
way for our high-tech remover, here come dee the specialist with
da Euher, and it going to be seated with da Thompson mute, so
what is left for it but to put the best face on it and huddle, huddle
close?
Ah, Christ, I hear her say, "Clorox, get Clorox, don't forget,
make a note," and him, he writes OQ 2 = t 2 -x 2 -y 2 -z 2 and thinks,
"Goodbye, my love, goodbye, my love, goodbye, my love."
But as I already told you, the old fraud faked her out at Fortysecond.
I mean, if he had meant to get rid of her, that's just what he
did —got her off without him, got her good and off.
Oh, the old sly-sides!
I tell you, these people with their eyes, they are not for one instant
to be trusted. Why, the rascal—he leapt up with a great start
as we drew into the station —fairly leapt, fairly leapt, I say— as if to
say, "Good heavens, Mrs. Wu —your hubby appears to have been
incalculably distracted — preoccupied beyond all fathoming — mercy
sakes, dear lady, darned near made us miss our station —let us
hasten, sweet wife, let us go."
Oh, the dickens, the dirty dickens!
Imagine this. See it as I, your man, saw it —the old reprobate
flinging himself at the doors and she, the poor dear, staggering after
— so completely bewildered, taken so completely unawares —
plunging blindly after, bad on her feet, I don't doubt, blisters galore,
corns, spurs, calluses, great horny bunions — totally but totally
disoriented, not to mention so dreadfully overcome by an absolute
83

Lish
riot of agonies —but nevertheless making her way just well enough,
gaining on him just barely, while he, the fucking fourflusher, he
executes the adroitest of pivots —and all with such courtliness, the
very sheerest of chivalries, as in "Ladies first, ladies first, dearest
lady of the realm."
Well, you know what I say? I say, "Radies first." Radies,
radies, radies —her on the platform, him still with me on the train,
the whole deal moving again, hell-bent for Thirty-third.
"Lealm." That's what the dirty prick said!
But to be absolutely evenhanded, I'll say this for him-which
is that the rogue actually winked at me once the doors had closed
and we were off and clattering along on our way again. He was sitting
back down in the same seat when he let me have it —winked,
like gunfire, just the once —pow! Then took out his folded-up
papers, his little stub of a pencil, making, for my money, a great
show of the thing, the filthy fucking Chink.
Oh, let's not beat around the bush, the wag was writing secret
stuff—isn't it high time everybody just quit all the shit and said
what he means?
But here's the thing, which was him doing what he did, which
was he, then — traitor or savior?
Because you can see how it could go either way, answer either
claim.
At any rate, it was a local, as I said. Or if I didn't say it, then I
just did. Forget it. What we had to deal with there was its being
Thirty-third next. This means —go ahead and count them for yourself—nine
blocks to get the Euher out and get the Thompson on,
nine blocks to get the Thompson on and fire once, nine blocks to
fire once and get the Thompson off, nine blocks to do what everybody
wants and get everything back under my big, loose coat.
Adjectives — oh, Christ I
John Griesemer
Vic Dixon
One night on the drive back from Bridgeport, Vic Dixon's
chief engineer suggested they sweeten the audio with some
taped stadium noises. The engineer, Ed Bannofski, said the
meagre cheers echoing off the empty seats were making him sick.
He said he could add the sound effects right at ringside or from the
mobile unit in the parking lot. They wouldn't even know back at
the station, he said.
Vic Dixon hated the idea and nipped it in the bud.
"Honesty isn't the best policy for TV Pro Wrestling Live, Banno,"
he said. "It's the only policy."
But Vic Dixon knew what his engineer was getting at. Attendance
was down. Ratings were off. There had to be rumblings back
at the station. He knew the old jungle telegraph was talking about
the show.
For the first time in years Vic was having to ask local promoters
to seat fans only on three sides of the ring —the three sides
facing the TV camera —to make the auditoriums, the armories, the
Masonic temples look fuller on the home screens than they really
were. Vic told himself it wasn't dishonest, not like canned applause;
it was only showing off the people already there in the best possible
light. But the people already there weren't enough, and that worried
Vic.
He tried to sense how the wrestlers themselves were doing.
They seemed okay, in good spirits, though maybe a touch overexposed.
Vic had been pushing a pretty hard promotional schedule.
Albany had seen Roughneck Nelson go against Cowboy Ernest
Harraday twice in the space of three months. Ditto Buffalo, New
Haven, and Springfield.
Vic tried to be objective. He wondered if the slump had
something to do with himself, maybe his looks. The hair? It was
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Griesemer
going, that was for sure. Maybe he should have started wearing a
rug like Cosell. But he put that in the same category as phony applause.
The bowtie? It was Vic's trademark. He'd been wearing
bowties ever since he saw one on John Glenn. Maybe it was passe.
But then fans sometimes showed up at matches wearing bowties
and shouting to him and pointing to their neckwear when the TV
camera panned the crowd.
Vic couldn't put his finger on the problem, so he began to tell
himself it was just a cycle. It's humanity's way, cycles. Man,
woman, birth, death, infinity. Ever thus. Vic Dixon wasn't going to
let it get him down. Besides, he had a battle plan.
He thought of it one day while sitting in his downtown office
waiting for the electric coil to boil the water in his soup mug. He
had been staring at the walls where he had hung the framed, glossy
eight-by-tens of wrestlers from all over the Americas. It was, he
proudly told visitors to his office, the largest gallery of wrestling
photos in the Free World. Many of the pictures were action shots of
ring combat: enormous, battling men drenched in sweat and stage
blood. Other photos showed greased and flexing wrestlers standing
in their trunks or robes, striking super-hero poses or snearing at the
camera. Most of the photos had good wishes scrawled diagonally
across the corners to "Vic," "Ol Vic," "Vicker," "V.D. — har-har," or
"Vic Dixon —The Pro of Pro Wrestling."
Vic let his eyes float across the ranks of framed images,
waiting for a pattern to emerge. It was when the water in the mug
began to fuss with bubbles that Vic's brain began to prickle with the
pitch, with the exact Sunday funnies romance he would need. He
unplugged the coil and got on the phone. By dusk, after some calls
to Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City, Vic Dixon had his file
cards ready for the first wave of ...
"THE CANADIAN INVASION"
The Raging Mountie
Drummed out of the corps for using excessive force. He got his
man, ladies and gentlemen, and then he got him again and again
and again.
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Vic Dixon
Eeluk The Eskimo
Hunts polar bears with his Iceberg Claw, a secret wrestling hold
that uses pressure points and shaman magic to instantaneously
lower the body temperature of his opponents and render them into
shivering helplessness — or worse!
Unlucky Pierre
The Wandering Lumberjack of the Frozen North. Grieved by a
mysterious lost love, he is kept civilized only by periodic bouts in
the ring to vent the pain of a broken heart.
The Masked Wolverine
Simply said, fight fans, the single greatest threat to all life north of
the Forty-Ninth Parallel.
Vic Dixon tacked the cards up to his bulletin board; then, for
good measure, he dusted off all the pictures. As he went around the
room, whistling and dusting, he smiled at each snarling face, said
each name aloud, and when he was done, he stood at the door in
his coat and hat and gave them all a crisp salute before he left for
home.
"CUT!"
A half-dozen Vic Dixons disappeared.
"Vi-ic, what in the hell was wrong with that take? I thought
that was the good take."
Ed Bannofski sat at the WANY editing room console, waving
at the bank of monitors in front of him. All the screens on the wall
were filled with snow or test patterns save one, down in the corner,
where a cartoon cat with a meat cleaver cut off a cartoon mouse's
tail. It was Saturday morning, and the corner screen was the onthe-air
monitor.
"Kid in the background was flipping the bird," Vic Dixon said
over the intercom. He was in the dubbing booth, pointing through
the plate glass window to the monitors above Bannofski. "You gotta
have an eagle eye, Banno."
"Yeah. Yeah. So, let's do the eagle eyeing Monday. I wanna go
home."
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Griesemer
"Cmon, Banno. This is a benefit for charity."
"Charity begins at home, Vic."
"Banno, for me. Okay? Please? The next take. It's a keeper. I
can feel it."
Bannofski threw some switches, and the screens flickered with
color keys. The bleeps of the sound-sync cues came over the
speakers. Quick flashes of wrestlers bashing each other burst across
the monitors as Vic read for the audio track:
". . . They'll claw and maul and send chills down your spine,
ladies and gentlemen! It's the Canadian Invasion, and it's on TV
Pro Wrestling Live. The Border Patrol can't stop them, so look
out! ..."
Bannofski noodled with the sound mix a little, pulling in the
background effects of blizzard winds and howling wolves.
". . . And as a special attraction in honor of The Canadian Invasion,
there will be a benefit bout for the Pernicious Anemia
Foundation to help fight that dreaded rulebreaking disease that
knows no boundaries and respects no borders! ..."
Vic rattled off the dates and times of the upcoming matches;
Bannofski swelled the music to a crescendo and out. The screens
went back to snow and test patterns. The cat and mouse raced
around a tree, wearing a trench into the ground.
"It's a wrap, Banno."
"Thank God," Bannofski mumbled.
Vic Dixon was out of the booth. A crumpled script whizzed by
Bannofski's nose and dropped into the waste basket.
"Two!" Vic Dixon grunted. He spun away, rolled down his
sleeves, threw on his jacket, and smoothed himself out.
"In a hurry, Vic?"
"Ever thus, Banno. Gotta go topside and talk to the brass. Gotta
book fights in three cities. Gotta speak with a woman about the
Easter Seals benefit. Gotta pitch the show at another varsity club
banquet tomorrow. Christ, I must be eating enough rubber chicken
these days to — "
"' — bounce a battleship,' I know," Bannofski said. "I know."
Vic licked his index finger and drew a vertical line in the air.
Bannofski was labeling the video cassette for delivery up to the
station's broadcast department.
Vic Dixon
"So, Vic," he said, "you think all this promotion stuff is working?"
"Think?" Vic said. "Hey, you saw that Worcester crowd. You
witnessed Poughkeepsie. And Waterbury says their advance sales
are the biggest in eleven months. Feel it, Banno. This is what it feels
like to be on a roll."
Bannofski turned back to the console and began shutting off
the editing monitors. All the screens went blank, save the one
where the cat and mouse ran zig-zag toward some distant mountains.
Someone had stuck a WANY bumper sticker above the
monitor, "Always ON!" the sticker's slogan read. Bannofski shut
that screen off too.
"So what do they want you for in the front office?" he asked.
But Vic was already out the door.
"Sorry I gotta run, Banno," he called over his shoulder. "Thanks
for your help. And stay tuned, my friend, stay tuned!"
The brass torpedoed the show. Vic asked for more time. He
tried to convince them that if the arena crowds were picking up, the
home audience wouldn't be far behind. He talked up The Canadian
Invasion. He appealed to their sympathies with his charity tie-ins.
He invoked his twenty-three years in the sport, his nineteen years
with WANY, but the executives only shook their heads.
The program director and the junior vice-president simply
double-teamed Vic. They pulled out their Nielsens, their demographics,
their statistical work-up on advertising shares and their
philosophy of station image. Vic's slot was going to a late-night
news analysis show from network. TV Pro Wrestling Live had a
month left to live.
"But this doesn't mean we're letting you go, Vic," said the vice
president.
"Absolutely not," said the program director. "We consider you
a long time, faithful member of WANY."
Vic sank back into his chair. It was too soft and it wheezed
beneath his weight. On the wall of the conference room an on-theair
monitor still flickered with Staurday cartoons. The two executives
had pushed their papers aside and leaned forward toward
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Griesemer
him. Though their chairs were as plush and as enveloping as Vic's,
the men seemed enlarged and buoyant on their side of the table.
"Vic, what we have in mind is this," said the vice-president.
"We want to transfer you over to our radio outlet."
"To the sports desk," said the program director.
"We know you've got sports in the blood, Vic," said the vicepresident.
"And we want to create a special position for you."
"You've got a high visibility voice, Vic," said the program
director. "We need a voice like yours."
"We want you," said the vice-president, "to be our radio
authority for high-school sports. A color commentator, if you will,
for schoolboy — and schoolgirl —athletics for the tri-county area."
"You're a figure kids could look up to, Vic," said the program
director.
"It would mean a lot less traveling . . ." said the veep.
"Now, we know how important pro wrestling is to you, Vic,"
said the program director. "But broadcasting's changed. And we
have to change with it."
"It's not an on-camera assignment," said the vice-president.
"But radio is very much alive . . ."
"We don't have to tell you that," said the program director.
"Of course we don't," said the vice-president. "But we do have
to tell you, Vic, that this is going to be our only offer. We're sorry
we have to put it on such a take-it-or-leave-it basis, but our hands
are . . ."
The vice-president stopped. There was no sense going on. The
program director was looking away, nervously searching for a
place to fix his eyes. Vic wasn't listening to them. The vicepresident
turned away too and, with the program director, stared
at the cartoon on the wall monitor. They didn't want to sit and
watch Vic who was slumped across from them, sinking deeper into
his seat, his hands covering his face.
"You're not welcome, Herbert!" Vic Dixon's wife shouted from
her bedroom.
"Honey, you'll wake the neighbors," said Vic from the living
room.
90
Vic Dixon
"Big deal!" she yelled back. "Maybe they'll think I have some
kind of married life over here!"
"Cathryn, I only thanked you for keeping my dinner warm."
"And I only said, 'You're not welcome, Herbert!'"
"Well . . . thank you anyway. And, please, call me Vic."
"I don't call my husband by a stage name. I married Herb
Starkey."
Tm Vic Dixon."
"In public."
"In private too. Legally. I changed it legally."
"So, arrest me ... Herbert!"
Vic collapsed into his easy chair. He was still wearing his overcoat
and tyrolean hat. He was exhausted. He had been on the road
for four days and three nights. He'd only had one broadcast, a
match in Buffalo, but he'd spent the rest of the time working frantically
to meet with fighters from five states and two provinces.
He'd tied up all the loose ends, worked everything out. He was now
twenty-one hours away from the final night of TV Pro Wrestling
Live.
Vic had taken the radio job. The program director and the
vice-president had said they'd give him a few days to think it over,
but once Vic had pulled himself together, blown his nose, and
straightened up, he accepted the job on the spot.
"Think of it as a lateral career move," Bannofski had told him.
Vic said he didn't need to be told what to think and that Bannofski
made a better engineer than he did a job counselor. Bannofski
apologized and went along to help Vic pack up the pictures and files
from the old office. Vic gave Bannofski all his duplicate photos and
three TV Pro Wrestling Live t-shirts for his kids.
"Did you watch any of the Buffalo match, honey7" Vic called
to his wife.
"Yeah."
"How'd you like the card?"
"Okay."
"Just okay?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I think a couple of those guys might go somewhere," Vic
said. "Eeluk. The Wolverine. They got the goods, I think."
91

