All quotation marks retained as data.
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Of course the top is power-oper-
ated"no extra cost" because this
is the Rambler American ~~400?
Convertible.
You may not believe itTs Amer-
icaTs lowest-priced convertible"
but it is, with no ifs, ands or buts.
Can it move? Definitely, and with
plenty of get-up-and-go" because
this rakish Rambler sports a snappy
125-HP overhead valve engine,
with a power-to-weight ratio that
sort of puts wings to your going.
(Interesting aside: the Rambler
American holds more top honors
in major economy runs than all
1962 Rambler American °''400"' Convertible"quality-built and lowest-priced
the other compact cars combined.)
What else is wonderful about
this sunful and funful car? Just
about everything.
Double-Safety Brakes that stop
when other brakes canTt (self-
adjusting, too). More carefree and
trouble-free motoring, with 4,000
miles between normal oil changes,
more thorough rustproofing (in-
cluding RamblerTs famed up-to-
the-roof Deep-Dip), the Ceramic-
Armored muffler and tailpipe that
won't rust out.* Even the exclu-
sive K-Stick automatic-clutch trans-
mission, for only $59.50*, with
* Furful x Wonderful
the fun, control and economy of
stick shifting.
You'll find a whole host of ad-
vancements in the T62 Rambler"
and you'll find all prices really low,
starting with AmericaTs lowest.
See your Rambler dealer"now.
*If muffler or tailpipe rusts out, collision
damage excepted, either will be replaced
free by a Rambler dealer for original
owner for as many years as he owns his
Rambler. Price of E-Stick Transmission
is manufacturerTs suggested price.
AMBLER
World Standard of
Compact Car Excellence
=N VOLUME V SPRING, 1962 NUMBER 38
VR TABLE OF CONTENTS
bie | CONTRIBUTORST NOTES 35
} Ke WN |
Va 4 FEATURES
h ~ a y Interview with Frances Gray Patton ace 3
WO Ld The Poet As Teacher by Karl Shapiro. 18
LN FICTION
ry The Secret of McCravenTs Cove by Charles L. Shobe, Jr. 240
r DRAMA
I AinTt Too Yit, a monologue, by Harry C. West i:
ESSAY
John P. MarquandTs Use of Background as Satire
by Richard L. Taylor. 26
POETRY
Pagan Rites by Sarah Hansen 15
Morning by Brenda Canipe 16
Lover by G. Burgess Casteel 16
In Time: In Season by Walter N. Dixon III 16
Serenade by Milton G. Crocker 17
Poem by Sue Ellen Hunsucker 25
REBEL REVIEW 31 |
Reviews by Milton G. Crocker, Dr. James E. Poindexter, Miss a
Janice Hardison, The Reverend Richard N. Ottoway, Joyce
Evans, and Jane Teal.
COVER by Larry Blizard.
THE REBEL is published by the Stu-
dent 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 REB-
EL should be directed to P. O. Box 1420,
E.C.C., Greenville, North Carolina.
Editorial and business offices are locat-
ed at 30614 Austin Building. Manu-
scripts and art work submitted by mail
should be accompanied by a self-ad-
dressed envelope and return postage.
The publishers assume no responsibility
for the return of manuscripts or art
work.
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Frances Gray Patton began her writing career while at-
tending the University of North Carolina. Since then, Mrs.
PattonTs short stories have been published in magazines
such as HarperTs, McCallTs, Ladies Home Journal and the
New Yorker. She has written three books: two volumes of
short stories and one novel. Her first book, The Finer
Things of Life, won for her the Sir Walter Raleigh Award
for the best book of fiction written in North Carolina during
a three-year period. In 1955, she received the award again
for her best-selling novel, Good Morning, Miss Dove. Her
third book, a collection of short stories entitled A Piece of
Luck, was published in 1956.
Mrs. Patton lives in Durham, North Carolina, where her
husband is a member of the English faculty at Duke Unt-
versity.
Interview With
FRANCES GRAY PATTON
Interviewer: What do you feel about teaching
creative writing in college?
Mrs. Patton: I donTt like the word ocreative
writing.? I always feel itTs fraudulent. ItTs as
if you were telling somebody: oGo to. I will show
you how to create.T But thereTs no point in squab-
bling about words. ~Creative writing? is in the
langauge.
ITm never quite sure what I think about it. I
donTt know but what I think that the discipline of
having to write, of having to meet a deadline, of
having to turn out the words instead of just imag-
ining that youTve written them is the best thing
we do. A writer has a lot of imagination, you
know, and itTs awfully easy just to think that you
have written ten thousand words you haven't
written. I heard Mr. Howard Mumford Jones say
once that the trouble with the writing class as
SPRING, 1962
- ee
Syste | "
opposed to a class in the other arts"playing the
piano, for instance, or painting a picture"was
that people go into a class in writing expect-
ing to sell immediately. They will gain more, I
think, if they write completely for their own
pleasure and for their own progress and excel-
lence. I think that the worst mistake made by
any teacher of writing is to encourage the stu-
dents to think that their excellence will be proved
by the acceptance of a story in a magazine. I
think that the writing class is the studentTs oppor-
tunity to learn how to be himself, to tell the truth
about his particular world as he sees it. If he
begins to try to tell the truth about his particular
world as he thinks the New Yorker would like to
see it, as he thinks Playboy would like to see it,
as he thinks The Partisan Review would like to
see it, he is ruining himself. He is killing his
3
particular talent at the beginning. If he has the
nerve to try for his own style"and style is nothing
in the world but a particular way of looking at
things"then I think that he can get a good deal
out of the class.
Interviewer: Do you think that a creative writ-
ing course should be taught from the standpoint
of aiming at a particular group of readers or
Should the aim be toward the universal?
Mrs. Patton: I think that the writing class
should be aimed at the particular in the univer-
sal. I think it should be the individual writerTs
particular approach to the universal problems or
should be directed toward helping the individual
writer express his views of life or perfect his
talent for entertainment. The writing course
should not be directed to any particular group of
people. I think thatTs the quickest way to kill a
talent in the bud. It would make all our litera-
ture dull. The writer has time enough when he
begins to publish to take into consideration the
views of publishers. No matter how hard the
writer tries to keep himself pure, he always has
to remember that that mean old smart editor will
be looking at his work and thinking that some of
his philosophical observations sound naive. ItTs
very hard to struggle against that. Writing is
never quite as much fun when itTs done for
other people as when it is done for yourself
entirely.
Interviewer: Do you think that any writing is
ever done entirely for yourself?
Mrs. Patton: No, but I think there is a time
when it is done for an imaginary audience. The
imaginary audience is often one that will abso-
lutely, entirely take you at your word. It will not
bring in its own prejudices and feelings by which
to weigh the truth that you are giving. I think
that the main question I should want to ask any-
body who wanted to study creative writing, who
wanted to be a writer, is a very simple one. You
canTt ask them, as is often asked, ~~Do you have the
spark?? You canTt ask them that. What do they
mean by having the spark? If they mean genius,
of course, you canTt say. If they mean really con-
spicuous talent, you canTt say. There is one
criterion. Do you have a genuine regard for
words? You may have a genuine regard for
words and you may find out that you donTt want
to be a writer. You may discover that sitting in
a room alone with a typewriter makes you nerv-
ous. You may find that what you really like to
4
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do is read. If you do, then I say as an author,
God bless you! If you donTt have a genuine regard
for words, if you even hesitate as to whether you
really care about the texture, the subtle differences
between the meanings of words, then the world is
wide, there are many avenues to human happi-
ness, and writing is just not your cup of tea.
Turn to something else. It is almost as simple as
that.
Interviewer: Do you think there is any par-
ticular group of writers today that could be de-
fined as Southern writers?
Mrs. Patton: I donTt think there is a group of
writers, but I think there are a number of individ-
ual writers who could be called Southern writers.
I think so far Reynolds Price can; Robert Penn
Warren certainly can; I think that although she
has gone off into another field in her Light in the
Piazza, Elizabeth Spencer can; Eudora Welty can,
of course, with her wonderful sense of place. I
think that as we have become more aware of our-
selves in the South as citizens of the world, we
have become less peculiarly Southern. I donTt
think there is any group comparable to the Agra-
rians, for instance, writing in the South today.
There was a time when the world at large almost
demanded that a Southern writer be a writer of
local color, but I think that we are now allowed
to think about other things if we want to and are
not immediately considered naive every time we
express an opinion that has any bearing on some-
thing outside our own little cove.
Interviewer: What contemporary figures in
Southern writing have meant the most to you as
a writer.
Mrs. Patton: I donTt know that I have been
influenced by Southern writing in a literary way.
I know a great many Southern writers that I
admire tremendously"Eudora Welty and Kath-
erine Anne Porter, for example. I think Peter
Taylor is one of our best short story writers.
Helen Bevington, the poet, has had a great in-
fluence on me. We are great friends. When we
met, both of us had been writing all our lives, but
neither of us had ever tried to publish anything.
We talked about our work, and we both began to
publish very soon. She is a woman of a very
exquisite sense of taste and form, but I donTt be-
lieve that my writing has been influenced by her
style. I have been more influenced by the writers
of the past.
THE REBEL
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Interviewer: What do you think of Reynolds
Price?
Mrs. Patton: I think Reynolds Price is a very
remarkable writer and I think A Long and Happy
Iife is an extraordinary book. What impresses
me most about the book is that Reynolds has the
ability to create a world into which he immediate-
ly draws his reader. ThatTs something that the
Victorians used to do. That was their greatest
talent; but except for Faulkner in this generation,
I donTt know of anybody else who does it. Faulk-
nerTs world, it seems to me, is a bizarre world"
a world completely out of FaulknerTs imagination.
Reynolds PriceTs world may be bizarre and imag-
inative too, but it is a world of reality that we
are more willing to accept than FaulknerTs world.
We were discussing the influence of Faulkner, as
almost every serious Southern writer has been to
a certain extent, on Reynolds Price. I think that
Faulkner has done this thing so well that it has
almost become a part of the language and the
idiom. I think, however, that Reynolds, like
Faulkner, is his own man and that heTs not going
to remain a prisoner of any sort of style. The
Faulkner stories, ~~Turnabout? and oA Rose for
Emily?, are different in a way from his stories
like The Sound and the Fury. I think that both
Reynolds and Faulkner are independent writers.
ITve read things by Reynolds that did not follow
FaulknerTs circular style.
Reynolds has a story in a very recent issue of
Encounter about an old Negro man which I found
extremely moving. There is not a false move
made in this story. It is simply a recollection of
the past. He goes into a book store in Oxford and
buys a post ecard on which there is a picture of an
Egyptian emperor. The profile reminds him of
nothing so much as this old hanger-on, this old
Negro man, who simply wandered around and at-
tached himself to the family. It showed a great
deal of feeling and understanding.
I think Reynolds may well be one of the most
important writers that we have in this country
or even more than in this country. He is tremen-
dously admired in England. He was taken up by
Spender when he arrived in England and his
talent was recognized immediately. HeTs very
young yet. We'll have to see what urbanity does
to Reynolds as he sees the world.
He had a remarkable experience with his first
story. It was called oA Chain of LoveT and was
about Rosacoke, the heroine in A Long and Happy
Life. ITm sorry that it is not incorporated in his
novel because it really does add another dimension
SPRING, 1962
to Rosacoke. Reynolds wrote this just as he was
graduating from college, and he was to be a
Rhodes scholar the next year. He took it to New
York to an agent and the story was accepted by
Atlantic, HarperTs, and one or two other maga-
zines. Reynolds refused to shorten or change it in
any way. I think it took a lot of nerve for a
twenty-one year old writer with his first story to
do that. He went to England and it was imme-
diately printed in full in Encounter.
Interviewer: Do you think that Southern writ-
ers have a social responsibility to push integra-
tion? |
Mrs. Patton: No. Southern writers are good
as Southern writers but they must forget some-
times that they are Southern. They must recog-
nize that there are other areas of existence in the
world, particularly if they want to do something
for the Negro. What they ought to do is to start
writing about the Negroes as people, as human be-
ings, with the faults, virtues, limitations, and op-
portunities of human beings instead of as black
angels that have been downtrodden and have had
_ their wings clipped and who, if it were not for old
Southern colonels, would be flying around in the
blue ether shedding sweetness and light upon all
of us. I think it is belittling to a person to cast
him in a stock role as an angel or clown or devil.
Negroes are not any of these; theyTre human be-
ings. That is the only legitimate way in which
they can be used in literature. I think that push-
ing integration is not one of the proper duties of
a writer unless he feels that he personally wants
to push integration. Paul Green does feel that.
It is one of the great motives of his life and so itTs
fine for Paul Green. I think, however, that it is
not proper at all for someone to take on as a duty
something about which he has no strong feelings.
We can do ourselves infinite harm by allowing
ourselves to be irritated to the point of an imag-
inary paralysis by people who are militant about
the Negro problem.
Interviewer: Do you agree with Lionel Trilling
~ when he said recently that no writer can be a
mature critic unless he has an urban intellect?
Mrs. Patton: I think I would disagree with
Mr. Trilling. ItTs the old fight still going on be-
tween the city and the country, the city slicker
~and the country bumpkin. I think the city man
who does not understand that there can be great
intelligence in the thoughtful country man, par-
ticularly in the country man who leads a sort of a
5.
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patrician, intellectual life, is missing a great deal.
As a matter of fact, I think that urban people are
likely to be more provincial than people in the
provinces simply because they do not know they
are provincial. TheyTre victims of a mass provin-
cialism and canTt see the woods for the trees.
Interviewer: Do you think that the majority of
our contemporary writers, particularly some of
our playwrites, are attempting to deal exclusive-
ly with the disaffiliates in society?
Mrs. Patton: If the Broadway plays are true
reflections of our society, I think that our society
is very sick indeed. Perhaps the wars and trou-
bles weTve had have made people suspicious of
ordinary life and have made them demand the
bizarre and distorted. Perhaps itTs a matter of
needing kicks. Then, of course, we have begun to
realize more about the individual unhappiness of
people in society. For example, you can be lonely
in a crowd.
Some of the preoccupation with disaffiliates
comes from pity, from a longing to understand
lonely people, and thatTs good. I think that to
consider them typical is a distortion of the truth
and is rather bad for society. It does an injury to
our thinking.
Interviewer: Does short story writing require
any particular aptitude as contrasted with novel
writing?
Mrs. Patton: The form of the short story is
very fluid. You can do almost anything with it.
It can be a familiar essay; it can be a straight nar-
rative; it can be a mood piece; it can even be
propaganda. The technique of the short story is
rather like a poem in that each word counts. You
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simply do not dare make a slip in a short story
because the form is brief. Everything you put in
a short story must have a meaning and a purpose;
whereas, in a longer work of fiction, you can
write several chapters that just take up space
without really interrupting the flow of the work.
I think the form used in writing a short story
is very distinct from that used in writing a novel.
