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VOLUME VI WINTER, 1963 NUMBER 2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
tg kb ER SL Sg Sarai nige epee ner mee anne eee aces 3
no hades aicie aoa inT - 39
FEATURES
Interview with Reynolds Price__-_......-------- i ; 4
On Creative Energy by Richard McKenna_____________------ 26
FICTION
The Outsider by Larry Blizard__-_...__-- 12
Jim Jumper by Zoe Kincaid Brockman Be 14
DRAMA
Quiet Contradiction by Sue Ellen Bridgers 22
ESSAY
A Tribute to William Carlos Williams by Milton G. Crocker 19
POETRY
Dawn by Brenda Canipe # F 10
A Touch of Madness by Brenda Canipe__.. 10
Voices by Milton G. Crocker-__--_______--------- 11
On Several Seas by Milton G. Crocker__._. 11
Troy by Milton G. Crocker 11
Poem by Dwight W. Pearce 18
Winter Love by Milton G. Crocker. 33
From a Kid by G. C. Norwood 33
Forever by Brenda Canipe 33
REBEL REVIEWS
Reviews by Ben Bridgers, Dr. George A. Cook, Milton G. Crocker,
Sue Ellen Bridgers, Sue McDowell, G. C. Norwood, and Joan
Harmon 34
COVER by Larry Blizard
Milip
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THE REBEL is published by the Student Government Association of East
Carolina College. It was created by the Publications Board of East Carolina
College as a literary magazine to be edited by students and designed for
the publication of student material.
NOTICE"Contributions to THE REBEL should be directed to-P. O. Box
1420, E.C.C., Greenville, North Carolina. Editorial and business offices
are located at 30614 Austin Building. Manuscripts and art work submitted
by mail should be accompanied by a self-addressed envelope and return
postage. The publishers assume no responsibility for the return of manu-
scripts or art work.
STAFF
Editor
JUNIUsS DANIEL GrRiMEs III
Associate Editor
SuE ELLEN BRIDGERS
Book Review Editor
MARKEY JONES
Business Manager
WANDA DUNCAN
Advertising Manager
FAYE NELSON
Art Staff
LARRY BLIZARD
DuFry TOLER
Louis JONES
Exchange Editor
SANDRA EDWARDS
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.\JoycE CROCKER
LOUISE RocErs
SY at Upy SULLIVAN
\. Wloyce JORDAN
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. Facu ty Advisor
Ovip WIQLIAMS PIERCE
\ivediation
x SSN ha Phi Omega Fraternity
" National Advertising
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Representatives
College Magazines, Inc.
11 West 42nd Street
New York 36, New York
Member Associated
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THE REBEL
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One of the most nagging problems faced by the college press is: to whom does
it owe its allegiance? On the professional level, this question is pointless; since
the publisher pays the bills he expects, demands and receives the allegiance of
that particular press.
But the college press does not have a publisher in the same sense of the word.
There are several factions on almost every campus which claim financial respon-
sibility for publications. These are: the administration of the college or univer-
sity; the student government association ; the student body at large. (It is
surprising how frequently the two latter are totally unrelated entities.) On some
campuses a fourth faction arises largely because of the squabble between the
other three. This faction consists of an editorial board which finally gets com-
pletely disgusted with squabbles and attempts at pressuring, and in frustration
removes the publication from the realms of any college authority. But removal
from college authority means removal from college support, and this means the
publications involved must be self-supporting or ipso facto, professional.
Such publications probably discover all too rapidly that they have escaped the
spectres of faculty, student and administration pressures only to confront the
much more frightening and demanding spectres of financial responsibility. Then
the law becomes, oSell or go under.� They no doubt learn that where before
they could harbor few radicals because of campus pressure groups, they now can
harbor few radicals because the public simply will not buy their product. Thus
they learn that complete freedom or lack of allegiance remains the ignis fatwus
of all publications.
Meanwhile, what of the press which continues to plod within the financially
safe fold of college authority? Where does their allegiance lie? Pragmatically
and legally, any campus organization exists under the auspices and control of
the college administration. Thus from necessity the college press owes its allegi-
ance to the college and its administration. Perhaps ideally, it should owe allegi-
ance to the students, or better yet, to good taste which should satisfy everybody.
But the ideal is not always practical, and under present systems allegiance be-
longs to and can be demanded by the college. Certainly this system is wide open
to many abuses, and student editors must depend on the good nature of the ad-
ministration to maintain any semblance of freedom.
At East Carolina, the REBEL has been fortunate in that virtually no pressure
has been applied by the administration.. If other college press groups find they
are having difficulty, they might first look in a mirror to see if the reflection of
their own responsibility shines. If they do this and the image is untarnished,
then allegiance or no allegiance, ignis fatuus or not, battle as vigorously as pos-
sible for the rights of the press.
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ii
Reynolds Price attended Duke University where
he was an Angier Duke scholar. He graduated,
Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude, with a Dis-
tinction in history. He spent three years at Oxz-
ford as a Rhodes Scholar.
In 1962 Mr. PriceTs novel, A Long and Happy
Life, was selected as a Book-of-the-Month and re-
ceived the Sir Walter Raleigh Award as the best
novel of the year written by a North Carolinian.
Mr. Price, who is an assistant professor of Eng-
lish at Duke, 1s working on a second novel and will
have a collection of short stories, The Names and
Faces of Heroes, published in June, 1963.
Juterview with
REYNOLDS PRICE
Interviewer: To what do you attribute your in-
sights into the fabric of eastern North CarolinaTs
lower class people?
Mr. Price: Well, I lived in Warrenton, North
Carolina and went to the sixth, seventh, and eighth
grades there in the Warrenton school. It was a
rural consolidated school. Students came in on
buses from various farm areas of the county and
those were the children I knew, the children with
whom I grew up in that extremely impressionable
period of late childhood and early adolescence. I
was especially, I think, touched and affected by
the girls of that age who were quite often physic-
ally more advanced than the boys and who have,
quite often, for a short period of their lives at
that time a kind of fineness and sensitivity which
you feel is only going to last two or three years.
And very shortly theyTll finish school, if they finish
4
at all, and marry and immediately commence hav-
ing a house full of children. And theyTll eventually
be worn down, drained, exhausted, and become the
sort of tired, fat women that their mothers are.
I spent a lot of my childhood in Warren County
because my parents were from there. Quite often
as a child I went there and stayed in the summers.
So I think that this is the basis of anything I
might know about the sort of people who occur
in the novel.
Interviewer: Do you think that eastern North
Carolina will continue as the region of your cen-
tral interest?
Mr. Price: Well, at the moment, this book of
short stories will be coming out in June. The
stories take place in eastern North Carolina and
THE REBEL
in a summer camp in the mountains in North
Carolina. The novel that I am beginning to go
back to now that ITve finished the short stories is
a traveling novel; it travels about in eastern
North Carolina. I donTt have any plans after that.
I mean, ITm not one of these people who has the
next six books planned; I only know one story at
a time. So what the next one will be I donTt know.
I donTt think about, when am I going to get out of
eastern North Carolina. I just write whatever
I want to write and it happens to be in eastern
North Carolina.
Interviewer: Do you think you would have the
same insights into character if you were to get out
of eastern North Carolina?
Mr. Price: Well, IdonTt know. You never know
that you have insight; you just guess. I mean you
start out feeling your imagination captured by the
idea of some character and proceed to write about
that character. You donTt say oWell, ITve got in-
sight into eastern North Carolina farmers, and
thatTs what ITm going to write about.� You just
Say oITm interested in writing about this girl called
Rosacoke Mustian.� Then you start writing and
itTs up to other people to decide whether you've
got any insight. But I think probably a good
writer has a built-in warning system that tells
him not to choose characters or a subject about
which he doesnTt know something. Now, very,
very good writers have, I think, quite frequently
veered out of their field and tried to write about
things they donTt really know about. Thomas Har-
dy wrote about the people who live down in Wes-
Sex, Egdon Heath and so on in Tess of the DTUb-
bervilles. He was fine; but the minute he tried to
write about the society people in London, as he did
Once or twice, it was disastrous. He knew a lot
of society ladies but they somehow didnTt engage
a very deep level of his imagination. Then, of
course, there are some supreme writers who know
everything"what itTs like to be everything. I
mean, Tolstoy knew what it. was like to be every-
thing from Napoleon down to the lowest form of
Serf. ThereTs no question that any form of life
Was closed to him; it wasnTt. But I donTt think
he ever sat up and said, oWell, youTre very lucky,
of Tolstoy. You know what itTs like to be every-
Ody.�
Interviewer: What real purpose do you think
that extensive advance publicity serves?
Mr. Price: Well, I donTt know. I suppose you're
talking about A Long and Happy Life which had
WINTER, 1963
a great deal of advance publicity which was all
through the desire and enthusiasm of my pub-
lisher. I was out of the country at the time and
was really very much an outsider to the whole
thing. I occasionally got sent bits and pieces of
information.
I think probably in the case of a first novel, if
itTs tastefully managed and managed with dignity
itTs probably to the good of the book. So many
novels are published every year. And by the very
nature of that any novel, especially a first novel
by a name that is absolutely unknown is just go-
ing to get lost in the rush and so if in any way a
publisher feels that a book is worth notice I think
he has to do an awful lot of handwaving and sig-
naling to get the thing out. I think the danger is
that it probably could backfire and I imagine that
two or three people in America very much ob-
jected to what they probably felt was sort of high
pressure in forcing the book upon them. The
English resent that sort of advance publicity more
than Americans do, because the English have this
very highly developed sort of literary life which
has gone on much longer than any kind of literary
life in America. I think they very much resent
having their minds made up for them in advance
about anything. There was nothing like the ad-
vance interest in the book in England that there
was in America. But even then, just with the
same quotations printed on the jacket in England
that were used in America, several English re-
viewers remarked that they had much rather the
book had been published without advance com-
ments from anyone. They felt that this was an
unfair attempt to bias them.
Interviewer: But to go back to that same ques-
tion, do you agree that there is a real distinction
between American and British book reviewers and
if you do, which method is more beneficial?
Mr. Price: Well, the English are very nasty.
They attempt to be much more witty, to be sar-
castic, ironic at the expense of a book. I think
that thereTs a notable lack of meanness in Ameri-
can reviewing. I think that quite often American
reviewers tend to be dull as dish water; they tend
to be just like grade school book reports. The
plot is so and so and the last sentence is oChildren
of all ages will enjoy this book,� and oTI recommend
you go to your library and get it.� Then you get
wise guys, like the guy in Los Angeles who doesnTt
like to read southern novels so he writes a sort
of little wise guy review about it. But on the
5
"""" =
whole I think American reviewing attempts to be
very serious.
Interviewer: How much do you think that crit-
ical reviews or critics actually affect the values
of the readers?
Mr. Price: Well, publishers say thereTs only one
review in America that can make or break a book
and thatTs the daily New York Times review. I
donTt believe that exactly, because I do think the
fact that my book got an enormous number of
generous reviews must have helped it a great deal
and I was totally surprised that the book took off
in the way that it did. But apparently publishers
do feel that the daily New York Times review is
very important, that it really sells books if it gives
a good one. I donTt know what happens if it gets
a bad one. I think publishers to a certain extent,
even the best of them, operate by a system of
irrational superstition. They have these very
elaborate notions of when a certain book should
be published and when it shouldnTt be published.
oItTs very bad to publish such and such in June and
itTs very bad to publish such and such in Novem-
ber; we donTt want your book to get lost in the
Christmas rush� and this sort of thing. One won-
ders really if there isnTt an awful lot of astrology
in it all.
Interviewer: Do you think its possible that re-
viewers are more apt to affect the reception of a
book in an academic community or on the academic
level?
Mr. Price: Well, itTs hard to say. I donTt know
because I canTt think of any critic, any single re-
viewer in America who is greatly respected by a
large body of informed readers. In England, say
thirty years ago, if Arnold Bennet reviewed a book
in the Evening Standard"he used to write, I
think, a weekly book review"if Arnold Bennet
liked a book he reviewed in the Evening Standard
then it immediately sold thirty thousand copies
just on the basis of that one review. If H. G.
Wells recommended a book it immediately sold.
I suppose in the 19th century in America if
Emerson had recommended a book"I mean,
EmersonTs recommendation of Walt WhitmanTs
Leaves of Grass took the thing right off the
ground. I donTt think thereTs a single critic in
America with the possible exception of Edmund
Wilson who could stand up now and say, oThis
is an extraordinary book,� and find respect for
his views. There are a lot of people that oneTs
always interested in. I mean, I~m always inter-
ested in what Mary MacCarthy says about books
but nine-tenths of the time I donTt agree with her.
ItTs very hard to know because I think that re-
viewers in America are so irresponsible really;
this may sound inconsistent. Where one would
expect to find intelligent reviewers in America,
one doesnTt. I think one finds intelligent reviews
in the Sioux City Sentinel. I donTt think one finds
intelligent reviewers where they ought to like the
Partisan Review or the Kenyon Review, even
sometimes the Sewannee Review. I mean, one
certainly canTt generalize too much. I think that
the best reviews are pronvincial newspaper re-
views.
Interviewer: Do you think it often defeats a
writer to be forced to teach in that it compromises
any complete commitment?
Mr. Price: Well, if you say forced to teach, yes,
I think it would. Teaching is a calling and I donTt
think one ought to be forced into a calling. You
ought never to force one into a priesthood. For
better or worse, teaching, I think, is a form of
priesthood. I teach because I very much enjoy |
teaching and because I especially enjoy having a
certain part of my life rendered in the presence of
people younger than myself, people who are full
of enthusiasm and a certain amount of fervor.
Goodness knows, enthusiasm and fervor vanish
soon enough. But I think certainly one does see
a number of people ground down, beaten to the
earth, who might have been forced to teach be-
cause (a) they need the money, (b) this is the
only way they know how to make their fifty-seven
hundred dollars a year or whatever it may be.
I donTt think we know what the effect of the
movement of the American writer into the uni-
versity is. People are trying to guess already about
this extraordinary phenomenon of the universities
becoming the literary patrons of America. It has
never really happened in the history of literature
before and it will be very difficult to know. But a
very good friend of mine, a very wise man, Lord
David Cecil, said to me that he thought any artist
needed great stretches of his life in which he could
be quite irresponsible"irresponsible to any form
of authority"well, any sort of worldly authority.
I mean, youTre always responsible to the law of
gravity, the laws of God, and so on; but I quite
agree. I think that it certainly is a necessity in
my own life, in the life of most writers I know,
for a certain amount of irresponsibility. And the
THE REBEL
university makes that very difficult. Because
there is one very exhausting thing about teaching
"there are many exhausting things about it, but
I think the main exhausting thing about teaching
is that not only are you expected to teach poetry
or physics or whatever, but you are also expected
to be an example of some sort to your students, a
good example, with all that it implies. ITm not
Saying that one wants to be a bad example in oneTs
hours off, that one wants to run out and do some-
thing really outrageous as soon as you get out of
Class. But I think that there is an element of
Strain which is probably in the end exhausting to
a writer. There are a great many things one
feels one canTt do; but then ITm sure there are a
great many things you canTt do if youTre an insur-
ance salesman, if youTre an editor for Random
House, or selling refrigerators like my father used
to do.
Interviewer: In teaching creative writing, do
you stress the academic side of form and struc-
ture?