Griesemer Vic Dixon
He could hear Cathryn shifting amid her bedclothes, trying to
get comfortable.
"Go somewhere," he heard her mumble. "The goods."
"You know, I look at all this as a lateral career move, honey,"
Vic said. "And I would thank you for a little support during the
transition period."
Cathryn thumped a pillow.
"You better eat your dinner before it dries out in the oven," she
said.
Vic sighed. From one of the back rooms, their cat, Gorilla
Monsoon, padded in, rolled once on the carpet in front of Vic and
walked into the kitchen.
"Here, kitty-kitty," Vic whispered, but the cat stayed in the
kitchen.
Vic got up and went to peek in the oven. The casserole looked
terrible. Cathryn had left him only a couple of chunks which by
that hour were locked inside an umber crust of dried cheese. He
stabbed at it with a spoon. He switched off the oven, took the aluminum
foil dish out and waved the casserole at the cat.
"Here, kitty-kitty, c'mon," he said and began to lure Gorilla toward
the back door.
"Herb?" Cathryn called drowsily from her bed.
"Shhhh, honey," Vic said. "Go back to sleep."
Gorilla followed Vic out into the backyard. When Vic placed
the dish down by the garbage cans, the cat began to purr and sniff
at the food as it cooled in the night air.
Light from the kitchen window spilled in a long rectangle
across the snowy driveway. All the neighboring houses were dark.
The street was silent. Vic looked for Gorilla, but the cat had given
up on the food and disappeared. In the slot of sky visible between
the houses Vic could see hundreds of stars and a sliver of moon. A
satellite slid across the view and disappeared behind the roof over
Cathryn's bedroom.
Vic knew what was going on up in those heavens. He knew
what was pulsing up there, zig-zagging around the globe, bouncing
off the stratosphere between transmitters and antennae, between
senders and receivers. It was a wonder to him, and he'd been in love
with it ever since he was a kid.
92
In his imagination he could tune up and down the broadcast
band, move in and out of Bible-bangers, call-ins, network news,
old movies, CB, hams, civil defense, and every manner of music
imaginable. A clear night and it was like a convention up there. Vic
Dixon's brotherhood: Roll call! Sound off! And they did sound off,
whether anyone tuned in or not. It made Vic Dixon proud he was
hanging on. He'd still be up there, night after night. He'd be helping
to make broadcasting change. He'd be on the air, always on.
Vic bent down and picked up the serving spoon from the dish.
He held the spoon in front of his mouth.
"Testing. Testing," he said quietly into the spoon. Although he
spoke in a whisper, he imagined his voice as it would sound at the
last match. He stepped from the shadows into the rectangle of light
in the driveway.
"Ladieeees and gentlemen," he whispered, his voice booming
throughout the arena and across the skies. "Friends and fanatics.
I'm Vic Dixon. This is TV Pro Wrestling Live. And have we got a
fight tonight!"
Did he ever. It was a sellout. Even after Vic finished the
preliminary announcements, the crowd still made a thick rumbling
sound as it moved into its seats. This was not the hollow, echoing
clamor of a half full house; this was the wide and deep expectant
tremor of a capacity crowd.
When the fans noticed Bannofski and the cameraman taking
their places, several handmade signs went aloft.
said one.
WE'RE WITH YOU, VICK DICKSON!!!
KEEP "THE PRO" IN PRO WRESTLING!
said another.
There were at least five fraternity flags from local colleges and
a banner stretching across a whole row of women, a banner that
had a picture of a bowling ball at one end rolling toward ten pins at
the other end and, in between, the words:
93