In the short story, it is very difficult to have any
real character development or change simply be-
cause of the brevity of the story. It does not
cover enough time for change and development
to occur. Things so rarely happen in life that the
short story writer can reveal. The short stories
can reveal hidden qualities in a character; but,
essentially, the hero of a short story is the same
at the end of the story as he was at the beginning.
Of course, all of these rules are to be broken. I
say that some things do not happen in real life;
they do happen. We all know of cases of sudden
conversion. We all know of boys who sit down
and read a book in which they suddenly see some-
thing that changes their lives. We know of peo-
ple who go to church and suddenly find their whole
course of thinking has changed. This happens so
seldom, however, that it seems sentimental to do
itinastory. Ina novel, there is a passage of time
and various influences of life coming in on the
character. It is logical that the character can
change in the novel.
Interviewer: What do you feel is the most grati-
fying thing about being a writer?
Mrs. Patton: The most gratifying thing about
being a writer is that morning after a long dry
spell when suddenly God seems to be on your side
and your subconscious is working well and words
tingle on your fingertips.
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THE REBEL
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| AIN'T THOO YIT
a monologue
HARRY C. WEST
Enoch awakes with a start. He opens his eyes
wide and looks around.
Hunh? Whozzat? He sits up in bed. His eyes
come to rest on a spot in the center of the room.
Whut you want? Frightened pause. Me? Whut
you mean? You donT need me. He screws up his
courage. You got no call to come lookinT me.
You jusT well 2gT on anT git someTun else. He
swings his legs to the floor, as if to get up. Then,
thinking better of it, gets back on the bed. WonT
do no good to wait. You jusT well gT on anT lemme
~lone. He nods at the door. DereTs de doT. He
pauses, scrutinizing the visitor. You jusT gone
stan dere, shakinT you haid?
How long you figger on stayinT? TF you gone
wait foT me, you got a long wait. I got things to
do. I cainTt go wid you now.
Whut? You ainT got time to wait? Well, me
neidder. He points. DereTs de doT.
He tries another tack. I tell you whut, why
donT you jusT gT on anT leave anT come back agTin
latuh, lak nexT yeah or so? DassTll be bedduh foT
SPRING, 1962
bofe of us.
He jerks his head toward the door, listening.
Hey! You Shawty! Stop Tat bahkinT! He gone
leave in a minnit.
Hunh! You isnTt? I thought it Tuz settled. I
done tole you it best you come back some udder
time. I tell you whut, nexT yeah Tbout this time,
ITll prolly be thoo and can go wid you. Right now
I got me too many things to do. Gotta fix dis place
up foT when Mistah Ed come back.
He gets out of bed, stands, and looks out the
door. See out dere? Dat fielT on de udder side
de house"whutTs lefT 0T de house"I Tuz gone plow
it up today. Got me some seed whut wuz lefT fum
when dem mens fum de Nawf come thoo heah.
Dey neah Tbout buhned evuhthing. TCept I saved
me some seed, dough. We got to git us some cawn
plannet so we kin eat. Miss Callie fum in town
brings me some food now and agTin. She Mistah
EdTs sistuh.
Yeah, I got me too many things to do raght
now. TF I Tuz thoo, ITd go wid you in a minnit.
7
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But as it is"
He breaks off, irritated that the visitor wonTt
understand.
You whut? Whut... well... uh, siddown, den.
He motions to the rocker. You kin wait while
. while I say Tbye to ole Shawty. He shuffles
to the door.
You Shawty! CTmere. TAtta boy. He lets the
dog in, then stoops to talk to him. Shawty, dis
man here, he say I got to go wid him. I reckon
dat leaves you heah to take keer de place. Now
I want you... He realizes how ricidulous this
is, and shuffles back to the chair.
How come you think you kin come in heah anT
bust things up lak dis? Wipe dat grin off you face!
Even Mistah Ed nevah done dis. He aw-ways
axed me to do things foT him. He never busted in
anT said, oEnoch, you cominT wid me.? Nossuh.
He aw-ways say, oEnoch, ITse gone hafta go
to town. Hich up de carrich foT us anT we'll drive
in.? AnT I say, oYassuh.? JusT lak dat. AnT he
owned me. Do you own me?
He looks at the chair, then gets the idea.
Well . . . conceding I reckon you do, in a way.
Awl of us. But you got no call to come Tfore a
manTs thoo. He ruminates on this. You evah
seed two dogs togedder? Well, cainTt nothinT git
dem apaht tell dey thoo"less you thTow cole
wawtuh on Tem. Ha! Likes this idea. You de
man whut runs arounT wid a bucket oT cole wawtuh
foT evuhbody, ainTtcha? Yeah, dass whut I
thought. Ha, ha, ha!
Well, I ainT thoo. Mistah Ed ainT thoo neidder.
AnT you kin quit noddinT you haid. You think
he thoo jesT Tcause oT whut happened to de place
heah? Naw.. fah fum it. You donT know Mistah
Ed. I wuz hisTn. We growed up togedder. He Tuz
bawn jusT two yeah aftuh I wuz. Yeah, he fah
fum thoo. I Tmembers de time when de herrycane
come up de rivah. Well, it blowed de roof off de
big house and de bahn flooded neahbout to de
haylofT. You think he give up? Naw. Not Mistah
Ed. Why"
He jerks his head back at the chair, as if rude-
ly interrupted.
DonT innerupT. I ainT thoo wid what I is tellinT.
You kin wait a few moT minnits. Anyhow, he
pitched raght in wid us nigguhs anT we fixed de
place up lak hit wonT nothinT happened. Dat tree
stomp outside de doT is lefT dare to Tmind us of de
stawm. Dass de onliesT thing lefT. Mistah Ed
never would let it be took up.
Aw, siddown. You ainT got nothinT else to do.
Heah. He fumbles in his pants pocket and comes
up with some rope tobacco. Have some Tbaccer.
8
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No? He cuts himself some and puts it back in his
pocket. He keeps the knife in his hand toying
with tt.
Guess you ainT nevah seed ole Marse Quillum
chew Tbaccer, did you? He Tuz Mistah EdTs pa
y know. He 1s stalling for time now. Back
when I Tuz jusT a young sprat, he uster give me
money anT I'd go inta town and git Tim some. Ole
Missus, she didnT lak him to chew, so heTd come
out to de fielTs to sneak Tim a chaw. Mistah Ed,
he tuk ovah when Marse Quillum die. Spits.
Oh, you Tmembers when dat wuz, huh? I Tuz wuk-
kinT dere as Mistah EdTs pussonal nigguh den.
Mistah Ed chewed too, aftuh ole Missus die. She
allus thought it un-dig-nee-fied, low and coTse, lak
nigguhs. We did have two or thTee low anT coTse
nigguhs heah. Dey de ones whut lefT when dey
freed by Linkum. TKnow, dey say PresTdent
Linkum de greTtesT man evah live. You take Tim
too? Whut you think"you say he greT? Hah!
No greTterTn de resT of Tem, hunh? Well, dass
whut I thought. He jusT a trouble-makuh, fah as
ITse concerned. I mean, he say us nigguhs is free.
Free to do whut? he spits. Free to spit our
"*baccer anywhurr? Sho. Dass whut he say. AinT
none of it. Free to git in trouble is whut. Whut
he know? JusT sittinT up dere in WashTnon lak
God anT say, oDe nigguhs is henceforewith free.?
Hah! Whut he know "bout freedom? ManTs got
to be tied to someTn. Man widout roots some-
whurrs is bound to git in trouble. AinT dat raght?
Cain you jusT Tmagine me in Baff wid nowhurrs
to go? Who gone hire me? Who gone give me a
job? Whurr I gone live?
How kin I builT me a house? Dass whut I
wanna know. Naw, dem udders lefT, but I hadda
stick by whut I knowed. He think he God and kin
say I seen all nigguhs beinT treated lak animules.
But he ainT seed how Mistah Ed treated me anT de
resT dem nigguhs. Yeh, he jusT good to us as he
kin be. He gone come back. It gone be de same
aftuh he gits back. Quit shakinT you haid. ItTll be
de same. Ole Marse and Mistah Ed bofe knowed
I Tuz a good nigguh. | |
See why I cainT leave now? Dey been good to
me. I gots to stay TrounT heah anT keep things goinT
tell Mistah Ed come back. Miss Callie fum in
town say I got to too. She even brings me whut
food she got, too, fum time to time.
I been tryTna fix de place up besT I could, since
dem mens fum de Nawf come thoo heah and buhn
evahthing. He points to the plantation house out
the window, on the hill in the background.
See de chimbley? Dass awl standinT. De col-
yums is lyin up dere now lak dead nigguhs. I
THE REBEL
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done cleaned up de besT I could. Mistah Ed, he
gone be home quick as he whups dem Yankees.
Hope he gits dem mens whut come thoo heah
buhninT evahthing. Dey even tuk my gal"Maud-
ieTs anT mine. Huh name Lula.
He rubs his face, as if waking from a dream.
Well, Shawty, leTs you anT me go anT hitch ole
mule up. We gone git that plowinT done. As if
taking for granted that the visior will leave.
You kin wait heah if you wants to, Suh. But I tell
you, you got a long wait. We got to git dis done,
fust. He makes as if to go out. He stops. He
looks back at the chair, listening as if in disbe-
lief.
You lie! You lie! You cainT fool me. You
tryTna fool me into goinT wid you. Dass whut you
doinT. Mistah Ed... Yeah, he gone come back.
I know he is. He told me when he lefT dat he
cominT back. I got to get things ready. HeTll be
back soon. He sits on the bed in bewilderment,
SPRING, 1962
trying to convince himself that Mister Ed will
come back.
Yeah, weTll fix de ole place up again .. . lak
it usta be, when he come. Yeah, I got me plenny
of things to do. No time now to go wid you. HeTll
*spect me to have things ready foT Tim. Who else
can do it?
CTmere, Shawty ole boy. He pets the dog, then
takes the dogTs head and speaks into his face.
Mistah Ed gone be proud of us. We'll jusT go out
anT git ole Wheemy, git her hitched up anT plant
us some cawn. Plenny oT wuk to do.
Here he begins settling back on the bed and,
by the last few sentences he is lying flat. I ainT
thoo yet, suh. Not by a long shot. You jusT well
leave now. I'll jusT lie back heah"git me some
resT foT we git out in the fielTs. He closes his
eyes. See dat he leaves, Shawty boy. You tell
him how we ainT thoo yit. ITm just gone resT mah
eyes a minnit anT
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l. was on one of those hot sultry Sunday after-
noons in July of 1935 that I pulled up in front of
the rambling structure of a farm house in Provi-
dence Forge, Virginia. The sign located at the
entrance of the long dusty lane, which I had just
driven up, had said that boats could be rented
down here and thatTs exactly what I was looking
for. Yes sir, just to get out there on the Chicka-
hominy and get a couple of hours of bass fishing
in before sunset was all that I wanted. Climbing
from my car, I approached the front door to the
house. After knocking and calling several times
without receiving a response, I wandered around
to the back of the house.
oAnybody home around here?? I called, begin-
ning to become annoyed.
Still there was no answer, so I thoughtfully
turned my gaze towards the river as it lazily
moved by. I suddenly became aware of someone
standing near the corner of the old house, watch-
ing me. When I swung around, a bedraggled
figure in faded blue-denim overalls wearing a bat-
tered straw hat confronted me. Much to my
amazement it"or she"was a woman.
oWhat can I do for ya, young fella?? she in-
quired, stepping from the shadows.
oT__uh saw your sign by the lane and thought
ITd rent a boat for the afternoon.?
oSign ?"Aw ya mean that ole sign Sam put up.
Lawd knows, son, he put that up two years ago.
My SamTs dead-an-gone now, but I still got a good
boat-er two that I can rentcha. AiminT on doinT
a mite oT bass fishing ??T
oYes mam. Could you give me any tips on some
particular spots I might hit carefully?? I asked,
giving her a playful wink.
~oWell"les see,T she paused. oI habenT talked to
none a the men folks rounT here for a spell, but I
can tell ya one place to steer good anT clear of
ifin unless ya wanna getcha self shot at!?
~oWhereTs that??
oPlace down the river there Tbout two-three
miles called McCravenTs Cove.?
oWhatTs there that should keep a man away?T
oWell"lITll tell ya,? she started as if preparing
to let me in on a choice piece of information. oYa
see nobody rounT these here parts knows how it
all come to be, but bout nigh ten years ago some
awful ole man bought up Tbout five acres of land
down on the river. Seems like he moved on the
land anT built hisself a cabin anT been back there
ever since. Course he comes out ta go upta main
2 92
Providence Forge to do his tradinT.
SPRING, 1962
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oSounds like an ordinary old hermit to me,? I
broke in. oITve always been interested in such
odd characters.?
oWell, mister, he ainTt nobody to take a likinT
ta. I seed Tim up-an-down the river before anT
he ainTt nothinT but a filthy, nasty ole coot. Looks
just like a wild man"vwith his dirty long red hair
anT beard. Dresses hisself in skins anT hides"
must stink ta high heaven.?
oAre the people around here afraid of him?T
I questioned, beginning to become slightly inter-
ested.
oAfeard of Tim? No folks ainTt afeared a
McCraven, but they donTt go a snoopinT rounT his
cove or land Tcause he donTt tolerate people on his
land. George WallTl tell ya that. Old McCraven
caught Tim in his cove just lookinT rounT and he
threatened ta shoot Tim ifin he didnTt get out.
There been others too. Ole coot even took his
pack aT wild hounds after a bunch aT boys who got
on his land.?
oWild hounds??
oYeah, some say he keeps Tem penned up back
in there ta keep folks away. I tell ya, mister,
donTt go near that place. The ole foolTs crazy"
just plumb crazy!?
I finally managed to rent one of the boats from
the old lady and get started on my fishing. I was
taking it kind of easy and felt relaxed while cast-
ing around the cypress and half submerged logs
of the river. However, as I slowly made my way
down stream there was just a little feeling of
anticipation in the back of my mind. Somehow,
what the old lady had told me about this character
McCraven interested me and I found myself want-
ing to see him. Of course, I thought, she had
probably just built up a real good story about
some poor old wretch that has been seen in the
vicinity a few times. In fact, this fellow Mc-
Craven might not be anything more than a legend-
ary character, who was altogether non-existent. I
wanted to dismiss the whole thing from my mind
right then, but somehow I found it impossible to
do.
About an hour later, I crossed to the other side
of the river and I came upon the narrow entrance
of a cove, which wound back into a dark interior.
Could this be McCravenTs Cove? It seemed to fit
the old ladyTs description of the cove, so by my
calculations this had to lead to old man McCra-
venTs home back in the woods. It was only now
that I realized to what degree my curiosity had
engulfed me. I somehow had to see this barbaric
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creature for myself. If what the old lady had said
was true, I would be risking my life. However,
I decided to work my way up the cove and see
where it led. So I quietly dipped my paddle into
the murky water and guided the blunt-end skiff in-
to the cove. I made my way forward into the inte-
rior. Tall clusters of cypress trees, along with
bushes and never ending networks of creeping
vines cut off almost all of the afternoon sunlight
which tried to filter through the entanglement.
