WINTER 1962 90C
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THE CARLETON Miscellany Business REPORT ON EDITORS' Art, Science and Life MEETING AND FORMA (and Movies) TION OF A. L. M. A. DICKENS AND THE POPULAR TRADITION Pleasure —ARNOLD KETTLE ENGLISH MAKED SIMPLE —PATRICK BROPHY CYBERNETICS (A Poem) —HOWARD NEMEROV WAR OF THE ANTHOLOGIES THE SHATTERING —JACKSON BURGESS CONTROVERSIAL —ERLING LARSEN Displeasure POEMS AND STORIES PROTEUS CRITICUS —LLOYD ZIMPEL, SCOTT —W. B. SCOTT BATES, BARRY SPACKS, LA DOUCHE HERBERT MORRIS, SUSAN —WAYNE BOOTH ABRAMS, JOHN LUCAS, SOME SOCIOLOGICAL ROBERT GRANT BURNS, FICTIONS MARION MONTGOMERY, —EARL H. ROVIT CAROLYN STOLOFF HEMINGWAY AND NUMERALITY —WILLIAM J. SCHAFER WINTER 1962 90c CONTENTS ESSAYS: DICKENS AND THE POPULAR TRADITION Arnold Kettle 17 THE SHATTERING CONTROVERSIAL Erling Larsen 61 ENGLISH MAKED SIMPLE Patrick Brophy 86 SOME SOCIOLOGICAL FICTIONS OF THE FIFTIES. .Earl H. Rovit 87 THE WAR OF THE ANTHOLOGIES Jackson Burgess 93 HEMINGWAY: ARBITER OF COMMON NUMERALITY William J. Schafer 100 PROTEUS CRITICUS W. B. Scott 105 FICTION: THE SCRATCHING CAT BEFRIENDED Lloyd Zimpel 10 LA DOUCHE Wayne Booth 81 VERSE: Howard Nemerov 3 John Lucas $6 Scott Bates 6 Herbert Morris 57 Barry Spacks 8 Carolyn Stoloff 58 Robert Grant Burns 51 Marion Montgomery 60 Susan Abrams 5 3 PROCEEDINGS IN THE FORMATION OF THE ASSOCI ATION OF LITERARY MAGAZINES OF AMERICA 70 THE CARLETON MISCELLANY, Volume III, Number 1. Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota. Published by Carleton College. Editor: Reed Whittemore Associate Editors: Wayne Carver and Erling Larsen Editor, Department of American: Wayne Booth Business Management: Haldor M. Bly and Arlys Wiese Drawings by CCW and ERW III The Carleton Miscellany is published in Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. Rates are as follows: $3.30 for one year, $6.00 for two years. It is distributed to newsstands and bookstores by B. DeBoer, 102 Beverly Rd., Bloomfield, N.J. Manuscripts are submitted at the author's risk; further, they will not be returned unless they are accompanied by stamped, self-addressed envelopes. Copyright, 196%, by Carleton College Entered as second-class matter at the post office at Northfield, Minn. cago and has lived "near North" there for the past five years. A story by LLOYD ZIMPEL print ed in the Miscellany in i960 re ceived honorable mention in the Martha Foley collection of short stories for 1961. NOTES ON HERBERT MORRIS'S verse has ap peared in Poetry and other maga CONTRIBUTORS zines. He lives in Philadelphia. ARNOLD KETTLE, an English WAYNE BOOTH'S regular column Marxist, is a "senior lecturer" at the in The Miscellany has been omitted University of Leeds. His two-vol in this issue, to make room for the ume work, An Introduction to the business proceedings of the English Novel, published originally A.M.L.A., but he is represented by Hutchinson House, has been re anyway by "LaDouche," which is printed recently in a Harper's pa not an excerpt from his new book, perback. The Rhetoric of Fiction (Univer sity of Chicago Press, 1961). This W. B. SCOTT was a regular con book, it should be pointed out, is tributor to Furioso, and his works there, like "Chicago Letter," have one of the important books about been reprinted widely. He teaches fiction in recent years (editor's at Northwestern University. opinion of another editor), and for those who do not thoroughly un EARL H. ROVIT, of the English derstand the machinations of "La Department of the University of Douche" we recommend pages 56- Louisville, is the author of Herald 57, in the chapter, "Novels Must to Chaos (University of Kentucky Be Realistic." Press, i960). PATRICK BROPHY sent us a letter JACKSON BURGESS has had two which we lost; so all we know of novels published—Pillar of Cloud, him at the moment is that he has 1957; The Atrocity, 1961—and is been a contributor to First Person an assistant professor at the Uni and comes from Nevada, Missouri, versity of California. if that is possible. SUSAN ABRAMS graduated from WILLIAM J. SCHAFER is in the Wellesley in 1954. The poems in graduate school at the University this issue are the first work of hers of Minnesota, after graduating from to be published. She works in Chi Earlham College. • HOWARD NEMEROV CYBERNETICS Now you are ready to build your human brain. You have studied the plan, and taken inventory Of all the pieces you found in the kit. The first brain won't be inexpensive or Compact; covering most of Central Park With these tiny transistors, it will cost A sum slightly in excess of the Gross National Product for Nineteen Fifty Nine; But that is not a scientific problem, For later brains will reproduce themselves At less expense, on a far smaller