Griesemer
TV PRO WRESTLING LIVE IS RIGHT UP
OUR ALLEY-UTICA HIGH ROLLERS WOMEN'S
BOWLING LEAGUE-KEEP THE CAMERAS
ROLLING ON OUR MAN VIC!!!!
YEA!!!!!
The fans waved and cheered whenever Vic looked their way.
Bowties were everywhere. Bannofski had to shove his way through
autograph seekers at ringside to shout to Vic. Bannofski's headphones
were knocked cockeyed, and he had himself and at least
two fans tangled in cable. He was half angry, half elated as he pushed
his way through the throng. He gave Vic the ten-second countdown,
and Vic had to grab one of the ring's corner turnbuckles to
yank himself above the crowd and get in the camera's range for his
welcome to the home audience.
The entire Canadian Invasion had amassed for this one. And
wrestlers from all over the stateside circuit where there too, either
on the card or in the seats as guests of honor, hob-nobbing with the
fans, signing autographs, or posing for the Instamatics that were
flashing continuously from ringside clear to the uppermost seats.
Once the fights got started, the fans focused on the ring, but it
wasn't long before they knew something was up. The two tag team
matches and the four one-on-ones that came before the intermission
all went to the villains. Every favorite son had gone down in
defeat. This was unheard of. Sure, there are always a few rulebreaker
victories early on, everybody expects that, but the scientific
wrestlers always manage to hold the edge. Here, though, the evil
wrestlers had cheated, used their rulebreaker tactics right and left
when the ref wasn't looking, and even won some matches fair and
square. Across the board the bad guys had never been better. The
fans were on edge, and by intermission, Vic knew he had things
right where he wanted them.
The second half went from bad to worse. The Wolverine won.
Macumba the Witch Doctor won. Roughneck Nelson used an eyegouge
(his Oedipus Rex Special) to blind and defeat the Id Kid, Hawaiian
heart-throb of thousands. The Greek Geek walked away
with a humiliating win over Diesel Donovan who announced tearfully
to his public that he was quitting pro wrestling forever to take
94
Vic Dixon
up gardening. Every bad guy who stepped through the ropes walked
away a winner.
The fans were stomping their feet; a couple of fist fights broke
out in the upper deck. Vic didn't want anyone to get hurt, but he
needed the evening to be at its edgiest for the last bout.
Outrage turned to cheers when Eeluk came down the aisle.
Eeluk the Eskimo was the only hope, the last ditch. Hands reached
out to touch the fur of his polar bear parka. He waved his harpoon
at his foe. Eeluk was going against Dead Daryl, Master of the Dead
Hand —a gloved appendage that, as ring legend had it, was grafted
onto Daryl's body by Chinese Communists when Daryl was a
POW during the Korean War.
Eeluk was on the run from the first bell. The Dead Hand was
known throughout the circuit as the deadliest of deadlies, but no
one had ever seen it lash out as it did that night. The crowd howled
with indignation. Daryl picked up the Eskimo and whirled him in
an airplane spin. He butted him in the solar plexus with his forehead.
He yanked a foreign object from his trunks and drew blood
with a series of blows to Eeluk's head.
The Eskimo was nearly blind. He was staggering around the
ring. Daryl tormented him and waved his gloved fist in the air. The
crowd rose to its feet. Paper cups and fistsful of popcorn started to
rain down from the galleries. Daryl jeered at them all.
Vic Dixon was on his feet now too. Sweat poured off him. He
was red in the face, hoarse in the voice.
Daryl got Eeluk down and was jumping on the Eskimo's spine
"in an obvious effort," Vic Dixon cried out, "to cripple the man for
life." The crowd screamed.
Then, just when Vic Dixon knew the fans couldn't stand a second
more, he grabbed his mike and stood on his chair. That was
the signal. The ref saw it and raced in to stop Daryl's vicious Fred
Astaire number on Eeluk's spinal column, but Dead threw him a
right, and the ref smashed a blood capsule over his own eye and
went down like a rock, just as planned.
The crowd bellowed. Eeluk crawled, dragging his useless legs
behind him, toward the press table.
"Help me," the Eskimo called. He was looking right at Vic
Dixon. Daryl was prancing around the ring in a victory dance.
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Griesemer
Vic Dixon, stretching through the ropes, held the mike by
Eeluk's face.
"Help me."
"He's losing strength, ladies and gentlemen," Vic Dixon said.
"Help me."
"This can't go on. Something must be done!"
Daryl raced in to kick Eeluk in the ribs. The referee was still
out cold. Eeluk was holding the microphone, holding Vic Dixon's
hand.
"Please."
"Something must be done!" Vic Dixon cried. He stepped from
his chair across the press table.
"Do it, Vic Dixon!" the Eskimo begged.
Still holding the microphone, Vic jumped between the ropes
and into the ring.
The crowd's roar dipped for a moment like the choked motors
of a bomber squadron just before a power dive. Then, in a massive
surge, the noise returned at twice the volume.
Vic raced across the canvas and, pulling the mike cord with
him, took the wire and threw it over Daryl's head. He raced around
the wrestler and tightened the wire. Daryl struggled against the
bonds.
The crowd loved it. The arena shook with foot stomping and
cheers.
Daryl broke from the cord and went after Vic. He grabbed
Vic's tuxedo, and the sleeve tore off. Vic had had a special breakaway
model tailored for the match. Vic ripped the other sleeve off
himself and waved it at Daryl. The crowd roared. The goon was
getting some of his own taunting thrown back in his face.
Vic ripped off the rest of his jacket. He yanked off his bowtie,
his shirt, and there, in the ring lights at center canvas, he stood in a
TV Pro Wrestling Live t-shirt. The fans couldn't get enough. They
waved their banners, threw popcorn and programs into the air.
"VIC-VIC-VIC-VIC-VIC!" filled the arena.
Daryl turned to shout at the crowd, and Vic used the opportunity
not to attack his opponent, but to run across the ring to
minister to the fallen Eeluk. The referee was still out cold.
While Vic cared for the wounded hero, Daryl stalked along the
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Vic Dixon
ropes and, unbeknownst to Vic, he climbed the corner post above
the announcer and the Eskimo. The crowd bellowed a warning as
Daryl planted his feet on the top turnbuckle and made ready to
jump. Just then, Vic Dixon looked up.
He sprang to his feet and gave the hand-clap signal that meant
he wanted to take Daryl on his shoulders for an airplane spin. It
was a signal used throughout the circuit; Vic knew it well.
"No!" Daryl yelled when he saw the signal. It wasn't what
they'd planned, not the simple rollout and hammer lock they'd rehearsed.
Vic Dixon had gone off the script.
He clapped again and moved in.
"Jesus H—!" Daryl said. He had no choice. He bounced once
on the ropes and was relieved to see Vic execute a perfect step into
the maneuver. Vic had watched enough matches in his day to know
the timing with his eyes closed.
Daryl left the ropes and felt Vic's shoulder in his gut. The guy
was actually making it work.
Vic began to spin Daryl around. The momentum of the huge
body on his shoulders was exhilarating. Vic felt as if he would
never stop. The ring lights blurred around him. Faces at ringside
elongated into fleshy stripes, and the ring ropes undulated as he
spun. He hoped Banno had the shot well framed. He hoped
Cathryn and the station brass were tuned in. He felt the sound of
the arena, its enveloping roar reaching into his chest, pounding to
get in deeper. He was running out of breath.
"Back slam, Vic!" Dary] yelled. "Back slam!"
But Vic spun on. He never heard Daryl, and he never felt
panic, only a moment of confusion as the upper galleries, the rafters,
then the lights came into view. The roof was curving slowly
across his field of vision. The horizon was falling away. His legs
were giving out.
He fell on his back with Daryl under him, and the impact
knocked Vic nearly senseless. He was aware only of the rack of
blazing white lights high above him, a brilliant spectral lake
suspended in total silence. Reds and violets began to curtain around
the edges of his vision, and through the warp came a striped sleeve
which rose up and fell down. It was the ref, recovered, slapping the
canvas, indicating a pin.
Q7

Griesemer
Vic could feel Daryl breathing beneath him. He felt the ref
grab his wrist and hold his arm aloft. Suddenly the sound of cheering
crashed back into his ears, and he felt himself begin to float on
the noise. The lights swarmed overhead and moved closer. Vic was
rising. He turned his head. Faces were everywhere. The gallery in
his office had come to life. He was rising in the arms of all the
wrestlers. The good and the bad, the champions and the challengers,
had all come into the ring from the locker room and from out
of their seats. They had picked him up and were holding him aloft.
The sound from the crowd pounded around them.
Someone handed Vic the microphone. He tried to speak, but
nothing came out. The mike was dead, unplugged probably. Vic
waved to the crowd, and it roared back. Banners floated down to
the ring from above. One of them, the bowling league's, landed
across the shoulders of the wrestlers as they reached up to pass Vic
from the ring to the aisle. They were carrying him out of the arena.
Banno was waving from the press table, laughing and weeping and
calling camera shots.
Vic gave one last wave to the lens, a salute to his home audience.
The show was over. Cancelled. Off the air. And Vic Dixon
was going with it, gliding above the heads of the crowd, bound for
another frequency on the broadcast band, ascendant on the backs
of titans.
98
Philip Levine
Dutch Light
In June of 1975 I wakened
one late afternoon in Amsterdam
in a dim corner of a library.
I had fallen asleep over a book
and was roused by a young girl
whose hand lay on my hand.
I turned my head up and stared
into her brown eyes, deep
and gleaming. She was crying.
For a second I was confused
and started to speak, to offer
some comfort or aid, but I
kept still, for she was crying
for me, for the knowledge
that I had wakened to a life
in which loss was final.
I closed my eyes a moment.
When I opened them she'd gone,
the place was dark. I went
out into the golden sunlight;
the cobbled streets gleamed
as after rain, the street cafes
crowded and alive. Not
far off the great bell
of the Westerkirk tolled
in the early evening. I thought
of my oldest son, who years
before had sailed from here
into an unknown life in Sweden,
a life which failed, of how
99