Suddenly a big long-legged crane swooped up just
ahead of me with a tremendous flapping of his
wings, breaking the haunting stillness. I rounded
the first crook in the cove just in time to see the
sinister form of a large water moccasin slide from
a log and make his way into the thick bushes.
The whole cove reeked with the scent of death.
Bloated turtle intestines clung to half-sunken logs
and trees about the area. oDamn,? I thought out
loud to myself, ~~when the old man chose this spot
back here to get away from humanity, he really
picked the ideal place.?
A few moments later I rounded the last bend in
the cove and there it was, right in plain view"
the old manTs cabin. I simply sat there with the
paddle across my knees, staring at the structure,
while drifting closer. It seemed to be compact,
made of hewn logs, which were chinked with mud.
There was a stone chimney at one end and there
seemed to be a thin wisp of smoke curling upward
from it. Abruptly my thoughts were brought to
an end by a movement in the bushes on the sloping
bank. Then I saw him. I knew immediately that
I was staring into the flashing eyes of old man
McCraven. A more barbaric creature I have
never seen. There he stood, dressed in hides taken
from animals. A shock of flaming red hair curled
from the neck line of his hide shirt. This, in turn,
was matched by an unkempt red beard, and flam-
ing natural curls which hid his ears completely
and came down thickly to the base of his neck.
Yes sir, he was exactly as the old lady had de-
scribed him to me, and as I sat there gawking at
him the boat drew closer to where he was stand-
ing. He moved another step closer and stood at
the edge of the bank, standing tall and proud with
that same look of barbaric hostility glistening in
his eyes.
oYa ainTt got no business a snoopinT rounT up
in these here parts, stranger!? he barked out, sud-
denly raising a big double-barrel shotgun to his
side and leveling it on me. oNobody got no busi-
ness back here but me! Now clear outn here anT
stay out!?
12
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I never got a quarter of the way through with
what I had intended to tell the old man, because
he became so infuriated with me that he discharg-
ed one of his loads of shot not two feet away from
the boat. That was all the convincing I needed for
the time being. I swung my skiff around and
headed out of that cove. I glanced back only once
and then I caught only a glimpse of the lone figure.
He was standing and watching, making sure that
I left his domain.
The sun was sinking low on the horizon as I
drove slowly up the rutted lane from the old ladyTs
farm. It had been quite an afternoon with per-
haps a little more adventure than I had antici-
pated.
As the week dragged slowly by I found my
thoughts turning more and more to the strange
old manTs choice of such a sheltered existence.
Was there any ulterior reason behind his obscure
activity or was he just a loner? By the end of
the week I knew only too well that my curiosity
had gotten the best of me, so when Saturday came
I left the crowded streets of Richmond and headed
once again for Providence Forge.
With my curiosity aroused to such a peak, I
had a lot of questions that needed answering and
I planned to get those answers. I spent my entire
weekend finding out about old man McCraven,
and meeting some of the people who lived around
Providence Forge. Of all those individuals I talk-
ed with, however, the most informative was Pete
Tyree, the gray-haired proprietor of a general
store. I had been told that Tyree was the only
man in Providence Forge with whom McCraven
had ever dealt, so I went immediately to his store.
Inside it was a typical country store. The shelves
were cluttered with goods of every kind and de-
scription. Stretched out on the floor in a spot of
sun was a bony hound dog and there was one
very dirty yellow kitten playing all around the
place. I walked slowly over to the man behind the
counter, introduced myself and inquired if he
might be Mr. Tyree.
oYep,? he replied, ~oo~what can I do for ya, mis-
ter ??T
oTm looking for some information about a cer-
tain fellow around here that lives back on the
river,T I started. ~o~They call him McCraven.?
ooMcCraven in some sortaT trouble?? he asked
suspiciously.
oNo"no trouble. I just happened to be making
a study of your area here around the Chickahom-
iny and heard about him. He seems to be a pretty
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interesting character and I thought ITd just get a
little factual information on him. You know,
you've got quite a legendary region around here
and this McCraven fellow adds to it even more.?T
My words seemed to create just the effect on
Tyree that I wanted. Immediately he seemed to
lose all of his suspicion towards me.
oWell, mister,? he said, coming around the
counter, ~o~pull up one of them chairs over there in
the corner and IT]l tell ya what little I know Tbout
ole McCraven.?T
Both of us seated, Mr. Tyree filled the beat-up
stub of a pipe and slowly placed it precariously
in the side of his mouth. Drawing a big kitchen
match across part of the little pot-bellied stove
beside him, he leisurely touched its flame to the
tobaceo. Large clouds of smoke engulfed him as
he drew the flame down into the pipe. Meanwhile,
I sat patiently waiting for him to begin.
oSo ya wannaT know Tbout ole McCraven, do ya,?
he began. oWell, guess it musta been Tbout 1925
that I first laid eyes on Tim. TTwas in the summer
as I recollect. He walked in here anT made me a
danged good offer for some land I had back on
the river. Well I solt Tim the land"five acres of
it. Also solt Tim a buncha goods in the store here.
He sure wonTt a very talkative fella"never has
been. But before he left we made a tradinT deal.
He was ta bring me some of his pelts that he got
each trappinT season anT I was ta give him certain
goods in return.?
oT see,T?T I returned, as Mr. Tyree paused. ~So
you were the first to know that McCraven planned
to live back in there on the land and trap.?
oYeah, I reckon so. Corse after folks seen Tim
up-an-down the river a few times they begun ta
talk. Then heTd show up here every three or four
months. Always come at night. But now heTs
completely changed hisself.?T
oChanged in what way?? I interrupted.
oWell for one thing heTs done growed a beard
anT let his hair grow out Ttill it partially covers
his ears. Ya couldnTt see those horrible scars and
purple stuff on his face no more.?
oScars and purple stuff??
oYeah, first time he come in here ya could see
this buncha purple birth mess all over his face
and he had a whip to his face or somethinT. He
was the most horrible lookinT thing I ever seed.
But later ya couldnTt see none a that mess cause
a the long hair anT beard heTs growed over it.
Folks rounT here said he looked just like some
sorta wild animal anT they was plumT right. When
heTd come a stalkinT in here he looked just lika
SPRING, 1962
SSSA Awe
-my carefully laid plans.
big mean ole hairy bear. AnT since he started
takinT that ole three legged deer hounT with Tim
wherever he goes, he even looks wilder.?
oSo he has a dog that goes with him,? I replied,
taking down mentally every detail that Tyree
brought out about McCraven.
oYeah, but he ainTt got but three legs, so he
couldnTt be of much use.?
Mr. Tyree had told me just about all he could
about McCraven, but the information he had given
me had been my best collection of facts so far and
so it was with a feeling of great accomplishment
that I left the store.
It was in the first week of August that I took
my vacation. I had had this one week of leisure
completely planned for a long while. So on the
Friday afternoon which marked the beginning of
my free time, I left Richmond and once more
drove to Providence Forge, where I rented a room
for the night. The following morning I was up
with the crack of dawn and after eating a hearty
breakfast, headed for the river to rent a boat.
This wasnTt to be any leisurely fishing trip, for I
was still concentrating on old man McCraven. On
this trip I wanted to satisfy my curiosity about
him once and for all. Was he simply a plain her-
mit who wanted no one meddling in his private
affairs or could there be something back in the
cove that he was hiding? In talking to different
individuals on my trip the previous month, I had
found that the majority of the people felt that
McCraven was hiding something of great value
or either hiding out himself. The people seemed
to have very vivid imaginations about the old
recluse. All of these thoughts ran through my
mind as I paddled slowly down the Chickahominy
in the cool morning air. The mist on the river
drifted lazily with me, creating an eerie effect as
I made my way towards the cove.
About an hour later I reached my destination
and paused before entering the cove. I had come
this far and had done some pretty extensive plan-
ning, so I couldnTt back out now, even though my
mission would place me in danger. No, I had
come for a purpose and I was going to carry out
So without another
moment of hesitation I guided my skiff into the
cove and silently proceeded up the winding inlet.
Upon reaching a point where the banks were of
a low level, I quietly removed my equipment from
the skiff. I wasnTt taking any chances on ap-
proaching McCravenTs cabin by boat, in plain
view, for I could not let him know of my presence
if I was to discover anything. So now, securing
13
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my boat, I took great pains to camouflage it. When
I was satisfied that it could not be seen by anyone
either leaving or entering the cove, I shouldered
my gear and began to make my way towards the
location of McCravenTs cabin. The sun was high
now and its hot rays made human existence in
the humid swamp almost unbearable. oMy God,?
I thought aloud, plodding through the thick under-
growth, ohow does the old man stand it!?
After a considerable length of time I edged up
to the clearing where McCravenTs cabin was lo-
cated. I crouched down quietly and relieved my-
self of the supplies which I had been carrying.
I nervously fingered the double-barrel shotgun
which rested across my knee as I watched and
waited in the brush. There did not seem to be a
sign of human life on the premises. But the old
man might be anywhere around here, I thought,
so ITd better be even more careful. Gathering up
my equipment, I proceeded to work my way to-
wards the back of the cabin, taking great care to
keep myself concealed in the underbrush that sur-
rounded the clearing. In back of the cabin stood
two smaller structures. They seemed to be stor-
age houses of some sort"or could one of these be
a pen for McCravenTs wild dogs, I thought, with
a chill oozing down my spine. I had plenty of
time to find out what was in the log structures
though, and right at this time I was more con-
cerned with finding a suitable campsite nearby for
my headquarters. Soon I came to a spot down by
the river which offered much cover, so it was here
that I decided to pitch my tent and make camp.
After eating and resting, I renewed my explora-
tion of old McCravenTs land. I moved about from
place to place watching carefully for any signs of
McCravenTs presence. But throughout the course
of the afternoon there was not a single sign that
the hermit was to be found anywhere about the
area. It was aterribly weird feeling not knowing
where the old man might be. He might be any-
where, lying half submerged in the reeking swamp
vegetation, with an ugly snarl on his red bearded
face"just watching me all the time. It scared
me even to think about it, even though I had a
shotgun loaded with buck shot. I watched and
waited patiently.
The time had droned by and when I looked at
my watch again it was four p.m. I had become
quite restless now and I decided to take a calcu-
lated risk. It would not take long to slip out into
the clearing and check the two log structures be-
hind the old manTs cabin. I had to do something.
So far the day had turned up nothing to enlighten
14
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me about McCraven, and perhaps by checking
these I might find a few answers. So with a firm
grip on my shotgun I advanced as quickly and
silently as possible towards the first of the two
structures. Upon reaching it I was glad to find
that the crude door was simply latched by means
of a movable wooden bar. Glancing around to see
if my presence had been detected, I quickly pulled
the bar out of position and let the door swing
open. A stench immediately struck me and I
heard vicious growling and snapping sounds! A
pack of dogs lunged out of the darkness at me,
the lead animal baring flashing white teeth, which
dripped saliva! As I jumped to the side, the
lead dogTs lunge was stopped by a heavy chain.
Quickly I slammed the door and shoved the wood-
en bar back into place. So McCraven does keep
wild dogs"why he must be crazy!
My thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a
movement off to my left. I swung around rapidly
and there he stood"old man McCraven. His firm
mouth was drawn tight and the grimness of the
situation was reflected on his weather-beaten face.
His eyes were narrowed to flashing slits and the
thick, bushy red eyebrows were furrowed as if in
some evil concentration. There was the big three-
legged deer hound that I had been told about,
standing close to his masterTs side, as if awaiting
obediently some command. All the while the wild
pack of dogs, closed in the wooden structure at
my back, were snarling and growling. Just at
this moment the back door of the cabin opened and
there appeared in the dourway a little blond hair-
ed girl. She coulnTt have been over nine years old.
I stood dumbfounded staring at her. No one had
mentioned anything about a little girl; my mind
raced. Could she have something to do with why
McCraven kept people away from his land? She
began to make her way outside in an unsure grop-
ing manner. Of course"it has to be, I reasoned,
sheTs blind"the childTs blind.
~oGranpa,? she called out suddenly. oGranpa, is
that you? I cTn hear your dogs"are ya with
"em ??
Without so much as a word the old man snapped
his fingers to his big three legged hound. Imme-
diately the dog responded by going over to the
child, mouthing her little hand gently, and leading
her over to his master.
oGranpa, did ya just get back from the river??
she asked the old man, holding her arms out to
embrace him.
oYes, Susie, my dear"but Granpa wonTt be
leavinT ya again for a long spell. No, darlinT, not
THE REBEL
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ae a = fee Se oe San a >} Se ae Se BS Me BS =
SAS = = Se ee Tea REALE SS SS eS
a a a ic a ibe san aaa Sees a Ona EMI ye oa é.
Fees eS BE Sa a Rae aS Ow a TE NS
ae _"~
a P > yee ee
pind sree
for a long time, cause itTs a gettinT so a man canTt
leave his own land without folks a sneakinT in on
it. Yeah I member ya, mister,? he said, turning
his gaze once more in my direction. ~~Seems I re-
call havinT run ya offinT my land once before, but
that didnTt nary stop ya.?
McCravenTs little Susie sensed my presence
now, but she displayed no sign of disturbance.
She stood blandly by the old manTs side, who had
now risen to a standing position in order to deal
directly with me.
oYa had ta come back a pryinT inta our lives
again, but this time ya dug a liT] deeper and have
laid yourn eyes on my Susie. Lemme tell ya some-
thinT though, mister"ever since I brung Ter to
my home here at the cove, I cared for Ter good anT
proper like!? he rasped out, his eyes blazing. oShe
was like me"didnTt have nary a soul to care Tbout
"er anT she needed me like I needed her. No, I
ainTt Ter Granpa"ainTt no relation to Ter atall!
I jusT happened ta find Ter wanderingT lone in the
snow up in Providence Forge one night. Poor 1iT]
thing had been left to wander by two damned no
good parents, so I brought Ter back here with me
and give Ter a good home with lotsa love anT care.
Ya see, mister,T McCraven continued with his
mouth twisted with bitterness, oin this rotten
fancy world of yourn I was always shunned and
unwanted! People didnTt want a ugly creature
like me rounT! I been ugly since I was born! Ugly
with purple mess anT scars all over my face! Even
the younguns Td run off a hollerinT anT screaminT
when they seed me a cominT! Nobody wanted a
ugly thing like me, so after I made me some money
a trappinT I latched onta this here land and been
here since. Folks donTt need liT] Susie anT me anT
we donTt want no part athem! AnT ya lemme tell
ya somethinT else, mister,? he said, pointing a
stubby finger menacingly towards me, oifin ya
leave this place anT bring a buncha smart elecky
folks in here ta try ta take my Susie Tway from
me, ya cTn Tspect some killinT, cause ainTt a soul
gonna come Ttween this chilT anT me! Now ya git
offTn this land for the last time. I neva done kilt
a man yet anT I donTt wanna hafta start now!? I
left McCravenTs Cove that evening.