Mr. Price: I have a course in writing, but I
donTt call it creative writing because I think thatTs
& very pompous phrase. I think itTs been attached
to an awful lot of very, very bad instruction in the
Past and in the present. I call my course narra-
tive fiction, narrative writing. I think a great
deal can be done for gifted students in a writing
Course if itTs managed very carefully and very
Suspiciously. I think very little can be done for
a student that doesnTt have some real gift of his
Own. I mean, I think thatTs the thing about any
art and itTs a pretty obvious thing to say. If you
donTt start out with some donation which you
didnTt acquire, which came to you from God, or
your genes, or something, you might as well give
up. But I think you can take a gifted person and
tell him the right things to read and point out and
try to help him discover as you yourself try to
discover the way certain things get themselves
Made and put together, certain stories, certain
Novels. I think you can at least begin to develop,
help him develop his ear, his sense of whatTs good
and whatTs not good, what can be done, what has
been done, what needs to be done. I would say
that the chief advantage in someone who wanted
to write having a college education as opposed to
Not having one would be that college provides him
above all, if he takes it seriously, with a reasonably
disciplined reading background. I think that
there is nothing more necessary and nothing more
important for a writer to have. ITve said it many
WINTER, 1963
times but I think if I had to have advice to young
writers carved on my tombstone it would be read
about ten times as much as you write. I think so
many young writers have the idea that you
must keep the typewriter going; if you keep it
going long enough something will happen. Well,
nothing like that will ever happen unless you stop
and think a bit and I think that the chief way
writers can think is by reading other writers and
reading very, very good writers.
Interviewer: Katherine Anne Porter said a few
years ago she abhorred comparisons of writers and
authors, especially by critics. How do you feel
about this? Do you think that writers should
stand completely on their own merit or be com-
pared?
Mr. Price: Well, I think that the answer to that
has to be double barreled. ItTs really ridiculous
to say othe best novel of the year was Spring
Time in the Rockies.� Well, thatTs nonsense. In
the first place how do you know at the end of a
twelve month period? Do you have enough per-
spective to know that xTs novel is better than yTs?
Just to take it further, I entered one of those il-
luminating discussions the other night of who was
greater"Tolstoy or Dostoyevski, when we should
have been on our knees thanking God that both
men existed. David S. Lagenta says itTs silly to
try to compare writers because writers are not
like race horses. You can enter horses in a race
and tell them ~When the bell rings, you horses
go from point A to point B and the first guy who
gets to point B wins the race.� ThatTs fair because
all the horses are attempting to do the same thing,
to get on their four legs from point A to
point B at a given signal. No two writers are
attempting to do the same thing. It is very unfair
to compare people who are not attempting to do
the same thing. Writers just are not race horses;
they are not entered in the same race. But you
must come along and say in the end, yes, com-
parisons are made, because it is perfectly clear
that some things are more worth doing than other
things. It seems to me that Jane Austin is a per-
fect novelist. Two or three of her books are ab-
solutely perfect and I donTt think that there is
anything that needs changing about them; yet I
think that anybody will admit that Tolstoy or
Dickens were greater novelists as they did things
that were much larger in scope and not only larger
in scale but with more value because of greater
intensity ; a greater degree of comprehension, un-
The Movie-Goer.
derstanding, was being expanded upon a much,
much broader range of human experience. So it
is possible to say that Tolstoy is greater than Jane
Austin. At the same time, why say it, why not
just read them both and be glad that you have got
them both? It is like saying oI love apples, so
much more than I do steak,� so what?
Interviewer: Your characters are more or less
of the inarticulate group, and you said that you
felt a certain compulsion or need to speak for the
inarticulate. In the continuing concern to speak
for the inarticulate, do you think that the articu-
late have been neglected?
Mr. Price: I have just read Walker PercyTs
It seems to me, although I
think the central character who tells the story is
pretty inarticulate, that a number of the charac-
ters in that novel are articulate southerns inso-
far as they are based on the Percy family in New
Orleans, which is a very distinguished southern
intellectual family. I know there are no articu-
late people in Faulkner except that boring Gavin
Stevens, who is always so articulate that you wish
you could shut off the valve. Who else? Thomas
Wolfe, well his characters are not supposed to be
articulate; they go on for a lot of pages though.
I think southerners are uniquely articulate at
almost all levels of society. Like southern people
in almost all countries, as opposed to northern
people in a given country, they will talk very freely
about problems that you think lie closest to their
hearts ; theyTll talk very freely about the alcoholic
nephew in the family, or the wino father, or the
illegitimate this or that. This is a very famous
thing about southerners. I think in a way articu-
late and inarticulate are meaningless in the South.
In any case, people will say that communication is
impossible. No two people ever speak to one
another. WeTre all locked up in those plate glass
walls and we never touch. Nonsense, I mean I
think, I imagine I communicate on a very intense
level with four or five people; and it seems to me
good enough. I donTt worry that I canTt walk up
to the guy who sweeps out my office and talk to
him kind of heart-to-heart. It doesnTt bother me.
I think an awful lot more people could communi-
cate if they just tried.
I think that another question is how do you talk
about characters who donTt think very much, who
donTt think in any conceptional way? And thatTs
a problem that I ran very much up against in
writing A Long and Happy Life. One be-
lieves that intellectual people do a good deal of
conception thinking, that I think that ITve got sit-
uation A, ITve got choices A and B and it would
be better if Ido A. The following things may re-
sult if Ido A. The following things may result if
Ido B. Ergo, I do A. ITm sure that 99% of the
people in the world donTt live their lives in that
way. I question if anybody does. Maybe Ein-
stein or a few people like him did. But this is
very much a problem that you have in fiction.
How can I show the way a girl makes up her mind
to marry the father of her child, or in the case
of Lie Down In Darkness, how can William
Styron show the mind of the girl rapidly heading
for suicide, this little girl who obviously doesnTt
think very much? Well, all sorts of techniques
have been invented in the 20th Century"stream
of consciousness and so on and so on. I think
they were just as artificial as the old Dickensian
18th Century method of saying oHe thought to
himself, ~I must go to the cliff and jump off.T �
So my characters just think that way. oI must
go to the cliff and jump off.� oI must marry the
father of my child.� They donTt say, olooking out
the window, seashells, breakers, foam riding
across the waves, I must jump off the cliff.�� ThatTs
the Wolfe, Joyce thing. It seemed to be just as
artificial as any method, so I returned to a much
simpler method which is at least more readable.
Interviewer: Then there were not any concious
techniques which you used?
Mr. Price: Rather simple ones. You just
say, oRosacoke looked at Wesley and thought
~Now I am free of Wesley.T�T I think very seldom
do you say to yourself in your head, oI am going
to walk across the street and tell that man exactly
what I think of him.T�T How do you think? Do you
think in words? Does one think in words? Do
you think in pictures? I donTt know, because by
the time youTve had a thought itTs past history; it
is impossible to reclaim the actual process. Some-
times I think very deliberately you do say words
in your head. You do say sentences silently.
Often in moments of great stress or moments of
great determination, one does think words; but
otherwise I suppose you think in a colossal jungle
THE REBEL
of pictures and electric impulses and so forth. No
one understands this, and so you Just invent your
own little particular convention, and my little par-
ticular convention in that novel was a rather nat-
ural technique of saying, he thought, she thought,
she said to herself, and so on. The method would
naturally alter with any given situation. You
canTt just invent a method at the age of twenty-
five and expect to use it the rest of your life.
ThatTs what Hemingway did and look what it did
to him. Right to the end he was trying to use
tools that he had made, no doubt he made them,
but he was still using the same old tools in 1961
that he was in those marvelous brilliant things in
1930; thereTs something a little grotesque about
that, like looking at Marlene Deitrich and saying
oWell I know Marlene Deitrich is fifty-six years
old, but she looks just like she did 30 years ago;�
you think, ooWow, she ought not to.�
Interviewer: Since you deal with the illiterate
groups in southern society, do you think these peo-
ple are any closer to the mainstream of life?
Mr. Price: I donTt know what the mainstream
is, except that ITd say that all those people who
go to bed hungry in Europe and Asia every night
donTt read books, certainly. My own father al-
Ways said heTd never read but one and he wasnTt
especially proud of the fact, but it was just a fact
of his life. He was a very good man indeed. A
very wise man. ITm not all that convinced of the
Value of books. I think of all the things in the
World which matter, art probably matters rather
little. Nothing matters very much and few things
matter at all, as Salisbury said. He may have
been right. If it is true, I think art is one of the
things that doesnTt matter very much.
Interviewer: In that case why are you writing?
Mr. Price: Because it is what I can do.
Interviewer: Do you think that a writer has a
real drive, that itTs something he has to do?
Mr. Price: It is a very neurotic drive, other
People steal underwear off clothes lines and things
like that. Others write. ItTs just a rather con-
Structive neurosis. I think itTs probably better
than people who steal underwear off clotheslines.
Interviewer: You made a comment about the
techinque you used in your first novel. You said
Something about making it readable. Is that your
Primary consideration? ©
WINTER, 1963
Mr. Price: ItTs certainly one, yes.
Interviewer: Well, the book that jumps in my
mind is FinneganTs Wake.
Mr. Price: There are people who have read it,
but ITm not one of them. [I'll probably go to my
grave not having read it either. I think thatTs the
great trouble with FinneganTs Wake. It is not
readable. If a pictureTs invisible, it canTt be seen;
if a bookTs unreadable, it canTt be read. I think
readability is certainly one of the first things
a writer must deal with. I think there are some
things which are so complex that they cannot be
said simply. It is useless to say that all prose
must be so loose that it can be understood by a
guy running a 50 meter dash. But I canTt read
Henry James, another confession; I keep making
attempts to read The Golden Bowl, and The Wings
of the Dove. TheyTre just unreadable; but there
are people whom I admire very much, people
whom I even love, who think that The Golden Bowl
is one of the supreme works of art. I just canTt
get past page 5, because I donTt know what James
is talking about. I realize if ITd been in the room
with this man, ITd have just been asleep.
I do think it is possible to be too good, from
moment to moment, in prose to be so good that the
reader finds it impossible to get on with the page.
HeTs continually stopping to admire a particular
little description or a particular little comparison.
oYes, that just exactly right; thatTs exactly how
a tree looks with ice on it,� or oThatTs exactly what
a 1939 Pontiac looks like.�� Consequently you have
this very cluttered quality; you feel like youTre
being buttonholed; you feel like somebodyTs stop-
ping you at the end of every line and holding you
up. I think in that case, if youTre a very clever
person and have a very good eye for detail, you
just have to throw a good deal of that overboard.
I remember Eudora Welty saying that to me about
one of my earlier stories that she read; that from
moment to moment it was too fine, that there were
too many good details in it, so that it slowed the
reader down enormously. You know what it is
like . .. you just go to the National Gallery in
Washington, there are too many good pictures in
that gallery. After a while you find yourself rac-
ing past beautiful pictures which, if they were
hung in a single room alone, you would think each
was one of the most beautiful things ever painted.
But when you see forty-five of them in one room
it just looks like wallpaper.
. "
Se a ee a eee meet ie
P
O
E
T
S
Dawn
Through a silver-frosted window
A sudden shaft of light!
A silver-shattering sunburst
Puts an end to night!
Along a stretch of warm sea-sand
A ribbon-twisted line of foam;
A night-weary shadow stops to muse,
Then turns again home.
White sails caught on a rising tide
Wait restlessly for me;
A lone gull wheels in open air,
And tops a white, foam-crested sea.
I must be gone.
A Couch of Madness
An old woman weeping
Under the gray blanket
Of a willow tree.
Grey rain over a long
Grey stretch of sea,
Under a grey sky"
Grey rain on a silver roof.
A thousand years ago.
Jules beside me
Reading in his chair
beside the fire,
Lost. Lost
in the intricate pattern
of a childTs delight.
Back to yellow leaves on
Snow.
Back a thousand years ago
To the slow rhythm of a
Thousand hearts and
A thousand drops of grey rain.
The sacrilege of winter
Spreading yellow leaves on
Snow.
Ashes and yellow leaves,
Ashes and snow.
Ashes, leaves, snow"
A thousand years ago.
Jules beside me
Nodding in his chair.
Jules under the earth"
Under the ashes, leaves and
Snow.
A thousand years ago.
Brenda Canipe
THE REBEL
Voices
OT Surely this is so"
Our feet have led us to the stars,
where, by the maze of lights,
we danced like frightened mice
on shattered coals...
Sears of failing stars
and silent stumps of flickering dark .. .
And we have run like ghosts
down fields where gryphons fled.
OT Surely I have crushed
a thousand flowers down...
The dark trees wait for light;
the young trees wait for rain... .
OT Surely I have sought the shadow of myself
and lost your eyes
in every weep of night
to stumble on at morning...
where the blind mice dance
by the maze of music light .. .
OT Surely there is no beauty
like a thousand flowers crushed .. .
In the belly of this. building
I will die...
I will haunt the floors above me
With a dying wail...
for I have made of Death
& woman wed to flowers .. .
And I will sadly gaze with silver eyes
upon the face of God...
For Surely I have heard
a thousand dying flowers speak .. .
On Several Seas
Call up, call up
those magic men
with names like Gods... .
who sowed their lives
like seed on the wind .. .
furrow to the right,
against the mast, Odysseus,
and the sirenTs voices
raised against him...
remember Achilles, Odysseus,
the manner of his dying...
Circe climbs a lonely crag
and looks to seaward ...
and in Carthage a single figure
sets a funeral pyre
to light the world.
Croy
Time has eaten here...
the wooden horse waits,
timbers sag with weather,
head charred.
Once ... this was a land alive...
this city has known the click
of historyTs heel; here Ajax died,
Achilles there ... here aged Agammemnon stood
and disbelieved Cassandra...
but now"this ash is old,
HelenTs bones are polished silver,
Odysseus dead"there is only the wind
and the wooden horse who waits.
Time has narrowed his eyes .. .
Milton G. Crocker
WINTER, 1963
11
Msi RT i a i lS PA ORME
Mixes Place they say was built on the ruins of
a once-thriving cotton farm, on land once lorded
over by gentlemen. They say that MikeTs Place
is part of the New South"not the New South in-
cluded in the governorTs speeches nor even the
New South of the travel folders: no, MikeTs place
is part of the New South of the back roads, of
the sun-scorched dirt farms, of miles and miles
of open countryside, green and alive with growing
tobacco in the spring and seemingly barren and
soggy and brown in fall and winter; or the
weathered raw-boned people who trample over
their fields, still tearing from the maws of the
land their food and shelter just as generations be-
fore had done (this in spite of the governorTs
speeches).
Amo"-wvnaCco mi
By LARRY
12
You can sit in the cool back room of MikeTs
place while the hot summer wind whirls up the
dust in the shimmery driveway outside. (During
World War Two, it had been a roadhouse, fre-
quented by marines who swarmed over the coun-
tryside, up and down the highway between there
and the coast. After the war it was turned into
a filling station; however, as time went by, the
back room was reopened, a juke box installed;
and, on the weather beaten front, along with the
Pepsi and Nehi signs was added, in crudely paint-
ed letters: cold beer.)
oYou oughtta get out of here,� Mike, the pro-
prietor, was telling the red-necked young man
who sat at the counter in the front, hunched over
a bottle of beer. oOutta this part of the country,
I mean. It ainTt your type of life.�
oWhat do you mean?�
oJust what I said. A fellow like you just donTt
belong here.� He swatted a fly which had landed
on the counter.