Levine
he'd gone alone to Copenhagen,
Bremen, where he'd loaded trains,
Hamburg, Munich, and finally
— sick and weary —he'd returned
to us. He slept in a corner
of the living room for days,
and woke gaunt and quiet,
still only seventeen, his face
in its own shadows. I thought
of my father on the run
from an older war, and wondered
had he passed through Amsterdam,
had he stood, as I did now,
gazing up at the pale sky,
distant and opaque, for the sign
that never comes. Had he drifted
in the same winds of doubt
and change to another continent,
another life, a family, some
years of peace, an early death.
I walked on by myself for miles
and still the light hung on
as though the day would
never end. The gray canals
darkened slowly, the sky
above the high, narrow houses
deepened into blue, and one
by one the stars began
their singular voyages.
Kenneth Zamora Damacion
Trio
for James Frazee and Biff Russ
We watch the Carolina evening color the room
grey stone, and shade our lips toward silence.
Restless, each in our own time, we lean forward
like a finger with a point to make
which then is withdrawn —
our backs surrender to the sofa, our feet to the table.
Ears are keen to summer thunder, the static signals
that interfere, refer to our lives beyond the mountains.
Facing each other, we wait, myself at the north point,
both of you flanking at the wings.
Tomorrow, our separations will take us elsewhere.
An eternity before the rain stops. We walk outside,
though the mountains are drenched with rain, and sweet.
Fireflies punch their neon message in air.
Down the road, the chapel front is lit.
I think hard of that triangle,
the architect's trust in fulcrum, in weight and counterweight,
the perfect balance. Tonight,
I think of how he commended enclosure to wooden beams;
like us, supported in balance, inside space
where loneliness drifts neither up nor down.
100 101

Lisa Ress
102
Traveling Through Pictures of China
Let's say we start by the Grotto of the Seven Stars.
We see a lane, and over it a gate,
its four legs rising out fields where spidery water
wheels stand over spider corn. We move
past White Cloud Mountain. Marbled towers rise.
Halls float like boats against cloud seas.
Roofs in still flame, the tiles
of lizard skin, and through this passageway
branched lattices, fair smattering of ornament, clear
oiled paper surfaces. We touch the spirit wall,
the tablets, crooked eyes that look across
to temple caverns of the Primal Spirit. Over us,
the roof pulls back in points. Bells,
lily-stiff, send waves of buzzing odor through the highest
halls: first forecourt, second, Incense Pagoda.
Here, Lions like thumbs look on, and the Celestial
Queen sings in the Grotto of the Animated Rock,
in the Cave of the Morning, the Temple of Tamed
Dragon Hordes. Wave-etched,
the gods, still lively in stone dress, embrace us.
She of Great Mercy toes the ridge pole tenderly,
her eyes on Golden Summit, its descent
into a world of cloud. Road gates
sprout dragons. These bare, stretched trees
Traveling Through Pictures of China
of Szechuan enfold the way to that
eight-sided Hall of Mastery whose guesthouse
waits in centuries, treasure-cool, its stillness,
waits for us among its stunted trees in jars of earth.
Behind it, hundred steps ascend the sacred
temple hill. We turn and have before us Small
Wild Goose pagoda in Shensi. Here the Monster
of Eternity guards relics, thick and dry.
Dressed stones laid everywhere against the passing
time. Graves delicate in rock. Death
making melody in stone cut
from the core of the world. And at last
the pass gate through the Great Wall.
The path again. We follow faithfully. We see
the unicorn, no milky, flower-girded horse with horn
but bronze, thick-muscled density, its gargoyle mouth,
hooked horn. The path again: Temple of Confucius,
Mount of a Thousand Buddhas, Lake of Great Light.
103

Greg Leichner Jack Nestor
I mope on the couch on the loading dock
and watch the trains
and when there are no trains
I watch the tracks.
The Note Response to Card Postmarked San Diego
With the warehouse across the way so long and close
the world is a corridor and three sets of parallel rails.
A train moves through
and I wave to the engineer, and the caboose.
A track inspector walks by.
We nod.
Over and over I read the sign on the opposite warehouse:
tallow beeswax walnuts roots bark.
Another train, an empty freight.
A message is chalked on the side of a beat-up gondola:
This is it. This is the end.
Last car loaded by Happy Chandler.
We from Jersey know
this place like
the back of our hands
tucked inside the soft
of arms crossed
sacerdotally posed in prayer
to no one
We from Jersey know this
104 105

Interview with Thelma Ducoing Toole
Edited and Transcribed by Hal Strickland
Ten years after John Kennedy Toole's suicide, the novel he had
written while stationed with the army in Puerto Rico in 1966-67
was published by the Louisiana State University Press. In 1980,
that novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, was awarded the Pulitzer
Prize, and its central character, Ignatius Reilly, was hailed as a
modern-day Don Quixote.
The novel would probably not have been published but for the
long campaign of the author's mother, Mrs. Thelma Toole. This interview
with Mrs. Toole took place at her home on Elysian Fields,
four blocks north of New Orleans French Quarter. Due to a recent
illness, Mrs. Toole greeted me from a chair in her living room,
where she was surrounded by mementos of her son. She was wearing
a green lame dress, and a wreath of holly and leaves on her
head. As I entered the room she was loudly repeating the phrase,
"Literary recognition! Literary recognition!"
Interview with Thelma Ducoing Toole
HAL STRICKLAND: He was fired by literary recognition?
THELMA TOOLE: Not by the money. He was Irish. Now, the
politicians want money, but Ken (John Kennedy Toole) was an
Irish artist.
Now listen, what my son did not know, I told him. In this
neighborhood we had culture. I was born in Marigny area, in a big
six-room house. I was born on the side where the big yard is. That's
my birthplace. I had piano, dramatic art at three. Imagine a very
Interview with Thelma Toole
high strung little girl. I knew as I grew older how temperamental
and high strung I was. Sixteen years of speech and dramatic art.
Piano at nine, violin at eleven. Now you know that's an enrichment.
HS: Confederacy is filled with Catholic references. You are Catholic
aren't you?
TT: Oh yes. I told my son that I love the Catholic religion, but I see
the many defects, and when I die, I don't want a wake; that's a lot
of gossip, and that's uncivilized. I told him my favorite flower. And
I told him I want an American flag on my chest, because I taught so
much patriotic poetry.
HS: What did you teach?
TT: I was a raging fiend of a speech and dramatic art teacher. A
raging fiend! I was kind to the little ones! I love little children. I used
to win them. They'd say 'Can we kiss you goodbye?' I'd win them
with pretty little juvenile poems, tiny accessories, like gold stars
and paper birds, little things to attract them. But the highschoolers,
I wonder if they liked me, or remember me. A raging fiend; a
professional.
Here and there I would get a talent and I would work after the
classes had ended, free of charge. I'd teach that magnificent Virginia
Convention speech by Patrick Henry. I'm an orator. I wrote to our
Governor, Dave Treen, and asked for permission to address the
state Legislature, to encourage them to repeal the Louisiana Napoleonic
Code to free Neon Bible, which is my son's other book I
would like to see published.
HS: What do you mean, to free it?
TT: I'm not going to permit those ordinary people to own fifty percent
of my son's creative writing. I told my lawyer, 'You can bequeath
money, stocks and bonds, property, jewelry, but you can't
bequeath that.' He said there has never been, in the annals of law, a
case where a manuscript has been shared by relatives. But Louisiana
law forces heirship to surviving relatives. I asked Governor
Treen to let me address the Legislature. I'd show those politicians
what oratory is, from a woman, an actress.
107

Strickland
HS: I'm sorry, but explain to me, who are these people who would
receive fifty percent of the profits from Neon Bible?
TT: My husband's three nieces and nephews. They own fifty percent
of Confederacy. I've been good to them, very good to them. I
paid the lawyer $2065 for the legal work involved with Confederacy.
They finally signed to release it because the LSU Press
said they would only print 2500 copies. That was the truth, because
he was taking a gamble with Confederacy, and they knew there
wasn't any money in it.
HS: Will Neon Bible ever be published?
TT: Not until I can clear it of the Code. It's criminal. It's criminal. I
would be dishonored. I would dishonor my son, letting somebody
steal. Both of his novels meant blood, sweat, tears, and death. He
never received a nickel, not a nickel from anything he wrote.
Never. So it is suspended until Edwin Edwards comes in, that's the
newly-elected Governor. I'm going to try him when he comes in. I'll
find a way.
HS: Wasn't Flannery O'Connor one of your son's favorite authors?
TT: He adored her. Before his death, he was working on his Ph.D.
thesis with her work as his subject. I didn't read all of the books he
read, but most of the books he read he would recommend to me.
He adored Flannery O'Connor. Flannery O'Connor's mother said
to her: 'Why don't you write about nice people?' Don't you like
that, the practicality of Flannery O'Connor's mama?
HS: Could you perhaps draw any sort of parallel between yourself
and your son and Flannery O'Connor and her mother?
TT: No, no, no, no, no, no. Her mother was a farmer. Her mother
had a farm, in Andalusia, Georgia. She had a farm. No, no, no, no,
no. I'm very artistic. I play the piano beautifully, ten years of classical
training, and when I was thirteen I had an urge to play by ear,
and I was surprised how that left hand formed chords. That's innate.
You can pay a trillion dollars and nobody can teach you to
play by ear. They can teach you to read notes.
I love music, but the first thing I love is the theatre. My sister
108
Interview with Thelma Toole
performed at the French Opera House on Bourbon Street in a
biblical play. My mother had two —I say this truthfully and
proudly— first ladies of the American theatre. The branch school of
the New Orleans College of Dramatic Art is two and a half blocks
from here. Every Saturday all ages met from ten to twelve, and I sat
still from ten to twelve. I was about seven. I had a crush on Tennyson,
Longfellow yes, but Tennyson!! I used to hear the older girls
quote him. We had little juvenile chairs on the first row and I would
look back and see ladies with their dresses down to their ankles
discussing Tennyson. I was born in 1901, the turn of the century.
HS: You've mentioned both a sister and a half-sister. Who were
they?
TT: My half-sister was of a different bolt of cloth: domestic. But
my blood sister, Anna Ducoing, she was an actress. Gorgeous. We
had all sorts of grace exercises. She was a beauty. Just the same as
my darling Irish mother, who didn't have the advantages, but she
surely gave them to her daughters. Margaret Kennedy, my mother,
was a beauty. You know, a family name as a middle name is so
classy.
HS: Well, you certainly had to be a beauty yourself with those big
blue eyes.
TT: Yes, these eyes, they'll shine out of my head, these eyes. My
beautiful child had these eyes. Kennedy eyes.
HS: Is there any relation to President Kennedy's family?
TT: No, no, no. I think they are of plain stock from Ireland. I surmise.
I have humility, and then again when there's achievement —
when you rise in your field — there's justifiable pride. Now this
genius that I gave birth to ten years after I was married, and my
only child, he was the talk of Touro. That's a fine, uptown hospital.
He was born with the face and born masculine. Newborn babies
you can't tell the difference between boys and girls, you know, now
I don't know every newborn baby, but that's my opinion. The
nurses came in and they burst out laughing. They said that's the
first baby that ever had facial expression and they would giggle. I
was the talk of Touro and was so proud.
109

