The Newspaper of The Literary Arts BOOKPRESS Volume 3, Number 2 March, 1993 Ithaca, New York COMPLIMENTARY The Voice of the Serpent Lori Burlingame in a communal culture like the emony intensified the interest in I met with Silko, who graciously results from commercialization of Pueblo culture, because that’s how Silko’s earlier short stories, “Yel­ consented to be interviewed, even the artist, Silko pointed out that ‘“a it operates in everyday life... that’s low Woman," ‘Tony’s Story," and though she was at the tail end of a lot of the marketing ploys in recent On January 22, Writers & what's found in the oral tradition.’’ “Lullaby," which years have started Books, a literary center Uiat operates In an interview with Silko in The are included in her to push the per­ in Rochester, NY, launched its Amicus Journal, Gina Maranto 1981 collection son, the maker of “Contemporary American Voices" wrote, “The Pueblo people measure Storyteller. Her the art, rather than series with a reading by Leslie wealth not in material but in epis­ other published die art itself." She Marmon Silko from her 1991 novel temological terms: to them, the works include feels that this is Almanac of the Dead and her current truly poor person is one who knows Laguna Woman: dangerous be­ work-in-progress Sacred Water. no tales. Tales embody the vital Poems (1974) and cause “it confuses Sdko, bom in 1948 in Albuquerque force of the tribe and possess power With the Delicacy die artist with the of mixed Laguna Pueblo, Mexican to shape die future." and Strength of work. They’re and Caucasian ancestry, grew up chi With the publication of her 1977 Lice (with James really separate; at the Laguna Pueblo Reservation, and novel Ceremony, Silko was her­ Wright in 1985). least they always her work is an extension of llie alded by Prank McShane of The New Among the an­ have been. Al­ Laguna Pueblo oral narrative tradi­ York Times Book Review as “the thologies that manac reflects the tion “Stories," she says “are central most accomplished Indian writer of feature Silko’s culture, what was to die way one's identity is formed her generation,” and widi N. Scott poems and stories happening around Momaday, Simon Ortiz, and James are The Man to me. I was like a Welch, she is among the best-known Send Rainclouds sponge. Indi­ » I N S I D E i- contemporary Native American (1974) and The vidual artists very writers, hi Ceremony, Silko affirms Remember ed seldom are aware Laui West Memoir the Pealing powers latent in the Earth (1978). of all the'Ytoees Rooms in College interconnectedness between the Her honors where liieir input' natural world and die story; Tayo, and awards in­ comes from, so page 8 her mixed-blood protagonist, re­ clude a grant from that the work of A Bite o f the A pple covers from die alienation and loss the National En­ any artist or writer of identity which result from his dowment for the (iunilla Feigcnhaum Photograph: Robyn Stoutenburg is actually greater experiences in World War II by Arts (1974), a po­ page 3 than the indi­ being brought back into a harmoni­ etry award from Leslie Marmon Silko vidual; that’s why ous relationship with the earth and Nick Gillespie The Chicago Review (1974), a hectic book tour tor Almanac o f the readers, viewers, or listeners can through a ceremonial reawakening Pushcart Prize for poetry (1977), Dead, in her room at the Strathallan on TV Fans find so much in there, so many tilings to die creative power of the word. and a grant from the MacArthur Hotel in Rochester. Expressing con­ that transcend the individual's life. page 7 The critical acclaim of Cer­ Foundadon (1983). cern over the “personality cult” which see Serpent, page 6

Survival and Transcendence The Third Sex?

Dharma Linn: A Biography of good you are, it helps to have a press whereas Schumacher put in eight Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing of television sitcoms, suspense Allen Ginsberg agent out ahead of you beating the years to produce this great while and Cultural Anxiety thrillers. Gothic novels, or beloved Michael Schumacher drums for all he's worth. Miles and shark. It is by orders of magnitude Maijorie Garber Broadway musicals. Not merely in St. Martin's, 765 pp„ $35.00 Schumacher and Ginsberg’s other the more thorough, with 53 pages Harper Collins, 443 pp., paper the “real life” appearances that porte paroles can be thought of as of footnotes to show for its $17.50 seemed to have multiplied on the Mark Shechner advance men for phase II of his scholarship. That’s the good news. streets near my home, in the booths career: posthumous fame. Ginsberg Ihe bad news is that Dharma Lion Susan Malka Choi of my favorite bar, at parties, on Is it dueling bios of Allen in fact is well positioned for phase II is one of the clumsiest books you planes, in the grocery store. This is Ginsberg we've got here? Even by virtue of what someone has called will ever read, and you have to The 'third" is that which questions not to say that transvestism as an dueling authorized bios? You'd “the Ginsberg cottage industry”—a wonder how someone with such a binary thinking and introduces crisis intentional activity has gained in think so, with Barry Miles's small army of assistants, secretaries, basic quarrel with the English — a crisis which is symptomatized by popularity. Nor does it seem that I Ginsberg: A Biography just three agents, clerks, bibliographers, language ever got attracted to poetry both the overestimation and the had in some way become more years old and now Michael transcribers, translators, lawyers, in the first place. How did St. underestimation of cross-dressing. perceptive to transvestite practices Schumacher's biography, Dharma accountants, investigators, and Martins’ copy editors sleep through But what is crucial here — and I can which had been until then invisible Lion, hitting the stores before the editors who can be found at his farm his calling an illegal smoke an “elicit hardly underscore this strongly tome. Duplicitous transvestites were presses have stopped humming from in Cherry Valley, New York, cigarette,” or descendants enough — is that the "third term ” is not revealed behind the guises of its predecessor. And both appear to working on various aspects of "ancestors,” or the prosecutor of not a term....The "third” is a mode of “ordinary people,” ordinary people have Ginsberg’s imprimatur. He Ginsberg’s poetry or journals or the Moscow Trials “Puchinski” (it articulation, a way of describing a were starting to look like encouraged both writers, who research or reputation. But then was Audrey Vyshinsky)? There is space of possibility. Three puts in “transvestites.” This reaction was worked more or less simultaneously, maybe the eagerness to publish his no end to these gaffes. To make question the idea o f one: o f identity, what Garber might call a crisis of and was generous to both with his life reflects nothing more than matters worse, Schumacher writes self-sufficiency, self-knowledge. categorization; its result being, in time and his archives. But then Ginsberg’s own gospel of nakedness, at times as though the scales had addition to a deep feeling of suspicion Ginsberg has always lent aid and his lifelong insistence that he has fallen from his eyes about five About halfway through Maijorie toward first impressions, my comfort to those who have devoted nothing to hide because nothing is minutes ago. Garber’s Vested Interests: Cross- uncertainty as to whether it was the themselves to carrying his word shameful and everything is, as he Not to worry: Ginsberg survives Dressing and Cultural Anxiety, I “ordinary person” or the Maybe that’s just Ginsberg’s hunger said in “Howl,” holy. the gaffes and the grammar. His began to feel the way I imagine Gaiber “transvestite” that demanded the for immortality, since in America A new biography was needed. life is too abundant to be obscured herself may have felt while she was ironic imprisonment of quotation immortality starts with publicity. Miles’s book, which weighed in at by bad writing. After all, Ginsberg writing the book. I saw cross-dressers marks. Literary immortality works like any 588 pages, took just five years to is one of the key literary figures of everywhere. Not only where they The argument Garber seeks to other hall of fame; no matter how write—a wink in biographer time— see Survival, page 10 appeared as the crucial plot element see Third Sex, page 2 page 2 the BOOKPRESS March, 1993 Letters to the Editor The Third Sex?