The younger man sat thoughtfully, picking at
the label on the wet bottle. Outside the sun
glared off a tractor parked by the gas pumps.
Now Mike was leaning over the counter, his
paunchy face peering into that of the youth.
oYou know the way things are here. You grow
yer tobacco anT you sell it. Maybe you trade in yer
car. Saturdays you get drunk. Sometimes you
fight. Sometimes you get thrown in jail. Some-
times somebody gets killed. ThatTs the way it is
here; thatTs the way itTs always been around here
and thatTs the way it always will be around here.
God knows, I know.�
oItTs that way everywhere,� the youth said
quietly.
Mike straightened up. oThis ainTt the place for
you, Joe,� he said. oYou got too many smarts for
this kind of life,� he said, tapping his forehead
with his finger. He picked up a soppy dish towel
from the counter.
oItTs just for awhile,T�T the youth said; oJust till
AnnTs old man gets better, you know. ItTs the
only thing we could do. I mean staying here and
helping out with the farm while heTs laid up anT
all. ItTs just for awhile.�
oHm! And just how long do you figure thatTll
BLIZARD
THE REBEL
be, huh? Do you know?�
oT donTt know,� he replied vacantly, picking at
the label on the bottle again. oBut anyway, I canTt
leave Ann and itTs her place to stay here with
him.�
A second fly landed on the counter. Mike went
after it. Outside, the tractorTs motor started up.
A dusty second-hand car pulled up and two
grimy, sunburned men with shirt fronts open and
shirttails hanging loose got out and came in.
oAnother thing,T Mike said as he carefully"
almost delicately" brushed the fly off the counter,
owhat about Carl Powers?�
At the sound of that name, the youth stopped
in mid-drink, set his bottle back on the counter;
and, for the first time, gazed attentively at Mike.
oWhat about him?�
~You know heTs outta prison now,� Mike said,
oanT you know how he felt about Ann. He ainTt
gonna take too kindly to you anT Ann beinT to-
gether.�
oT can take care of myself, Mike.�
oT remember him anT Ann used to come in here
lots,T Mike said, o"used to come in here Saturday
nights anT drink anT dance anT raise hell. HeTs a
big man, Joe, anT heTs mean"real mean.�
oITm not worried about him.�
oWhat I canTt figure, Joe, is you anT Ann gettinT
along together. I mean her and Carl, they were
alike in a lotta ways. They both grew up around
here; theyTre a part of this place. This is the only
kind of life they know. They work the land, they
drink, they fight. But you",� he jabbed his
finger at Joe, o"youTre not their kind. YouTre"
too goddam easygoinT.�
oTook Joe,� Mike was leaning over the counter
again, looking searchingly into the youthTs face,
otake my advice, huh: Get outta here. Take the
girl with you"if you think sheTll go"which I
doubt. You stay here, you'll end up like the
people who live around here, brown and wrinkled
and squinty-eyed, and hard. ItTs the only way to
Survive here, Joe. But youTll be all dried up in-
Side; the sun, the wind"theyTll dry you up. You
work the land, you drink, get in fights on Satur-
day nights, maybe shootinT somebody"or gettinT
shot. These people"this is all theyTve ever known.
They can take it. But you"you just ainTt cut out
for it. Why canTt you just leave here, anT get
away from Powers anT his kind.�
The young man sat there saying nothing. Fin-
ally he looked at his bottle of beer. oI canTt go,
Mike. I love Ann. As long as sheTs here, I'll fit
in here too.�
WINTER, 1963
And the afternoon passed. The sun, now a
red globe against a purple sky, sank below the
horizon ; while the land, like a cat awakening from
sleep in the sun, seemed to yawn and stretch in
the fresh coolness of the evening breeze. And
with the evening, MikeTs Place came alive with
lights and sounds"the juke box, the pin ball
machine, the hiss of beer cans being opened amid
the sliding of chairs and stools; the coarse laugh-
ter, the leathery faces and the smells of sweat and
tobacco and soil"the smells of the land. The
youth finished off his last bottle and walked out
the door. The moon was a climbing pale disc in
the sky as he drove off.
He had driven perhaps two miles when he no-
ticed the car behind him. At first he paid no at-
tention to it, but when he saw how the car hung
close to his rear in the gloomy dusk, he studied
it closely, took a deep breath, and very slowly,
very deliberately pulled off, and crunched to a stop
some yards ahead of him.
He sat there in the darknes of his car, waiting,
feeling a sense of loneliness yet fascination, as
two figures emerged slowly from the other car
and walked toward him in the glare of his head-
lights. The one, the nearer one, was a hulking
figure in a gray shirt.
oJoe?� the nearer man called, oIs that you,
Joe?�
oTTm right here, Carl .. .�
9?
oCome out, Joe, I got somethinT I wanna...
He said no more. The youth called Joe had the
revolver aimed even as the other man called. The
gun barked once"the hulking figure raised a
hand, spun around, falling. The youth after firing
once, fired again and again"four times more"at
the figure writhing on the ground, at the shadowy
figure behind him. Four more shots, a scream,
and then silence. The echoes faded, the figures
lay still. The darkness closed in around them.
From somewhere, a fresh moisture-tipped breeze
rustled the stalks in the field beside the road.
You can sit in MikeTs Place in the burning
summer afternoons, while the hot wind churns up
the dust outside, while the sun glares off tractors
parked by gas pumps. In a way, time hasnTt
changed the countryside around MikeTs Place. In
spite of the tractors and machines, the people still
trample over their fields, work the land, fight,
drink, love, and die. It is a part of the country
with which the casual tourist rarely becomes in-
volved. In many ways, it is still a harsh life.
13
Pre ee "s ee N
Sal fin A
r og
ea
i it i ke j
i we i
fl r m
wert y Toler
By ZOE KINCAID BROCKMAN
THE REBEL
That his name was Jim Jumper was the occa-
sion for perennial flurries of mild mirth in the
small town where the upright and the dissolute
lived more or less harmoniously and uncritically
together.
Jim Jumper was the townTs most notorious bum,
pan-handler, and fussy drunk. He seldom had
enough money or begging luck for a real spree,
but he was always foggy and unsteady from bay
rum, vanilla extract, or canned heat. His last
drink was paint thinner, but that comes later in
the story.
His name amused old residents and newcomers
alike, since Jim Jumper had never been known to
accelerate his shambling gait, even when crossing
Ashley Avenue, which is practically a death trap,
or the railroad track which bisects the town.
Jim Jumper, age unknown, was tall, stooped,
loose-jointed, and splay-footed. In appearance
he was the reincarnation of Ichabod Crane, a
character of whom Jim Jumper had never heard.
Where what meager schooling he had been expos-
ed to had ended, nobody knew. Just as nobody
heTd been pointed out as the townTs No. 1 No-Good.
But where he spent his little boy days or with
whom, none could say. He seemed to have grown
up in alleys, slept in piano boxes or coal cellars,
and begged his food from restaurant leftovers.
I first encountered Jim Jumper in the news-
paper office where I work. The newspaper was
on Jim JumperTs beat, since reporters are known
to be pretty soft-hearted people, and our office
was always good for several touches. As for me,
I studiously avoided the big, shambling, mutter-
ing man. It wasnTt that I was afraid of him.
Jim Jumper had never been known to harm so
much as a kitten. It was rather that his un-
kempt, greasy hair, his spotted, smelly clothes,
and the look of his skin, deeply pitted from acne
or some ugly disease and ingrained with dirt,
offended me. The newsroom staff, particularly
the gay young sports writers, made quite a thing
of a visit from Jim Jumper, if he remembered to
make it after the paper was off the press. They
handed out dimes, they poked sly fun, and they
needled him in a way both kindly and merciless.
JUMPER
knew where he came from or who his family had
been. He had difficulty spelling out newspaper
headlines, and words of more than two syllables
Were beyond him.
When the grisly thing was over and the compul-
Sion was upon me to record something of the his-
tory of Jim Jumper, there was little or nothing
to draw from. Nobody knew whether or not he
Was a native of the town. All the old settlers
Could tell me was that: he had been mooching
around for forty years, and that from childhood
WINTER, 1963
But Jim Jumper was aware only that he was in
a friendly atmosphere, the boys offered cigarettes,
and often gave him what remained in a mashed
and crumpled pack.
Jim Jumper would grin, showing stained teeth
with several of the front ones missing. He never
lifted his head about his stooped shoulders, but
peered upward through shaggy strands of fear-
fully dirty hair. He loved the newsroom, if there
was a vacant chair he took it, tilting himself pre-
cariously against the wall. When the reporters
15
had time to talk they drew him out on what he
was drinking that day, where he had slept the
night before, and what he was going to do with
the money they gave him. Then, if his mood was
good, heTd pluck a battered harmonica from a torn
pocket, clamp rubbery gray lips over it, and draw
from it music that had an almost magical sound.
His repertoire consisted of a few sad, nostalgic
tunes, and seldom could he be persuaded to try
any of the current favorites.
One day the boys sold him on the idea of getting
married. What he really needed, they told him,
was a nice fat blonde wife. They advised him to
place an ad in the paper"they wrote the ad out
for him with much ribald laughter.
Jim Jumper was elated. He discussed the ad
with the man at the classified desk, had him read
~it over and over to him, and then stumbled out,
sure that heTd find a nice fat blonde girl waiting
for him when he visited the office next day. What
he didnTt know was that the crumpled up ad hit
the wastepaper basket before he was out of the
front door.
One day I didnTt see him coming and he caught
me at my desk in the womanTs department. I
typed busily, never once lifting my head. And
Jim Jumper talked. oGonna get married,� he told
me. oBig fat blonde girl. Got money. Got car.
Can love like hell.�
When I didnTt reply he asked, oCat got your
tongue?� When I still gave no sign that I knew he
was around, he waggled a long bony finger slick
with dirt under my nose. oLemme tell you some-
thing,� he mumbled thickly and a little excitedly.
~~Prettier wimmen than you talk to me, anT young-
er ones, too.�
At that, since ITm neither young nor pretty, my
risibilities overcame me and spilled over into
laughter. oLaughinT at me,� he muttered fiercely.
oGot no right to laugh at me. Gonna get married.
Nice fat blonde girl.T�T And he shambled off in
the broken shoes that caused him to walk on the
sides of his big splayed feet.
It isnTt that people in my town are careless or
hard-hearted, and we have a welfare department,
same as the next one. Church people tried to do
something for Jim Jumper, to sober him up, clean
him up, and find some sort of a berth for him.
But the big shambling wreck of a man wanted
none of it. HeTd been numb with cold or sodden
with heat, depending on the season, all of his life.
He was used to being hungry. His ancient clothes,
stiff with dirt and grease, suited him. All he
wanted was freedom to check his beat each day,
16
- a
SE a
collect from the easy marks as well as the impa-
tient ones who flung him a coin to get rid of him,
and to shuffle into the newspaperTs city room,
which constituted his club, the only place he could
go for a spot of conversation which had nothing
to do with the good of his soul. Of preachers and
the Salvation Army, he was leery. TheyTd give
him food and a bed, or the Salvation Army would,
but it was the feel of alcohol coursing warmly
through his sluggish veins that he needed and had
to have. Maybe the fearful stuff he drank eased
up any blurred memories he might have had. And
surely he must have had stirrings of memory.
HeTd been a baby once, heTd been born to some-
body, and surely, for a time at least, heTd known
warmth and comfort and some sort of security.
But these thoughts came to us much later when
we were through with merely accepting Jim
Jumper and were trying to catalogue him as a
human being.
The day that Jim Jumper, tight as a pickled
owl on an unaccustomed windfall of real whiskey,
was discovered showering the Confederate monu-
ment on the court house lawn with decaying to-
matoes and cabbages garnered from a food storeTs
garbage can, was the day the authorities took
steps. Arrangements were made for Jim Jumper
to go to the county home. He was washed, and
that must have been accomplished by force. His
hair was cut, and his bony, unsteady body was
thrust into clean denim work clothes. Somehow
his knobby feet were put into brand new shoes,
the first new ones anybody had ever seen Jim
Jumper wear.
The county home didnTt suit him, as the uneasy
authorities had known it wouldnTt. Clean clothes,
three plain, wholesome meals a day, and a clean
bed meant nothing to a man who had never known
them. Or, if he ever had, had long since forgotten
that such comforts existed.
For the first day or two, Jim Jumper kept to
himself and played the harmonica, which was his
one treasure and which heTd been allowed to take
with him to his new home. New? ThatTs a laugh.
It was the first home Jim Jumper had ever had.
Unless the plaintive tunes issuing from the har-
monica were tag-ends of something he had known
before we became aware of him. Where, for in-
stance, had a character like Jim Jumper picked
up the melody of BrahmTs oCradle Song,� or the
wistful notes of ~Mighty LakT A Rose� and oGoinT
Home,� which seemed to be his very favorites?
Nobody knew, and the origin of the wavering
THE REBEL
tunes he played were shrugged off as ojust one of
those things.�
After three weeks, Jim Jumper managed to
elude the manager of the home and shuffle into
town, a matter of some five miles. When he ap-
peared in the newspaper office, sweaty, filthy,
and exhausted, if there was any expression in
his hooded, wary eyes, it was that of complete
panic of a creature caught in a trap, of a captive
in a trap, of a captive who had to get out of the
trap at all costs.
This time the reporters couldnTt help him. This
time there was no easy banter, no give and take.
They talked seriously to him, asked him why he
couldnTt behave himself and act like a human be-
ing, kept him talking while one of them put in a
telephone call to the proper place. Presently a
cross individual showed up, shoved Jim Jumper
into a pick-up truck, and took him back to the
home.
The great craving was upon him. There was
vanilla extract at the home. Jim Jumper knew;
he could taste it in the bread pudding they had for
supper. There was bay rum; he could smell it
on the scalp of the man who ran the farm and
who despised him because he would not, or could
not, work. But it was all locked away from him.
And now there were no friends to laugh at him,
to jeer at him, to tell him impatiently to oget
going,� but who, at the same time, gave him the
bits of money which he exchanged for the only
thing that made his existence bearable. What we
realized much later was that Jim Jumper had to
have something, just as all human creatures must,
and his something was realized in the cheap mix-
tures which, if he had the money, he could always
find.
The idea that desperation could or would assail
Jim Jumper didnTt occur to any of us. He was
the town character, dirty, slovenly, witless, and
drunken, and now we had at last got him into an
atmosphere of cleanliness, decency, and sobriety.
Or had we?
Well, Jim Jumper had the answer to that one.
Again he escaped the home, but he didnTt show
himself in the newspaper office. There his friends
had failed him; they had delivered him to the
enemy; he would not trust them again. He fell
in with a ragged company of fellow derelicts, and
holed up with them in an abandoned building for
areal orgy. Whether or not he had known these
men before, we had no way of finding out.
This was Saturday night. The group Jim
Jumper joined had latched on to paint thinner in
WINTER, 1963
large quantities, stolen from God knows where,
and rolling about on the splintery floor of the
lurching building, they drank the fearsome stuff.
How Jim Jumper got away, and why he chose,
if, indeed, he did choose, to die in the Episcopal
churchyard, is another of the mysteries surround-
ing this doomed man. His companions died hor-
ribly in the rotting warehouse. And how, since
he must have been in agony when he stumbled or
crawled there, did he recognize the figure lurking
in the shadows awaiting the partner of an assig-
nation as a woman, a nice fat blonde woman?