Strickland
They'd bring him in to me —now listen —and 1 sang to myself
[singing] Im biding my tiiiiime.
He ruled everything he touched. When he was a little fellow he
had strong likes and dislikes. Some children in the neighborhood he
shied away from. We'd bring a rubber ball to Audubon Park, and 1
would recite, and I'd sing, and then we'd come back and I would
play juvenile songs and fascinate his little friends, to make him
happy. He was so proud of me, and I was supernaturally proud of
him because he was on a genius level. This was one of his quotes,
he was eight: 'I wonder what the mothers were doing when they
should have been going to school?' The 'mothers' you see, didn't
have any culture. Eight years old. He didn't say it disrespectfully:
he wondered. He thought they should have been smart.
I used to hang on to every word he said. Sometimes I'd comment
and sometimes I wouldn't, I would just listen to him.
HS: Speaking of his 'genius', he did move rather quickly through
school, didn't he?
TT: He told me about Fun with Dick and Jane. The first-graders
couldn't take their books home. They would leave them in their little
desks. I went to the public schools warehouse, somewhere in
Tchoupitoulas, and I bought the book, and his father or I would
read to him.
He was five when he entered first grade, and that was against
the rules of the Orleans Parish School Board. You had to bring
your certificate, and the President had to be there to see that you
were six years old. The kindergarten teacher called Ken a little
prince, just the aura of him. He was a little prince. She told me later
that he used to tie the shoelaces of some of the little children. When
he went into first grade, he didn't talk. He used to talk very openly
with me. Then one day he fell on the floor in the living room and he
cried. He said, Tm not learning anything.' I said, 1 see.' I started
my humbug. I said, 'We immediately are going to the Orleans
Parish School Board. There's a very smart lady there.' Was that a
Public School system! Way down in the deep dark south. I'm a
product of it. The lady was Miss Chaleron. She was a child psychologist
I phoned for an appointment to test Ken's I.Q. When we
got there she said, 'You want to come inT I said, 'No, he's on his
110
Interview with Thelma Toole
own,' and I sat in the hall. He was intrepid: people didn't frighten
him.
We were there about a half-hour. She came out, she was beaming,
she gave me a paper, her opinion of him: the mentality of an
eight year old child. She recommended him for second grade.
Miss Chaleron said he had an I.Q. of 133 and said 160 is
genius. She said, 'He wouldn't talk to me.' And I immediately said,
'You know why he wouldn't talk to you? He was studying you.'
And that was the case all through his life. Introspective. Studying
the scene, he was watching all the time, he missed nothing.
Anyway, the next morning I went to school, and the principal,
the first grade teacher and I were out in the hall: Virago, Fishwife
and Scold. We were screaming at one another. That's true, we were
screaming. They didn't want to put him ahead. I said, 'You can't
stifle that mind.' I said, 'He's . . .' no, I didn't say 'genius.' I said,
'He's highly intelligent. He's not satisfied.' And the first grade teacher
said, 'You're going to be sorry.' Barrumph! A dire prediction.
Prior to that incident, a woman teacher said, 'Mrs. Toole, I
hate to tell you, but your son is in the cloak room with a paper bag
on his head.' That incident and the time he cried, that's how I knew
I had to have him advanced. He had a paper bag on his head.
Huey Long —you're heard of Huey Long, a genius from Louisiana.
He was very indiscreet. He tortured his teachers. So smart. A
smart pupil will make a teacher want to slap him in the face, you
know? You understand? That's what caused his death, he was indiscreet.
He accused Dr. Pavey's son-in-law of colored blood, you
see. Long, that is. He was indiscreet.
But my son, beautifully behaved. He would study. He loved
grammar school. When he was twelve he looked sixteen, but that's
a good thing. I said to my husband, 'If he were sickly and had
glasses, they'd thow him around the schoolground.' He was two
years younger than all of his classmates, and from the second grade
on, do you know what he called them? 'Those children.' He had a
beautiful theatrical voice. He inherited that from his aunt and me.
When he was six he had a school exercise once. I wasn't invited.
I said, 'How'd it go, son?' And he said, Those children thought
I was Shakespeare.' I had told him about Shakespeare, hoping
someday. . . . There's a propensity toward writing on the Ducoing
side. You know, poets. I am a versifier, but Ken was a poet.
111

Strickland
HS: There is certainly a distinct lyrical quality to Confederacy.
TT: Lyrical, yes, all right. And you know what it is? It's wonderful
theatre. Primarily theatre, and film quality too, to appeal to the
masses. Waitresses are reading it, did you know that? And cabdrivers.
You get a good slant.
HS: Speaking of film quality, what is the present status of film
rights?
TT: Well, that's very sad. Scott Kramer, a young associate producer
in Hollywood, bought a $10,000 option immediately when it
was a best seller, before it won the Pulitzer. Then he bought
another $10,000, and he has been beset by difficulties. Universal, if
I recall, liked it. They wanted to do it, and then they didn't want to
do it. Johnny Carson Movie Productions liked it, and I said, 'Well
this is it, Johnny Carson's millions, you know?' Then that was
deserted.
I keep in touch with Scott. I write letters. I phone him. He
says, 'After the first of the year.' Now, I'd be great in the role of
Irene, let me show you. I look Irish, you know. Irene, full of muscatel.
I'd be a wonderful Irene. My son was against everything. He
was against toppers.
HS: Toppers?
TT: Toppers. Those short, cheap coats that the poor women used
to wear. Playing Irene I'd have a yellow topper. I believe I have
French taste —I'm very particular about what I wear —a purple
dress, and black wedgies, and a pink hat for the communion scene.
And of course the homosexual boy. The homosexual is magnificent.
From the wheat fields of Nebraska, Dorian Greene, that's
Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray.
HS: That was the basis for his name?
TT: Yes, yes. And Burma, Burma's the star of the production.
'Nobody talk about goin' to no school.' That's true about the
Negroes. The truant officers didn't get to them. They were playing
on the streets and their mamas were washing and ironing women's
clothes, you know. I love Burma Jones.
112
Interview with Thelma Toole
HS: Do you think Burma was created from anyone in particular?
TT: No. My son knew the worthy ones here and there. The maid
who worked for my family was his nurse. On the days when I
taught, she would come. They would go to the park. I'd come home
and the house wasn't dusted. She'd say, 'Miss Thelma, he won't
come in.' And I'd say, 'That's all right.'
HS: The incident in Pirate's Alley, when Ignatius confronts Dorian
with his sword as the women's social club is selling its paintings .
TT: Now, you know, that's great. Ignatius berated them and insulted
them. Those club women, you know, are frivolous and foolish.
They have nothing to do. They are cheap and niggardly. I'm
sorry, club women. I'm not a joiner.
All right, now, Ignatius was surprised to find the club women
call him nasty, vulgar. He said, 'They'd better learn how to draw.'
And a little rock bounced off his watermelon head, a little rock.
Now here's Irene. Let me get my muscatel voice: [Recites]
.'Listen, baby, don't you think you ought to take a little rest at the
Charity Hospital?'
'Mother, are you referring to the psychiatric ward? I know
those people. If you don't like condominiums, whirlpool baths,
sauna baths, dehydrated French soups, reconstituted lemon and
orange juice, downers, uppers, Jane Russell's bras and girdles to
give women a false form, translucent . . .'
'Aw, Ignatius, that ain't true! You remember old man Becnel,
he was running around in the street neck-ed.'
'Mother, the word is pronounced naked.'
I'm an actress.
HS: / can tell, a very good one.
TT: Wait until I do that for Scott Kramer. I'm to be a consultant on
the movie. He promised me that. I'll sit in the audience and get a fix
on the director. I'll be able to see immediately — that's my favorite
word —what he can do. If it were done right, they'd be lined up
several blocks, because of the charm, the lure of the book.
HS: Okay, I know that this is a question you are not particularly
113