Kahn Responds about these later—but my specific same thing: the way society saves is continued from page 1 Garber’s efforts to do away with this on the Economy proposal here is “we need to use by devoting a portion of its output to make throughout her tremendous emancipatory ideal by renaming it a taxation to encourage private investment in plant, equipment, in­ documentation of the transvestite in “mode of articulation.” To the Editor: investment...tax credits for real frastructure, technology, and Western culture is that the The problem of terminology will Since I know that Professor private investment, R&D, appren­ people—is central to the process of transvestite is not a “third term” or become more apparent after taking a Mahr would not intentionally ticeship and worker training economic growth. “third sex” but the mark of a crisis of look at the way Garber’s book is mischaracterize any argument of programs, and expanded employ­ • But for this. Professor Mahr as­ categorization, a crisis that is structured. In light of the subject mine in order to take exception to it, ment tax credits” (emphasis added). serts, domestic savings are not occurring, however, “elsewhere.” matter, it seems appropriate to I can explain her misrepresentation This was hardly a contention necessary, because "financial mar­ Thus the transvestite does not require include a description of what the of the central concern of my “Chronic that all we need is more savings. kets are global”; ours can always be reassignment to another gender bode was wearing, when I picked it Consumption” (your title) published Nor was there the slightest im­ supplemented with foreign savings. category, for it is the transvestite up in its hardcover edition, towards in your October issue only in terms plication in my article that either She is silent, however, about my that questions not only the binarism the end of last year. Since that time of her anxiety to emphasize the re­ enhanced savings or the private expression of concern at our dra­ of gender but also the very notion of the more affordable paperback spects in which we do indeed market alone—or, as she puts it, matic conversion in the '80s from a unitary identity. The crisis of version has been released, but the disagree.[See Professor Ruth Mahr's "simply manipulating a few policy the world’s leading creditor to the categorization is not occurring in appearance of the cover remains response to Professor Kahn's article levers, among them the savings rate,” world’s leading debtor country— the body of the unchanged. in “Letters,” Feb. 1993.] would "cure the social ills that Pro­ the inevitable counterpart of the transvestite; The jacket The subject of the article, she fessor Kahn lists in his dramatic decline in our domestic the transves­ color is purple, thinks, is whether we can “rely on article—increasing poverty, home­ savings rates (in the form prepon­ tite ’s body trimmed in sal­ the private sector to invest in the lessness and stagnating living derantly of the huge federal budget simply marks mon and mint. economic restructuring of the standards...." deficits)—and the fact that while this crisis. The lettering is US....What can and should be the doing so we increased the proportion S tr a n g e 1 y black andwhite role of government policy in shap­ On the contrary, one of the main of our spending on consumption enough, the and sans-serif, ing this transition?” And my reasons I call for a sharp curtailment rather than on making better provi­ category crisis the title in a conclusion—if she “reads [my] ar­ in the government entitlements ex­ sion for the future, through private I experienced style remini­ ticle correctly”—is that “the task penditures that go to people and governmental investment. as a result of scent of Miami can be entrusted primarily to the regardless of need—constituting • Part of the explanation of Pro­ Garber’s book Beach art deco. private sector...,” with the govern­ something like 40 percent of the fessor Mahr’s distorted sum­ was not the On the baek ment confining its responsibility total federal budget—as well as cut­ marization of my argument seems to distant crisis cover a blurb of essentially to keeping "financial ting military expenditures, is “the be a simple misreading: she at­ to which she praise elicited markets...flush with savings so that huge shortfalls in the other govern­ tributes to me a belief in a “world of referred— the from Henry interest rates may be kept low enough ment expenditures—which we smooth transitions,” effected pre­ crisis of the Louis Gates, to encourage investment.” surely have to make good....” (em­ sumably under a market economy, Western Jr., pronounces To see whether this is a fair phasis added). 1 later summarize because of my assertion that a con­ understanding Vested Inte­ these as "resuming our lamentably version of perhaps 2 percent of our of gender, or rests “a big characterization of my views, it Josephine Baker seems logical to look at the conclud­ delayed progress in combating pov­ total national product from military race, or class. book in every ing section of my article, “the erty, combating homelessness, to civilian uses (in contrast with 40 Rather than encountering a crisis sense.” The front cover features a solutions.” I group them under three taking care of the 35 million people percent after World War II) would which I might come to better 1979 Paul Wunderlich painting of a headings. without medical insurance and the in itself threaten nothing more than understand, through the figure of diaphanous gown with breasts and • The first, to be sure, is that we far larger number that lack cata­ a mild intensification of the problem the transvestite, I was having a crisis also a penis and testicles of its own, ..jiust “reduce our huge collective strophic medical coverage." of stagnation. She interprets that of categorization regarding the an image which seems not so much dissavings via the federal budget” observation as reflecting a belief on transvestite it(?)self. Who, or what, an homage to, as an outright deficit. But the second, which I • I nowhere in my article asserted my part that the “problem of stag­ qualified? plagiarism of an almost identical characterize as “at least as impor­ or said anything that could reason­ nation” itself is likewise readily Garber's account includes, amid painting by RcnC Magritte. The tant,” “is the need to reverse the long ably be interpreted as asserting that solvable and properly left to “the countless other and equally Wunderlich painting is called historical decline in productive achieving higher saving rates (Pro­ market.” An unbiased reading of intriguing examples, the violators II ermap hr o di t e n h e m d : government expenditures on infra­ fessor Mahr does not disagree with my piece will demonstrate that was of sumptuary codes in Elizabethan hermaphrodite-shirt. The front flap structure, technology, and my assertion that ours are by far the the opposite of my meaning: as I England, the transsexual tennis star implies the contents of the book by education” (emphasis added). lowest among all major industrial said in my very first sentence, Richard Raskind/Ren£e Richards, means of a litany of questions — “Is And while the third emphasizes countries) is or would be sufficient the feminization of the male Jew, transvestism a sign of the importance of private invest­ to solve our many problems. What to characterize the economic task the masculinization of Josephine homosexuality?” “Why is Peter Pan ment, nowhere either directly or by I do assert emphatically is that they we face today—or tomorrow—as Baker, straight drag, gay drag, played by a woman?”