What he said to her, no one will ever know, nor
in what way the girl, who must have been fright-
ened at the appearance of a stranger in her tryst-
ing place, repulsed him. His clouded mind must
have still retained the foolish dream of a nice fat
blonde girl for a wife. And, if he became angry
when he thought I was laughing at him in the
newspaper office, his last spurt of anger when
rejected by the unknown blonde must have been
headier and more violent.
Be that as it may, when the sailor who had
arranged the furtive date with the girl arrived in
the churchyard, he was, according to his later
statement, galvanized from shock. His training
for disaster brought him out of that, and he hailed
a passing cop. The rest is history. There was
the girl sprawled on the grass, her full breasts
strutted against the fabric of a too-tight sweater,
her plaid skirt twisted in spirals under her, and
the long bony, dirty fingers of Jim Jumper already
cold and rigid around her throat. The cops ad-
mitted that, before her face turned black and,
yes, the tongue protruded, she might have been a
nice looking girl. That she was blonde and fat
was there for all to see.
The macabre business was swiftly concluded at
the police station. The coroner was summoned as
a mere formality. Since the doctor and the am-
bulance attendant had some difficulty in removing
Jim JumperTs stiffened fingers from the throat of
the corpse, the cause of death was self-evident.
The sailor took the next bus out of town, not
bothering to pick up his luggage at the crummy
hotel where he had registered, and not paying his
bill. But the town was so stirred at the unexpect-
ed end of Jim Jumper, who was thought to be
safe and protected at the county home, that the
miserly hotel manager never gave the unpaid bill
a second thought.
Clots of people on the streets discussed Jim
Jumper, and some uneasily wondered if there had
17
eee = aa
a
2 iE : .
i
ever been anything we could have done for him.
It was so in the newsroom, where horror and
tragedy strike hard, no matter how hard-boiled
and nonchalant the reportorial staff tries to ap-
pear.
oHell,� the sports writer squirmed, owe were
nice to him, werenTt we? We kidded him, we gave
him smokes and money. ThatTs more than some
people did. And how could we know heTd take
seriously that stupid stuff about a nice fat blonde
girl for a wife?�
Somehow, nobody from our place had the crust
to visit the second-rate undertaking parlor where
Jim Jumper lay, clean and clipped once more and
dressed in the cheap but decent black which the
county provides. We turned to our typewriters
and clattered away in an effort to drown out our
thoughts and our unwelcome memories.
All but the editor. A purposeful sound came
from his office, riding the waves of good cigar
smoke. He knocked out a fine lead editorial on
the importance of the young being taught the dig-
nity and responsibility of honest toil, throwing in
a rail fence here and there. He bore down hard
on the evils of alcohol, and he strongly advocated
temperance education in the public schools, as a
required. vot an elective subject. Jim Jumper
was casually pointed up as a sordid example of
what indolence, non-productiveness, and the ad-
diction to drink may lead to, and frequently does.
The big fat blonde girl wasnTt mentioned. Such
as she had no business in our town in the first
place. We didnTt then, and we donTt now care too
much for murders. Big fat blonde girls of easy
virtue should be all means proceed to the next
station.
Poem
Strangers all, we of empty moods are,
Each one restless for another joy, another laugh.
Blank faces peering from tinseled lives beg to be
free,
To live in a shade, a brillance their own.
I love the cool Spring breeze, the sleepy Summer
day; to walk, to dream.
Cloudless skies console a hazy faith
And I know joy, I laugh, I walk, I dream
Till fading shadows bring release.
18
DWIGHT W. PEARCE
THE REBEL
ee
A TRIBUTE
TO WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
A Study Ju His Poetic Form
By
MILTON G. CROCKER
William Carlos Williams is dead.
The man who lived in the midst of an artistic
furor all his life died quickly and quietly and
without fuss on March 4; so far no critics have
written grand and colorful obituaries; no one has
painted his life in glorious living color, as they
did Cummings. Stephen Gurvis did run a small
item in oThe Village Voice� having to do more
with his life, contributions, etc., than with his
poetry. But everything seems strangely quiet and
subdued and it is easy enough to imagine the
quacks and pseudo-artists, the members of the
artsy-craftsy country-club set breathing easier
since the man is dead who championed Ginsburg
and Corso and shoved sexual ideas into the con-
servative quarterlies of our fair countryside.
It is difficult to weigh his work. There are
those who consider him one of the most important
writers in the twentieth century. And there are
those who, with equal justice, turn their shoulders
inward and stop breathing at the mention of his
name. And there are those who stand scratching
their weak little heads and canTt make up their
WINTER, 1963
minds (ITm one of those). He was a radical; but
a talented radical; in these times of nonsensical
verse and abstractions that try the patience of
saintly monkeys, that should be enough.
Williams was born in 1883 in Rutherford, New
Jersey. He went to the University of Pennsyl-
vania; there he met Pound and got hooked on the
opiate of poetry. But he was no dreamer, this
man. He was a practical man, a man of action
who had little nonsense about him. While Pound
was racing over Europe, Williams was returning
home with a degree in medicine.
Yet he and Pound became fast friends. It is
evident from his writings and from the way the
two men speak of one another that they shared a
great deal of agreeable thought. Williams wrote
to Norman, who was preparing the biography
Ezra Pound, of their experiences on the campus
of the University"how they obecame engaged� "
of the girls they knew"of H. D., whom Pound
courted in those days.
Williams wrote home to his parents about
~.. the new student . . . who is making all the
.
19
ee "s ee ee ee el
9?
arts his prevince .. .� and Pound later accom-
panied him to his home for extended visits on
several occasions. Later, Williams sent the first
poems he wrote to Pound for his personal criti-
cism. An examination of his earlier work affords
a view of just how much opersonal criticism� was
involved:
The birds piped ti-ti-tuh and as I went
I thought how Katharin von Borah knelt
At Grimma, idle she, waiting to melt
Her surpliced heart in folds less straitly meant.
As now, it was March then, lo! heTll fulfill
Today his mighty task, sing for content
Ye birds, pipe now! for now Ttis loveTs wing bent
oe love wakes, sing! and the glad air
thrill.
However, by the time Williams had published his
first book, under the pseudonym Elkin Matthews,
he was, as one'critic put it, o... oriented different-
ly ;� the critic, Vivienne Koch, in Williams Carlos
Williams adds: oHe was again responding to a
tradition, but now to the more exotic one of the
Provencal lyric which Ezra Pound had so vigor-
ously employed in the songs and translations in
A Lume Spento,.. .�
And yet the two are entirely different in their
final approaches to the problem of literature, to
the content of literature, if not to the form it
should take. Pound, for instance, is classical to
the core. Williams is not. Both pursued the
demon of vers libre; but as Sir Herbert Read has
concluded:
Pound defected . . . he became a Confucian
or a European ... it remained to... Williams
to fill his shoes...
This is the core of the matter between them ;
Williams remained decidedly American in his
poetry while such people as Eliot and Pound have
taken on the aspect of Internationalism (the man
who said that art has no boundaries was a nitwit;
if you donTt think so, try reading some good trans-
lations of Arabic poetry about four hours a day
for the next three weeks or a month).
The crux: He, Williams, retains all that brutal-
ity, that exuberance, vitality and freshness, which
is recognizable in the American culture. Eliot and
Pound have a European gloss, a soft persuasive-
ness about them which he lacks. An hour with
Eliot or Pound is likely to make one feel sad, a bit
lost and somewhat disillusioned perhaps; an hour
with Williams is liable to drive a sane man mad
or have one plunging up out of his chair to ex-
20
plode recklessly into the street. We have:
THE TREES
wailing at the gate
heartbreak at the bridgehead
desire
dead in the heart
haw haw haw haw
"and memory broken
wheeeeee
and yet the same man can write:
AN ADDRESS
Walk softly on my grave
for I desired you,
a matter for sorrow
for decay;
flowers without odor
garlanded
about the sad legend
live in this
whom green youth denied.
And, still, Williams is much more familiar to
us. There is nothing unfamiliar to us, nothing we
cannot construe in such lines as:
XXI
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
This is a visual poem. There is nothing in it
which we have not seen, nothing which we do not
know; it is proletarian"as much so as
IMPROMPTU: THE SUCKERS
1927
Take it out in vile whiskey, take it out
in lifting your skirts to show your silken
crotches; it is this that is intended.
You are in it. Your pleas will always be
denied. You too will always go up with the
two guys, scapegoats to save the Republic
and especially the State of Massachusetts.
The Governor says so and you ainTt supposed
to ask for details"
These are earthy and very honest verses. They
THE REBEL
are as strong as anything the Russians have tried
to produce artificially. This is WilliamsT method;
whereas Pound and his cohorts develop intricate
patterns and juxtapositions there is nothing com-
plicated about Williams. He utilizes the same
methods they do but he remains truer to life;
there is something, as Pound once said, o.. . clos-
er to the bone...�
In his prose and his criticism he does the same
thing. That is the secret; that is why it was
possible for him, as early as 1955-56, to begin
championing, defending, and sanctioning such
characters as Ginsberg, Corso and sundry com-
Ppanions; the same forces led him to push orad-
ical� ideas and o~way out things� into the pages of
genteel magazines across the countryside; he
Shocked his fellow academicians into accepting a
new era in poetry in America as Pound had done
in Europe several generations earlier.
Williams was, as things turned out, WhitmanTs
Only true follower. Other poets of a similar na-
ture turned to various ends, none of which pos-
Sessed the verve, the audacity of Whitman. But
Williams had a wider range than Whitman, he
Was a twentieth century poet and was, of course,
affected by his own time while Whitman, no mat-
ter how you cut it, belonged to the latter half of
the Nineteenth Century. Paterson, for example,
is the poem that Whitman would have written
had he been born in the America of this century;
Compare these lines with some of WhitmanTs:
3 4 eee WE
voice of the shirt-sleeved
Evangelist rivalling, Hear
Me! I am the Resurrection
and the Life! echoing
among the bass and pickerel, slim
eels from Barbados, Sargossa
EN ai
The man who wrote these lines was action personi-
fied, could have no more been a college prof than
the man who wrote oWhen Lilacs Last in the
Dooryard Blocmed� could have been a traffic cop.
Paterson is a personification of man. As Wil-
liams himself commented in the note to Book I:
Part I introduces the elemental charac-
ter of the place. The second part will
comprise the modern replicas. Three
will seek to make them vocal, and Four,
the river below the falls, will be reminis-
cent of episodes"all that one man may
achieve in a lifetime.
WINTER, 1963
It belongs to the middle and later periods of his
life; to that period when the kernel or stone in his
earlier poetry has subsided somewhat and there
is left a more pliable, plastic quality which will
bend but not break. It is his outstanding poem.
It is what he meant when he said:
A poem is a small (or large) machine
made of words. When I say thereTs noth-
ing sentimental about a poem I mean
... there can be no part... that is re-
dundant ...a physical more than a lit-
erary character...
One is also reminded at this point of what he had
written the conservative Miss Monroe a decade
before the publication of Book I of Paterson:
... Verse to be alive must have infused
into it something of the same tincture of
disestablishment, something in the na-
ture of revolution...
This came about as a result of Miss MonroeTs
suggestion to Williams that the poem oPeace on
Earth� should have oa more explanatory title
and that ~Proof of ImmortalityT lacks an iambic
syllable in the fourth and sixth lines.�
The influences are still there, of course; it is
easily possible to see in the arrangement of Pater-
son the influence of PoundTs Cantos and EliotTs
later work. But in the interim Williams has
hardened somewhat; the gap between their works
and his has grown wide indeed; WilliamsT inter-
ests in colloquial culture has intensified and deep-
ened.
But there is a catch to all this. It may be that
Eliot and Pound have discovered something that
Williams never did. That is: without the soft
persuasiveness, without the gloss of classicism, it
isnTt necessarily good poetry. Poetry and art are
gestures, the seed thrown against the wind; the
facade of seen and non-seen, act against non-act;
truth, on the other hand, is blowing back the seed,
the fact of the matter. Between these two ends
lie a world of extremities, a wilderness country
through which no man may pass in safety. Yet
it was in this no manTs land that Williams built
his fortress; and maintained it, passing not once
but many times through the dangerous borders
around it.
And though Hearst and cohorts may not grieve
him there are those of us who must; for he was a
great energy in the field of art. We will surely
feel his absence.
21
ee _ ee ed
|
'
| QUIET CONTRADICTION
SUE ELLEN BRIDGERS
cS TPE EP
Hh)! The front porch of a white, two-story house.
it The porch is wide and extends the width of the
| i | house. It is supported by four posts, one at each
i of the corners and one on either side of the steps.
Hi The front door has long narrow windows with
Lh shaded panes as do the windows. There is a wreath
1) Be on the wall beside the door. It is a typical old
ae southern town house.
| A boy eight years old and dressed in short khaki
|
some plates like this.
LOU: She does not. (STUDYING THE
PLATE) You mamaTs plates got daisies on Tem.
Wonder why it is men donTt notice things like
that? I know what kind of plates everybody on
the blockTs got. Mrs. JonasT got blue and white;
JodyTs mamaTs got roses; Mr. Barkley eats outa
paper plates; WallyTs mama...
BEN: Papa took me to Raleigh once. He
ws Sonne on pe a etme
pants and a tee shirt, is sitting on the porch with
hit feet on the top step and his hands cupped under
his chin. A girl, nine years old, wearing an every-
day summer dress, comes out on the front door
carrying a plate of brownies. She sits down be-
side the boy, the plate of brownies in her lap, and
starts munching one.
LOU: DonTt you want one?
BEN: Huh-uh.
LOU: Sure are good. You know, the best food
I ever had was when Grandpa died. There was
this pineapple cake with great big chunks of pine-
apple. I ate it all right by myself.
BEN: (TAKING A BROWNIE AND STOP-
PING TO STUDY THE PLATE) MamaTs got
Rebel readers may recognize this play as a re-
worked short story by Mrs. Bridgers which ap-
peared in the Fall issue. The editors thought that
the play, in addition to its own merit, might indi-
cate how a short story is fashioned into drama.
22
took me and Mama and we went in this eating
place. They had lights you couldnTt even see and
there was music in the walls.
LOU: I went to Raleigh one time.
BEN: I know it.
LOU: There were rows and rows of houses so
close together that I couldnTt see between unless
I walked right up and peeped. And I did once.
Mama donTt know it. She told me not to dare to
do it but I did anyhow.
BEN: Papa let me have three different kinds
of ice cream. They had a million kinds.
LOU: Want another one?
BEN: Huh-uh. ,
LOU: Isaw some statues in Richmond. There
was one of a man on a horse. Mama says he lost
the war. WhereTs Wally?
BEN: I donTt know.
LOU: Did he do it this morning?
BEN: Nope. He was walking along and |
started talking to him and he made a wrong turn.
LOU: Did you let him do it again?
BEN: He donTt let me, does he? I ainTt miss-
THE REBEL
ed in two weeks, though.
LOU: ItTs not fair to talk to him.
BEN: AIl heTs got to do is count, Lou. You
go up three blocks, turn this way (MOTIONS TO
THE LEFT) on the third one. Go over two, then
up one and that way (MOTIONS TO THE LEFT
AGAIN) two more. ItTs real easy once you get
it in your mind.
LOU: You could have let him do it again one
time.
BEN: Mama says sheTs gonna have the blocks
moved. The grass canTt grow oneath Tem. Papa
was gonna build somethinT with Tem, though.