Pagan Kites
Night is falling
Soft, but heavy as a dark purple curtain.
The shades of night fall teasingly
While little boys and girls play tag
With a fervor transcending energy.
Back and forth running
In the close-cropped grass
That smells like Fourth of July melons
They run and chase
Their hearts beating wildly as pagan drums.
Refusing to go into the white houses
That stand with gaping doors
Like mouths of cool dark tombs
While the deep purple shroud covers them.
SPRING, 1962
£ gee SSS
Ke AAR SS aint awl Sint i eG eintiniad eeadieceal stated akesememencces PE a Sp ee eee gloria fae eer
"SARAH HANSEN
15
a a a ST SN Se eke w eho SSS zs :
ba
16
~" =| rr O "U0
Jn Cime: Ju Season
(3rd Prize"1962 Contest)
In time my thoughts shall tread these fields
And plant this fallow land,
In time will images advance by rows
Unique in style, but planned.
In season dews of many days
Shall presage harvest time;
In season, acres filled with dreams
Shall blossom into rhyme.
But not until I share a love
More precious than I know
Shall I, upon these fallow fields,
Go forth again to sow.
"WaALTER N. DIXON III
ne
a nate theres 4 .
5st ROWE ELST TE TEN STENER SPATE RI STSES TOTS ISOS *SSS28E tag
Morning
(1st Prize"1962 Contest)
I have known quiet moments
Like this before,
MorningTs sun-laced shadows
Sprawled across the floor,
Wind-ruffled curtains
Weaving patterns on the door:
Hushed, sparkling laughter
From the room below,
Young, chattering voices,
Footsteps, soft and slow.
The smell of wood-smoke
Drifts up from the lake,
And with a last long struggle
With forgetfulness
Iwake...
"BRENDA CANIPE
Lover
(2nd Prize"1962 Contest)
Earth-bound, dripping fingers gripping
At the lonely channel marker,
"Round its naked whiteness slipping
Robes that deepen ever darker.
Thin arms paling, weakly flailing
At the omnipresent ring,
Close embracing, holding, veiling,
Till the fog alone is king.
Lonely, dying light, the crying
Channel too is lost in gray.
Still, beneath a wet ghost lying
In a wanton disarray.
"QG. BURGESS CASTEEL
THE REBEL
o iene ish rcinovisie uk ad
oisacunremneteetia comtnetet
SO. ty A
TR
os = ied Seas
Serenade
Asking no wine
but only belief
remembering red days
in a young cocoon
white light
on a leaf
and the windTs lean fingers
stroking the dust of afternoon.
II
And the tongue of flame
out of the darkness comes
and faces rise beside the bed
ghosts who wade
through naked air to catch
the careless coins of words we shed;
and those few who rise
from the cobbled streets
above the scream of traffic horns
names and voices
in tattered coats
dying and the yet unborn.
SPRING, 1962
III
Only voices warm
with the smell of wind
and tight with sleep and snow;
deep eyes and the lanes of sleep
and the people of the shadow
who rise and go.
Dark people of the shuttered soul
who move with mellow music
go home in the dawn light, warm light;
the stars are womenTs eyes
and the dawn a paper doll
in a smudged white dress
wearing slippers of dew.
IV
And Christmas clear
and sharp and cold
when we renounced the cross
but the dolly had no tears
the puppet
no remorse"
only after"
the puppet-master cried
to see the house glow with light
the people warm inside.
" MILTON G. CROCKER
17
SN .
a
PMA Tego Tle RST PRIS SASSI CEST SE BESTS TS as PESTS PETE TA FSS SSS SL e hae = eRe, 2 *
" ?"? " ey ee Sg e
PSNR DONS et See SP aE ae pa z A oa
Karl (Jay) Shapiro was born in Baltimore, Md., and
matriculated at the University of Virginia and Johns Hop-
kins University. He was Consultant in Poetry at the Li-
brary of Congress and a member of the National Institute
of Arts and Letters, 1959.
Mr. Shapiro has been praised by both critics and fellow
poets for his contributions to American letters. In 1941,
when his first poems appeared in a New Directions Five
: Young American Poets, Louise Bogan predicted that ohis Son WN j a\
i work will become a sort of touchstone for his generation.? en? pe x KN yy AN-g \\
a Miss BoganTs predictions have been rewarded. Mr. Shapiro j, a SY :
has since that time received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in
1945; has been Consultant of Poetry at the Library of Con-
gress from 1946 to 1947; has been a member of the National
Institute of Arts and Letters, 1959; and has been editor of
Poetry: A Magazine of Verse.
Mr. Shapiro has said, oMy interest in poetry dates back
to my high school days ... Later, at the University of Vir-
ginia, I did poorly in my studies because of my greater
interests in writing verses.?
Mr. Shapiro is now an instructor in English at the Uni-
: versity of Nebraska and is editor of The Prairie Schooner.
| The following is a lecture which he gave at East Carolina
College in a program with Mark Van Doren and which Mr.
Shapiro kindly permitted THE REBEL to print.
SS
\S S
S
Y
Ree.
\) SSS
Shi esata
z
oe
Karl §. Shapiro
THE POET AS TEACHER
Bd
ar
ae
7. a
sane SE EGE EAA AAB LABEL EAL LE ELE LEE AES LEE S 5
13. are two kinds of teaching the poet does
today. The first is the conventional kind of higher
teaching"by conventional I donTt mean anything
bad but only that which we are used to. Poets
who teach literature have always been present in
universities in small numbers and some have been
famed as teachers. Mark Van Doren is probably
one of the most famous literature teachers in
America. I have heard of him in this capacity
ever since I can remember. This kind of teacher
of letters unquestionably gains in his teaching
from being a poet himself. His courses must be
greatly enriched by first-hand insights and expe-
rience which are denied the literature professor
whose training is purely scholarly. Essentially
however the poet who teaches literature follows
18
: ee 2B Seer i ig be gS aA et TR RE Seen a haze
tis iat =
the rules and customs of the scholarly profession,
and I assume that the poet always plays second
fiddle to the scholar and teacher in this situation.
A. EK. Housman maintained a complete divorce
between his scholarship and his creative life, so
much so that we tend to think of him as two sep-
arate people (as he himself did). The Latinist
and the lyric poet were never on good terms. I
cannot tell you much about the poet as literature
professor or scholar, for I am neither. It is true
that I teach a survey course to undergraduates
once in a while, but I do that out of a book. The
closest I come to literature teaching or scholar-
ship is in a course in contemporary poetry, which
I love to teach for more or less selfish reasons.
But I could never teach a operiod? course and
THE REBEL
Re Sa ES
{Fee EAE AAS SABLE PSM RES TSE MEE Rl eS eh SR REN eS BSS el a a ew Sandestin ate ate eee
nobody would expect me to. I have not the train-
ing for it. There is a distinction between the
bona fide literature man and a poet in the univer-
sity like myself, whose only qualification, at bot-
tom, is that he is a poet and doesnTt bite students.
The literature professor carries on the disci-
plines of the scholar and imparts them to a new
generation. The campus poet on the other hand
is a kind of captive specimen of the rare bird, and
something of a freak, make no mistake about it.
I fall into this category, which might be termed
oOur Poet.? There is almost never more than one
of these per campus, for reasons which are some-
what tribal and obscure. Even when there are a
dozen poets scattered throughout a faculty, Our
Poet occupies a unique position, namely, that he
teaches Creative Writing and acts in a manner be-
coming a poet. That is, he is less becoming than
other people. The average university or college can
maintain only one such personage. Even that one
may sometimes put a heavy strain on the academic
community.
There is practically an entire literature of and
about the campus poet (Our Poet) by now and I
am not going to add to it, if I can help it. Most of
this literature makes fun of Our Poet, not without
reason, and yet there are a few facts about him
which are generally accepted. For instance:
The campus poet is an American phenomenon.
We will not find his like in the European or Asiatic
university.
The campus poet is not quite in the academic
community and not quite out of it. Frequently he
feels guilty about being there at all.
He experiences two serious kinds of opposition:
one from the old guard scholars who find him a
needless accessory to the curriculum, if not a dis-
ruptive influence. More important perhaps is the
opposition from fellow writers on the outside of
the gothic wall, who consider him a paid hireling
of something or other, a wage slave and a con-
formist. This kind of criticism comes not only
from the Beat writers but from well-wishers of
all kinds who fear for the poetTs creativity in the
academic climate. And both kinds of opposition
can marshal good arguments for turning Our Poet
out into the world.
Depending on how profound we want to appear,
we can look upon Our Poet as an accidental ex-
erescence or bunion of the educational community ;
or we can see him as something deeply symptom-
atic in our culture. I tend toward the latter view.
Our educational system is extremely fluid and
SPRING, 1962
Shige ITS AS Se ee
See eee ee eed
experimental, compared with old world systems.
Ours is the first nation to try to experiment in
mass higher education, without regard to service.
I mean that the old systems trained a handful of
men for rulership; and that is still more or less
the case in England, France, India, and even Can-
ada. Russian higher education is purely for serv-
ice; literature for instance is taught there as a
function of political philosophy. Education for its
own sake is unknown under dictatorships. We,
on the other hand, take a more frivolous view"
or did before we got into the arms race with Rus-
sia. (We are now beginning to demand education
for service also, and that is a bad turn, in my
opinion.) Let me simplify what I am saying still
further. The Old World education was and is
essentially class education, because their societies
are built upon class structures, in Western Eu-
rope as well as in Russia. In our relatively one-
class society, which is a middle class society, we
go to college to prolong the incubation period of
life. Not to go to college in America is something
of a disgrace, just as illiteracy is, and in a certain
sense, it doesnTt matter much whether we send
our children to Harvard or to some remote rural
college which nobody ever heard of. Sociologic-
ally, the American college or university (and the
terms are significantly interchangeable with us)
is a lolling-around place preceding marriage or a
job. Whereas in Europe the university is the
final weeding-out place for national leaders of all
kinds. It is well known that the average high
school student in a European country can, on an
examination basis, put most of our students and
many professors to shame. This is because, ob-
viously, no European family would ever think of
sending a child on to higher education unless he
came from the privileged class or unless like D.
H. Lawrence, for instance, he showed a genius for
rising to that class.
In a sense, the Old World university is a train-
ing ground for princes. In America, everybody
goes to college. Practically anybody, with a reas-
onably white skin, can get into one, somewhere.
Now this sounds like I am writing a book, and
ITm not. I will skip over the implications of what
I have just said, and come to my point which |
hope will explain why we have the poet, the paint-
er, the composer, and every kind of artist on the
American campus. My point is that the Ameri-
can college campus is not simply a place of educa-
tion: it is also and maybe primarily our focus of
culture.
19
CS ee eS ee ee St ee RE EE eT Se See
Se
Shh Tae
Bs ig
a :
ease
=x" anti
OR Teves,
oiui grad iar Oe
Here is the difference. In the Old World (Eu-
rope, Asia, even South America, which is terribly
prematurely old)"in the Old World, culture lives
in the great old cities with their fabulous relics,
crushing tradition, etc. In every European na-
tion, for instance, all culture is magnetized to the
capital. And there is only one capital: London
draws to itself all the culture of England, Edin-
burgh that of Scotland, Paris the same; Italy has
several capitals, having been split up for centu-
ries; but it is always a particular city which
gathers up the treasure. Sometimes the treasure
is robbed, as Napoleon and Hitler robbed one
anotherTs museums"but always for the capital,
the Center.
And what about us? Well, we have no Center.
Washington, for all its museum-like beauty, is a
dead city culturally. No poet or painter or com-
poser of any consequence ever came out of there.
New York may be the closest thing we have to a
Center, yet no one really thinks of New York as
the one center of American culture. It isnTt. It
has many of the finest museums, most of the pub-
lishing houses, theatres, orchestras and the only
opera in the U. S., and yet New York is not the
Paris or the London of America. Nor is Boston,
certainly not Philadelphia or Baltimode or
Charleston or even San Francisco, with all its
sparkle.
The fact is that American culture is decen-
tralized, spread all over, and tends to show itself
in places, however tiny, where there are vital col-
leges or universities. In my city, for instance,
there is no art museum except one being built at
fabulous expense for the University. There is no
good music or for that matter, jazz, which does
not come from the University. We have the only
live theatre. The painters and their students
come from the University. And the writers also.
And the important point is that these activities
are not scholastic or parochial; they belong to the
community at large.
What I am trying to say is that the American
college is to us what the village opera in Italy
used to be"the cultural ground. We can com-
plain all we want about mass entertainment and
TV hypnosis, but the fact is that all the arts in this
country are spreading like wildfire, leaping from
cow college to cow college across the land, and
that we probably have more creative vitality to-
day than all the European countries put together.
I am not saying that we are turning out master-
pieces by the hundreds, but I am not saying we
20
ate Si iain AEG i A DS aOR ES eS
: a pa ga ea i ate na kd ard ob has
aren't. In any case, that is for our children to
judge.
Whereas in England, for example, which has
produced what is probably the greatest poetic
literature in history, there is no poetry to speak
of. English poetry today is practically non-exist-
ent. I canTt explain this and wouldnTt want to try,
but if you quickly compare the poetry of the first
half of the 19th century with the first half of the
20th, you will see what I mean.
Having said this much, I want to withdraw a
little. I do not mean that our cultural state is the
better for being spread in all directions: I am
simply stating what I take to be an important
fact. In the matter of poetry publication, for
instance, it no longer matters what part of the
U. 8S. a book of poems comes from. There are so
many good publishers of verse, probably half of
them university presses, that the name of the pub-
lisher or his city is irrelevant. Whereas if one
thinks of a new poet coming out abroad he would
think: Gallimard in Paris is practically the only
one of repute. Faber and Faber in England has
the monopoly of living poets there. This mono-
lithic business has long since gone by the board in
America.
Now let us come back to Our Poet. There he is
on the small-town campus, slightly declassed
within and without the walls, scuffling ofor
scraps of notice,? it may be, like any other artist,
within and without the walls, and mysteriously
teaching something mysteriously called Creative
Writing. Is he happy? What is he up to? And
what can he possibly teach?
This of course depends on who the poet is.