— while the implication does it give primacy to are anecessary condition, and 1 know converting from a cold war to a Liberace, Divine, Madonna, Elvis, hack flap pictures the author and her the simple governmental remedy of no reputable economist who peacetime economy grossly exag­ and Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken. She dog. A caption states that the author Professor Mahr ascribes tome. Ido would disagree. Or who would gerates the dimensions of that discusses not only transvestism that is pictured in leather, a fact not indeed emphasize the importance of disagree with the proposition that particular problem, and corre­ is performed and transvestism that immediately apparent, and that her increased savings and have no doubt high levels of achieved savings and spondingly minimizes the is chosen as a lifestyle, but even dog, Wagner, is in fur. whatever about the importance of investment—which, as Professor dimensions of what really needs to transvestism that is "latent," I’ve described the book’s jacket low long-term interest rates—more Mahr knows, are by definition the be done (emphasis added). unintended but nevertheless read, before describing the body of its or received, as transvestism. (An argument because that argument is There undoubtedly is a real dif­ obvious example is made of Michael devoted to the subsumption of the the ference of opinion between us on the Jackson, but Garber also cites Mr. question of the human body’s identity extent to which we think it desirable T.) In support of her stated thesis — and authenticity under the more BOOKPRESS or necessary to engage in direct “that the transvestite makes the fundamental problem of its clothing. governmental management of the culture possible" — Garber enlists a Garber argues that dress is not the economy. Professor Mahr thinks body of evidence that is both massive inevitable extension of identity, but Publisher: Jack Goldman we need “a systematic way to man­ and massively entertaining. This that it is constitutive of identity itself. Editorial Staff: Jack Goldman, Joel Ray age trade” and “to use the wealth of example, however, The central issue for Garber, then, is extraordinary purchasing power of threatens to engulf the object of the questionable facticity of the body, Design & Production: Dennis Stein governments at all levels to create inquiry it is supposed to illustrate. and the singular role of clothing as a Advertising: Joel Ray, David DeMello domestic markets for new, environ­ Who, or what, qualifies as a mode of articulation that is not to the Contributing Intern: Kelly Rohrer mentally sound products and transvestite? What does it mean, body as is a figure to its ground, but, technologies." These assertions trip what stability of categorical rather, the reverse of this relation. Distribution: Olli Baker, Jo Kress, lightly off the pen. I suggest your convention is assumed, to say that a Garber’s analysis turns on the Scott Nash, Steve Sena, Ken Mink readers give some attention to the transvestite must “qualify" as such? revelation, “epistomologically way in which policies such as these Taking the whole range of intolerable to many people,” that the Contributors: Milly Acharya, Gunilla Feigenbaum, have in fact worked out in practice— transvestism offered by Garber into body is not the ground, but the figure, Nick Gillespie, Emily Goldman, Barbara Mink, in Central and Eastern Europe, for account, neither intention nor that gender is not represented, but Irving Mink, Kathy Morris, J. Michael Serino, example, or in Argentina, Guinea, reception nor the consistent exists only as an effect of Mark Shechner, Johanna Sheldon, Alan Singer, or India. My personal reaction when employment of any particular representation: “This is the Suzanne Stewart someone advocates that we “sys­ vestimentary clement — bound and subversive secret of transvestism." tematically manage trade” is to put flattened breasts for women, a In order to clarify this secret— which, The entire contents of The BOOKPRESS are copyright ©1993 by The Bookery. my hand over my wallet. That does stuffed brassiere for men — can be in spite of its obvious importance to All rights reserved. The BOOKPRESS will not be liable for typographical error, or not make me a laissez-faire depended upon to denote the the argument, arrives extremely late errors in publication except the cost to advertisers for up to the cost of the space in ideologue. in the text — Garber quotes Roland which the actual error appeared in the first insertion. Questions or comments for presence of transvestism. This The BOOKPRESS should be addressed to The BOOKPRESS, DeWitt Building, particular category crisis eventually Barthes paraphrasing Hegel: “As 215 N. Cayuga Street. Ithaca, NY 14850; telephone: (607) 277-2254. Yours truly, reintroduces the problem of the so- pure sentience, the body cannot Alfred E. Kahn called "third term" in spite of see Third Sex, page 16 page 3 A Bite of the Apple

sidewalk. Gregory ambles in the never seen before (Don't ask what to It was a great place for people­ was paranoid and nasty, the stylists middle. You don’t look up at the do with them. No one is willing to watching. Minuscule Guatemalans would stick you with pins, the cli­ buildings. Only tourists look up. tell you.) Continue up Bowery a few sat next to Italian businessmen with ents would be there to look and try to They look at the skyscrapers. New blocks and turn right for Orchard Rolex watches. Turhaned Sikhs and get a date, and the atmosphere was Yorkers look waist-high at the on­ Street and the Jewish section, full of Polish grandmothers. The thrill wore one of rapacious cupidity. coming fellow pedestrians. You discount stores and street vendors. off after a few hours, giving way to Then there were catalogues, and don't look people in the eyes. Only Bargain if you buy something. If stupefying boredom and the ensu­ Sears, Roebuck was king. If they tourists look people in the eyes. you want knishes like your bubba ing rage that is bom from humilation. booked you once, they’d book you When you cross the street you don't made them you can find them here, The number of window-tellers again. As a Sears, Roebuck model, Gunilla Feigenbaum just check the direction the traffic is and the service is something to be shrank to three as they left for lunch your rent was secure that year. Their coming from. That's the least of remembered. They treat you like and the lines crawled to a virtual demands were reasonable: you show New York, March 1993 your worries. You check the other you’re uncle Izzie who deserted the halt. Children, hungry and thirsty, up on time with your make-up on Out-of-town visitors, from as direction, which is where the mes­ family and will never be forgiven. fussed and cried. People got mean and your eyelashes in place, bring­ far away as Hurope or as close as sengers on bikes will come from. Or turn left and experience what’s and started fighting over seals. Af­ ing your wardrobe of wigs (to change I loboken, always comment on the The bikers in New York don’t have left of Little Italy. Chinatown has ter three and a half hours my number your appearance from one shot to peculiar flavor of New York City. to observe traffic rules. They can grown to take over most of it but you was called, a city worker who had another.) There were no make-up They wax poetic about the energy, and do run red lights. They exceed can still find some terrific salami gotten her diploma in non-personal artists or hairstylists to torture you. unique to this city, ever present, day the 30-miles-an-hour speed limit. and get a decent cup of espresso and rudeness looked over my papers, It was assumed that a girl knew how and night, the engine of mankind They also bike on the sidewalks, some pre-New-Age pastry. signed them, and sent me to another to comb her own ponytail. Motherly humming away. Living here, 1 agree weaving through the pedestrians, Continue north on Broadway line for fingerprinting. Iliis one had women would steam-press your of course, soaking up the comments thus avoiding serious injury. In a and west on Broome, then zig-zag some 300 people and you had to polyester pantsuit (elastic waistband, and interpreting them as flattering, confrontation between a pedestrian Spring Street and Prince Street. stand in it. No number, no sitting, double-breasted styling with fash­ the way a loving parent listens for an and a bike, the bike will win Walk­ There are lots of art galleries and fun one city official inking and printing. ionable safari pockets, sixteen colors, occasional kind word about a child ing New Yorkers never stop at a red stores with unusual objects and By now, no one was amused and the sizes 6-18, wash and dry.) They’d everyone knows is hell on wheels. light. They don’t cross against the clothing. People wear interesting line was in a riotous mood, trading dress you, pin the back, and stuff a Kverything here does seem to red cither—the trick is to always post-modem clothes and hair. Have insults with guards and commiserat­ ton of tissue