LOU: Maybe we ought to stop doing it, any-
Way. It ainTt much fun anymore.
BEN: WhatTcha mean"fun? It ainTt sup-
pose to be fun. ItTs just something you do and
you got to do it right and every day too. Like a
vow or swearing on somethinT. Anyway, you donTt
have to do it. Nobody asked you to go in the first
place. (PICKS AT SCAB ON KNEE)
LOU: Quit that. Do you want to git it in-
flicted ?
BEN: Huh-uh, but ainTt it already? (STICKS
KNEE UP IN HER FACE) ,
LOU: CouldnTt hardly help it, you ignoramus,
when ya got Tcha dirty fingers in it. (PRESSES
THE SCAB) It is sorta runny.
BEN: Hey, whatTcha trying todo? Squirt me
in the eye? (MOVES AWAY FROM HER AND
PUTS HAND OVER SORE)
LOU: You better git Tcha Mama to put some
alkehol or somethinT on it.
BEN: I[ainTt.
LOU: You better, Ben Parsons. Can I see it
One more time, huh?
BEN: What for?
LOU: TCause I wanta see a live knee sore ~fore
it dies. TCause you gonna die, Ben Parsons, if
you donTt wash it out with alkehol.
BEN: Sez who?
LOU: MamaTs a nurse, ainTt she? I know all
about knee sores from Mama. ITm nine, ainTt I?
BEN: Nine ainTt much.
LOU: OlderTn you. A whole year older.
BEN: Well, you ainTt no bigger.
LOU: Well, ITm smarter. Now let me see.
BEN: (MOVING BACK TOWARD HER
AND TAKING HAND OFF SORE) DonTt you
£0 touching it.
LOU: ITm not, silly. (LOOKS CLOSELY).
Hey, thereTs a bug on here! You already got bugs
and you ainTt even dead yet.
BEN: (LOOKS CLOSELY AT THE SORE)
WINTER, 1963
That ainTt nothin~ but a gnat.
LOU: You gonna die, Ben.
BEN: Shut up, or you'll be dead first.
LOU: You ainTt gonna murder me, Ben Par-
sons. White folks got laws against it. Just nig-
gers kill each other.
BEN: You wanta play walking on the side-
walk?
LOU: YouTll cheat.
BEN: I will not.
LOU: You did yesterday. You hit a crack and
then you said you werenTt playing.
BEN: Well, I wasnTt. I didnTt say letTs play,
did I?
LOU: You think weTre too big to play, Ben?
BEN: I donTt know. I wish youTd shut up
about it. (WISTFULLY) I hope Papa comes
home soon. I-bet heTll come walking right down
the street and look up at that sweet-gum tree and
say oDamn fine looking tree� and pat the old bark
and pull a leaf and say oBring that home to Mama
~cause she dearly loves the smell,� and then heTll
sniff it a little and grin and push his hat back on
his head.
LOU: Your Papa ainTt coming home, Ben.
BEN: And he'll take his gun and his hat off
and put Tem on the top shelf and say, oGunTs a
dangerous thing, son.� Then I'll say, oTTm gonna
be a policeman, too, Papa.�
LOU: That ainTt how itTs gonna be, Ben.
BEN: You remember the day Wally got his
blood on the cement block?
LOU: Yeah. Your Papa bandaged him up
right well. Of course, if Mama had been home...
BEN: Wally said Papa made it stop hurting.
(SOMEONE INSIDE LETS OUT A MOURN-
FUL WAIL AND THEN SOBS)
LOU: Mrs. Jonas.
BEN: Telling about Patrick.
LOU: Did you know Patrick, Ben?
BEN: Huh-uh.
LOU: How old was Patrick?
BEN: Fifteen, I guess. Mrs. Jonas donTt ever
say. Just what a good boy Patrick was and how
he use to kiss her before he went to school and
how she always had fresh cookies when he came
home.
LOU: Mama said Patrick wasnTt such a good
boy. She said he stole apples offa Mr. BarkleyTs
tree.
BEN: Well, ITve done that. ItTs not so bad.
LOU: But that ainTt all. He got caught sneak-
ing in the movie house, too. Mama says Patrick
was the death of Mr. Jonas.
23
BEN: SheTs got his picture in her living room.
He donTt look bad.
LOU: Folks never do in pictures, silly.
BEN: MamaTs got a picture of Papa. You
remember that time when he got the medal?
MamaTs got a picture. It donTt look much like
Papa.
LOU: MamaTs got a picture of me when I was
just a little baby. I ainTt got any clothes on,
either. Mama just shows it to everybody.
BEN: Your mamaTs a nut.
LOU: She is not. I bet if your mama had a
picture of you with no clothes on, sheTd show it
to everybody.
(A CLERGYMAN HAS COME DOWN THE
STREET AND NOW GOES UP THE WALK TO
PORCH)
- MINISTER: Hello, Ben. Lou Anne.
BEN: MamaTs in the house, Mr. Williams.
MINISTER: Thank you, son. (GOES TO-
WARD THE DOOR AND TURNS BACK A SEC-
OND). God loves the little children nad will pro-
vide for them. (GOES IN)
BEN: WhatTs he doing here?
LOU: They always come when somebody dies.
Did you go to Sunday School last time?
BEN: Uh-huh.
LOU: I donTt believe that about Moses, do you?
BEN: What about him?
LOU: Oh, turning the water into blood and
that stuff about the snakes.
BEN: Ilikeit. Except for when all the babies
died.
LOU: ItTs not so bad for babies to die.
BEN: I wish WallyTd come.
LOU: Want another brownie?
BEN: I wish I had a Pepsi.
LOU: You already had one this morning.
BEN: WhatTs that got to do with it?
LOU: Mama says oneTs enough.
BEN: Your mamaTs a nut.
LOU: She is not. She knows more than any-
body.
BEN: She does not. God knows more than
anybody.
LOU: Well, not counting God.
BEN: Do you really think He knows?
LOU: I guess so. It sure was good of Him to
have Jesus. We've got a picture of Jesus when
He was little. HeTs wearing a dress like a girl.
BEN: Boys use to do that.
(TWO WOMEN COME OUT OF THE HOUSE
AND SPEAK BEFORE THEY SEE BEN AND
LOU WHO ARE PREOCCUPIED WITH EAT-
24
ING BROWNIES)
ONE: Did you sign the register?
TWO: Yes. It'll be full by dark. So many
people knew him.
ONE: Naturally, being a policeman and all. 1
surely hope it doesnTt rain. Funerals are so de-
pressing in the rain.
TWO: Well, you can never tell this time of
year. Clouds are as likely to blow up as not.
(NOTICING KIDS)
ONE: Poor little thing. No father.
doubly hard on Mary Elizabeth.
Makes it
TWO: A strong-willed woman"that Mary
Elizabeth. Still hasnTt cried. It does folks good
to cry.
ONE: Ben, honey.
TWO: Eating brownies. Things like that keep
it off a childTs mind.
ONE: (RUBBING BENTS HEAD)
fine young man.
TWO: So well-mannered, too.
BEN: Thank you, MaTam.
(THE WOMEN GO OFF THE PORCH AND
DOWN THE STREET)
ONE: I surely hope tomorrow is a nice day.
Funerals can be so depressing in the rain.
Such a
BEN: What are they doing here?
LOU: Everybody comes when somebody dies.
BEN: I wish WallyTd come.
LOU: I bet his Mama wonTt let him.
BEN: Why not?
LOU: Just because. Sometimes youTre so
dumb. (SINGING) Ben is a dumb-bunny, Ben
is a dumb-bunny.
BEN: I am not. I know lots of things you
donTt know.
LOU: What?
BEN: Oh, lots of things.
BarkleyTs wife didnTt die? She ran off and mar-
ried somebody. I heard Mama and Mrs. Jonas
talking about it. Mrs. Jonas said she was no good
"no better than a nigger.
LOU: All niggers ainTt bad. Some niggers
are betterTn white folks. TheyTre just all the time
running off. :
BEN: Jessie ain~t ever done it?
LOU: JessieTs different.
BEN: Jessie ainTt ever done it.
LOU: But sheTs Jessie. I bet you didnTt know
JessieTs papa was a white man.
BEN: WhatTs wrong with that?
LOU: NothinTs wrong with it. I just mean
Jessie ainTt really a nigger.
BEN: What is she then?
Did you know Mr.
THE REBEL
LOU: How do you think I know? She works
for your Mama, donTt she?
BEN: JessieTs a nigger. She just ainTt ever
run off.
LOU: ThatTs cause she ainTt got a husband.
Who do you think sheTs gonna run off from?
BEN: SheTs got a baby. You remember when
Jessie had a baby and it died. Mama and me went
down there to nigger-town and it had already died.
LOU: Lots of folks have babies that die.
BEN: I know it.
LOU: Do you think God should of let Moses
kill all those babies?
BEN: I reckon He can do most anything.
LOU: You still want a Pepsi?
BEN: Uh-huh.
LOU: You want me to get Tcha one?
BEN: If you want to.
(LOU TAKES PLATE OF BROWNIES AND
GOES INSIDE. MRS. JONAS, A BIG BOSOMY
WOMAN PASSES HER IN THE DOOR-WAY.
BEN STANDS UP AND LEANS AGAINST THE
POST WITH ONE ARM AROUND IT. ONE
FOOT DANGLES OFF THE PORCH. MRS.
JONAS COMES UP BEHIND HIM AND PUTS
HER HAND ON HIS CHEEK. HER HAND-
KERCHIEF IS HANGING LIMPLY OUT OF
HER DRESS. SHE HAS BEEN CRYING AND
LOOKS AS THOUGH SHE MIGHT CRY AGAIN
ANY MINUTE)
MRS. JONAS: (RUBS HAND ON CHEEK)
Poor little Ben.
BEN: (PULLS AWAY FROM HER AND
TIGHTENS GRIP AROUND THE POST) Leave
me alone.
MRS. JONAS: (CLOSING IN AGAIN) Please,
Ben honey. (SIGHING) People just gotta bear
Sorrow, honey.
BEN: Leave me alone.
MRS. JONAS: (HOLDING HIS SHOULDERS,
TUGGING GENTLY TO PULL HIM AWAY
FROM THE POST) ItTs all right, Ben. He really
looks fine. EverybodyTs saying so. They all say
he sure does look fine. Why donTt you come see,
Ben? Your papa would want you to.
BEN: (PULLS AWAY FROM HER AGAIN
AND GOES TO OTHER POST) HeTs not dead.
(HUGS THE POST) HeTs not dead. HeTs not
dead, I tell you!
MRS. JONAS: (AT HIS BACK) Please, Ben.
Be a man now, honey. DonTt hurt your Mama like
this.
(MURMURS INSIDE INCREASE. VOICES
SO CLOSE THEY ARE ALMOST AUDIBLE)
WINTER, 1963
BEN: (BODY RIGID AND STILL) Papa is
a man. (SCREAMING) What are they doing
here? Why donTt they go away? Papa, make
them go away!
(BEN RUNS INTO THE HOUSE, WHILE
MRS. JONAS SCREAMS oBEN!?T. BEN IS
BACK ON STAGE IN AN INSTANT, THE
OPEN REGISTER TIGHT IN HIS HANDS. HE
FALLS TO HIS KNEES, THE BOOK ACROSS
HIS LEGS, SOBBING AND TREMBLING.
RIPS THE PAGES OUT UNTIL THEY ARE
CRUMPLED IN HIS FISTS. HE TIGHTENS
HIS FISTS AROUND THE PAPER)
BEN: They arenTt here. They were never
here at all.
(PEOPLE GATHER IN THE DOORWAY,
WATCHING. LOU ANNE HAS COME BACK
ON THE PORCH AND HAS WATCHED, ALSO.
SHE PUTS THE PEPSIS DOWN AND KNEELS
BESIDE BEN. AFTER A FEW MINUTES,
WHILE THE PEOPLE DISAPPEAR IN THE
DOORWAY, MRS. JONAS, SNIFFLING AND
SHAKING HER HEAD, GOES INSIDE. THE
MURMURS RESUME)
(LOU ANNE OPENS HIS FIST GENTLY,
AND TAKES THE PAPER. REPEATS AC-
TION SLOWLY WITH THE OTHER HAND.
TAKES BOOK OFF HIS LAP AND PUTS IT ON
THE FLOOR. SET DARKENS SLIGHTLY.
LOU ANNE SILENTLY MOVES BEN TO THE
STEPS AND SITS DOWN BESIDE HIM. HE
IS STILL TREMBLING BUT NOT SO VIO-
LENTLY. HE LOOKS BACK AT THE
WREATH. LOU ANNE LOOKS TOO.)
LOU: Why my grandpa died, he had so many
flowers you couldnTt see him.
BEN: Goddam, Goddam, Goddam.
LOU: I think lots of flowers are nice, donTt
you? My papa says your papaTll have more flow-
ers than anybody since everybody liked him so
well.
BEN: (PICKING AT SCAB ON HIS KNEE)
I thought you said just niggers killed each other.
LOU: Well, I donTt know everything. (SHE
LOOKS DOWN AT SCAB AND THEN AT BEN.
SHE PUTS HER ARM AROUND HIS SHOUL-
DER AND PULLS HIM GENTLY UNTIL HIS
HEAD IS CRADLED AGAINST HER NECK.
SHE SWAYS GENTLY, HOLDING HIM
AGAINST HER. AFTER AWHILE, SHE
STOPS SWAYING) You ainTt gonna die, Ben,
even if you donTt put alkehol on that sore. (BEN
PULLS CLOSER TO HER) But tomorrow, [ll
put some on it.
25
ae ee _" ee el
Richard McKenna, born in Mountain Home,
Idaho, 49 years ago, entered the University of
North Carolina after serving in the Navy and
graduated in 1956 with a Bachelor of Arts degree
in English.
Mr. McKenna began his literary career writing
science fiction stories and recently won the 1963
Harper Prize for Fiction for his novel Sand Peb-
bles. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and re-
sides in Chapel Hill with his wife, Eva.
During the Winter Quarter, Mr. McKenna visit-
ed the campus of East Carolina College. The fol-
lowing article is a rewrite of an address which he
delivered while here.
ON CREATIVE ENERGY
A few days ago I called a man in New York on my writerTs imagination knew at once that both
long distance and he was not in. The operator in were young and pretty girls. I listened with de-
Durham gave my telephone number to the secre- light. The voices grew more impatient.
tary in New York so that she could call back when
the man returned. I have one of the few num-
bered exchanges, but in New York they still have
named exchanges.
oPlease repeat the exchange,� said Miss New
York.
oItTs nine-six-eight,� said Miss Durham. She
pronounced it nahn-six-eight.
oIs that Nancy-Kate?� Miss New York asked
doubtfully.
oNo! Nahn-six-eight!� said Miss Durham.
Stupid! her voice implied. From their voices,
26
oSpell it. WonTt you please spell it?� Miss New
York pleaded.
oYou cainTt spell it! ItTs numbers!� Miss Dur-
ham said.
oT donTt want the number. I already have the
number,� Miss New York said crisply. oJust
please give me the exchange, will you, please!�T
oLike I told you. Nahn-six-eight!�T
oNancy-Kate. Now is it really Nancy-Kate?�
oListen! Nahn!� Miss Durham said desperate-
ly. oOne - two - three - four - five-six-seven-eight-
NAHN!�
THE REBEL
I A
oNine? Are you saying ni-yeen?�
oYes! Nahn-six-eight!�T
oNine-six-eight. Oh! ItTs a numbered ex-
change!�
Why didnTt you tell me? her voice implied. For
a moment I heard the distant rumble of the guns
at Sumter. Then both girls giggled.