Strickland
fond of, but speaking of the character Irene: Just how much do you
think she was developed out of your son's view of his own mother?
TT: Now wait, wait, you mean me.
HS: Yes, you.
TT: Well you know what one reporter said: 'She lives four blocks
below the French quarter,' which is true, 'and she drinks muscatel
and her hair is red.' Beyond that, I hope the similarities are few.
HS: Just one more question about the movie. Has a screenplay been
written ?
TT: No. No director. No cast. But it must be done. I must
somehow raise the money.
HS: Well, it sounds like the struggle to see the movie filmed is
similar to your earlier struggle to have the book published.
TT: I tried for ten years to get it published. My husband was dying,
one stroke after the other. I was alone with him. Then once the
book was published, I spent three years promoting it. I don't charge
for my lectures. I interpret the characters. I give a clear picture of
my son as a supernatural little boy, very normal, too. His feet were
firmly planted on the ground. I used to watch him, because he had
a tendency to boss. He had a beautiful vocabulary, too.
HS: Why did your son have such difficulties attempting to publish
it?
TT: Robert Gottlieb crushed him. I wrote once to Gottlieb. I read
the letter to my lawyer over the phone. The next morning my lawyer
called me and said, 'I didn't sleep all night.' I said, 'It's not
libelous. I quoted from his correspondence.' The scathing correspondence
. . . Gottlieb.
HS: Is Mr. Gottlieb still with Simon & Schuster?
TT: He's with Knopf. Prestigious, wealthy, a power in the
publishing field. I'm going to write to him again with no return address.
I don't want any correspondence from him. I'm going to give
him something to remember. The scathing .... The last letter, it
114
Interview with Thelma Toole
isn't about anything. He said, 'It could be improved, but it wouldn't
sell.' How do you like that for an Editor-in-Chief7 How do you like
that? No horse in Gottlieb's stable could approach this Irish artist.
My son startled Gottlieb. For almost two years they corresponded,
and I never saw any of it during that time. He didn't
want to hurt me. I saw it after he passed on.
HS: The correspondence between Mr. Gottlieb and your son, is it
substantial?
TT: I have it. It lasted for two years. I think I have fourteen letters
from him. My son kept them all. He clung to them. This is Gottlieb:
'Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite, and don't think you can get by with
a funny ending.' He didn't completely grasp it. He said Myrna was
a pain in the ass. How do you like that? My son said, 'I thought
Myrna was provocative.'
Myrna's adorable with those lectures, her radical views and
the father supplying her with money. She gave a lecture and an old
man came in out of the cold in New York and he was the only one
in the audience, and her papa was sending her money. Do you see
what I mean? Do you see what is in that book?
All right. The Levy's: 'Not so hot,' Gottlieb said. That's charming
language for an Editor-in-Chief, huh?
HS: Tell me about your dealings with Walker Percy.
TT: I had written to over ten New York publishing companies. I
was alone now, my husband had died. I read in the paper that
Walker Percy was holding a seminar in creative writing. I phoned
Loyola and got his schedule, the time, what days. My deceased
maid's husband, a big tall colored man, a very good man, escorted
me there, and Walker Percy wasn't there. We went a second time
and he wasn't there. Then I phoned the chairman of the English
department and said, 'Pin him down, I have a masterpiece.' I'm a
bold Irish piece. I said, 'Tell him to be there, I won't take much of
his time.'
This colored man and I went for the third time, and I was sitting
outside of his office and I saw a man tripping sprightly up the
steps. It was Walker Percy. I said, 'Wow, pow.'
115

Strickland
HS: You said what?
TT: Wow, pow.' That's what I say when I'm excited. I went in his
office and said, 'This is a masterpiece.' You should have seen his
look, it said, 'Who is this bird?' I said, 'I'm not a great critic of literature.'
I wanted to say 'I'm a damn good critic,' but I thought I'd better
be a lady. I said, Tm not great, but I'm a good critic of literature.'
He said, 'You're prejudiced.' I said, 'No, I talk assuredly. I've
gone before some astute publishers and have said the same thing.'
We didn't talk much longer. I took about ten minutes of his
time. He thought I had a chauffeur. He told that to the Chicago
Tribune. He also told them I had a little black hat, and little white
gloves, accused me of being a little old lady. Later, when I got to
know him better, I said, 'Hey, I had a grey mink hat, and grey
suede gloves, and a blue dress, a blue coat and a blue bag, and you
said I was a little old lady, and I'm not.'
Anyway, a week later, a postcard. It's somewhere in my bedroom:
'Most flavorable novel of New Orleans' he had ever read or
ever would read, and he said he would see what he could do.
He sent it to Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, and they said that
since the author is deceased it would have no future. He then sent it
to two other publishers in New York which didn't want it either.
Then he fortunately thought of Philabaum (Editor-in-Chief of the
LSU Press), and Philabaum had it for six months. By this time I had
started to call him Walker, and I said, 'Listen Walker, I'm dying.
Either get him to admit that he wants it or he doesn't. So Walker
wrote another letter to Philabaum, do you understand? What a
friend. My son's literary godfather. Then I received a letter from
Mr. Philabaum, saying: 'I am stunned at the whole situation,' and
finally it was to be published.
HS: It has met with success outside of the United States as well.
How many languages has it now been translated into?
TT: Twelve. Isn't that wonderful! Finland, Denmark, Sweden,
Norway, Portugal, the Portugese in South America, Israel, Spain,
Germany, the Netherlands. Russia has an obstacle, a cultural obstacle.
The Italian cover was wonderful, it had Mrs. Levy in a
bikini.
Ken was in Puerto Rico two years when he wrote Confederacy.
He was in the Army. They gave him a private room im-
116
Interview with Thelma Toole
mediately, and he bought a typewriter. He wrote me a letter and
said, 'Mother, I'm writing a novel about New Orleans. It has surfaced,
it has been with me a long time and I am not bogged down
by correcting papers now.' He didn't tell me much, but he said, 'I
trust I'm not raising my hopes too high for the success of it.'
He told Gottlieb he 'put his soul into it.' That killed Gottlieb.
He began pleading when Gottlieb began to disparage it. How do
you think I live with all that?
Gottlieb's getting a letter, about a three-page letter. Nothing
libelous. I'm going to bring in my devotion to word usage. And he's
going to be addressed as Gottlieb on the envelope. A.A. Knopf
Publishing Company. I have the address, I got it from the library.
This is how I am going to begin it: Tour innate arrogance, insolence
and assumed superiority, utterly devoid of Irish discernment,
perspicacity, and insight, were your undoing in stupidly letting
a Pulitzer prize-winner slip through your fingers.'
You had better temper some of this. You know I have to be so
careful. But I am not odious. I'm just so truthful in what I say.
Gottlieb's called the Wonder Boy of the publishing world. He is
stern. Now my son liked Bruce Jay Friedman. Stern, A Mother's
Kisses. He was with Simon & Schuster too. But they couldn't hold a
candle to Confederacy.
Confederacy is going to get greater with years. You know
what I told Walker Percy before it was published? 'The Chamber of
Commerce should sell it as a fun guide, and they'd say, 'Hey, whoa
this is erudition!'
HS: Tell me about the present state of your son's scholarly letters.
TT: My son's letters to Mr. Gottlieb, which are revealing, will be
published in The Scholarly Papers and Letters of John Kennedy
Toole, compiled by Thelma Ducoing Toole. It will also include
dissertations, essays, tests, letters from Puerto Rico. . . .
Someone said to me: 'It's lucky you held on to all these things.'
I said, 'Lucky7 I knew from birth.' It's unnerving me. My son had
a merit scholarship at Tulane and later at Columbia. He finished
a two-year graduate English Literature program in one year, when
he was twenty-one years old. I still have to hunt for some more letters
from his Columbia days. You know Ken taught Myrna Minkhoff
at Hunter College in New York, I saw it in his roll book.
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Strickland
HS: There was actually a student of your son's named Myrna
Minkhoff?
TT: Yes. She had nothing to do with the character, but he liked the
name. Myrna Minkhoff, that 'Minkhoff' got him.
HS: You don't think the character was molded after her, however?
TT: No, no, no. He didn't talk about her or any of those girls. He
was so superior to those smart alecks, you understand. Tall, handsome,
Irish. They don't see that type.
HS: Tell me, if you will, about Ruth Lafranz.
TT: Ruth Lafranz is brilliant. My son attended classes in Newcomb
College, and Tulane, they're combined you know, and Ruth was a
student too. I remember at the graduation ceremonies my son and
Ruth Lafranz both received many honors. Ruth followed him to Columbia
on a part scholarship. He had a full scholarship. She loved
him very much. I think he loved her. He was not ready for marriage.
I think she said in an article, 'It was profound but very light.'
Now that's a pretty paradox, isn't it?
Ruth. Very attractive, intelligent. She came to the publication
party, and she knelt down by me and I said, 'Ken loved you,' and
she said, 'I loved him very much.' It was a beautiful affinity,
beautiful affinity.
I keep the pictures up to remind me of him. The determination
in his face, the strength. It was ethereal yet practical. There was
heaven in that face. His eyes never came through so beautifully in
pictures as they were when he was alive. A friend said, 'Those eyes
look into the future.' He was dreaming of literary recognition, his
goal, his dream. I think he would have had the novel published
without any profits. I think he was desperate for recognition. Gottlieb's
going to get a letter.
You see, the Irish have a divinity, they can divine things.
That's true, the Irish, of all the nations in the world.
The publicity he has received! International recognition. And I
am very humble and I don't want to be a celebrity. I want peace,
which I don't have and never will have. My mission is not finished.
The movie, the scholarly papers, my mind is just racing.
118
Bruce Jay Friedman
Business is Business
For twenty-five years, my father's boss was a man named
Schreever. He was the president of Schreever Laces, Inc. and
a boyhood friend of my father's. They started the business together.
My father was not good at business manipulations. After a
few years, he decided to devote himself exclusively to the factory
and work on salary. It would be better that way since he would
have fewer headaches. But as the business prospered, the factory
expanded. My father had a dozen production assistants under him
and about seventy-five women. He enjoyed being in charge of all
those people. Even in his executive position, he was the first one
down to the factory and the last one to leave in the evening.
Everyone else on our street was certain my father owned half the
business and he didn't really deny it. It was a flourishing enterprise.
But privately, to us, he said he had less headaches not having anything
to do with the business end of it and he was tickled to death
he didn't have to worry about those things. He invited me down to
the factory once on a Saturday. I was in for the weekend from
military school and it was a big thing for me because he'd never invited
me down before.
The factory was deserted and my father switched on the lights.
He took me around, showing me the piles of laces, rayons, silks,
the sewing machines, patterns, and the cutting machines. "You really
want to see something, kid?" he asked. He took a pile of rayon
material in his hand and switched on the cutting machine. He slid
the materials alongside the blade of the cutting machine and it sliced
through the pile like a knife through soft butter. "What do you
think of that?" he asked. I said it was pretty good. Actually, I didn't
see what he was knocking himself out about. If he hadn't been my
father, and if this hadn't been the first time he'd paid any attention
to me I'd have told him it was lousy and showed me nothing. My
119