paper in the front. Sears, move faster. All business is con­ cross in the direction of the green. a bite to eat in Manhattan Bistro on ing about the US. Roebuck hated creases of any kind. ducted with singular expedience (and We pride ourselves by being able to Spring Street. Now cross Houston accompanying rudeness). It takes plot a route dial never forces one to Street into Greenwich Village. some getting used to. I have a friend come to a halt. Plotting routes is a You'll have seen lots of baby who recently moved back l ast alter very New York thing to do. When carriages. taking a 20-year nap in California. Gregory gets into a cab the conver­ Watching him adjust is like watch­ sation goes something like this: V ing a sci-fi movie about a man who Gregory: Where are you from? got stuck in outer space for half his Cabby: I come de Bangladesh. Right below Chinatown is City life. It begs for both pity and con­ Gregory: I've never been Utere Is I (all, where many New Yorkers have tempt. There are probably tilings he it nice? some of their most harrowing expe­ knows how to do, which 1 don't, like Cabby: Is beautiful. Very poor riences. It’s where you go to have how to have a meaningful conver­ Gregory: Ah yes, poor. Is that why your driver's license renewed, get a sation that starts with “What's your you came here? To make money? marriage license, or have an alien sign?"-or which fork you use when Cabby: Money, yes. But is no easy. card issued or replaced. When 1 was you cat fish served with mango sauce I hardly make de money de feed de given my card 27 years ago it was (is it (lie dessert or the main course?), dog. called a Green Card, but now it is no but living skills aren't fixed—they Gregory: Oh wow! You have a dog! longer green and that association of are location-determined and it seems St) do 1! I have a German shepherd “green" and “money" isn't appro­ dial my friend Gregory lacks the named Oscar! What kind of dog do priate (if it ever was). New most fundamental proficiency. you have? immigration laws have it that all the Take die seemingly simple activ­ Cabby: I don't know de kind. My old cards must be replaced, so we, ity of walking. At least Gregory neighbor give de me de feed one who never thought we'd have to go lived in the San Francisco area, so he week, then he never come back. through the horror of dealing with I was done at 4 p.m. Hie whole including natural body creases, so does walk, unlike LA acquaintances Where you want de go, sir? IJS Immigration and Naturalization day, and a total of maybe seven you were made to look completely whose Nikes have never kissed a I get in, I say: “Church and White, again, find ourselves once more in minutes spent with someone actu­ smooth. You’d be warned not to sit pavement. New Yorkers, of course, turn right, then right again, go down the toils of the bureaucracy. 1 might ally doing something. down under any circumstances—”1 all walk, hence the location-specific the drive to 15th Street, exit and get have resisted, but I wouldn't want to hope you’ve already been to the fashion of on again im- ruin some person's greatest ambi­ bathroom, dearie"— and then ush­ r u nn in g m ed i a te ly tion, which I would, should I take it ered into the studio where the shoes as an because of in my head to clean that person’s I grieve the death of the Sears, photographer waited with his appropriate construction house someday, and that person later Roebuck catalogue. When I got my Hasselblad. Ollier photographers accessory to right there, was appointed to a Cabinet position Green Card, I was sponsored by used 35-millimeter cameras, and you a B rooks then go down and called to account before a Sen­ Hileen Ford who signed me up as a had to shimmy in a yoga position Brothers suit to Houston, ate committee of untarnished white fashion model because I sported the while they used up two rolls of film or a mink exit, go to men whose houses are cleaned by flat-chested, emaciated look that was on a single outfit. At Sears you coat. New Broad way, elves. considered the height of female struck one of die three accepted Yorkers walk turn right, go Hence 1 found myself, in the cliarm in the mid sixties. 1 under­ poses, the lights were adjusted, you fast and to s i ra i gh t blinding light of a too-early morn­ stand the catalogue is an American were told to wet your lips and smile, their right of down, cross ing, standing in a long line to go institution, an icon from pre-shop­ then “drop tire left hand, smile again, the sidewalk, like traffic. (Some­ Canal, White is two blocks below, through a metal detector, the first of ping mall days when it was die only thank you” for a second shot, and times the side changes, because of turn right and go one block.” many long lines. Once I had en­ way you could get a piano in Mon­ then you were done. ( 'hange clothes some snafu like construction or a Cabby: Where you want de go, tered, I then stood on another line to tana. I've never lived and lacked and hair, do die next shot. If your corpse, but when it does, everyone miss? receive a tag with the number 424. piano in any of the rectangular States, booking ran past lunch diey gave f smoothly adjusts widi no loss of V Looking for a place to sij and wait, I but 1 think fondly of Sears, Roebuck, you a tuna salad sandwich and a speed.) New Yorkers don't walk noticed that the number being served, which was a haven for models like Pepsi. They paid the full $60 an fast because they are in a hurry—not There are no baby carriages or as displayed on a lit board, was 161. me. hour, and it was nice to model sorne- all of them are, aldiough all claim children on midtown sidewalks. There were some 500 people in the The hourly rate for a Ford model diing that could be worn to Wally’s that they are. You don’t admit to They don’t move fast enough. 1 room and more were pouring in. All back then was $60 an hour, which Waffiehouse in Boise, Idaho, for having time on your hands in diis don't know how toddlers are trans­ languages were spoken, except was a princely sum. The problem Sunday brunch instead of vinyl hot city anymore Uian you admit to lik­ ported from one part of the city to Hnglish. A sign proclaimed "No was, you didn’ l always work, and if pants with Saran Wrap on top which ing ketchup in Paris. You walk fast another. Are they always in cabs? Smoking. No Hating or Drinking” in you worked for magazines, they paid surely no one could wear anytime, because everyone else does and to Are they carried in Bloomingdale linglish, French, Greek, Spanlsli, and only $15 or $20 an hour because it anyplace, in any charted universe, do otherwise would be to obstruct shopping bags? Portuguese. Ten window tellers were was considered a boost to a model’s with the one possible exception of traffic. I have long suspected dial If you want to see baby car­ hard at work. Now and then one of career to appear on the editorial New York City. the pace is set by the first person riages, you have to go to other parts them would say through a loud­ pages. And they'd get creative and who walks down 5di Avenue in die of Manhattan. My favorite walk speaker, "Anyone here speaking do awful things to you, like put green morning. You walk fast even if you when I'm in the mood for babies is Russian and Hnglish?” “Anyone paint on your lips and live hamsters "A Bite o f the Apple ” is a regular don’t know where you’re going. If from Chinatown to Greenwich Vil­ here speaking Creole and Hnglish?" in your hair. You were a canvas to column by our nol-so-far-flung you want to hesitate, you go home lage. Take a cab to Mott Street and “Anyone here speaking Indian and dieir abstract expressionism. Gen­ correspondent and illustrator and do it. You don't ever do it Canal Street and stroll around for a Hnglish?” eral advertisement bookings were Gunilla Feigenhaum who lives in ambling in the middle of the while. Buy some vegetables you've Indiat ??? also problematic because everyone New York City. page 4 the BOOKPRESS March, 1993

Off Campus Canal Walking King of the Once Wild Frontier / believe in stream o f conscious­ Robert Schichler ness, in free verse, in free love. I At The Bookery Spillway Press, 120 pp„ $8.95 believe in Walt Disney, the Great Grandfather Almighty, maker of William Lonberger heaven and earth: and in his son, The Bookery Winter/Spring lecture series continues Sundays at 4 p.m. Jiminy...