In setting out to make the particular statement
about creative energy which I wish to impart in
this talk. I know that I face a barrier to under-
standing more formidable than the Mason-Dixon
line. It is the barrier between youth and age, for
these remarks are addressed primarily to young
men and women who are not yet twenty-one years
old. What follows is an experiment in communi-
cation.
Everyone knows that creative energy is what
produces art. Fewer know that it must power all
significant work in science and in every scholarly
pursuit. Not nearly enough people understand
that it can also power every aspect of daily living
and make the difference between dispirited bore-
dom and a life that is vividly exciting regardless
of external circumstances. My thesis is that we
all begin life with a vast fund of creative energy
and lose it along the way at rates which vary be-
tween individuals, so that among mature adults
there is a far greater disparity than among chil-
dren. My concern is to advise you, as college stu-
dents, how best to retain as much as you can of
your creative energy during the crucial period you
have now entered and in which, in the normal
course of things, so much of it is irrecoverably
lost.
The problem and its solution are stated very
well in WordsworthTs oIntimations� ode. I hope
a good many of you have already read it with a
certain puzzled interest, knowing its repute as
great poetry, and yet in all honesty finding it
incomprehensible and dull. I wish to translate
WordsworthTs ode into contemporary terms and
concepts and also to go somewhat beyond it, as
our culture has gone far beyond what it was in
WordsworthTs day. ~The ode embodies a subtle,
elusive idea that cannot be bought over the coun-
ter or handed about like a package. It is more
like catching a bird in flight and, if you are to
stay with me, you must be prepared to fly a bit
yourselves.
What Wordsworth chose to treat as different
modes of being we can handle more easily now-
adays with the concept of creative energy. There
is still going on in all aspects of our culture a long-
term shift from the statics of form to the dynam-
WINTER, 1963
ics of progress and the notion of energy is more
familiar to us than it was to Wordsworth. We
have a number of schools of dynamic psychology
busily disagreeing about how best to construct a
unified field theory of the human spirit. Their
jargon is at least as confusing as and much less
pleasant to the ear than WordsworthTs poetic
phrases. In this talk I will avoid the jargon.
I will instead begin by defining creative energy
simply by pointing at it in such a way that you
can all identify it with something of your own
direct experience. While it is possible, and most
fascinating, to infer the operation of creative
energy in very young infants, I am going to point
at a later manifestation of it, one recoverable
through memory in recognizable terms.
When I was eight or nine years old I read a
story about cavemen and one afternoon I went out
to hunt a bear. I was going to bring him home
to my cave as food for my parents and brothers
and I meant to make his pelt into a robe for my-
self. It did not bother me that my cave was a
conventional house and that my forest was a
desert expanse of sagebrush and lava rock where
no bear had ever lived. My spear was a long
wooden lath on which I had whittled a point. I
set forth filled with pleasant excitement.
It was a hot afternoon with the sky perfectly
clear and the world flooded with light. The air
was filled with a spicy sagebrush smell and the
buzzing of locusts. Yet I went along in mounting
excitement with the sense of a cool, shadowy for-
est all about me, and occasional sunny glades. I
went somewhat further from home than I was
accustomed to go in play, up a slight rise in the
land and finally, with a thrill of fearful delight,
I came upon my bear.
He looked something like a rock, crusted with
gray-green lichens and partially screened by
clumps of sagebrush. I had been that far a few
times before and I knew that he was a rock, but
I did not know it so certainly that he could not
serve me as a bear. Safely serve me as a bear,
if you will dare to know what I mean. Down I
went on my hands and knees, heart thumping,
spear gripped in my right hand, and I began to
stalk him.
I was perhaps twenty feet away when his rump
and haunch heaved slowly. The locusts stopped
buzzing. I froze breathless, with a watery thrill
of weakness down my legs. The bear did not
know yet that I was there. I could still creep
away. Instead I waited dry-mouthed until I re-
covered the marginal knowledge that he was also
27
a rock. Then, with both knowings held in pre-
carious balance, I resumed my stalking.
The outline of his haunch became plainer. I
could see his flank heave with slow breathing. A
tension of fearful delight grew in me almost past
bearing. The bear sensed my approach and rear-
ed shaggily up to loom and roar. In a kind of
chaotic swirling away of everything I rushed
screaming at the bear, thrusting and hacking and
screaming and beating my lath to a splintered
stump, until I had restored the set shape of things.
I had slain the bearness of him and I had restored
the rockness.
I had made him a rock for good and all. I stood
there panting and trembling and I knew that I
could never hunt him again. But I would always
have a friendship with him; he had become a place
for me, that I could revisit with pleasure. There
were still plenty of other rocks for me to hunt.
That experience is my own fundamental defini-
tion of creative energy. A good place for each of
you to look for his personal definition might be in
the area of night fears and fancies, because after
dark the set shape of things has less power either
to protect or to command us. If as you search you
find yourself becoming uneasy and inclined to
scoff, that is only to be expected. I say it sadly.
I hope you will not let it defeat you.
It is to be expected because you are still too
close to your childhood and all the shaping forces
of our culture impel you to put away childish
things. The world of childhood can be acutely
disturbing to an older mind. Our primary defense
is first to forget it and then to insist that it never
was because we cannot ourselves remember it.
Wordsworth notes that often on his way to school
he would have to grasp at a wall or a tree to make
the physical world around him retain its set and
proper shape. He found it terrifying.
Consider that for a moment in imagination.
What would it be like to see the externa] physical
reality all around you begin to shimmer and shift
and sway like figures painted on a curtain? To
see a cypress tree become a great roaring green
flame? Who of us would not be terrified? Yet to
a little child, who has not yet created for himself
a stable and independent physical world, that is
how it seems. It is no threat to him, because that
is just how things are and they are pretty wonder-
ful. The more surely he gains a stable physical
world, the more he loses of the fearfu] wonder.
As a boy he can still recapture echoes of it in
daring imaginary bear hunts. In full maturity
he may sometimes go at great expense to East
28
enn Pio I rer le
Africa to shoot real lions. That is a very paltry
substitute.
Wordsworth was understandably terrified. We
all carry at varying depths beneath our conscious
memory that archaic, primordial terror. The in-
clination to scoff is a safeguard against its over-
whelming reemergence. It is a necessary safe-
guard. But, Wordsworth goes on, oIn later pe-
riods of life I have deplored, as we all have reason
to do, a subjugation of the opposite sort.� I hope
in these remarks to help those who can stay with
me to avoid too complete and crushing a subjuga-
tion of that opposite sort.
You are moving now through a transition zone.
oShades of the prison house begin to close upon
the growing boy.� That has already happened to
you. oThe youth. ../By the vision splendid/Is on
his away attended.�T That is where you are now.
It is a great irony that you will not be able to
appreciate the full splendor of it until you have
lost it, until oAt length the Man perceives it die
away/And fade into the light of common day.�
That is where you are going, into the light of
common day. What you find it like when you get
there will depend in part upon how much of your
original stock of creative energy you will have
succeeded in bringing through with you to be, in
WordsworthTs phrase, the master light of all your
seeing. And now, as I have called upon your
memory to re-experience childhood, I would like to
lead your imagination as far as it will reach to-
ward an anticipation of your intellectual maturity.
To you now, physical reality is independent and
mostly dead. It is no longer possible to turn a
rock into a bear. It is not easy even to be friends
with a rock in his essential rockness. But, just as
the child you once were had to explore and to re-
late themselves to a wonderfully living, changing,
unmanageable world of sticks and stones and
bushes, so the youth you now are must explore
and relate themselves to an equally fearful and
wonderful world of ideas. No doubt you often
find it confusing and difficult. Perhaps the idea
you think you have grasped turns out not to be
the idea your instructor thinks he has tossed at
you. To you ideas are still more like birds in
flight, with a life and a will of their own, than
they are like baseballs. In your thought-world
you feel the oBlank misgivings of a Creature/
Moving about in worlds not realized.� Something
of the same process which you have already gone
through in your relation to the physical world
must also take place in your relation to the world
of ideas. It must take on for you a certain public
THE REBEL
stability and reality which is roughly the same
for everyone. You are going to be very power-
fully tempted to make it a small and as far as
possible an unchanging world.
If, however, you let the process go too far, it
can practically destroy that life of the mind which
you now have in almost unimpaired vigor. There
will be no more play and exploring. It will not
be possible to go bear-hunting among ideas. Then
the thought-world is more of a prison house than
a refuge, a narrow world of a few ideas safe be-
cause they are fixed and solid as rocks. I do not
mean that a man in that state no longer thinks.
He can send his attention skipping as nimbly as
ever among his stock of ideas. Just so can all of
you still run and shout among the rocks and bushes
if you like, but you know you are not doing the
Same thing as little children. The man I am
describing can think, all right, but he can no long-
er think creatively. Nor is his state any bar to
material prosperity. I think there are many men
of power and affluence who are as frightened of
an idea threatening to change shape as they would
be of a rock changing into a bear. They are
extreme cases of that subjugation of the opposite
sort. For them the salt has lost its savor and it
is most merciful when the savor is lost so com-
pletely that not even an aching memory of it
remains.
I will assume that no one who has come thus
far with me wishes to end in that state, even if
it means foregoing a certain measure of power and
affluence. And I must warn you that our culture
will move you by insensible degrees steadily in
that direction, unless you resist it intelligently.
WordworthTs prognosis holds true for you all:
Full soon thy soul shall have her early freight
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost and deep almost as life.
Here I am really extrapolating from the ode.
The relative numbing of imagination had not gone
So far in WordsworthTs day, when grown men and
Women could still find in traditional fairy tales the
kind of delight that only quite young children can
find in them in our time. Yet the experience is
Still the same and we can still learn from Words-
Worth.
We can learn that intellectual manhood does not
Come as suddenly or as early as we may have sup-
Posed. I know of no infallible way to determine
When it has come, but I can describe the particular
Signal by which I first discovered it in myself.
It was about midway through World War II and
WINTER, 1963
I was on a ship in the South Pacific. I had charge
of the watch in the engine room, in the sleepy
hours after midnight, with nothing to do but walk
around glancing at gauges and thermometers and
listening to the steady hum of the turbines. It
was my habit at such times to repeat poetry to
myself, my favorite poems, of which I had many.
I was just experiencing the music and pleasure
of them without thought, the way another man
might whistle a tune as he worked. I always had
with me a pocket anthology of poetry and I would
sometimes read-a.poem which I did not have by
heart. That night I read WordsworthTs oIntima-
tions� ode. I had read it often before, with a
certain puzzled interest, but I had never been
able to make it be poetry for me. That night,
suddenly and powerfully, it became poetry for me.
It became magnificent poetry. oTo me alone there
came a thought of grief... But thereTs a Tree,
of many, one...� I repeated, and the words drip-
ped wonder. oFallings from us, vanishings,� I
marveled aloud. The ode had become a poem
not only of feeling and sense-imagery but also of
ideas. It was my first clear signal that I was
verging into what Wordsworth calls othe years
that bring the philosophic mind.�
If you will read and study it now, perhaps the
ode can also serve some of you as an indicator.
It cannot be magnificent poetry for you because
it is a memory of lost youth and you are still
immersed in youth. One cannot remember the
present until it has become the past. But if in
your thirties you still find the ode incomprehen-
sible and boring to read all the way through, the
chances are that you will have lost not only your
youth but also the ability to remember it. You
will have paid for intellectual manhood a far
greater tax on your creative energy than was
really necessary.
I was just past thirty when the ode became true
poetry for me. Wordsworth was thirty-three
when he began it, and then he wrote only the first
four stanzas. In them you can see him trying to
resolve his othought of griefT and you can see
him fail. His last stanza ends with the same sad
question:
Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
Where is it now, the glory and the dream?
Three years later Wordsworth answered him-
self in the final seven stanzas of the completed
ode. It concerns us here mainly to note that he
found a way to recover the glory and the dream
and that he did it by taking hold of the stable and
29
" eee =~ 1 FUT mS ee ee |
rocklike idea of Christian Immortality and putting
it through some transformations. He alarmed
certain good and pious persons who feared that he
was changing their familiar rock into a strange
one. He sought to reassure them by saying that
he was only playing with poetic possibilities,
thereby implying that their rock might not be as
rocklike as they, had thought it to be, and no doubt
alarming them still more. It is in that notion of
playing with poetic possibilities that we can find
one clue to what we are seeking.
We must accept it as a sad fact that after child-
hood rocks will refuse to become bears for
us. Wecan no longer play with sticks and stones
as once we did. But that same lumpish, inert
petrification does not ever have to happen to our
world of ideas unless we, unwittingly, permit it to
happen. It will not happen if we succeed in
carrying over with us into the world of ideas
enough of the shaping power of our imaginations
which we first learned to use on the physical
world around us. If we do that, we recover the
glory and the dream. We can, if we like, again
play directly with sticks and stones, but now as
architects and builders.
The question is how, precisely how, are young
persons like yourselves to carry over into your
world of ideas as much as possible of the creative
energy of children. I have no certain answer.
But I believe that by a lucky chance I came
through that transition without a crippling loss
and all that I have learned up to this point in my
life suggests some tentative answers. To them I
now turn.
Most important, never stop using your creative
energy. The more lavishly you pour it forth, the
more abundantly will it always remain at your
command. Do not hold back and seek anxiously
for some worthy field on which to expend your
energy. That is being miserly. It is in the nature
of creative energy that the misers lose it all and
only the spendthrifts retain it. Make the whole
world of ideas your field. Regard each new idea
you meet with a friendly or hostile interest, but
never with indifference. Whenever you turn your
back on an idea you close a door in your mind and
you may never again get it open.
Find your personal poet and make him part of
yourself. Do not take him from anyone, no mat-
ter how august his authority; search and find
your poet for yourself. He is likely not to be
someone called great"for me at your age he was
Kipling"but if you can meet him honestly and
directly, without any screen of critical evaluation,
30
he can let you into the world of poetic thought.
That world is the least petrified of all. Once you
are fairly inside it, by however humble an en-
trance, you cannot be wholly lost. From inside it
you will go on making more poets and their poetry
part of yourself without conscious volition, like
something which grows of itself. From inside it
you can approach the real giants, Milton and
Shakespeare and Chaucer, and make them part of
yourself in a way not possible by an approach
from the outside. It is the difference between
living the poetry and just talking about it, how-
ever learnedly one may learn in time to talk.
I believe that what kept my mind alive and my
fund of creative energy intact through all my
years aboard ship was, more than anything else,
my devotion to English poetry.
Make the same kind of entrance into the world
of music and the plastic arts. Here I am in no
position to speak with authority. In my day there
was no art or music aboard warships and they
were not something a man could bring aboard for
himself, like a pocket anthology of poetry. But
I passed my youth largely in China and Japan,
where art is mingled intimately with all of daily
living, and I made my entrance into that world
through ways so diffuse and humble that I did not
even know that I was in it. Only when I returned
at last to the United States and missed it as a
part of life did I learn to look for it in the special
buildings set apart by our culture for such pur-
poses. But just as with poetry, I think it is more
conservative of ~creative energy if one learns to
experience all art without self-conscious aware-
ness, directly and wordlessly, before trying too
hard to learn to talk about it.