Statistics will be of no avail here. If an English
Department is in need of a Romantic scholar, a
Middle English man, even a 20th century expert,
it can draw from a fairly large group of candi-
dates. But if an English Department set about
finding a poet, how would this work? To make
it more plausible, put it in the past. Taking a
clutch of 19th century poets, how would the De-
partment choose between say Byron, Shelley,
Keats, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Blake, and Lan-
dor? Well"Byron wouldnTt need the job to be-
gin with; the private habits of Shelley and Cole-
ridge would make them unlikely choices; KeatsT
health might militate against him. Blake of course
would be marked down as a psycho by the Board
of Regents. Which would leave Wordsworth and
Landor, both fine men, first rate poets with excel-
lent critical minds. Both would be hired at once,
THE REBEL
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= : * = a na em wi oe
ae ee ie iter sie Sona Yang Sasa Gch A TR a SR AR A TNE a Sy Ca: Manic Ne Pre
Sie Rete SE Ie BS oe Fe SS
mn
sae aii
2EFESLSSOLT SIS SSS
ee Rn SS
Gc asd SSS SSS SSS
3
even though Wordsworth has a slightly Leftist
background and would have to take the loyalty
oath twice.
What I am getting at is that the poet who ac-
tually does enter the university is pretty carefully
thumbed over beforehand. If he does not have a
solid conventional training in literature he must
make up for it by a more or less impressive bibli-
ography, with a few prizes thrown in. The
chances are that critical articles by him will carry
as much weight, or more, than his poems.
ItTs best also to have him married, with a couple
of children, to keep him off the streets.
Our Poet is now settled; September has come
and he meets the Creative Writing class. Let me
pause for a moment over this class. It is neces-
sarily small, because of the personal nature of the
work and the amount of personality release that
takes place in Creative Writing, which would be
considered eccentricity, indulgence or worse in
any other kind of class.
Of a dozen people in the class (that would be a
maximum) several would show symptoms of tal-
ent not because they can demonstrate talent but
because they are what psychologists call disturbed
people. Actually these people belong in the class,
although they will probably never write anything
of interest to anyone except the poet-teacher.
These same people multiplied by X will make up
a serious portion of the poetTs audience. They are
the ones who have not shut the door on creative
life, but to whom something has happened which
has made creative development very difficult.
Given immense time and patience they can pro-
duce good work, but usually the class doesnTt last
long enough for them, and they will lapse into
silence once the stimulation of the poet and the
class are gone.
There will be one or two brilliant and volatile
members of the class, excellent in their studies,
maddeningly articulate, logical, incisive, and at
the same time detached. It is always a trial and
a mistake to admit students of this kind, yet it is
hard to reject them. About writing they are more
curious than serious, and should be sent to philos-
ophy.
The balance of the class, roughly half, will be
students who are more or less truly intent on
learning how to write. These will have more
humility and objectivity about the task than, say,
the neurotic fraction; although the neurotic frac-
tion stands a much better chance of turning out
interesting work. And the couple of students who
SPRING, 1962
should be in philosophy will come and go, per-
forming little acts of sabotage and making the
others feel slightly inferior.
Our Poet is always tempted to nurse along the
neurotic fraction and let the others drift. I think
this is a mistake. Of course, we are brought up
to believe that poets and artists of all kinds have
a touch of madness, and there is so much evidence
to that effect (evidence which has never been
properly examined for what it is) that we tend
to associate neurosis and creativity, psychosis
and genius. And there is so much psychological
theory and ancient philosophical criticism which
point in the same direction that any student with
an attack of nerves comes self-recommended to
the class. As I say, these students are the most
attractive for the work at hand, and it is a temp-
tation to concentrate on them and make them the
center of activity.
If I may linger on this delightful subject a
moment longer: I once obtained a scholarship for
a young poet who resided in a famous psychiatric
institution. We admitted him to the university
where he promptly flunked all his classes except
mine. After a great deal of time and rhetoric I
got him another scholarship. But his general edu-
cation ended there. My relationship with him
was more that of a friend or older writer than
anything else. He would closet himself for hours
in my office and talk and groan. If I helped him
with his poetry it was more as a colleague than a
teacher. He had a sheaf of poems which had been
admired by no less a critic than Gertrude Stein;
eventually I got the book published with Miss
SteinTs remarks. The poet faded off somewhere.
He was only one of a dozen or more whom I have
helped toward publication but whom I could do
nothing for as teacher. Properly speaking, they
were never quite members of the class; they had
already learned their craft and needed time, en-
couragement, and most of all friendship. The
class provided their first audience: that was the
most important aspect of the class to them. And
it is a very important one. We know from history
how often poets fall into groups of three or four:
one reason for this is that they need each other
as an audience, a sounding board, as a little world
which will gradually make itself heard.
My real concern, when all is said and done, is
with the larger group of students, the non-neu-
rotics and non-hangers-on or kibitzers. And this
means that I will accept practically any one for
my writing class who wants to get in. The num-
ber is kept low for purely practical reasons of
21
ee ne
Sanne
T DREGE AE LAAT RE GATE a AO ONE ET SB PGE SEINE REI ia i EE AL ne tik ME IME bg iS hn cl An ea
teaching.
Most writers would be horrified at the prospect
of facing endless generations of non-neurotic
poets. I am not. Most of Our Poets go digging
around for what they think of as the special or
talented man or woman, the one with a gift for
poetry. Whereas I will take on anyone who has
the will to write and is willing to be put through
the paces. In the long run the talented writer
will do his own work in his own way. There isnTt
much I can do for him except editorially. But
for the others I can do a great deal. I can teach
them the extent of their commitment to the art of
writing. That sounds rather lofty and I had bet-
ter explain.
The expression Creative Writing takes a terri-
ble drubbing everywhere, and it deserves it. It is
one of those awkward expressions we use SO Many
of to cover up deficiencies in our relationships.
Non-fiction is another one. Cold war is still an-
other; and so on. These are terms which have
been devised somehow to keep us from facing or
coming too close to the unpleasant truth about the
kind of world we live in. We use all manner of
double-speak words to make it easy for our left
hand not to know what our right hand is doing.
The President holds a bomb in one hand and a
poem in the other"matters of life and death to
the whole world which we pretend to ignore by
inventing a double word which is self-contradic-
tory and sound-resistant.
In the history of literature there is only one
point on which all parties are agreed: namely, that
the poet somehow tells the truth and that the
truth bears some relationship to beauty. Granted,
this is an agreement in mysticism and constitutes
something amounting to a minor religion, yet
there is no escaping the one term of agreement:
truth. Only certain people are given the dispen-
sation for saying truth: doctors (whether witch-
doctors or the modern kind), priests (including
the self-anointed), and poets (or artists).
Politicians are never given this dispensation.
In most civilized countries, the word opolitician?
is a synonym for something unspeakable. Not
even lawyers or judges are given this right to
annunciate the truth. Men of wealth are never
given this prerogative, and are in fact denied it.
Teachers and philosophers are given it to a de-
gree"and so on.
The writer or poet is a witness to the truth.
Let me quote the words of the great French writer
Albert Camus in something he wrote called ~The
Artist as Symbol of Freedom.? He said: oTrue
22
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BS PSL SS Se SSS DUETS HOSES ED IIIS PTF BOLUS VEO ST ESSTS See SPIE EPS SESS RSS epepe so3-4),,
. then grit i Saag tat pet ta eh pr Soe ge oo gs Z HO), g
artists do not make good political disciples, for
they are incapable of taking their opponentTs
death lightly. They are on the side of life, not
of death. They are the witnesses of the flesh, not
the law. They are condemned by their vocation
to understand the very one who is their enemy.
This does not mean that they are incapable of
judging good and evil. On the contrary. But
their aptitude for living the lives of others enables
them to recognize, even among the most criminal,
the constant justification of men, namely, suffer-
ing. That is what will always keep us from pro-
nouncing absolute judgment and, consequently
from endorsing absolute punishment. In the
world of condemnation to death which is ours,
artists bear witness to that in man which re-
fuses to die. No oneTs enemy, unless it be the
hangmanTs.?
These are glorious words, despite the dark
thread of suffering that runs through them. The
artist is a man who witnesses the truth, at what-
ever cost, not out of fanaticism (though there are
many who wind up that way), not because he is
defending a program"it is politicians who defend
a program": he is a man who defeats his own
program, defeats himself because he humbles
himself before his own mistakes and the mistakes
of others. In this way he is indeed self-destructive
and a danger to others.
Writing his autobiography, the French writer
Stendhal said: How many precautions are neceés-
sary to keep onself from lying! Gertrude Stein
once said about Hemingway: if he could write a
book about himself, that would be a true book (or
words to that effect.) One could make an anthol-
ogy of similar sayings that would all make the
same argument, namely, that poetry is the telling
of the truth about oneself, oneTs life, and by impli-
cation, oneTs time. In the last analysis, the worst
condemnation of a writer, no matter how many
hundreds or thousands of years ago he lived, is
that he was insincere. If he lied, no matter how
brilliantly, man will detect it. If he tried not to
lie, his attempts will be honored somehow.
I am a very unimportant writer. Whenever I
sit down in front of a piece of paper, I know I am
going to lie. The wrestling match begins with
the piece of paper. Lie after lie goes down on the
typewriter. Sometimes the lies are so pleasant or
well said that I keep them where I can sneak a
look at them. Eventually I either tear them up
or in a fit of weakness get them printed. And I
know all too well that is what my students are
doing.
THE REBEL
EIR Bi fete eT RR SEAS SS laa a Sarg ana ite hae Bilt Wye Bas bow aes ad Nis Hee OST Ha Sie Pew eee as LSB RTE CR See wares, |
Sa
Tg Se aes
Se Ae ES """rr ;
a - ee a Se Ep eee S Se SS ea oe a3 = Pe OS ee SS oS SS Se = SS Sees ==
" os tly a i a a ae ee eS as Be ae SE aS EES ES SORES SSS SES PEST SES SAAS HESS LSS a "" -
Consequently, as a teacher, I make my students
suffer for my mistakes. I assume that they are
lying. I badger them into telling the truth about
themselves. Very few can get it out. The neu-
rotics get it out well, but usually in a disguised
fashion. The others are in fear of hurting people
close to them (who have probably inflicted in-
juries of their own). When you think of the
conventions of love poetry in literature, you can
see what extremes artists have gone to to disguise
feeling and fact, and you begin to conclude, as I
do, that most of the worldTs poetry is in fact con-
cealment of the truth. If only Hemingway had
been honest about Hemingway. On one hand we
have the great art of a man, on the other what
appears to be the hollow shell of the man himself.
There is the marvelous artistry of the poet Yeats,
and the ridiculous simulacrum of the man, an ab-
surdity of which he himself made bitter mockery.
Which is the truth? The poetry or the man (as
Yeats asked so many times).
I am rambling, but I am rambling back to my
one idea"the ancient idea"that the poet is the
witness of the truth. Small as that truth may be
in terms of experience, it may yet be staggering
in its universality. Probably the greatest novel
ever written, The Brothers Karamazov (most nov-
els called the greatest ever written are Russian)
"this novel is set in a nasty little village in a
poor time in a poor country. Into it the novelist,
(who had served his time in Siberia as a criminal
of society,) pours the riches of perception and
sympathy, despair and glory, vulgarity and finesse
which will forever fire the ambitions of writers.
How did he do it? Why did he do it?
In learning to write, the young person must not
necessarily be thrown into the cauldron of litera-
ture. It is enough, and usually too much, to throw
him into the cauldron of himself. Education, as
a formal discipline, is a weaning away from the
truth of oneself. From the time we enter kinder-
garten, even from the day we are born, we are
thrown upon the disciplines of society, religion,
philosophy. The mother feeding her baby may be
teaching frenetic disciplines which she, poor thing,
is certainly unaware of. In school the child is
brought to book at once. Every poet has inveigh-
ed against the enmity of schools toward the child.
Creeping like snail unwillingly to school, as Shake-
speare said, the student relinquishes little by little
his contact with life. He is taught history, which
is the study of human horror. It should not be
taught. It should never be taught to children, in
any case, unless to princes, and those are happily
SPRING, 1962
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" SOG ag GA Ae A GRP RMS ERE hark SSS hse Ga aS SSS GT SSSE SS SSE SS SSS SSE ASSESS Ss : =
$
outlawed under the Constitution of the United
States.
Taking this extreme approach to education, I
try as best I can to uwneducrte the students in my
Creative Writing classes. 1 tell them in advance:
I want to turn back the clock in their own lives;
to rid them of what they learned from books and
courses, in order to free them to face their own
experience as young human beings. This is not
easy to do, and the advice doesnTt work well except
in some cases. It works well, I have discovered,
with given assignments"as when I say (to take
the responsibility away a short distance) : every-
one will write a poem about the State Capitol
Building, which they have all seen.
The rule however, with my class, is to let them
write about and in any manner they choose, any-
thing they want. That is the progressive school
method, and it doesnTt work at all unless there is
personal supervision and prodding"unless I be-
come a substitute father or mother"a method
which is successful only as long as the father or
mother substitute is at hand. And I donTt have
that much time. I have children of my own who
wreck my own discipline as a teacher and writer
and father.
And yet, this turning back the clock, this relax-
ing of arbitrary and usually paralyzing discipline,
produces results in the end. DonTt be afraid of
the sonnet, I tell them. Anyone can write a son-
net in twenty minutes, if he likes. I try to get
them to write a sonnet in twenty minutes. Some
of them are shockingly good. The sonnet is a
trick, after all.
I tell them: (quoting from a Frenchman I canTt
identify) genius isthe norm. We are all geniuses.
Think of the genius it takes to be alive, even if
you have seventeen fingers and a pointed head,
like a character of Aldous Huxley. I warn them
away from philosophy and conceptual thinking"
great as that may be, it will only postpone creativ-
ity. Perception is the clue to experience, not
logic, metaphysics, theology, and so on. The whole
program sounds progressively philistine.
everything but the evidence of your senses. Con-
sider your mind as a minor appendage to your
total being. If my superiors knew what I was
teaching they might be alarmed. But with my
few novices they would probably shrug it off.
To touch the dead areas of their sensibilities
I give them unheard-of books. Gandhi, Tolstoy,
Kropotkin, Henry Miller, Paul Goodman, Alexan-
der Neill, Rimbaud, the Marquis de Sade, Wil-
helm Reich, William Carlos Williams, William
23
=a OE IL ET EE OI Ee ee
A SP SISOS : = pare
Doubt
PRE iPro
Pan ter oe a ATR AURAL Tes aR NEN MEADE TSO a TOO EE EERE PEL COTE
enn san Sern een RA ae RAS oer re Aa Pas LoS ik ear Annan nonce Sn PAT he Renee Sacer
. ~i~
= x ee
{AOSD ES SS PP LAE ge ESE EERE EES LOLS IE LILLE LE LELE BO DE Be as Stee ETEss. _
Tea, es See oe ee Cee SEE Ran Se RO ee eS ERE BSS : Or
1 Base Fes Bae SN Se Do oo NP ER he Sele ale ods ga Fawn Ste ete gh pale le ky pare et PSE E SF TERE TASES 1G SEP Ht EA BS SIGS SVS ESSE Sete TESST SES ee S TEER RSS Sd Pega sen:
Burroughs, all the Beats and Zens, the poems of as a writer and a 20th century man and I try to
"" = aise jee, - @
perate, less radical. Teaching as I do in a land-
grant university in the Bible belt of the midwest,
I frequently wonder about my professional long- |
we get
A thigh of mutton, forty-eight pounds-weight of
| | children, which are as marvelous as the paintings tell why. My aim is to put the young writer on
| of children (but nobody collects them) ; the prose his own as judge of the famous works of the past.