in the new lecture space in Bookery II. Though ii begins with a serial Though the king’s world is in murder. King of the Once Wild chaos and the fantastic episodes flash Frontier is not a murder mystery. before the reader like a cartoon on March 14 Though it deals with the Krie Canal, fast forward, Schichler is in total it is not a study of local history. control. He knows exactly what he Gail Holst-Warhaft Though it takes place in the early wants to accomplish. Each para­ will give a talk entitled "The Poisoned 1970s and includes television trivia graph presents vivid images: Omelette: Women's Laments and from the ’50s and ’60s, it is not a Greek Tragedies" concerning why book of nostalgia. It is difficult to But listen: crickets—thousands put a genre handle onto Robert upon thousands of them, igniting Greek women's laments were banned Schichler’s work, for King of the sparks with the friction of their in antiquity. Her just-published book Once Wild Frontier: Reflections of wings—lights, flashes, swirling is Dangerous Voices: Women's a Canal Walker is a phantasntagori- ashes—the air is alive! Laments and Greek Literature. Holst- cal excursion along the towpath of Warhaft is a lecturer in classics and the Erie (’anal and the mind of the Like Blake, Schichler's influ­ comparative literature at Cornell author. It is a concoction of truth ence is the “unlimited territories of University. and fantasy whose characters include the imagination.” And through these Jiminy Crickey, Smokey the Bear, territories, we accompany the king Bucky Beaver, a deformed elk, ob­ on his rounds as he highlights the April 4 stinate school boys, a toad-riding absurdities of media authority, reli­ fly, lunatic entertainers in various gion, nature, and our own inflated Sandra Bern guises, and the canal walker who concepts of ourselves. would be king of this menagerie. professor of psychology and Now l am a man o f reflections women's studies at Cornell, will A teen-age girl in red shorts is and as I sit here at the center o f my talk about our culture's staring down where / sit, a royal universe, many snares avail them­ assumptions concerning sex and clown in a coonskin crown, on a selves to my outward gaze. I see gender and how they shape stone throne at the water’s edge. many men caught up in webs o f self- society, which is also the subject “ What are you writing ?" she delusion... of Bern's new book, entitled The repeats. Lenses of Gender: Transforming "...just recording a few rants King is an effective allegory of the Debate on Sexual Inequality. and ravings of an old king, that’s the conflicting dualities of the left all. ’’ side/right side brain. Coming to "Are you a king?" she asks in terms with these dualities within the wide-eyed astonishment. reflective dimensions of the meta­ " Yes, that I am. your ladyship, phoric environment provided by the April 18 that / am." canal is the major source of the novel’s conflict, which climaxes The duties of a canal walker are with an artful debate between the Dan McCall to walk aktng an assigned section of coonskin-cnowned canal walker and professor of English at Cornell, will the canal during the summer and a tormenting court jester. As a result, read from his soon-to-be-published watch for leaks. This novel follows the enlightened king comes to the n o v e l Messenger Bird, w h ic h the walker “king” as he journeys understanding that, in order to sur­ concerns two years in the life of a along his designated realm of the vive, he must cease lamenting about young surgeon assigned by the Public waterway and chronicles his the dualities of existence and plunge Health Service to a 25-bed hospital thoughts and experiences. Reality himself into its fullness. on a Native American reservation in and reflection fuse in the story so that the worlds of television, actu­ I look down. At the same time, the Southwest. ality, and imagination blend together a frightened—yet inquisitive—face into the surreal kingdom of the out­ stares upward at mine.Jjump... And cast canal walker and a sort of there you are, in the midst o f it all, amusement park designed by Dali. leaping out of those depths as / plunge ever downward from these May 2 ...reflections reflect unreality in heights. Fll meet you half way... their deception of human percep­ The mirror shatters...you and I are Deborah Tall tion, existing in the eyes of a merging: our brains bubbling, our particular beholder... bloods boiling in union, mingling in will read from and talk about utter confusion. We’ve become One! her just-published book Divided into three parts and e n title d From Where We Stand: experimental in nature, the narra­ A native of Rochester, Schichler Recovering a Sense of Place. tion in King shifts from second received his B.A. and M.A. in Lit­ Tall is a poet and non-fiction person in the opening section where erature from SIJNY at (ieneseo and writer and a professor of the reader finds himself playing the attended SUNY at Binghamton, English at Hobart and William role of canal walker, to third person earning his doctorate in Old English. Smith Colleges in Geneva, New in the middle, and concludes in first A canal walker once himself, the York. person. In each part, the king must author is presently a professor of walk along the canal’s towpath Old English at Arkansas State Uni­ which is a sort of tightrope separat­ versity. A noted upstate ing the real world of his wild frontier photographer, Schichler's photo­ on one side and the reflective world graphs of the canal illustrate this of the waterway on the other. It is noveL along this Spcncerport to Brockport King o f the Once Wild Frontier towpath that most of the novel’s is published by Spillway Press, a The Bookery action takes place. Rochester-based writers’ coopera­ Though humorous on the sur­ tive publishing house focusing on face, King is not just light reading. writers from the canal region. DeWitt Building, 215 North Cayuga St., Ithaca Replete with references to classical literature, philosophy, Christianity, local history, TV trivia, and my­ For more information call (607) 273 - 5055 thology, King also never takes itself too seriously, reminding one ofVonnegut's caustic satire of and William Lonberger is a writer liv­ the absurdity of Tom Robbins. ing in Kenmore. NY. )( page 5 Plugged-in Poetry at State of the Art

Lisa Neville get your work across because you’re writing, I try to craft the piece to ( Breton’s entire attitude toward got to do something about it. reading over the clack of pool balls make it readable, but that's different women and toward reason itself is to LN: That’s why I’m happy to have Kurt Cline, a poet and performance in the background, the clink of than writing for a particular audi­ be questioned. He claims the power this open reading. I’ve been to many artist from San Francisco, Califor­ glasses, people throwing beer bot­ ence. A poem should serve the of non-logic but he always uses open readings and I know that you nia, is currently curator of the tles across the room, an< oon. inis function of expanding conscious­ logical structures at least in his have to sit through a lot of work that reading series at State of the Art is a very mellow place to read. ness, opening a window to an theoretical writings. Nevertheless, doesn’t interest you, that you don’t Gallery in downtown Ithaca. He is LN: Are you going to perform at alternative perception of the world. I still think it was an important project necessarily admire or get much out the author of three hooks o f poetry, this series? The reader’s relationship to the world and one that is echoed today by of, but then you will find work that among them Brave Words for A KC: I will be performing in a multi- should be changed because the lan­ poets seeking to alter our relation­ you need to hear. Deadman (e.g.) and Strange Occur­ media presentation in April with a guage the poet has used forces one to ship to reality by altering our KC: That’s one of the reasons I rences (SFSU Press). He teaches /isual artist, originally from inhabit another reality. Poetry should relationship to language It’s true favor having open readings. There writing at SUNY Cortland and Ithaca Syracuse, who now lives in Ithaca, consistently blow your mind. that in a fundamental way we are our is a sense of the unexpected, that College. Robin Mizener. We’ll be presenting LN: With the impending threat of perceptions and the interplay be­ anything might happen. I really a combination of visual art, per­ began writing because of open read­ LN: Why did you start the State of formance, and poetry ings. 1 started writing for the public the Art reading series? LN: And go-go dancing? at the International Cafe in Berkeley KC: Well, 1 moved to Ithaca about KC: And go-go dancing. in the mid-’70s at an open reading two years ago from San Francisco, LN: You come out of and have been series run by a man named Paladin, and I felt something lacking