Friedman
father went inside to the latrine for a second. I wandered out of the
factory into the showroom where the finished laces were on display
for buyers. They were under glass and I went up to the showcases
and stared at them. My father ran up behind me and slapped me
across the mouth. I thought I was too old to be slapped and for that
reason I started to cry as he tugged me back into the factory. "You
don't ever go where you're not supposed to go," he said. "I brought
you down here to see the factory. The showroom is someone else's
territory," he said. Then he told me how many girls he had under
him, where they worked and how they were always goofing off
near the Coke machine and how he had to be strict with them so
they would learn not to loaf. He told me how big the factory was,
the exact dimensions, and exactly how many people worked there
under him. He told me the value of the factory in case Schreever
ever had to liquidate, which was highly improbable. A number of
years later I saw a car lot attendant go berserk in Cleveland. He
leaped up on a Buick and beat his chest telling the world that the
sea of cars in the lot belonged to him and no other man. The first
thing I thought of then was my father and his factory.
The first time I met Schreever was at my military school
graduation. I had always heard him mentioned in exalted terms and
I was scared when they brought him over to me. Later, Cubby, a
football player whom I idolized, told me I was shaking like a leaf
when I talked to him. I had seen a picture of him with my father.
They were at the beach and they were both young. At that time it
seemed they were the same height. When I saw Schreever he was
actually much taller than my father. He asked me what I was going
to do later on. I told him I wanted to go to college but I wasn't sure I
knew what I wanted to take up. "Going to college is a very expensive
proposition," he told my father. "The boy ought to know exactly
what he wants before he enters. I think he ought to consider
something like accounting very seriously. Be a big help to him." My
father agreed. He acted funny around Schreever, did a great deal of
laughing. When Schreever asked where my mother was, my father
hollered out "EDNA" across the parade grounds. My mother left
three women and came running over. Schreever gave her a twentyfive
dollar defense bond for me.
When Schreever had his heart attack, I was living at home and
going to school in the city. My mother had been after my father to
120
Business is Business
ask for a share of the business and not go on all his life working for
a salary. My father kept saying he didn't want the headaches. My
mother said that Schreever had three homes and an apartment and
we couldn't even have a place in the country every summer. My father
said he'd see about it, but would she please leave it to him.
"Besides," my father would say, "I'm sure Mrs. Schreever doesn't
have an ermine stole like you do." That would always quiet my
mother down and then my father would say he'd see about it anyway
just to satisfy her although it would probably mean all kinds
of headaches. Just at the time Schreever had the attack, two salesmen
in the firm approached my father saying they were going to
form their own outfit and would my father like to come along and
be their "inside" man. He would be considered a full partner. My father
was considering it when he went to see Schreever in the
hospital. Schreever said it would be all over without my father.
The business couldn't last a day without him and if he stayed on he
could have a substantial raise in salary. Seeing Schreever dying in
the hospital changed my father's mind. He turned down the two
salesmen who decided not to go through with their plan without
my father. Schreever got better and left the hospital . . .
My mother asked my father why he didn't ask for a share in
the business instead of settling for a raise. "You can't do business
with a dying man. You can't bargain with a man who's had a heart
attack. It's not ethical," my father said. But this time he was plainly
shaken. He seemed to realize that he'd made a big, obvious mistake
and he said to my mother that when Schreever recuperated fully he
would "really talk to him this time."
Whether Schreever had made enough money and wanted to
take it easy the rest of his life or whether he'd been given an ultimatum
by the two salesmen was not plain. But suddenly my father announced
at dinnetime that after 25 years in the Lace Business,
Amos Schreever was retiring. The new owners of Schreever Laces,
Inc. would be two of the firm's salesmen and himself. They would
each have to invest a considerable sum of money to buy out
Schreever. But the best part was yet to come. My father had spoken
to Schreever and out of gratitude for twenty-five years of devoted
service, Schreever was going to put up my father's share of the investment.
Meanwhile, my father took his last cent out of the bank as half
121

Friedman
of the investment and borrowed the other half from my uncle, who
was a gynecologist. Schreever would come up with the money
when it wasn't conspicuous, so the other partners, the two
salesmen, would not be irritated and take offense. "This is
something that has to be kept very quiet," he told us at home. "It's
not good business ethics for Schreever to be doing this for me. It's
simply a gesture of friendship and if the two salesmen found out it
would be horrible."
Still, an air of tension hung over our house as my father began
his new business venture. We had a dinner during which we toasted
his success; but everyone laughed a little too easily and forced a
good time. My mother was told she would have to pull in on the
household budget at the beginning until things got straightened
out. The lace business had its first bad season in twenty years. The
buyers came in, took a great many numbers down, but really didn't
order very much. It was thought that Schreever had been a much
stronger figure in the business than anyone realized and his absence
was really hurting them. My mother, after a few months, asked my
father at dinner if Schreever had been around and if Schreever had
said anything to my father. My father said Schreever was at his
Florida home recuperating. "What's wrong with you, Edna?" he
said. "A man in the condition he's in and you expect him to worry
about business. You really don't understand anything." We got a
letter from the Schreevers in Florida saying the weather was wonderful
and another from them in New Orleans. My father laughed
nervously and said it was good they were getting around and he
hoped it was doing the old boy's health some good.
Living at home, the way I was, it was easy for me to see the
change that came over my father. He was obviously upset constantly,
but it came out in a very strange way. He began to bring
his factory home with him. Everything in the house had to be done
in a precise, exacting way. He went around piling and lining things
up. At the dinner table, he would scrape the crumbs off the tablecloth
with a knife after dinner, getting every one, even if it took
half an hour. Once I took some butter from a side of the dish that
hadn't been started and he knocked the knife out of my hand. He
went around cleaning and dusting and making things neat. He
made his bed over at night in distinct motions as if he were doing it
122
Business is Business
by the numbers. He grew further apart from my mother. She asked
him whether Schreever had gotten in touch with him, and he said,
"Shut your goddamned mouth." Another time she asked him in another
way and he said, "You know it is possible I misunderstood
him. That's been known to happen in the history of men, too.
Maybe I took something for granted that really wasn't the case."
But it didn't sound as though he meant it. As business got worse,
we continued to hope that Schreever would come through.
When my father had an attack of sciatica and had to sleep on a
board, we took a place in the country near a lake. The rental was
pretty high and my sister and nephew came to live with us. There
was the talk, of course, that my father's illness was mainly
psychological, but at any rate it was painful. He was stationed in
the parlor and we had to tiptoe past him. The slightest creak would
start him groaning. We tried to make everything pleasant for him
and keep his mind off business, but he was on the phone every day
speaking to his place. I lied about my age and took a job as a
policeman across the lake. I was to carry a gun and keep unauthorized
people off the private beach. The gun scared me out of my
wits. But at night I would swim the lake to our side. That always
refreshed me and I would not think about the gun until the next
day. I always had the feeling it would go off in the holster and take
my leg off.
One night I swam the lake and came home. I changed my
clothes and went into the back room for a game of GRIPs with my
nephew, Harry, who was five-years-old. We made up the game and
it used to drive him crazy. I would get him in a grip, making up a
name for it, saying it was Elementary Alligator Grab or an Advanced
Boa Hold, and no man had ever gotten out of it. He would
start to laugh and then I would get him in the grip and after a while
ease up, letting him slip out. When he got out he would squeal with
delight, begging me to get him in an Intermediate Japanese Panther
Lock. I had him in one of the grips when my mother came over to
the side of my father's board and said she had a card from the
Schreevers. My father didn't say anything. She said she would read
it. It was from Naples and it said, "Dear Henry and Edna, Are enjoying
sunny Italy and will go on from here to Switzerland. Europe
is truly wonderful, everything we ever dreamed of. Will see En-
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Friedman
gland if there is time and we don't get too overtired. Hope you and
family are enjoying best of health, we remain, the Schreevers." My
mother showed my father the card which had the Schreevers standing
in front of some ruins. I saw it later and Mr. Schreever looked
tall and sun-tanned, better than at my graduation. My father turned
away and said, "You're always digging me, Edna. All my life you've
been digging me. And now that I'm sick you're digging me worse
than ever."
We drove home in a gloom at summer's end, stopping every
couple of miles because the radiator got overheated. My father had
his tonsils taken out, which seemed to cure his back ailment. There
was no talk of Schreever or business on the way home or in the
house for the next month. We were certain it was all over and my
father had really misunderstood him.
One Monday night after working overtime, my father flung
open the door, whisked my mother off her feet and blurted out,
"The Schreevers are back. They called me at work. They want us to
come up to their Connecticut place on Sunday."
My mother was more excited than she'd been in a long time.
She made him calm down and tell the story slowly at the dinner
table. Mr. Schreever, it seems, had called my father while he was in
the factory, telling him he was giving a little cocktail party on Sunday
and would he like to come and bring along the wife and boy.
There would be no one else there and they could have a nice little
talk during the afternoon.
We had a victory drink and my father chided my mother for
being so silly all these last months. "You don't understand business
ethics, Edna," he said. "Number one, the man was a sick man, and
number two it just would've been lousy if he'd done something for
me and those partners of mine found out about it."
My mother spent the rest of the week selecting a new outfit. A
new suit was bought for me. The car was simonized and my father
had his nails manicured. He took a sunlamp treatment at the barbershop
and came back with a fairly good tan. My mother had her
stole cleaned and brushed and her hair done at the beauty parlor.
Just before we started out, my mother suggested that maybe we
oughtn't take the car. "After all, they're smart people. When they
see a convertible they may think we're doing very well. You never
know, Henry, they might think we have property investments."
124
'
Business is Business
"That just shows you how much you know about business,"
my father said. "Get in, Edna, and stop your nonsense. If you've
been in business just two days you know that it's always best to
look your very nicest. No one wants to have anything to do with a
slob."
We drove up with the top down and the air nice and cool. My
father got some good music on the radio. A sign on one of the turnoffs
said Sunny Roads Estate —The Schreevers — and we turned in.
The driveway seemed about a mile long. There were many little
houses on the way to the main house. In front of it stood the
Schreevers, both dressed simply but graciously. Mrs. Schreever
had a boxer heeling at her side. The greeted us and the first thing
they commented on was the car and how well we all looked. "A
con — ver— tible," Mrs. Schreever said. "Isn't it beautiful. And look
how wonderful she looks. And that suntan on Henry. And look at
that lovely stole on Edna. My you look zoon-der-ful, my dears."
I was given the boxer to play with and my parents went into
the bar to drink. They talked for about an hour, all about the
Schreevers' European trip and how they had found all sorts of perfumes
and gifts over there to take back. Then Schreever brought up
the old days and how they had both started out together and how
far they both had come over the years. Everyone got a little tipsy
except my mother. My father did a great deal of laughing and smiling
whenever Schreever opened his mouth. The hours went by. My
mother started to poke my father. He looked at her like she was insane.
She kept poking him, casually so no one would see, but he
kept smiling and laughing at Mr. Schreever. They talked about
Able Starr, a boyhood friend of theirs who had gone to prison and
how they had both visited him; they kidded about how they had
discussed slipping a file to him in a cake. It got dark on the porch
and then we were up and saying goodbye, my mother still prodding
my father, and my father still smiling and laughing with Mr.
Schreever. Then we were in the car driving home, my father a little
tipsy and my mother silent. After a while, he seemed to realize
what had happened. My mother didn't say a word. "I guess it was
just meant to be a little social gathering after all, Edna. It's really
not good business to talk about money at someone's house. It'd be a
sorry mess if I was to go and ask for money when someone had invited
me over for cocktails." My mother asked him to stop the car.
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Friedman
He pulled over and she threw up at the side of the road. She came
back crying in a loud, snuffling way. My father put his arms
around her as he drove, saying that he really would ask him in the
city. No more fooling around. All of us knew at that moment that
he would never ask him. It was the first time I had ever seen my
mother cry. But it was also the first time I had ever seen my father
put his arms around her.
® 1984 Bruce Jay Friedman
126
The Contributors
HELEN BARTLETT is a free-lance writer living in New York City.
She has contributed to The Massachusetts Review, Kansas Quarterly,
Great Contemporary Poems, and is the city reporter for New
York Beat.
M.G. CASEY, author of "Sign of the Dog," is a physician who lives
in Ireland.
MR. CROCAMO, 36, lives with his wife and two sons in Lancaster,
Pennsylvania. He is a Vietnam veteran and a recent
graduate of The Weekend College of St. Elizabeth, Convent Station,
NJ. "The Ambush" is the first of his short stories to be
published.
KENNETH ZAMORA DAMACION has poems forthcoming from
Tendril and The Virginia Quarterly Review. He lives in Berkeley,
California.
STEPHEN DUNN has received a Guggenheim Fellowship for
1984-85. His fifth collection of poems, Not Dancing, will be out
soon from Carnegie-Mellon Press.
ADELHEID FISCHER is a free-lance writer and editor for the arts
in Minneapolis. She has published poems in Sing Heavenly Muse,
Women's Art Registry of Minnesota, Milkweed Chronicle, Twin
Cities Magazine, and The Christian Science Monitor.
BECKY FRANCO-FIEIFELD was born in Havana, Cuba, and received
her B.F.A. from the Pratt Institute in painting. She is one of
the few women outdoor billboard artists in the country and works
127
:
i:

Contributors
for the Winston Network, New York's largest outdoor advertising
company. Becky has also been recognized in newspapers and
magazines for her trompe-loeil murals, furniture and floors. She
lives in Port Washington, New York, with her husband and
daughter.
JAMES FRAZEE'S poems have appeared in American Poetry
Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The North American
Review, among others. He has worked in the film industry for
seven years and now writes film commentaries and reviews.
BRUCE JAY FRIEDMAN, born 1930 in the Bronx. De Witt Clinton
High School, University of Missouri Journalism School. Three
years, lieutenant, USAF. Has written novels (STERN, A
MOTHER'S KISSES, THE DICK, ABOUT HARRY TOWNS);
plays (SCUBA DUBA, STEAMBATH); two short story collections
(BLACK ANGELS, FAR FROM THE CITY OF CLASS). Also,
THE LONELY GUY's BOOK OF LIFE. In film, he wrote STIR
CRAZY and co-authored SPLASH and DR. DETROIT. This story
will appear in a collection called LET'S HEAR IT FOR A
BEAUTIFUL GUY, to be published by Donald I. Fine, Inc. in the
fall. Mr. Friedman is married and lives in Water Mill, N.Y.
NADINE GORDIMER is the author of eight novels and seven
books of short stories for which she has won numerous awards and
honors as well as international acclaim. Most of her work addresses
the social and political issues of her native South Africa. "Crimes of
Conscience" is from her forthcoming collection, Something Out
There.
JOHN GRIESEMER makes his living as an actor in New York and
regional theatre. He appears in the films Playing for Time and the
forthcoming John Sayles film Brother From Another Planet. His
stories have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, The Agni
Review, The Seattle Voice and other magazines. He is also the
author of several screenplays, including the PBS film The Voyage
of the Mimi.
Contributors
MARK HILLRINGHOUSE is the Poetry Director of the William
Carlos Williams Center for the Performing Arts in Rutherford,
New Jersey and an editor of the American Book Review. He lives in
Paterson, New Jersey.
COLETTE INEZ'S poems are widely anthologized and have appeared
in numerous magazines including Poetry, The Hudson
Review, The Nation, The New Republic, Partisan Review, and
American Poetry Review. She is currently teaching poetry
workshops at Columbia University and has a new book out Eight
Minutes From The Sun, published by Saturday Press.
BEV JAFEK is the author of numerous short stories. She has been
cited for distinction by William Abrahams of the O'Henry Awards.
"You've Come A Long Way, Mickey Mouse" is the winner of this
year's Carlos Fuentes Fiction Award.
KATHERINE KANE has appeared in The Iowa Review, New Letters,
The Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Missouri Review.
She lives in Katonah, New York.
TED KOOSER, a previous contributor to Columbia, has appeared
in many literary magazines over twenty-five years. His last book,
Sure Signs, from Pitt, won the Society for Midland Authors Poetry
Prize in 1980. Mr. Kooser lives in Lincoln, Nebraska where he is
Second Vice President-New Business for an insurance company.
GREG LEICHNER designs and builds stained glass windows at his
studio on the Blackfoot River near Bonner, Montana. His story
"Battle Scenes" appeared in Columbia 6.
PHILIP LEVINE is widely published and received the American
Book Award for Ashes in 1980. His Selected Poems has just been
released by Atheneum.
GORDON LISH is a Senior Editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. He is
also the author of the acclaimed novel Dear Mr. Capote, and the
collection of short stories, What I Know So Far.
128 129
\

Contributors
JAMES McCORKLE is a graduate of the Iowa Writers workshop,
and has had poems appear in The Missouri Review, The Minnesota
Review and Quarry West. He recently finished a dissertation on
contemporary poetry and poetics at the University of Iowa.
JAN C. MINICH received an MFA from Iowa Writers Workshop in
1974. He has published poems in The Montana Review, Northwest
Review, Seattle Review, and others. He is presently teaching literature
and composition at the College of Eastern Utah.
JACK NESTOR runs a spirited, grass roots press in Hoboken, New
Jersey. He has been published in Wind, Ascent, Appearances, and
The Hoboken Terminal.
D. NURKSE has recent poetry in The California Quarterly and
Mss. He's co-translator of the disappeared Guatemalan poet Alaide
Foppa de Solorzano.
JAMES REIDEL is a cataloguer at the Rare Book Room of Strand
Book Store in New York City. He is currently working on a book
about the poet Weldon Kees —focusing on his career as an abstract
painter. Mr. Reidel lives in Piscataway, New Jersey, with his wife
Lori and baby Max.
LISA RESS'S first book of poems, Flight Patterns, was the winner
of the 1983 A.W.P. Award Series in Poetry, and will be published
by University Press of Virginia late in 1984. She is a 1984 N.E.A.
grant recipient, and will be leaving Cornell to teach at University of
California, Irvine this year.
MARIO SOLDATI is a well known Italian essayist, short story
writer, novelist and film-maker, many of whose books have been
translated into English. Much of his fiction is autobiographical,
with a strong concern for moral issues. He divides his time between
homes in Milan and Tellaro.
JANE STAW received her M.F.A. from The Iowa Writer's Work-
130
Contributors
shop and now teaches writing in and around Berkeley, California,
where she lives.
NANCY TAKACS teaches creative writing at the College of
Eastern Utah. She won the Discovery/Nation award in 1981, and
has published poems in The Nation, Quarterly West, and The
Montana Review, among others.
131