scale, Bringing down average costs in the long run. Screwdriver ready? But before you start, Consider, helmsman, what a brain requires. A human brain has always needed blood, And always got it, too, in plenty; but That problem occupies a later stage; Right now, some elementary decisions. It must of course, be absolutely free, That's been determined, and accordingly You will program it to program itself, Set up its own projects and work them out, THE CARLETON MISCELLANY Adjusting what it does tomorrow by The feedback from today, and casually Repairing yesterday's disasters with The earliest possible editorials. It must assure itself, by masterful Administration of the unforeseen, That everything works according to plan, And that, as a General from the Pentagon Recently told Congress, "The period Of greatest danger lies ahead." This way Alone it will be able to preserve Anxiety and sloth in a see-saw balance, Provoking the flow of both adrenalin And phlegm (speaking electronically), Whence its conflicting elements achieve A fair symbiosis, something between The flood of power and the drouth of fear: A mediocrity, or golden mean, Maybe at best the stoic apatheia. At the same time, to be a human brain, It has to have a limiting tradition, Which may be simple and parochial (A memory of Main Street in the sunlight) But should be unequivocal as well: "My country right or wrong," or "I believe In free enterprise and high tariffs," Or "God will punish me if I suck my thumb." Something like that. You will provide also A rudimentary view of history: One eyeless bust of Cicero or Caesar, A Washington Crossing the Delaware, The Driving of the Golden Railroad Spike; Maybe a shot of Lenin tombed in glass. It need not be much, but it must be there. HOWARD NEMEROV Oh, but you want a more ambitious brain? One that can keep all history in mind, Revise the whole to fit one added fact, And do this in three hundredths of a second While making accurate predictions of Price fluctuations for the next six months? Perfectly possible, and well within The technical means at hand. Only, there's this: It runs you into much more money for Circuits of paradox and contradiction. Your vessels of antinomian wrath alone Run into millions; and you can't stop there, You've got to add at every junction point Auxiliary systems that will handle doubt, Switches of agony that are On and Off At the same time, and limited access Blind alleys full of inefficient gods And marvelous devils. No, you're asking the Impossible, Dostoevsky described it: "A Petersburg intellectual with a toothache." Better to settle for the simpler model. You could put a man on the moon for less. O helmsman! in your hands how equal now Weigh opportunity and obligation. A chance to mate those monsters of the Book, The lion and serpent hidden from our sight Through centuries of shadowed speculation. What if the Will's a baffled, mangy lion, Or Thought's no adder but a strong constrictor? It is their offspring that we care about, That marvelous mirror where our modest wit Shall show gigantic. Will he uproot cities, Or sit indoors on a rainy day and mope? Will he decide against us, or want love? HOWARD NEMEROV How shall we see him, or endure his stride Into our future bellowing Nil Mirari While all his circuits click, propounding new Solutions to the riddle of the Sphinx? • SCOTT BATES FABLE OF THE FALLEN DROP OF DUNG A rich and noble drop of dung Whose ancient privileged class Had lost repute once fell among Some proletariat grass Whose spokesblade turned to him and said We don't need your kind here The feudal days of dung are dead As dews of yesteryear We've passed the unprogressive stage When guts were all gung-ho Our modern scientific age Will rise with Vigoro! The drop of dung felt fallen then But firmly answered Sir My strength is as the strength of ten For I am pure manure SCOTT BATES FABLE OF THE HUNCHBACK WHO THOUGHT HE WAS A SWALLOW The hunchback who thought he was a swallow Slept in the city dump Under a green umbrella With feathers on his hump By gray popocatepetls Of fuming cinder piles And seas of emerald bottles And goodrich tire isles The hunchback who thought he was a swallow Dreamed of summer gone To cloudbanks over Rio And down the Amazon To big Brazilian beetles On green umbrella trees And butterflies like petals Floating over seas The hunchback who thought he was a swallow Flew south over telephone poles Over perpendicular people With hunches on their souls Over tall cathedral crosses To the isles below the wind To plane with albatrosses And others of his kind THE CARLETON MISCELLANY •BARRY SPACKS AT THE AGE OF THIRTY WHEN HAMLET BEGAN HIS REVENGE, AND JESUS HIS MINISTRY Don't mention the rocks, the blocks from the quarries, the boulders..