here, influenced by a melange of different who was my first anti-mentor. Al­ especially as regards poetry, the schools, the street poets, the surreal­ though he wrote beautiful and written word. Although there were ists, the Beats, who were a big sometimes quite elegant verse, he a few occasional readings, there was influence in the Bay area, and of was a biker and a strong individual no single series where people could course the language poets, particu­ who always had a weapon on his see and hear—on a regular basis— larly at San Francisco Stale. I’m person, and the way he ran the po­ poets and writers who were living interested in how you synthesize all etry readings was consistent with and working in the ktcal community. these different elements in your own his personality. For instance, in an LN: Is this only a poetry reading work and how these different schools open reading, the emcee’s job is to then? of poetry speak to each other. introduce the readers in the order in KC: No, not at all. For instance, in KC: Hie poetry scene today is very which they appear on the sign-up January we featured Fred Wilcox diverse. Though there are move­ list, but Paladin didn’t do that. He who is a novelist and a nonfiction ments of sorts I don’t think there are pretty much picked names that he writer. Formerly we've had writers any singular movements that have wanted to hear first, then he would such as Jon Frankcl who are prose total sway over the art. 1 come from let the otlter people read. Also, if he writers as well as poets. We’ve also a background, as you mentioned, of didn't like what you were reading, had musicians—Kathy Ziegler, a Beat poets, street poetry, surreal­ he’d just pull the plug tin the mike in popular local musician, was also ism, and the language poets—these the middle of your poem, and if you featured in January. We've Iwd poets are all forms of poetry that clutllenge didn't like it, you had him to deal who are giving their first public the status quo. There are many poets with. This was extremely annoying reading ever, as well as professional, who do this. There are oilier poets, to me at the time, but, still, it taught extremely accomplished poets, such such as new formalists—a kind of me a lot about egolessness. Now 1 as Ted Pearson My idea was to neo-conservative form of poetry— don’t feel that anybody can do any­ have a kind of broad-spectrum and the more traditional forms of thing to me in terms of my writing, reading where really anyone who nature poetry that 1 don’t see as a n y displeasure th a t a n yo n e in ig h i lives and works in the Ithaca area really challenging anything. The put out can’t really undermine me. would have an opportunity to read mainstream attempts to be an arbiter LN: So you had to give up your ego Photograph: Rebecca Berg or perform, if not as a feature, then of taste, but acluallv accomplishes a attachment to vour work? as part of the open reading. sort of tired rehashing of old forms Kurt C line KC: Either that or start packing a LN: The open reading is important? which ends up imprisoning the im­ the new world order, the secret gov- tween our mental activity and our pistol. Before I’d ever read any­ KC: Absolutely. Ihere is an open agination. ernment, nuclear war, mass perceptions determines our reality, thing, I was going to these readings reading following each featured LN: So what do you ask of a poem? starvation, the rise of the national and, in a fundamental way, who we and listening and I'd see Paladin on performance and anyone who de­ What should p

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continued from page I the stone snake means, no way. This would they be different front Euro­ one of the reviewers poked fun at the dme, an act in present time and past That’s the whole point of art.” is just what I did as a novelist.” peans to that extent? It always notion that you can have riots, fires, time, and it’s also her working with Almanac of the Dead is broad When asked if the giant snake amazes me that, after all the vio­ earthquakes, all these things at once, the natural feature of that place. In and ambitious in its scope; over 700 can be linked to the return of the lence Europeans have used against but then Southern California had the Pueblo oral tradition, that’s how pages long, it covers half a millenium Aztec plumed serpent Quetzalcoatl, Native people, that anyone would twin earthquakes, riots, and the big important landscape or place is. and details the lives of more than 70 Silko said that it would be wrong to be surprised if the tables were turned. Oakland fire. The reviewers poked These oral narratives are what I was characters. About the writing of the assume that there is “only one That just might happen, but that’s fun at the notion that somehow trained on, what I heard growing up, novel, Silko says, “I locked myself Quetzalcoatl in any one place”; not Indian behavior; that’s human natural disasters could help bring and unconsciously tiiat’s what I’ve up four to five hours a day, five days equally erroneous is the assumption behavior, and that's why all op­ down the US government, but when done.” a week for six years. Altogether I that when the plumed serpent ap­ pressors, whatever color they are, Hurricane Andrew hit Florida be­ Silko is currently working on worked for ten years making sure pears in the novel, it is always worry so much. Look at the mixed- fore they had even finished repairing Sacred Water, which will feature a that the words are the way that I “operating along Aztec narrative blood character, Menardo, with his the damage in South Carolina from collection of personal narratives and wanted them there on the page.” lines.” Silko says that “the giant bulletproof vest; you know that’s Hurricane Hugo, the government photographs taken from her experi­ In form and tone, Almanac o f snake belongs to all of the tribes in all about projecting the bad things began to see what natural forces ences in die Southwest and in Alaska. the Dead was inspired by remnants the Americas, and in Africa too” (in you’ve done on your victims. But could do to a country." When asked about of old Aztec and Mayan almanacs. West Africa, the snake is known as I don't want to pull punches and When asked how the natural In an interview with Hugene Marino Damballah). She also makes a dis­ say, oh yes, you can be sure that all landscape functions in her fic­ of The Times Union, Silko says, “The tinction between Middle Eastern of the Native American people who tion, Silko replied: "It’s old Mayan almanacs were con­ religions, like Judaism and Christi­ want to retake the land are going to pretty central in the structed of narrative, and that’s why anity, that fear the snake and those do it in the most pure and nonvio­ Pueblo cosmol­ I thought, aha, you could have a that revere it; she says that “snake­ lent magical way. I'm not going to ogy, and that’s novel that was an almanac, because worshipping cultures are often promise that. What I try to do is what most the old almanacs were many differ­ matriarchal, they’re very earth-ori­ show. I don't align myself with any influ­ the signifi­ ent narratives.” ented. The religions that oppose one character. enced cance of the title, she The central image that emerges snakes tend to be negative toward “I do try to keep them mostly in m e . responded: "Water's always at the end of the novel, a thirty-foot women and toward the earth.” a position where they can say, well, From been precious and dear, especially sandstone snake that appears near a Almanac of the Dead chronicles when someone is trying to kill you, the in the southwest where I grew up. I uranium mine, is based on the 1980 the violent demise of materialistic, you are allowed self-defense. And was bom in 1948, and in the ’50s and appearance of such a snake at I .aguna individualistic, and destructive in some way that’s scary. But early ’60s. we saw this all- Ameri­ Ihjeblo. Silko says she now realizes Anglo-1 iuropean culture and antici­ someone is trying to kill us; hasn’t can attitude of Uiere’s no tomorrow, that the snake unconsciously influ­ pates the reclamation of the Americas anyone noticed? Terrible things time and even a scorn of Native Ameri­ enced her in the whole novel; she by Native peoples. With the excep­ have been done. The earth is I was cans for our horror at how die water has even done a mural inspired by tion of Sterling, however, the Native being killed. But I don’t agree an in­ and the land were getting used up. the snake on the outside of her Stone characters in the novel also partici­ with all of the things that fant, I Then, widiin a few years, to see how Avenue studio. pate in destructive rituals and violent my characters was raised quickly the Native American people “Its immediate message is to means of obtaining by people were proven right....This is a very look south in the direction of com­ power who regarded fragile kind of land dial wc'a* on. A ing,” Silko says of the snake. “But, the earth, weather, lot of it is desert and semi-desert.” of course, this is my interpretation animals, and plants “Water mediates between life of the stone snake as a novelist. as all related. In west­ and death. Human beings cannot I’m not a Pueblo holy per­ ern European culture, people live long without water. It’s one of son, so I have no idea of try to objectify nature, make it the most elemental of all things. the whole message, separate from themselves; but I grew We’re mostly water ourselves, and and in a way it do at all.” up with people who felt themselves we live in an atmosphere diat’s al­ doesn’t matter. I and According to Silko, "Anyone totally integrated with nature, so we most water-like, and as time goes by mean I know the vengeance. 