Try to understand your years in college as a
staking out of the world of ideas in which you
will live the rest of your life. Make it a wide one.
In the world of real estate some men must inevit-
ably be poor and narrowly restricted. Every man
may claim for himself as much as he wishes of
the world of ideas. Make each course you take an
outpost of the imagination to hold for you some
region of wonder for exploration later in your
life. Claim more such regions now than you can
possibly exhaust in ten lifetimes. Build yourself
outposts in as many as possible of the sciences
and furnish them with the beauty and wonder of
art. The more weirdly outflung and roundabout
your boundaries may seem to more conventional
minds, the more richly wonderful will be the world
you are claiming for yourself. Claim it now and
claim prodigally. Only so can you carry with you
THE REBEL
into that world an abundance of the creative ener-
gy which you must otherwise lose.
Understand each course you take as an invest-
ment of your creative energy, which thus will still
be yours to draw upon in later years. The way to
make it an investment rather than a tax or a
purchase price lies in the attitude in which you
approach it. The course will embody a set of
ideas. Address yourself directly to those ideas.
Push to one side as much as you can all thought
of pleasing your parents or professors with high
grades. Do not for a moment think how you will
someday use those ideas to make money. All of
that poisons the living relationship you will be
Seeking. Simply become curious and explore
those ideas in the very same way a little child will
explore first the house and then the yard when
his family moves to a new location. Do not expect
to grasp them at once and as concretely as so
many rocks, although the examination system will
often seem to expect that of you. Hope rather
that you never grasp them in full concreteness.
You may often feel a certain baffled distress. That
will be WordsworthTs oBlank misgivings of a
Creature/Moving about in worlds not realized.�
In years to come, if you can retain it, it will be a
Source of great joy to you. If your grasp of an
idea differs from that of your professor, do not
assume instantly that you are wrong. Ideas are
not rocks and you may both be right. Argue it in
Class and after class and you may teach your
teacher something. If he is at all worthy of his
vocation, he will love you for it. Even one such
experience in a course is a more genuine token of
education than an A on the final exam. It is your
assurance that you have indeed invested there a
Portion of your creative energy, to go on working
autonomously and drawing interest against the
time that you will pass that way again.
In every term paper you write strive to tell the
Professor something about the course material
Which you suspect he has not learned for himself.
Give him your thoughts, gained by your own ex-
Ploration of the ideas, instead of just reflecting
his thoughts.
You will meet certain invincibly dull and boring
Courses to which you simply cannot imagine relat-
Ing yourself in the manner I have just described.
I insist that you can. If you cannot kindle a
Curiosity about its set of ideas, then explore them
Vindictively. Go after them in order to revenge
yourself by making fun of them, by transforming
them ludicrously in your term papers, by seeking
to deny their valid existence as ideas. If you pro-
WINTER, 1963
voke them enough they will defend themselves and
you will become creatively engaged with them,
which is what you must achieve in every course
if it is to be an investment of, rather than a tax
upon, your creative energy. Do not demand of all
ideas that they must please or divert you; claim
those that shock and frighten you.as well. The
world of the mind would be a pretty dull place if it
were only one great flowery meadow; build your-
self also cliffs and chasms, tawny deserts and
polar wastes.
I can almost guarantee that one attitude or the
other will take you creatively through the most
dull and difficult of courses. Simply persist in
trying to relate yourself directly to the :set of
ideas and one or the other attitude will spring
up within you. But you must persist, to the point
of psychic discomfort. You must be like the man
who dropped a nickel into a pond and threw a
dollar after it in order to make it worth his while
to recover both. Throw in your dollar and your
wristwatch and your sweetheart and whatever
else it may take to get you in there too. You must
get in there, somehow creatively engaged with
those ideas.
Another way of putting it is that you must be-
gin now, while you still can, to play with ideas in
precisely the way that children play with sticks
and stones. Never stop playing with ideas as long
as you live. Never grant to any idea the inde-
pendent, unchanging, thing-in-itself existence
which you have been forced to grant to rocks.
Never grant to any professor the intellectual au-
thority to make ideas into rocks for you. Those
who do grant it, who indeed by their passive dis-
engagement from ideas insistently demand it, in
effect turn a university into a factory. They ride
through it on an assembly line and when they
tumble off the end they will run, all right, but
someone who has kept his creative imagination is
going to have to drive them. That man will be a
product of the living university of students and
teachers jointly and creatively engaged with liv-
ing ideas, playing with ideas. Insist on being one
of the latter. So in the realm of thought you may
remain young indefinitely where another man, no
less well than you endowed by nature, may be
senile at thirty.
It will be said that you must live predictably
and responsibly. That is true. But in the realm
of thought never acknowledge any master. In
the realm of thought wear custom like a decent
garment, but never let it come to lie upon you
heavy as frost and deep almost as life. Then,
31
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when you are alone or in congenial company, you
can cast it off and go adventuring. Men all
around you will be living in stony thought-worlds
sometimes sculptured grandly into Grecian archi-
tectural forms. Visit them there, for they are
often good men. Do not disturb them with your
freedom, for that would not be good manners. But
if you feel your garment of custom beginning to
cleave to your flesh, if you detect a certain stoni-
ness creeping about your ankles, make your ex-
cuses politely and get out fast.
It will be said that you must specialize rather
narrowly in order to have a successful career.
That also is true. But so mark out your private
thought-world that you can at will bring to your
specialty the resources of whole continents. What
you will bring will not be so much a jumble of bits
of knowledge as it will be a large and free and
flexible habit of thought, that priceless ability to
play like children with ideas. With it you can find
new approaches to old problems and roundabout
ways to valuable insights not available to your
more stony competitors. For the sake of that ad-
vantage, in this crucial period of your lives take
H. G. Wells as a kind of model. Of him it was
said disparagingly that while he was indeed a
mile wide, he was only a foot deep. That is pref-
erable to being a mile deep and only a foot wide,
if one cannot have it both ways, because a mile
will span a great many one-foot channels. I be-
lieve, however, that one can have it both ways if
he chooses wisely and in time. Run widely now,
in youth and early manhood, and you will retain
sufficient volume to cut many deep channels later
in life. But if you settle for a one-foot channel
now you will be trapped in that slot forever.
Up to this point I have been talking to you in
terms of your individual self-interest. There is
another aspect of this subject on which I wish to
touch briefly before concluding.
Our private thought-worlds must all take ac-
count of one another and combine into the common
thought-world of our culture. The private
thought-worlds range by minute gradations be-
tween extremes of stony immutability and sur-
realistic freedom. The proportions in which they
combine determine for our common thought-world
something we may call an index of plasticity. I
mean by that a relative ability to change and adapt
in order to relieve stress rather than shatter into
stony fragments when the stress becomes too great
to resist any longer. I believe that the plasticity
index of our culture is dangerously low. It can
only be raised by mixing into the culture new
minds more free and more abundantly supplied
with creative energy to replace the stony old ones
which are dying off.
It happens that some regions of our culture are
more free and plastic than others. Those of you
who manage to retain a large share of your cre-
ative energy will be tempted to move into those
free areas and to confine yourselves there. By
so doing you will be of little help in raising our
overall index of plasticity. You may rather, by
helping to increase the rate of change in those
areas, work to increase the stress which gravely
threatens the more stony parts of our culture.
One free region is art. An artist is still free
to see the bear-quality in a black rock and to take
his sculptorTs tools and liberate the bear. But it
is ominous that not many artists are doing any-
thing like that these days; what they seem to see
in all they look at is chaos and old night. Another
free region is science. By playing with ideas the
scientists have learned how to abstract from black
rocks a certain metal which, assembled in the
critical quantities already on hand, can destroy all
life on our planet.
So, to conclude, there is a certain standpoint of
thought from which I can tell you honestly that
whether and in what proportions you can comé
through these college years with your creative
energy undiminished may well determine whether
or not our culture is to survive. You will not helP
much if you hide yourselves away in science and
art. What you must do is to diffuse in your ow?
persons the freedom of science and art, the i�
comparably precious ability to play like childre��"�
with ideas, through the other and stonier parts of
our common thought-world. If just enough of
you can do that to slightly leaven the lump, J
think we may all be saved.
Thank you.
THE REBEL
winter love
You were a ghost
Among brown leaves;
I followed you
through troughs driven by the wind;
you were a ghost...
and as you passed the flowers
died by the roadside,
the willows ceased,
and the cranes in the brake
cried once and rose...
MILTON G. CROCKER
forever
Tn one thoughtless moment you took my hand
And looked at me with soft, dark eyes,
While laughter spilled from your lips
ike wine from an enchanted cup,
nd I have never been the same.
All that I have ever searched for,
All that I have ever hoped for,
ived for an instant in that laughter and those
eyes.
Later, when my dreams are burnt to ashes"
Moldering embers at my feet"
Nd all my days are but an endless, numb pro-
cession,
Shall remember you, stranger with dark eyes,
And all that could have been.
:
Lost, lost, forever lost.
:
BRENDA CANIPE
Winter, 1963
1008
from a kid
If you wonTt love me, tell me true:
Can I just walk and be with you?
Perhaps while strolling here or there
YouTll smile; ITd lift it from the air.
The breeze could pass in spurts and dips"
I'd love it for having touched your lips.
Let me be the one for you to use
When you have just some time to lose,
And use me for what fun you may,
Although childish seems what I say.
My love for you by such is fed...
Crumbs are also bread.
G. C. NoRwoop
33
ee 1 TT 2 Ears
- A t "_~
""" ne
Ss be.
« it . ae, Sen. """ -- P
= ; j
; A f | | j
j Ay . q ~~ ¢ \
ae S, y \
SS >
) Sei FAL #-
y aie a a o,
"4 SY ee ZA ae,
{
Reverence After Midnight
Letters of James Agee to Father Flye
Letters of James Agee to Father Flye. New York: George
Braziller. 1962. 235 pp. $5.00.
James Agee is probably best known for his
Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Death in the Fam-
ily and for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a
book about white tenant farmers in Alabama that
somehow defies any sort of pigeonholing nomen-
clature. He also published a short novel, a book
of poetry, wrote articles and columns on books and
films for leading magazines, and wrote movie
scripts (The Quiet One, The African Queen, The
Night of the Hunter). Recently his articles and
reviews of films have been collected and published
34
in book form under the title Agee on Film. This
collection of letters is his fourth book to be pub-
lished posthumously and there is considerable
reason to hope that it will not be the last.
James Rufus Agee was born in Knoxville, Te?�
nessee, in 1909 and at the age of ten he enteré
St. AndrewTs, a boarding school for boys operate
under the Monastic Order of the Holy Cros®
(Episcopalian) near Sewanee, Tennessee, wher
he met and had classes under Father James Ha!�
old Flye. In the autumn of 1925, Agee entered Phil-
lips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshir@
at which point his letters to Father Flye bega�
continuing until five days before his own death ip
1955.
THE REBEL
These letters are all written to Father F lye who
was in many ways AgeeTs adopted father. Per-
haps his own fatherTs dying when Agee was only
Six years old precipitated this adoption, but the
Close friendship between the two was also formed
by the sharing of many interests and values.
There are some ninety letters in this collection
Covering a period of thirty years, and in them
Agee discusses books, friends, ideas, current
events, his personal life, and his ambitions and
feelings about writing. The letters are written
in different emotional levels, running the entire
Spectrum from despair and suicidal moments to
extreme elation and happiness. His prose is often
Cryptic and elliptical, but at other times expands
into full blown sentences that come as close to
approaching the richness of Elizabethan language
48 we are likely to find in a contemporary writer.
We follow him from his early letters as a student
through to his maturity and see the development
of his mind and ideas.
Even if you are not interested in reading Mr.
AgeeTs letters for academic reasons and even if
you are not a writer yourself concerned with the
young or maturing artist there are many things
in the letters that could interest you. If nothing
else, there is the personality of the man that
omerges to meet you; warm, sincere, charming,
Strong, reverent. There are his hopes and doubts,
is weaknesses and failures, which at times fill
you with love, compassion, and wonder at the man.
In the beginning you see the dynamic boy setting
Sut to spend his life concerning himself with writ-
ing, and at the end you see the man who has driven
himself in too many directions for too long, told
to Stop his beloved smoking and drinking in order
to dispel the from six to twenty heart attacks he
has each day. The one thing about the man that
'S revealed in these letters that may seem unfor-
tunate or disconcerting is his almost adolescent
Self-pity when he talks about his ambitions. The
Teader may feel that Agee should not have thought
SO much about writing a good book. When he says
© wants to write better than Shakespeare did,
We are tempted to say, oAll right, but what writer
asnTt ?�T
_ I will not quote from him for it is only in read-
~ng these letters in their entirety that James Agee
© man would come through to you, but there is
*ne bit of information that you might use as a
Prospective reader. In the preface to the last
odition of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,
alker Evans says that Agee was a onight writ-
*t.� This is significant in that particular book,
WINTER, 1963
but it is also important to remember with respect
to this collection of letters. In reading this book
it could conceivably mean more to you if you sat
down by yourself at night someplace where you
would not be disturbed and read it through with-
out stopping. The suggestion is important first
because Agee wrote at night and second because
many of the things he talks about seem less dan-
gerous unless felt in the solitude brought only by
darkness.
"BEN BRIDGERS
Gripped By Forces
The Sand Pebbles. By Richard McKenna. New York:
Harper and Row. 1962. 597 pp. $5.95.
Richard McKenna, in a competition involving
045 submissions, has, in The Sand Pebbles carried
off the 1963 Harper Prize Novel award. The title
of the book designates the crew of the San Pablo,
an ancient gunboat that cruises chiefly Tungting
Lake, halfway an enlargement of the Yangtze
River above Hankow. San Pablo and its slight
armament are protecting, according to treaties
established with China after the Boxer Rebellion,
American interests and missionaries in the cities
and region about the lake during the mid-twenties.
The book begins with his story until he is shot to
pieces by Chinese Bolshevik forces in China Light,
a missionary compound. The only departures
from his story line are those which deal with
Shirley Eckert, a teacher at China Light who goes
up river with Jake and arouses in him feelings
and admiration that smolder and glow through
much of the novel. Still, the cast of characters is
sO numerous and the action so extensive that the
pressures of the time and place could be conveyed
without Jake Holman and Shirley Eckert. But
they provide the central tenderness, the most
poignant sacrifice, and the most acute individual
human involvement.
Mr. McKenna depicts the human being ironic-
ally, and often tragically, gripped by forces at
play beyond himself. If there is any carping to
be directed at the novel, I would have to direct it
at the inevitability of outcome. All is plausible
and acceptable, though. How can the fate of
Maily and Burgoyne be otherwise, those tortured
lovers who seek to mate during the troubled and
embittered rise of the Kuomintang government?
They, missionary-reared Chinese girl and Ameri-
35
Cn oe ae |
can sailor, are ground to pieces by hates that are
national. Cho-jen, the brilliant young Kuomin-
tang leader, and Ponan, the apt and inquiring
coolie-engineer who serves ably under Jake, are
destroyed in the clashes of American and Chinese
groups. These losses are almost more damaging
to the cause of America and the West than to
China; the thing to be hoped for is that there are
other Chinese as worthy and Westerners to appre-
ciate them. I am almost disposed to think at the
end of the novel that the world exists only because
there are good persons who die in it or acts of
good are done therein. Even Sand Pebble Harris,
surely the earthiest of men, supremely elevates
himself by receiving the blow meant for Lieuten-
ant Collins, a commander whom he has grossly
insulted.