4 poetry of every land and time, everything to the He must at all costs learn to approach the classics
4 left of the literature they are taught in the proper with his own eyes and ears and never accept the
courses which may be dulled by tradition and dicta of his elders or of elder generations. Well,
: pedagogical method. Translations are good, for you might say, why have these students in school |
| there are many times when the percepts of the at all? Why not simply turn them loose in the ¥
lj poet come through in poor translation. (The poor public library and let them browse at will among
| translation is often richer than the polished one, the treasures and the trash? To this I have no
: as in a literal translation of a most famous verse reply. Many of my students do, in fact, leave
from the Rubaiyat: instead of" school, the poets especially, to wander to and fro
: | Doe ot Gore docu ihe Bouck in the earth. But many of them come back pos
| A jug of wine, a loaf of bread,"and thou I venture to say that most poets teaching in
1 Beside me singing in the wilderness" universities would agree with most of what I
| O, Wilderness were Paradise enow! have said. Many of course would be more tem-
: wine, and you on the edge of the desert. And
i! thatTs paradise.) evity. But I try not to think about the knock at
| the door. There is a blessed liberality about most
aI [ demonstrate to them, and I admit that my per- humanities faculties, for the time being anyhow; ,
i sonal taste runs in this direction, every example at least a kind of laissez-aller for people like me.
le of primitive, naive, and child poetry I can find, I am always happy to discover on my lecture trips |
Pie stressing at every turn the vitality and plasticity around the country that there is a strong minority |
| me of the American language over its ancient and among English professors who cheer me on (in |
(7 beautiful parent language. I delimit the geogra- whispers usually, yet they are there). And I am
it phy of the world to bring them down to home, to used to the cold shoulder from the academic right
al show them that Chaucer lived in no better world wing, the old tories of discipline. Our Poet is not |
(er than Lincoln, Nebraska, and probably in a much only Our Poet; he is also Our Revolutionary, defin-
Li , worse one. And in short, I attempt to get them itely a subversive of some kind or other. He fumes,
lees to sit still and look around them and open their prophesies, and laughs at the wrong time. He is | |
But eyes, and stop dreaming of Chicago (which is the a living example of freedom, or ought to be, to |
Bey Paris of the Middle West), stop dreaming of Paris those whose freedoms are threatened by the cur- 1
| i | and Ctespphon and ruined Illium, and start look- riculum, and by the society it shores up.
ia) ing at the people at their sides and all that goes I was talking with an eminent scholar the other tT
al with them. evening about the many works of literature and
Bf You might call it the shock treatment, though scholarship which Mark Van Doren has given us.
| I have too much respect for students to use shock, I recalled that one of the first works that ever
and I know I will not have them long enough to fired my interest in poetry was his collection of
make literary violence meaningful. world poetry. The scholar remarked that Mr.
My college might well consider me a Trojan Van DorenTs approach to letters was Oriental,
Horse in their midst. Certainly I do my part to which surprised me and may surprise him. He
undermine the sanctity of the disciplines, to de- went on to say that his was a poetry of discourse
mand a constant revaluation of values, to chal- and ceremonial, that to him the poem provided the |
lenge the bases of the ethics and esthetics of the objects of understanding. I! hope 1 am quoting |
university and the community. For the creative him accurately. This tribute recalled to me the |
person this means contradicting the classical canon meaning of the universality of letters with which
all along the line. It means ridding oneself of the I am in so great sympathy, despite the fact that
superstition of a hundred great books; should I belong to the Angry factions of literature. It is
someone mention, say, the Iliad as one of the good for me to have his example.
greatest poems ever written I will point out that Allow me to quote again from Camus in closing; |
a a famous modern author has called it the butcherTs in his essay which I mentioned before he goes: o~A |
L i annual. The Divine Comedy means nothing to me day will come when everyone will recognize it, i
| I 24 THE REBEL
Fe GG a ee Oy ma Pee ae eg So OT ee ne, De ae, IS, ae 23 FE PS PS . c 63 : ee oe 9 =e Sk i
i Pion) eg Soe ? ir Pl Sera y ota I ~areeum as 5 a Pe een ee z Fa ee ee = = Oe a Se eee eee ee te RE LO eR ee tes. SEN ge aS = = : 2 S = ee * : a ~ Be tae
sail BEERECEZEB AEA LEER LTE ARABS a tS. EE BAB eG MOE Ge RG IOS A AE SSB AE LEO EAR ECR ARE it AOE OEE SIE ts SSPE a SB I SU i UE ce Be ET as BORE = POSSI EIT ae BS oe EER ie Sai EI I SiR Ra as a as Tian lke WP ne WIS BSS Bee esa aad Hide Wk OG Shay eg as Sib RD eee aes LS BAS eS eS ee,
ya
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LOL ES, AAP ge cM cs bce
3 PSS Sa
ie
and, respectful of their differences, artists will
then stop lacerating themselves as they do. They
will recognize that their deepest vocation is to
defend to the very end their opponentTs right not
to be of their opinion. They will proclaim, each in
his own way, that it is better to be wrong without
murdering anyone than to be right in the silence
of the charnel-house. They will try to demonstrate
that though revolutions may succeed by violence,
they can be maintained only by dialogue. And they
will then know that this singular vocation creates
for them the most overwhelming of brotherhoods,
Si i Ts BE TEES BERL LED LEAT SAE FAB SES LOLS BSS SES PES AE TESS AFT RATE
which, through all the ages of the intelligence, has
never stopped struggling to affirm against the ab-
stractions of history that which exceeds history,
and that is the flesh, be it suffering or be it happy.
All of present-day Europe, puffed up in its pride,
cries out to them that this undertaking is ridicu-
lous and vain. But all of us are in the world to
demonstrate the contrary.?
The poet, in other words, asserts the universal-
ity of man which history is determined to deny.
And that is what I try desperately to impart to
my students.
Poem
White sprig of summer"
July"the loverTs month
to hear the songs of heat
and wonder, can I dream,
can I touch the fantasy of clouds,
and call this home?
Can I feel the pulse of longings
and turn back white sheets
to find the corpse of spring"
cold, cruel spring that flies
and lights on budding branches
that turn white hot in JulyTs sun.
There is no peace in this.
There is no road to end with a
dusty sign post,
no oasis where the water runs
cool and clean.
So I must run"
and wandering
find the leaves of autumn
gold and red
and full of pain.
"SUE ELLEN HUNSUCKER
SPRING, 1962
_ Fee TE AAS SESE RAREST ATG AE ASE SE SE SG NS OE SES ESE RE TOS STE MES LASSE Se ee
25
2 COR SEED L A I LEAE TEE LE EEE LEE LEIS DPB IF eee "" ee
a Ei 8 BSS FE
Aer APA a "_
Ce plate ph le hake Dude, Soke pe gee ae a pg I pe eter Ra PL Ait itd erceseasemerenege? . eS ESI»
AL Phy BSE,
JOHN P. MARQUAND S
USE OF BACKGROUND AS SATIRE
26
THE REBEL
|
| a By RICHARD L. TAYLOR |
AB
: |
d |
Four novels by John P. Marquand, So Little Although these heroes are wealthy, or at least |
Time, Point of No Return, H. M. Pulham, Esq., economically comfortable, they attain a plausibil- |
and Melville Goodwin, U. S. A., are variations of ity for the reader who does not enjoy the advan- |
the same story"that of a man whose vision ex- tages of the well-to-do. That all men, rich or poor,
tends beyond his social milieu, but who finally dis- share similar perplexities is an idea whose accept- |
covers that oduty,TT or ~o~responsibility,T? or con- ability is not dependent upon the readerTs eco- |
vention, or ingrained habit prevents his escape. nomic status. After all, the ordinary man takes A:
MarquandTs message appears to be that lifeTs dif- some satisfaction"smug and perverse though it |
ficulties have no real solution, but that people may be"in learning that the rich and the well- |
somehow accept the problems and live with them. educated"the ~o~smartT"sometimes question the i}
The protagonists of MarquandTs novels become worth of their lives and their work. When the |
aware of their entrapment"some vaguely, others osmart people? admit that what they do and what |
acutely, and end by achieving a productive resig- they live for is open to question they find accept- ih
nation. With a suspicion or with the knowledge ance from the reader who o~knew it all along.? | |
that their contributions are of dubious value, they It is this acceptance of characters as plausible |
turn from the temptations of the wider vision and images which contributes so much to make the
are reconciled through the dictates of practicality Marquand novel an effective vehicle for satire.
to lives which circumstances"not the individuals And it is MarquandTs satire"satire in a light and
"have created. often kindly vein"which we can examine here.
Geer spss vt
acon SRE jzae Bi lies aeaaoes cig sii inion acs it ci asc Gi ip Ca ty a ni ii i a is i ie ee a tie inca k Sai hies ee eS keen cao ea iE ee Pee Dera Mos WG Hee Sa as Sle ee eS ES FSS SS """
Bie Sis eS STS
One of the many agencies of MarquandTs satire
is background, usually a room or office, against
which minor characters are set to reveal the par-
ticular sham or absurdity which the author satir-
izes. Since most of MarquandTs novels are cen-
tered in Boston, a great deal of satirical comment
is directed against the charactersT veneration of
their heritage and their satisfaction in claiming
distinction from the accomplishments and wealth
of their ancestors. Consider this passage from
H.M. Pulham, sq, :
oMrs. Motford said that there was nothing
like a country wedding and so we were going
to be married at the Motford family place at
Concord. It was not far from the bridge
where the battle was fought, and the land
where the house stood went straight down to
the edge of the river. The house itself had a
bullet hole near the second story, pierced by a
British musketball, and carefully marked by
a marble tablet. I had never taken the bullet
hole or the house very seriously until my wed-
ding; I had never realized how seriously
Kay and all the Motfords took it until then.?
Such things as Revolutionary War bullet holes
are important matters in New England, where so
many people oborrow so much of their importance
from the waning reputation of old worthies, where
there is often so little present occasion for the
pride and self-complacency with which they re-
gard themselves.?
A passage in So Little Time exposes the smug
assurance of inherited wealth through a descrip-
tion of the dining room of an exclusive New
York menTs club:
oThe dining room was Georgian"the
chairs and the silver and the soft green pan-
eling all very good, and used by people who
understood them. The Sheraton sideboard
against the north wall was a fine authentic
piece. It was covered with a great mass of
non-functional silver"cups, bowls, and urns
"but the silver was completely in place, like
the few diners at the tables, and like the wait-
ers. There was a watchful dignity about the
room and a tacit assurance that there would
be no mistake about forks or fingerbowls.?
The satire is extended when the hero of So Little
Time visits the apartment of his friend, Minot
Roberts, one of a long line of wealthy heirs.
oThe hall of MinotTs apartment was dark
oak with an Italian refectory table and a Ve-
nitian gilded mirror above it and a silver
plate for calling cards . . . when the chande-
liers were lighted and the logs in the Italian
marble fireplace were burning, it had seemed
SPRING, 1962
FT
93 5 _ 5 7" a " a Pe RES OES ey eet ee
ESRB SS OE GR SE we Pg ad i eS ee SE 6g el eS eH SS HESS 4 Cth ei wr Re SSE SE S BREE MH RES SASS SASHES AP BETA TD SIS Ee EE SSS ESE AE IT EE
to epitomize, more than any room... an
impregnable sort of stability. Now it seemed
silent, sensitive to his criticism. These min-
utes before dusk were the least flattering time
for any room, for everything had a weary
look, and the curtains should have been
drawn and the lights turned on to conceal a
day that was dying. The room was crowded
with pictures and furniture and bric-a-brac
and the Persian rugs were a little too large
for the floor space, all from MinotTs motherTs
house, brought there after she had died. The
Louis Seize chairs in blue damask had come
from his motherTs parlor. There was a bench
covered with petit pointe, with Jacobean legs,
standing just in front of the Renaissance lion-
headed brass and irons, which were too large
for the fireplace. The piano in the corner
was covered with a silk Persian rug, and on
top of the rug was a cluster of photographs
of MinotTs friends, each in a heavy silver
frame.?
In this paragraph, the phrase, ~~a day that was
dying,? has the heavy connotation of approaching
finality and it can be associated quite fitly with
the circumstances of Minot Roberts, a widower,
the last male of his line, living out his days on
money he never earned. The room is cluttered
with family heirlooms that correspond to the her-
itage of family name and background to hem in
the owner and make him the complete victim of
his familyTs past.
At times MarquandTs comment upon the pass-
ing of the old order is not so much saticical as it is
an almost lament. In these instances the trappings
and decorations of bygone days appear as a sad
anachronism ponderously immobile in a world
which no longer has a place or need from them.
The scene of Uncle JudsonTs dining room in So
Inittle Time is an example of the sympathetic
commentary :
oThe ceiling of the room was high. The
walls were done in greenish leather. The cur-
tains which framed the tall windows were
heavy blackish-green velvet bordered by tar-
nished gold tapes. The table was round,
made of black fumed oak like the sideboard,
and its legs had the same heavy ornate carv-
ing. The chairs were black oak too, uphol-
stered in dark green leather that was held in
place by elaborate brass-capped tacks. Lizzie
was removing the place plates, which were
gold-embossed and dark purple each with a
different flower in its center. The silver was
a variation of the crown pattern, a heavy
elaborate contortion of motifs such as you saw
sold by weight in those strange New York
shops that collected bric-a-brac from liquidat-
ing estates. There was not a single thing in
27
ENO EE LS LAE ETE SCE IE Be Ee OM LEE Se BEE LIE
ee 22 RITES Ms He Te SST SS EE 8s TS re
eRe FRG S FEPSSS PERE BIDS Ses eGo MSN SST RETA IE PETS AE Se SSR eae Sead SSRIS S OTS Pe PES ES SESE SIGS ES SPSS SE bat Ht oe =f = = 2s
"
ee
5 A ip
1 abe
aa
Bits)
Oe ESE
EBS,
a
=e i oR helices er, Wicca | eee aac ts
that room that anyone in his right senses
would want any more.?
At times MarquandTs satire is obviously heavy,
particularly when he questions the dubious tastes
of the upper-class Bohemian or the cultural pre-
tensions of the small-town avant garde. In So
little Tome, Fred and Beckie are two minor char-
acters. They are well-to-do, like to give parties
and dinners to which they always invite ointer-
estingT?T people, and they serve cocktails in their
rumpus room where guests can play ping-pong
or feed nickels (provided by Fred and Beckie)
in slot machines. When glasses are emptied Fred
is quick to refill them, and Beckie passes out cock-
tail napkins with oWhoops!? printed on them.