1 asked who would, at this point in the late were part of the landscape. Of that doesn't change. rumor that went Silko if she felt that this un­ 20th century, try to write a novel in course the definition of land­ “Literature and the arts will al­ around, but dermined the novel's critique of which the reader is certain that the scape'—it comes into the English ways be important because diey are the fact such behavior and the efforts of the way is morally clear and that die language fairly late—implies some­ elemental themselves, because dicrc Native people to reclaim the land, or characters arc morally clear—that one standing outside or away from. are these fixed points in human ex­ that if it was, perhaps, a reaction of self- is a'fairy tale, a repression and de­ That word is sort of meaningless in perience, whether it’s widi water or t h is defense to the injustices suffered by nial of how complex the human the Pueblo culture. It goes without air or in human relationships. There rumor the Native peoples. psyche is. What a complex situa­ saying dial we are natural beings; are these elements dial don’t change, was public “Well, I do think that that’s tion we’re in now with the earth.” we’re natural forces, as much as the or change slowly, and it's the slow­ tells you right away what the characters would argue. I One of Silko’s notions in Al­ coyotes, or the plants, or the trees. ness of the change dial makes art that it’s not the true interpreta­ am the Almanac maker, and so I want manac of the Dead is that "natural We don’t separate ourselves; we’re possible." tion. The rumor was that the snake that kind of tension to exist even forces could push the United States no better and we’re no worse, if you had won. Of course, we saw right among the Native American charac­ further in the direction of a big eco­ have that kind of background, yes, away the snake didn’t win. Your ters, because I am trying to be morally nomic collapse.” Alter some of the place and the story are really one. world uranium prices fell, the mine realistic. As I try to suggest with my fierce storms and natural disasters “For example, in the title story closed, and the mountain that some references to Montezuma the Sor­ lately, Silko feels “that indeed the in Storyteller, when die woman who people thought the snake was going cerer, there is a strong possibility for earth is starting to let human beings takes on the duties of storyteller runs to devour, the mountain's still there. violence and negative behavior on know that they have crossed over out on the ice and makes the trading D m Burlingame is a graduate stu­ But I would never want to say, oh, the part of Native American people, some lines. When Almanac of the post guy fall through, that’s an act of dent at the University o f Rochester. this is what the people at laguna say because they are human beings. Why Dead came out in November, 1991, vengeance dial works back through Illustration: Emily Goldman

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Indeed, its presence computer power; in 1987, they com­ Continuum, 315 pp., $24.95 sequel, The Other Glass Teat), and as fluff, or holding a “Don't Open a and properties defined the time. But manded less than 1 percent. By Telegarbage have all tried their best Book Day. ” now its time is over. The television 1987, there were 80 million per­ Life After Television to kick in the small screen, and over age is giving way to the much richer, sonal computers in the world—half George Gilder the years the assumption has been In “delivering the carefully interactive technologies of the com­ of them in the US—and their collec­ Whittle Direct Books, 86 pp. set in concrete that watchers of the considered opinion of a professional puter age.” tive computing power dwarfed the reprinted by W.W. Norton, “idiot box" are idiots themselves. TV viewer,” Biancuili pushes the For Gilder, a TV set is literally total of large computers.” 126 pp., paper $11.95 As Neil Postman put it in his concept of "teleliteracy” as "some­ an “idiot box,” since the "nature of A rosy scenario to be sure, but 1985 anti-TV jeremiad, Amusing thing to be embraced, not de­ both the vacuum tube and tire radio­ what will a post-TV society look Textual Poachers: Television Fans Ourselves to Death, “The result of nounced... From Sesame Street to 60 frequency spectrum” dictated tliat like? Ihrough the use of fiber-optics & Participatory Culture all tills is tliat Americans are the best Minutes, from the PBS documen­ “television would be a top-down and ever more efficient microchips, I lenry Jenkins entertained and quite likely the least tary The Civil War to die IV over­ system...a few broadcast centers the "balance of power between the Routledge, 343 pp., paper $14.95 well-informed people in the Western age of the Gulf War, television is too would originate programs for mil­ distributors and creators of culture” World." Although Postman didn’t important and pervasive to be dis­ lions of passive receivers, or dumb will be radically changed, "forever Technoculture blame all the problems in America missed as a crass medium." terminals"’ break! ing] the broadcast bottleneck.” ('onstance Penley and Andrew Ross, on TV, he did come fairly close. Biancuili provides the reader In place of such a “totalitarian Because consumers will get to call editors “The language of radio newscasts with a historical overview of televi­ medium," Gilder envisions a grand their own shots, they will get what University of Minnesota Press, has become, under the influence of sion, from the 1923 “broadcast" by future for “the lelecomputer." Where they want (and only tliat), when they 327 pp., paper $15.95 television,increasingly de- C. F. Jenkins of his “waving fingers," TV exalts mass culture, the want it. Fntertainment programs, contcxtualized and discontinuous, to demonstrations at the 1939 lelecomputer “enhance!s] individu­ news services and information net­ Technopoly so that the possibility of anyone's World's Fair and the establishment alism.” "Instead of a master-slave works will all be tailored by the Neil Postman knowing about the world, as against of the major networks in the late architecture, the lelecomputer will consumer. Alfred A. Knopf, 222 pp., $21.00 merely knowing o f it is effectively 1940s, to die developments of the liave an interactive architecture in Gilder, of course, sees such a blocked." current day. I Ie also does a fair job which every receiver can function shift as not only beneficial to indi­ Mark Crispin Miller, author of of chronicling the “mass contempt” as a processor and transmitter of vidualism but necessary to keep the Nick Gillespie Boxed In: The Culture o f TV (1988), IV has always inspired (“I can only video images and other information ” entrepreneurial spirit alive, and such, extended Postman's argument and imagine very stupid people looking Gone will be the "severe bottle­ an unproblematic approach to both ecently, prior to having the slopped a good deal of blame on the at it," wrote II.L. Mencken in 1947) necks” of information and creativity is hardly surprising coming from the students in my composition victims. “Those who liave grown up and contextualizing those critiques caused by IV . man who, in 1980, authored the sup- class read a few essays a- watching television are not because in relation to die ones faced by other Life After Television, originally ply-side manifesto Wealth and R of all that gaping, now automati­ mass media such as comic books, bout television shows, 1 asked off­ published in 1990 as part of the Poverty. handedly if anyone knew when TV cally adept at visual interpretation radio, and rock music. Whittle Direct Books “Larger 'Ihe smell of something slightly ' vas invented, or who had invented That spectalorial experience' is Tele literacy also stresses the Agenda Scries” and reissued by W. rotten lingers in the air, though, es­ it. Nobody had any idea, and I passive, mesmeric, undiscrimi- critical response of IV viewers, and W. Norton this past year, is a follow­ pecially when the discussion turns realized that my own hazy recollec­ nating, and