I wish for the retrieval of Jake Holman more
than that of any other. He is learning to acknowl-
edge bonds to other human beings, bonds that he
has spent much of his life denying. He has lived
an admirer of manTs machines, not man. It is too
bad that, once possessed of vital wisdom, he is
deprived of the opportunity to employ it.
"GEORGE A. CooK
oThe Maiden TruffleTT
An Anthology of Bad Verse: The Stuffed Owl. Ed. by D. B.
Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee. New York: Capricorn
Books. 1962. 264 pp.
An Anthology of Bad Verse is a book that had
been sorely needed for a long time. Not only does
this book give the practicing poet an over-all view
of bad poetry through the centuries and indicate
severely what he should not do, and provide a
much-needed boon to such rare characters as poets
these days, but it also gives our anthologists a
look at some material which will fit right in with
the same marsh-mess they have been turning out
for years. Judging from the taste in the most
current anthologies this material will fit right in
without a ruffle.
All kidding aside, this book is an illuminating
study into the devious art of poetry. Chuckles
aplenty abound on every page. But more impor-
tant, it does provide a view of poetry which is
entirely unorthodox and much needed. For exam-
ple, for the poet who constantly has trouble mak-
ing people understand what he is trying to say,
36
there is a sample section by Mr. Edward Edwin
Foote. Although I have my doubts, Mr. Foote is
generously credited by the editors as having pos-
sibly invented the footnote: since he used it so
frequently to make sure everyone understood:
AlthoT we! mourne for one now gone,
And he"that grey haired Palmerston,?
to which he adds as an explanation in a footnote:
1'The nation
2The Right Honourable Henry John Tem-
ple, Viscount Palmerston, K.G., G.C.B.,
ete. (the then Premier of the British
Government), died at oBrockett Hall,�
Herts., at a quarter to eleven oTclock in
the forenoon of Wednesday, 18th Octo-
ber, 1865, aged eighty-one years (all but
two days, having been born on the 20th
October, 1784. The above lines were
written on the occasion of his death.
Now you see. IsnTt that clear?
ThereTs something for everybody in this de-
lightful collection. Its selections are not limited
to the .poetaster and the critic alone. For in-
stance, for the scientific there are selections from
Erasmus Darwin dealing with such delightful
topics as oThe Maiden Truffle� and oThe Birth of
KNOs,� and for the romantic there are osweet�
selections by Julia Ward Moore, the oSweet Sing-
er of Michigan;� (OT come on"youTve heard of
her!) and, of course, as should he in any volumé
of this nature, a large selection of William Words-
worth for the aging pedant.
The surprising thing about the book is that
there are none of our modern soap-box jingles:
housewife poetry, etc., but the editors get aroun
that in the introduction. The Stuffed Owl is 4
collection of ogood� bad poetry, a category i?
which jingles do not fall.
"MILTON G. CrocKEs
oSilence of the Young�
Jeeney Ray. By Iris Dornfeld. New York: The Vikiné
Press. 1962. 188 pp. $3.50.
Iris DornfeldTs first book Jeeney Ray is th®
story of a mentally disabled childTs search fot
identity amidst the ignorance of supposedly no!
mal people. What Jeeney Ray is"a spastic, t
victim of a wounded brain, a retarded child"
THE REBEL
4
remains a puzzle for the reader throughout the
book, even when J eeney Ray herself is finally satis-
fied with her identity.
Jeeney RayTs search is pin-pointed in the ques-
tion, What am I? which she asks everyone from
Zelda, her fun-loving sister-in-law who has ono
pity in her for me being what I am, .. . She donTt
bother how anyone is,� to the warped people in
the Pink Lantern Hotel where J eeney Ray is em-
Ployed as a maid. Until the death of her grand-
mother who dies leaving only oher teeth and her
Book and her smell,� Jeeney Ray has the security
of the old womanTs love and does not need an
answer. Suddenly alone, confused by her inability
to speak correctly and frustrated by the inability
of others to accept her as a normal child, Jeeney
Ray turns to the mysteries of the woods for con-
Solation and understanding. Her silent observa-
tion of nature is poetic and touching.
oThe summer is a birdTs summer and there is
No trouble in it... I watch life come naked and
Weak and grow wings for flying and let it go; I
am a feeding mother till summer passes to dry
and old for hatching, and silence of the young is
overywhere, and the pause begins. All is dry
8round and dry grass and a white sun baking
day by day and fruit rot coming in the dampness
of night, saying summer is almost dead.�
Only Jim, the gentle ditch-walker who finds the
Child in the woods, realizes her need for under-
Standing and help. As her teacher, he patiently
helps her to form words with her tongue and lips
and to read the Bible. oI go slow and hard soTs
to make no mistake; ... Together we thunder
JOy clear to the heart of the sky and back to our-
SelvesT heart; and final we are a whole new person
from the cure of laughing, and lay back sweated
Mside out;...� As her friend, he gives her a
Spyglass. oIt is the eye to secret life and brings
Me closer than touching.�
Written in the first person and present tense,
Jeeney Ray merits approval and admiration for
�,� sustaining mood of sadness and longing which
oould have easily been lost in right words and
800d grammar. Its feeling, the warmth of Jeeney
ay, the vulgarity of the insensitive people around
�,�r, are all part of the beauty of this book. In
"eading Jeeney Ray, the reviewer has discovered
�,� freshness of language, the delight of a childTs
'�,�cognition of life about her, and the terrifying
'8Norance and cruelty of people.
"SUE ELLEN BRIDGERS
Winter, 1963
Unsuitable Liason...
The Lonely Girl. By Edna OTBrien. New York: Random
House. 1962. 244 pp. $3.95.
Caithleen Brady, Irish, twenty-one, and adoles-
cent, has come to the city to an insignificant job
in a Dublin grocery store; she is Edna OTBrienTs
Lonely Girl obviously headed, owing to her unset-
tled if colorful home life, for an unsuitable liaison
with a married man.
In an improbable love-at-first-sight meeting,
Caithleen, the ingenue fresh from the bogs, sees
Eugene Gaillard, modern Irish equivalent of the
burnt-out case. This meeting launches a tediously
adolescent love affair. Adolescence is the inevit-
able reverse of CaithleenTs appealing youth; Eu-
gene, his literary talent consumed in documentary
movies on sanitation, provides the tedium.
The Lonely Girl traces the dissolution of. this
affair; badly mated from the start, Caithleen and
Eugene bicker and finally part over their differ-
ences in background. Caithleen lacks her lit-
erary loverTs sophisticated seize-the-day attitude,
but she does not lack the inherent feminine desire
for permanent arrangements. oI noticed with
momentary regret that he never used dangerous
words like ~forever and ever.T �
The first rumor of CaithleenTs affair rouses her
father from his alcoholic lethargy and provokes
two outrageously funny scenes.
In a rage of indignant moralism (oDivorce is
worse than murderTT), he drags Caithleen back to
the country to protect her from harmful influ-
ences. She escapes eventually and endures a jaw-
jarring ride in an ancient hack driven by a sinis-
ter Caldwellian Captain Hook. oI worried that
he might twist back his arm and put his iron hand
on my knee.� Two hours later her father breaks
into EKugeneTs study leading a drunken posse of
chivalrous bumpkins, including Captain Hook, to
rescue othat poor innocent girl.� A wildly comic
battle follows culminating in an unexpected shot
gun blast provided by a loyal servant. Eugene is
the victim of his opponentsT hob-nailed boots; the
posse concedes to the falling plaster, and Caith-
leen crawls out from under the sofa festooned
with ofluff and dust.�
Predictably, the lovers grow tired of each
other and separate in mutual disillusionment.
Caithleen from London writes, oI havenTt heard
37
"" Oe
an tn AN ol
Sr
SS SR
from him now for a couple of months and I take
it that he has gone back to his wife, or that heTs
busy in South America doing that picture on
irrigation.�
Isolated passages testify to Mrs. OTBrienTs
power of description. ~We passed a group of fel-
lows who stood at the crossroads, and they yelled
to us in that maniacal way which country boys
have of yelling at strange cars.� Other similarly
acute morsels highlight the narrative. For in-
stance Caithleen and her roommate in a burst of
romanticism dye all their underwear purple.
Minor characters and minor incidents also orna-
ment the plot of The Lonely Girl, but they do not
redeem it.
"SUE MCDOWELL
For Juveniles
The Uncle. By Margaret Abrams. Boston: Houghton Mif-
flin Company. 1962. $3.50. 146 pp.
I hardly know where to begin. It does have a
nice cover. Margaret Abrams has done it. She
really has. She fooled Mifflin into thinking this
is a novel. And they published it. As I began
reading, I decided to categorize as well as list all
the weak points I could find. The margins filled
with notes. Then I decided maybe I should try
listing the strong points. This was harder. The
cover is one. Strong cover.
At the very bottom of the winch in literature
is the heavy block which keeps the cable taut: the
dramatic element. Without this, your cable be-
comes a loose dangle of strands. It is this dra-
matic element which Mrs. Abrams fails to hook
with her cable.
We become involved with a young stoic, seven
years old, who has the perception of the ancients,
the blind faith of Noah, the artistry of Freud. I
know little boys are supposed to be made of ham-
mers Tn nails Tn puppy dogs etc., but Gus is too
much. ThatTs his name. He is an unpredictable
agglomeration of the perversions and repressions
and traits of all the seven year old uncles you will
ever know. (if you ever do.)
Anyway, after seven years, Gus finds out that
he is an Uncle, and has been one all his life. Con-
sequently, his nephew is also seven. Upon finding
out that he is an uncle, GusTs pals make fun of him
thusly: oGus is an uncle!T�T They actually do this
three times in the book, although Mrs. Abrams
tells us that they do it a lot more. And upon this
38
exciting, vivid, meaningful foundation Mrs.
Abrams attempts to build a novel worth reading.
She quits after 146 pages.
First of all, the novel is not believable. Sweet,
good-natured Gus is made fun of by his buddies,
and in no more serious a mien than the chant just
quoted. But Gus is nearly driven to distraction.
He hides in old houses, he cries. He with draws,
he sulks, he fights. But our impression at the
outset is that Gus is a strong boy. We are told
that. So, this is just not believable. It is absurd.
The rest of the novel is essentially how the chant-
ing affects him. No drama.
Another big fault is the fact that Mrs. Abrams
makes the amateurish mistake of trying to tell us
everything instead of showing us. Instead of
showing us GusTs likes and dislikes, she tells us.
How dull it is to be told something. But Mrs.
Abrams wants to make sure we see only what she
sees.
And there is another weakness. There is too
much of Mrs. Abrams in Gus. We never see things
very long from his point of view.
One would be right in assuming, then, that
there are a number of shifts in point of view, nar-
ration, and even dialogue. Mrs. Abrams canTt
decide whose language to put the book in"herTs
or GusTs. She canTt decide from whose eyes t0
view the setting"herTs or GusTs. Note the con-
trast in these two segments of narration, both
within forty pages of each other:
(Gus) liked the way his father. looked in a
white jacket ... like a king or something. He
liked the way his mother looked in something
filmy and soft with her shoulders showing.
And now the shocker:
Until now (Gus) had existed in that state of
primal sophistication in which the knowing
of all things is still balanced in the psyche,
not yet attacked and fragmented by the con-
scious mind . . . Gus had already begun to
sense that a great many souls were too vapor-
ous to be beleaguered.
Because GusTs anxieties do not seem important
to him, they are not important to us. We thv®
care little what he does about them. And throug!
all this, we always hear from Mrs. Abrams th®
story. We rarely get to see for ourselves. An
because drama and believability are lacking, we
feel we are reading a book intended for juvenile®
Well, perhaps so.
"G. C. Norw00?
THE REBEY
ry
The Bone Yard
We Have Always Lived in the Castle. By Shirley Jackson.
New York: The Viking Press. 1962. $3.95. 214 pp.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle, written
by Shirley Jackson, provides an eerie tale of the
two Blackwood sisters and their elderly uncle,
three seemingly real characters who are woven
into an unreal world. It becomes obvious from
the beginning of the story that a dark cloud hovers
Over the three Blackwoods, which questions them
regarding the mysterious death of the other mem-
bers of their family.
Shunned by the villagers, they live secluded
lives with the exception of infrequent visits by
their few friends. Variety is unknown to the
Blackwoods until the arrival of Cousin Charles.
The existing close relationship of the girls dwin-
dles but only momentarily. The tragic fire that
Sweeps the BlackwoodsT ocastle� claims the uncleTs
life and causes Cousin CharlesT departure from
the sistersT private life. The true family murder-
"Ss is disclosed at the end of the tale, but this pro-
duces no reaction.
Miss JacksonTs sole purpose is to weave an en-
Joyable story employing human emotions, real
Characters with weird personalities, and unreal
Surroundings. This purpose is accomplished
through the modern literary technique known as
Surrealism. By relying upon the readerTs sub-
oonscious mind, Miss Jackson weaves a tale that
deeply penetrates fictitious writing. In evaluating
�,� Have Always Lived in the Castle, the Viking
ress claims it is meaningless to describe in words
the Story, ofor it is not just the subject about
Which (Miss Jackson) chooses to write, or even
*r ability as an immensely gifted storyteller,
at distinguishes her work; it is her unique
Vision, illuminating the familiar.�
Characterization is perhaps the key word in
hirley JacksonTs writing. The Blackwood sisters
ore deftly portrayed as queer and different human
®ings placed in a fantasy world. Their person-
~lities can be realized in the following verse which
'S used often throughout the book:
oMerricat, said Connie, would you like a cup
of tea?
Oh, no, said Merricat, youTll poison me;
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go
to sleep?
Down in the boneyard, ten feet deep!�
Because it has no equal, We Have Always Lived
�"� the Castle is highly recommended to anyone
Winter, 1968
Contributors Notes
Zoe Kincaid Brockman, a well known poet, is the
Society Editor of the Gastonia Gazette. Mrs.
Brockman, whose work has appeared in lead-
ing periodicals, published her first volume of
poetry, Heart on my Sleeve, in 1951.
Larry Blizard, long time Art Editor of THE
REBEL, makes his first appearance as a fic-
tion writer in this issue. Larry is a graduate
student in the School of Art.
Sue Ellen Bridgers and Milton G. Crocker are
members of the staff.
Brenda Canipe, a sophomore English major from
Rockingham and winner of the 1963 writing
contest, makes her third appearance in this
issue of THE REBEL.
Dwight W. Pearce, a sophomore from Norlina,
N. C., makes his first appearance in this issue
of the magazine.
G. Carroll Norwood, a frequent contributor, is a
senior English major from Black Mountain.
Sue McDowell, Ben Bridgers, and Dr. George A.
Cook are members of the English faculty.
Joan Harmon is a freshman from Arlington, Vir-
ginia. She makes her first appearance in this
issue of the magazine.
whose mind is in dire need of a thorough question-
ing, who wishes to escape from the everyday rou-
tine of life, or who desires purely entertaining
reading.
"JOAN HARMON
39
The REBEL Magazine
Announces:
4th ANNUAL
Writing Contest
POETRY--- PROSE ( phert Stories )
Poetry: K) 35:00 gut Prize §75-00 gud Prize
Prose: S 35:90 Gu Prize $1599 gud Prize
Winning Entries Will Be Published
DEADLINE: MAY 1st
Send Entries to: Rebel Contest
Box 1420
OM @F ae