Their dining room upstairs
o. . has been enlarged from the old farm
winter kitchen and Beckie had kept the gen-
eral atmosphere carefully within the limits
of what she called ~old, farmy and kitcheny.T
In taking your place at the seventeenth-cen-
tury trestle table, which Fred had found on
Madison Avenue, you had to be careful not to
stumble over spits and pots and candle molds
and pestles and mortars and other kitchen
implements, which had been collected on the
old kitchen hearth. An old pine dresser, very
old and very battered, was filled with pewter.
Candles burned in pewter candlesticks and
the central table decoration was a great
mound of small multicolored gourds, all var-
nished and heaped on an enormous pewter
platter. Around the platter and among the
candles were ears of red and yellow corn, and
a few small pumpkins to show that it was
autumn. The chairs were simple wooden
kitchen chairs which Fred and Beckie had
been collecting over a period of years, con-
stantly discarding one when they found a
better one, until all of them now had a fine
patina.?
In Point of No Return Mrs. Smythe Leigh is
the self-appointed cultural arbiter of the small
Massachusetts town of Clyde. She directs the
amateur theatricals of the Clyde Players, and she
is acutely conscious of the responsibility of people
of culture and learning toward their town.
oMrs. Smythe LeighTs living room was an
intellectual fortress and it stood for the larg-
er world. As Mrs. Smythe Leigh told him
later, there was no reason to get in a rut be-
cause one lived in Clyde. Clyde was a dear,
poky place, full of dear people, but one could
always open oneTs windows to the world. One
could always bring something new to Clyde,
and this was what she always tried todo...
a few reproductions of modern paintings, a
bit of Chinese brocade, a few records of
Kreisler and Caruso, and the American Mer-
28
SG 5 OE. ER RSE SS TEN
Fe ESTs TSF SLAG SST AG Pe SSS SEEPS VS FETA ESS TSS E ISTE
cury and the New Republic and of course
HarperTs and the Atlantic, and the New
Statesman and LTIllustration. All one had to
do was open oneTs windows to the outer world
"and the surprising thing was the number
= congenial spirits who gathered if you did
i es
Sham and pretense in the commercial world
does not escape MarquandTs satire. Charles Gray,
the hero of Point of No Return, comes home to the
small Massachusetts town of his youth and finds
that the old Clyde Hotel, once a nondescript coun-
try hotel frequented mainly by traveling sales-
men, has been purchased by a national chain and
renamed the Clyde Inn. To capitalize on tradition
and the New England heritage, the new manage-
ment has installed a cocktail lounge, The Fife and
Drum Room. Charles Gray saw the Clyde Inn
as a place where
oEach detail contrived to give a gentle hint
that the Clyde Inn was a suitable place for a
sophisticated urban visitor compelled to stay
in a provincial town. It was a Murgatroyd
Hotel, and the inference was that Mr. Mur-
gatroyd knew how to make you comfortable
with a foam-rubber or an innerspring mat-
tress and a private bath.?
Offices, particularly those which dispense the
make-believe products of the theater, radio, and
advertising, become veneered bastions of hollow-
ness as they are exposed by Marquand. The
famous news commentator, Sidney Skelton, nar-
rator of Melville Goodwin, U. S. A., has an office
which has been created and decorated solely for
the impression it was to make on program spon-
sors and visitors to the studio:
oThe place had been redecorated after the
new contract had been signed, and it now
sported a hunter green carpet and green
chartreuse leather upholstered furniture.
There was also a collection of blown-up pho-
tographs on the wall showing Sidney Skelton,
the commentator, looking at the Pyramids,
gazing raptly at the Taj and at the Forbidden
City in Peking, boarding the battleship Mis-
sourt and shaking hands with General Ejisen-
hower. I had personally been against this
final touch and I had said so"but it was a
million-dollar program. There had to be
a proper office, a hideaway where Mr. Skelton
prepared his broadcasts.?T
H. M. Pulham, hero of the book named for him,
once sought employment in an advertising agency
operated by a Mr. Bullard.
oThe elevator let me out in a large recep-
tion room which was not like any other I had
THE REBEL
a ae -
sees pese: e 2S rs rie? i ©
3 aes se . : : : Z ee ee ee ag? age OE awe SS oe ee en Oe ee ee ee ee ae
© hy EL erg . 5 = Se a a gl el ia gh Re saris = ee BEES PSS SRR se Be BE BASE GP SR ia Da RELA DERE NE LS BO Se Se 2S ee
eT be On ge LE AL, MR is Me oe 3 ss coh gi a Thi a Mic Rp GS GBA DP OLE AEGIS tg OLE LED Di NE A LE EE NATIT "
accent RE pS GE pe REAL ERED LEIS se EAE. SAG SAB A INES a REBATE = ae Re Be ae =
ever seen. I saw a handsome Persian carpet
and some red leather chairs. Behind a girl
seated at a Jacobean table was a wall of rich-
ly bound books and an artificial fireplace with
artiucial Couis.?
o. . » when I saw Mr. BullardTs office...
The wall was decorated with tapestry. The
floor was covered with a noiseless carpet, and
it was quite a walk to where Mr. Bullard sat
behind an antique Italian table.?T
Some months after Pulham had quit the adver-
tising business he visited his friend, Bill King,
with whom he had once worked. Bill now had his
own advertising agency.
oThe reception hall, when you got out of
the elevator, reminded me a little of the Bul-
lard office. There was the same sort of girl,
but instead of shelves of books behind her
there were some Byzantine arches with ivy
growing up the columns. Bill had a big office
of his own, with tapestry on the wall that
showed a rather plump Saint George on a
horse, running a spear through a sick-look-
ing dragon. Bill had a Jacobean table with
three telephones and his own secretary typ-
ing in a little cubbyhole.?T
MarquandTs characters are not always so per-
ceptive. Pulham, for example, never realizes his
own smug condescension when he is forced to eat
a meal in a small suburban o~atmosphere? restau-
rant:
oThe only place available for luncheon in
our neighborhood was the Bob Crachitt Tea
Roome and Coffee House, an establishment
run by a group of dour-looking ladies who also
sold cakes and cookies at the change desk"
tea thirty-five cents, luncheon fifty-five cents
and dinner seventy-five cents. On the whole,
it always seemed to me that the Bob Crachitt
Tea Roome was a sensible, nice place, patron-
ized by people who did not care to pay any
more for simple, wholesome food, and by peo-
ple like me who were driven there when there
was no food at home.?
Pulham, scion of a wealthy family, does not
realize that he has been oforced step by step to
become a timid stuffed shirt by the pressures of
an exclusive school, Harvard, family and Boston
social traditions.?T He is secure in his home where
oThe stair carpet was badly worn. It was
one of those furnishings which we were going
to change when the children grew up, but I
was glad to see that it was all tacked tight.
Up in the second-floor hall, the wallpaper was
dingy. No matter how often Kay and I had
told the children, they always rubbed their
hands over it. But the parlor looked splen-
did. Kay called it her only successful room,
for somehow all the possessions which we
SPRING, 1962
ee 7 " ae Sa Saale ama se alee ee SS a Sa EI PE ED EEC NO ALES
SEA Dd Sh AS SRA ca ao SR REA Eat eR SS ah BG eS BE ER ESE 4 SR ee Kes SERME SSOP SE HMMS SOTS MEAS SSS HSS areas
De i a oe sd ks Ve
had bought and inherited fitted together.
The Persian rug, which came from KayTs
mother, was not too large for it and it went
well with the Motford armchairs.?T
The complacently wealthy are not the only vic-
tims of MarquandTs satire. In So Little Time,
Walter Newcombe, foreign correspondent and
author of World Assignment, represents the pom-
pously mysterious, name-dropping, utterly hollow
and self-conscious fraud. He makes enigmatic
references to confidential information passed on
to him (he implies) by the leaders of war-torn
Europe, and bears the load of worldwide respon-
sibility in a pained but patient manner. A sample
of his conversation with Jeffrey Wilson will illus-
trate:
oWalter sat down in one of the armchairs,
but almost immediately got up and pulled a
tortoise-shell cigarette case from his pocket.
oo oEixcuse me for not thinking,T he said. ~I
wonder where the devil that room service is.T
And he snapped the case open. ~Naples,T he
said. ~They can do anything in Naples with
tortoise-shell.T He paused and reconsidered
his statement. ~That is, almost anything.T
o oAre the Italians going to get into the
war?T Jeffrey asked.
Walter sat down and tapped the cigarette
case.
oo oYes, he said, ~and no, perhaps, but donTt
get me started on that.T
oHave you met Gamelin?T Jeffrey asked.
ooGamelin?T WalterTs forehead puckered.
~Oh, Gamelin. Everyone meets Gamelin, but
donTt get me started on that.T ?
Marquand again uses background to point up
the weaknesses of the bumbling, ineffectual, and
pathetic correspondent who, although he is the
idol of the womenTs clubs and the author of a book
which attempts to explain the complexities of the
entire world of 1939, is still no more than the
momentary holder of an evanescent fame of his
own manufacture.
oThe suite in the Waldorf Tower had the
same impermanence as Walter Newcombe.
There were no possessions of WalterTs in the
sitting room except six copies of World As-
signment piled upon a secretaryTs desk, and a
portable typewriter on a table near the win-
dow, and these did nothing to alter the
roomTs impersonal perfection. It had been
done in colonial reproduction mahogany by
some wholesale decorator. The two overstuff-
ed chairs, the pearl-grey carpet, and the sofa
upholstered in old rose"all were devoid of
character. It made you feel that within five
minutes Walter Newcombe could pack up and
go. It made you think of Walter Newcombe
29
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ES: Sees
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always packing up and going, and never leav-
ing behind him the slightest trace of himself.?
Months after Jeffrey and Walter met in the
Waldorf, they again had a brief encounter in a
Hollywood hotel, the Val Halla, where Newcombe
was in preparation for a trip to China. Jeffrey
described the hotel, and MarquandTs satire in this
passage encompasses not only the Walter New-
combes of the world but the whole artificiality of
hotels like the Val Halla as well. The last sen-
tence in reference to the activities of the lovebirds
is singularly appropriate to the Hollywood head-
line mills so assiduously stoked by the marital
aberrations of stardom.
oIt was near the filling stations and the
drive-in luncheons and the drugstores and the
open-air markets and the motels where you
could drive your car right under a shelter
and walk into a room. It was noisy, as the
clerk has said, and a great many people
known as ~fallen starsT lived in little apart-
ments near it. The Val Halla, however, still
had its large grounds and its date palms and
its monkey puzzle trees and its roses. It was
built, Jeffrey supposed, on lines inspired by
one of the old Spanish missions"a main
building where the guest ate and lounged and
then lots of cloisters with rooms opening
right out upon lots and lots of miniature gar-
dens, each with a little pool filled with lotus
flowers. Hanging from the arches of the
cloisters were lots and lots of birds in gay
lacquered cages, known as ~parakeetsT when
Jeffrey was younger, but now termed ~love-
birdsT. Their conjugal quarrels and their
reconciliations all going on at once, formed
an odd and slightly hysterical background.?
The theme of these four novels is one of men
whose vision reaches outside the social frame-
work in which they live. Their rebellions against
_
OLE Om
a , a -" x 4
Be ED AB SO ae EGBA BITE e ESL VSTSTG TELAT STS CE FE FSS DE ILI SISTERS
that framework are seldom overt and are never
successful. The range of their awareness of their
own imprisonment varies. H. M. Pulham was
vaguely dissatisfied as a young man and he moved
out of the carefully shielded and well ordered life
in Boston to the strange delights of advertising
and the love of a woman whose origin had not
been as lofty as his own. His background was
too strong to permit him to enjoy his freedom,
and so he returned to the old, familiar and secure
life, rationalizing his timidity in doing his ~o~duty?T.
All the characters, Pulham, Gray, Wilson, and
Skelton, to some degree flirted with escape, but
none succeeded. Their responsibilities were too
many, their training and conditioning were too
enveloping to allow them any realization of the
larger vision beyond the knowledge that they had
not become what they might have been. A final
quotation from So Little Time shows the single
pathetic trophy, Jeffrey WilsonTs office, which he
cherished as the symbol of a life he wanted to live
but did not have the courage to explore.
oHe had bought the furniture over the past
few years himself"a tall green filing cabinet,
a bookcase filled with plays and works on the
theater, a flat desk with a swivel chair and
two leather armchairs, which he had purchas-
ed at a country auction, and a tavern table,
which he had bought in Maine. The broad
pine floor boards had been waxed and he had
made a point of allowing the ashes to remain
in the fireplace just as they always had in his
fatherTs fireplace on Lime Street. He knew
that the room was ugly, and Madge had often
said she did not see why he wanted a room
like it, because he had good taste, but its bare-
ness and ugliness had always consoled him.
That room was the only place which was en-
tirely his own and it represented no effort and
no compromise.?
30
Gae C r re ES Hi Re A ONE GCS i RE LG ON AERTS BEETS ss
THE REBEL
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The Little Prince
The Little Prince. By Antoine de Saint-Exupery. New group of admirers who comprise a small cult.
York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company. 91 pp. Tr. from the Antoine de Saint-Exupery was a daring pioneer
French by Katherine Woods. ; . ; : ;
2 aviator who lost his life in a crash in the T30Ts..
Although known for many years in Europe,
The Little Prince is not so well known in the
United States save to a dedicated and faithful
SPRING, 1962
pg e BS FRE hE EERE EMG aE A wT a SE OES OES ROAR ESE ES ER ES
He wrote a number of books, notably Wind, Sand,
and Stars, chronicling his adventures as a flier,
but The Little Prince is ExuperyTs most classic
ol
a ae eee Scape ncaa pes ade EA eS TE Mg Ea TE cee NAG EP a Re EEO OL ON a ME gee i ee eae ey ne See ee Se we z Peter Bias She ee ee
Feng a. Bias oe coastal sia iain it is as aah PR re TE Tan a
contribution to the world of letters. In this one
thin volume Exupery has captured all the pathos,
all the significance and insignificance of life which
he must have known on long nights flying beneath
the stars far above the earth. He has captured
all the simplicity and grace of poetic youthful
innocence within ninety-one pages; for the Little
Prince, albeit he seems a little child, is only dis-
guised as a child for the duration of the novel; in
reality he is innocence personified. One is re-
minded of James AgeeTs words in the prologue to
A Death in the Family:
We are talking now of Summer evenings
in Knoxville, Tennessee when I lived there so
successfully disguised to myself as a child...
Exupery first met the Little Prince when he
crashed in the desert, thousands of miles from any
known habitation. Suddenly a voice said, oDraw
me a sheep.TT Exupery turned and there was the
Prince. He did as asked. And thus began the most
rewarding friendship he was ever to encounter.
This is the proof that the Prince was Innoncence;
Exupery did as he was asked without question and
with only slight hesitation. One does not question
faith, and faith is an integral part of innocence.
The Little Prince (For he was a Prince from a
very small planet and that was all Exupery was
to know him by, names being unimportant since
owords are the source of misunderstandings.TT)
came to Earth because of a tragic love affair. Love
had come to the Prince in the guise of a rose, a
cruel and tender and very beautiful rose who
treated the Little Prince harshly.
I ought never to have run away from her...
I ought to have guessed all the affection that
lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers
are so inconsistent! But I was too young to
know how to love her...
According to Exupery in the PrinceTs coming to
Earth, oI believe that for his escape he took ad-
vantage of the migration of a flock of wild birds.?
And so, the Little Prince came to Earth and here
learned what love really means from a fox that
he tamed. He had come to believe that his rose
was not unique, that she had told him lies; he had
passed a whole garden full of roses and had seen
no difference between them and his rose. But the
fox taught him otherwise, taught him the things
which the vain rose had known in the heart of her
petals all along.
It is only with the heart that one can see
rightly. What is essential is invisible to the
o2
sittin Sia Neke i eS RESETS BBR Ss See We Me WE BBE SS
PPR PERS OS SRS SS PLT Sates
eye. It is the time that you have wasted for
your rose that makes her important...
Exupery, however, because he was an adult and
therefore not innocent enough to accept what he
saw with his heart, because he had been thwarted
in his youth by the adulterated teachings of his
parents, was impatient with the Prince. He be-
came angry; he considered that he was alone in
the desert with a busted engine, a fastly diminish-
ing supply of water, and a strange little fellow
who spoke in parables. The Little Prince rebuked
him gently, saying to him
The stars are beautiful because of a flower
that cannot be seen ... What makes the des-
ert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a
well.
Exupery was astonished by this sudden under-
standing of the beauty of the desert, by what
makes anything beautiful. Then he realized that
this was what the fox had said, o. .. what is most
important is invisible to the eye.TT They found
the well at dawn; but soon after the Little Prince
went away. A serpent took him; but Exupery
believes that he went back to his planet, to his
rose, and he imparts a word to anyone who might
see his Little Prince. He misses his friend very
much and, as the Little Prince had said to him,
oTo lose a friend is sad. Not everyone has had a
friend.?? Therefore, anyone who might see the
little friend must notify Exupery at once. It is
not that Exupery created the Little Prince, but
rather that the Little Prince created him.
"MILTON G. CROCKER
Me and the Liberal Arts
Me and the Liberal Arts. By Dave Morrah. New York:
Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1962. $3.50. 192 pp.
Dave MorrahTs Me and the Liberal Arts is not
a book about anything that ever happened any-
where. Though the story is set on a college cam-
pus, somewhere in North Carolina, its author
makes no attempt to capture the essence of life
on a college campus, and the antics from which
the insignificant plot is constructed are wildly off-
centered, deliriously humorous fragments of an
ingenious imagination.
Humor being so personal a matter, it is too
much to assume that everybody will find Me and
the Liberal Arts funny. Though it could land
high on the list headed ~~Books We Could Do With-
out,? Mr. MorrahTs new novel is great fun to read.
THE REBEL
See
Se ee ee
_
EE TAG HSER ESAS VS TST TLENSTSTS TATE SETS LESTE TS PES PTS
a a
Fa a Er
Le se 2G Ae
e SETS IP LATO HE TF LL INE I PEEL TIE
Kee tEek tg PEERTES OEY HPSS HEAT REECE AD AESEPI PES HEES LEA TET BOS LAPSES EERES PELE EERE EBT AA ER AEE E BEDS FLD SOS OSES OES
The hero, Wilbur Hare, observed at the beginning
of his narrative that he went off to college in the
first place to o~loosen up Millicent Britt,TT who
wanted to marry a college man; but Wilbur man-
ages to loosen up considerably more than Muilli-
cent Britt, including a Director of Admissions, a
Dean, an English Professor, a public relations
director, and a young female teacher of biology
named Miss Beasley.
All of this loosening up is done before Wilbur
finds out that he is not enrolled as a student on
scholarship, but as a popular and thoroughly effi-
cient grounds-keeper.
Prevented from spending rainy days in class
by direct order of the administration (he was a
odisrupting influence,T) Wilbur spends them
building up confidences among college officials
whom he unwittingly betrays, thereby averting a
college scandal and restoring a donation of one
million dollars to the college treasury.
Because of Wilbur, author Dave Morrah, who
is, by the way, himself director of Public Relations
at Guilford College in Greensboro, has written a
funny novel. He would have had to use little of
his first-hand knowledge of college life to write
his story. He has created an amusing character
in Wilbur Hare and set him to tending garden in
an academic atmosphere at King City College, the
likes of which we can hope never existed. Wil-
burTs philosophical summations and airy dismiss-
als of intellectual and administrative pursuits"
oT seen he didnTt know the answer but was the
type that wouldnTt say so? or oMr. Rasker will
have to see me now, cause if this rain stops it ainTt
no telling when I could get back in hereT"make
for a pleasant evening of very light reading.
oMe? fares better than the liberal arts, but
there are lines in it that do omake a body strangle
over theirselves.? The reader would be wise not
to put other reading aside for this one, but if it is
comic relief he needs, this is it.
" JANICE HARDISON
The Moviegoer
The Moviegoer. By Walker Percy. New York: Alfred A.
Knopf. 1961. $3.95.
This novel is beautifully written. Percy has
mastered all the techniques. His characters are
real, and they do believable things to and with
each other in recognizable places. He avoids the
usual traps which are likely to snare the novice
(this is his first novel, at forty-five), like bookish
SPRING, 1962
4 NSE AT GAs RLS RE SRE Re ER WE RE OD SE SSA SS SE NS Se BES ES SSS Res SESS
imitativeness, cuteness, pretentiousness, exaggera-
tion, and sentimentality.
The question of what he is driving at remains,
however, to puzzle the reader. This work does
not yield its ultimate meaning easily, if at all. It
is prefaced with an epigraph from KierkegaardTs
Sickness Unto Death: othe specific character of
despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being
despair.?? It ends with the unlikely marriage of
the hero Binx with his step-cousin Kate, a worse-
than-neurotic patroness of the bottle and of bar-
biturates. There has not been a more unromantic
match in fiction.
Binx is a moviegoer because movies are a phe-
nomenon of what he calls ocertification.?
Nowadays when a person lives somewhere, in
a neighborhood, the place is not certified for
him. More than likely he will live there sadly
and the emptiness which is inside him will
expand until it evacuates the entire neighbor-
hood. But if he sees a movie which shows
his very neighborhood, it becomes possible
for him to live, for a time, at least, as a per-
son who is Somewhere and not Anywhere.
Binx searches through much of the book for
Somewhere, a realization of which he has had
only once in real life"while lying wounded in a
muddy ditch in Korea. To him, the implacable
enemy of Somewhere is not only Anywhere but
also o~everydayness.? (o~Everydayness is the ene-
my. No search is possible. Perhaps there was a
time when everydayness was not too strong and
one could break its grip by brute strength. Now
nothing: breaks it but disaster.?T)
But why does Binx marry Kate? This union
apparently is part of his final rejection of. his
heritage through his father of the romantic-aris-
tocratic Southern tradition"an elaborate set of
ideal unconsciously cloaking despair and actually
finding their apotheosis in the death wish. An
accidental visit with his mother, whom he hardly
knows because of family circumstances helps lib-
erate Binx. She is a person who doesnTt believe
anything but who is at least devoid of illusion
and who is real.
Kate, too, he discovers is, for all her aberra-
tions, shrewd enough to operate on the practical
level"a true Creole. In taking her has Binx
finally concluded that ~oeverydayness?T is all there
is and that it alone makes life endurable?
This work, which received the National Book
Award for fiction last month, is one of the most
disillusioned novels which this reviewer has ever
Bh)
SL IS SE EY SA Se ae ae Se ee a eT Te en Se
i i
ka it
aay
=: eT Se ws
= Secs
LS ae.
PE ee eT
read, whatever its exact meaning may be. Ulti-
mately, itTs a puzzle, like life. Yet the reader can
live with the ambiguities of the book precisely
because they are presented in such a lifelike
manner. Perhaps this is the highest accolade,
after all, which can be bestowed upon a work of
modern fiction.
"JAMES E.. POINDEXTER
From State Church to Pluralism
From State Church to Pluralism: A Protestant Interpreta-
tion of Religion in American History. By Franklin Hamlin
Littell. New York: Doubleday & Co. (Anchor Books). 174
pp. $.95.
Another effort to decipher the local religious
situation ... everyone friendly to church and no
one taking the responsibility of the Church. This
effort works within the historical framework.
Mr. Littell states his purpose in writing this
book as: oThe primary purpose of this essay is
to discuss the development of the American
churches from the established Protestantism of
the colonial state churches to the ~post-Protes-
tant? era in which Catholic-Protestant-Jewish
trialogue is opening up new possibilities of theo-
logical clarification and articulation.? ,
Contrary to popular belief, America came into
being as a heathen nation. After the Revolution,
when the colonial state churches collapsed, mem-
bership found a level of about 5%. Actually,
America was a mission field.
The next century and a half witnessed the in-
vention of mass evangelism which moved the
church membership to 50% of the population by
1926. Mass evangelism is the dominant feature
of American Christianity. oMost Americans are
today ~new Christians,T first or second-generation
Christians, just as truly as are those of the
ode J
~Younger Churches in Africa and AsiaT.
Being a Younger Church gives us the need to
develop rather than think of ourselves as an ad-
junct to European thinking. The overwhelming
demand is to teach and discipline the millions that
have been won. ~The temptation is to allow a
rather vague cultural expression to name itself
Christianity. Littell is serious on this point after
seeing the action of the Church in the rise of
Nazism with which he deals in The German Phoe-
Mix.
From State Church to Pluralism is a readable
profile of the Church in American history. The
author has the ability to turn a sharp phrase and
o4
Sidhe aA AEA AT GARE CCPC ESTER ERE ANTE
ih ha a hr Sin he eg ET cE A DAO LE AL TE SP EET HSE
se DEES SEATS SSS STDS STIG Oe SS SONS STS OTE Te FS ee Ieee
dig out the implications of movements in history.
The book has one serious handicap: inadequate
footnotes for facts, charts, and figures.
"THE REV. RICHARD N. OTTAWAY
Episcopal College Chaplain
No Little Thing
No Little Thing. By Elizabeth Ann Cooper. New York:
Doubleday & Company (Dell Publishing Company). 384
pp. $.60.
oIt is no little thing to win or lose the kingdom
of heaven.? This is the theme of Elizabeth Ann
CooperTs novel No Little Thing. Father Michael
Mundy, the main character, renounces his vows of
priesthood and, therefore, must search for his
self-respect throughout the novel. Father MundyTs
fall from grace can be attributed partly to the
impossible standards which he sets for himself.
Even as a child, his main goal in life was to be a
saint"to prepare himself for Heaven. AS a
young priest, he tries to take the sins of the
world on his shoulders. Unable to convert the
members of his parish, a group of oSunday Chris-
tians,?T into pious, obedient saints, he suffers from
fellings of intense guilt. His downfall occurs,
however, when he attempts to convert Laura
Dunne, whom he has saved from a suicide attempt,
into a vigorous Christian.
In a moment of frustration and self-pity,
Father Mundy yields to Laura Dunne and her
worldly temptations, othat lithely sensual and del-
icately scented body, those mocking eyes.T Fol-
lowing this incident, Father MundyTs feelings of
guilt and frustration increase to an agonizing de-
gree and become even more intense when he finds
that Laura is pregnant. He renounces the Cath-
olic Church and begins another life with Laura,
his wife"a life of fear and flight"continual
flight from his own feelings and from public
knowledge of his sins.
Through Father MundyTs struggle between his
own sin and his desire to be a saint, Not Little
Thing becomes more than an account of cheap,
sordid events. At first, the novel appears to be
only a story of suicide and alcoholism. It devel-
ops into a realistic conflict of human emotions.
Miss Cooper adequately and vividly portrays
Father MundyTs feelings of guilt and frustration
"~He put off thinking ahead ... Dream, weak-
ness, and shame all became one.. .?T "and de-
scribes his character in detail. The priesthood
was all he wanted in life (except, perhaps, a free
THE REBEL
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fae > ea ° ec Se ee ~ pS SSB Z
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ticket to Paradise after death). ~Before men, he
aspired to no other identity than his priesthood.
It was better so: clean, lucid, free of debt, invul-
nerable.TT Because of this simple attitude toward
his identity, Father Mundy suffers greatly from
his voluntary separation from the Catholic
Church. This suffering is pre-eminent in No Little
Thing; the entire novel is an account of one manTs
struggle between his sins and his conception of a
righteous life.
"JANE E. TEAL
Therefore Be Bold
Therefore Be Bold. By Herbert Gold. New York: Lancer
Books. 1962. 192 pp. $.40.
Just as in life, there is no extreme, definable
climax in the process of maturation; just so in
this small segment of adolescence, there is no cli-
max but merely a series of events, large and small,
which develop the characters.
Gold employs these events to unfold the slow
maturing of a group of young people before the
Second World War. He displays a keen insight
into the thoughts and actions of teenagers and he
is very sympathetic toward these adolescents who
are trying to be adults. He creates a group of
people who, in their problems and frustrations,
could very well be the group with whom anyone
grew and matured.
Gold uses the method of first-person action and
outlook. He gives us a first-hand look into the
thoughts and motives of one young boy as he tries
to overcome his small obstacles (no money for a
date) and to win the girl he adores"although he
isnTt quite sure which one that is.
We see his friends and his enemies, but in this
world there are no enemies but merely persons
toward whom one feels dislike or apathy. We
are allowed to travel again the road taken when
we were children, and we feel a kinship with each
and every one of the adolescents in this story.
Gold has mastered the technique of writing by
creating a story that is not really a story on the
printed page but one which we can experience
and participate in"one which we can add to
from memories of our own adolescence.
"JOYCE EVANS
SPRING, 1962
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CONTRIBUTORTS
NOTES
Brenda Canipe, a sophomore from Rockingham,
won first place in The Rebel writing contest.
G. Burgess Casteel won second place in the writ-
ing contest and Walter N. Dixon III from New
Bern won third place.
Richard L. Taylor is a graduate assistant in the
Social Studies Department.
The Rev. Richard N. Ottoway is the Episcopal
College Chaplain at St. PaulTs Episcopal Church.
Dr. James Poindexter and Miss Janice Hardison
are members of the English faculty.
Charles L. Shobe makes his first appearance in
this issue of the magazine. He is a sophomore
from Hampton, Virginia.
Sarah Hansen, a frequent contributor to The
Rebel, is a primary education major from New
Bern.
Joyce Evans and Milton G. Crocker are members
of the staff.
Harry C. West is a graduating senior at David-
son College.
Jane Teal and Sue Ellen Hunsucker are members
of the staff.
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