therefore not conducive does a lot to dispel glib dismissals of up to Gilder’s Microcosm (1989), to the new forms of narrowcast en­ tion of a Philo Farnsworth postage to the refinement of the critical fac­ them. Still, the book ultimately which Uxiked at the historical de­ tertainment programming. Consider stamp hardly represented substan­ ulties." But Miller doesn't let the suffers from redundancy and a velopment and tire technological the puniness of the payoff: tial knowledge. producers off easy, either. "livery- limitation of scope. How many times promise of the microchip and com­ Given that television has be­ body watches (TV|, but no one re- do we need to be reminded that TV puter industries and mapped out the Tired or watching TV? With artfid come massively dominant so ally likes it... Its only champions are has produced The Civil War, Pen­ advantages of microcomputers. programming o f telecomputers, you quickly, it's odd how little we really its own executives, the advertisers nies From Heaven, Duel, Cheers, Gilder sees a world of possibility could spend a day interacting on the know about it (quick: who's who exploit it, and a compromised M*A*S*H. The execution of Pri­ and hope, where i screen with Henry Kissinger, Kim Jenkins ’ John 1 jOgic Baird?). It might network of academic boosters... IV vate Slovik. and Trilogy of Terror ? Basinger, or Billy Graham. .. You as well liave dropped from the skies, has no spontaneous defenders, be­ However, in discussing Robert The force of the microelectronics could watch your child play baseball a gift (or curse) from the gods. Fa­ cause there is almost nothing in it to Thompson's college courses on TV, wit blow apart all the monopolies, at a high school across the county, miliar statistics indicate the domi­ defend." Biancuili introduces a more inter­ hierarchies, pyramids, and view the Super Bowl from any point nance of TV: 98*% of households esting picture. powergrids of established industrial in the stadium that you choose, or own at least one set, 65% have more society. It will undermine all totali­ soar above the basket with Michael titan one, and 60% subscribe to cable espite the g«xKl deal dun's “English professors used to be tarian regimes. Police states cannot Jordan. You could fly an airplane (typically receiving between 30 to true in Postman's and what IV professors are now," endure under the advance of the over the Alps or climb Mount Eve­ 60 channels). Thirty-five million Miller's critiques, their Thompson says of those avant-garde computer because it increases the rest—all on a powerful high-resolu­ households watch their VCRs dur­ inexactD overstatements liave con­ teachers who first brought Fitzgerald powers o f the people far faster than tion display. ing prime time every week, and the structed a straw man, and a problem and Hemingway into their literature the powers of surveillance. All hi­ typical viewer watches about 20 with straw men is tliat they tend to courses. "Later, film went through erarchies will tend to become To be fair. Gilder sees such benefits hours of TV per week. (Perhaps to go up in smoke. In Tele literacy, the same problems. There have al­ “heterarchies ”—systems in which as secondary. Primarily, he sees the make up lor what they missed in a “Baby Boomcr-tumcd-TV-critic” ways been complaints about making each individual rules his own do­ lelecomputer as the means of childhood without TV, people over David Biancuili wants to light the room for the next tier of popular main. In contrast to a hierarchy rcinvigoraling those institutions the age of 55 average 26 hours a match. "I'm more Ilian willing to be enterlamnutnL " ruled from the top, a heterarchy is a (“family, religion, education, and week.) a ‘spontaneous defender' of televi­ society o f equals under the law. the arts”) “that preserve and trans­ Despite Marshall McLuhan, sion," writes Biancuili: o George Gilder, the ques­ mit civilization to new generations.” whose ghost hovers over IV like a tion of TV's relevance may This power shift, according to Gilder seems to understand tliat guardian angel, the lube has been The best o f TV is very good indeed, be moot. If he is correct, we Gilder, is already underway. In 1977, technology is not some magic rocket the target of a number of especially uiul . the idea of indiscriminately T should begin to prepare for life after he notes, “large computers costing see Hyperspace, page 11

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recoup as best I can the Eng- by heart, and saw that one of his Dostoevskian than Vcgas-ian, not ours, and still do). Back to my books ing.’ Consider.”)? Who was I to land of December, 1948, when notions—that of at least being dif- even sure that what I was planking I went, a chastened performing ani- opine on logic, expert tliat I was in peace was new and everything ferent—I must not only take to heart down on the light or the dark blue mal, sacrificing Rousseau to muddle, especially after grappling Istill scarce. Everyone you met was a but, during my candidate week, en-was valid currency at all, but giddily Words-worth, Rabelais to Swift, my with Bertrand Russell’s The Prob­ survivor, but by then we took the act with choreographic zeal. It was conscious of tempting the fates innermost mind haunted by that lems o f Philosophy, in which all reprieve for granted, and I, at any like being obliged, within the con- without getting into debt. The whole heady sample of the promised land, chairs became unreal fascii of rate, resumed an old pastime, fines of those much-climbcd-ovcr test was a lottery, even the winner Sidney Sussex College, wliere Oliver qualities? As for the unexamined watching the grand opening of the ancient college walls, to soar beyond uncertain of being allocated to the Cromwell had been. I yearned dis- life, I knew only, from recent bitter season of the common cold, whose the human race, yet without going college of his preference, since many mally for the flyblown quiet of its ordeals, tliat it might actually be an very name seemed to imply a snob- too high. If one achieved excessive colleges examined jointly and then coal-dusty rooms (even a candidate unmitigated joy (no more three-hour bish dismissal. A Luftwaffe of solar apogee, he would seem better competed among themselves, over had “rooms” and not just a room), essays) and that, in a less shallow viruses blitzed us that winter, no less suited to a rest clinic in the provinces the port and walnuts, for the cream, the atmospheric seethe of the fire in sense, although the un-examined life than the Heinkels and buzz-bombs than to a court near Cam or an Ox- A solider student than I would the grate, the kettle that boiled might not be worth having, the ex­ of the war, and had to be likewise ford quad, or, at worst, a have worried about being unable to thereon like an hydraulic ally, the amined one might not be worth endured. Life went on. How could it teacher-training college where half- march his data past the reviewing rind-stiff marmalade on the dead living. not? wits hard-earned massive sheepskins stand, whereas 1, exhorted to twist toast in the dining hall, the tamed In nightmares I kept meeting One became ruefully aware, in to mount on their walls. The main the questions to my needs, had a lawns in the courts, the continual pimply geniuses with narrow, the presence of so many runny noses, bells, the river-sweet fog. It had all sunken, striated brows, who jubi­ of the island’s hinterland, that North gone up in some kind of smoke, or lantly remarked on die easiness of Sea, a marine prairie on whose down, like a severed head, into the the translation from Chinese, the fringes it was never warm enough to enormous picnic basket into which “piece of cake" that the literary swim or even paddle, not even in one laid one’s script when one's best history paper had been (mad minu­ summer. Nineteen-forty-eighl had been done, or the proctor said tiae pincered from a continuum choked in a nasal maze. Raw-red stop. rolling from Homer to Haidor Lax­ seplums showed up everywhere, and ness), and die trivial stimulus of there was not a dry eye to be seen. One could, I discovered, form a even the hardest essay topic (“Dis­ Had it been this bad in 1945 and crush on a place, on a college’s offi­ cuss any teleology implicit, or 1946? No one had noticed. And in cial polychrome scarf, its plumbing, seemingly so, in the categorical the interim the winter had been mild, its amber evening lamps, lliat I had imperative"). Hie only consolation, or the cold-season had taken a year been born for (though not into) all idle gossip of school cloakrooms, off. But 1948 was glacial and a stem this, I had no doubt, and that I had, was that these examinations were reminder that things were back to like the gauche prince of legend, stiffer than the universities' own normal. been shut out, 1 could not believe. A final degree papers; graduates (Oh Against this backdrop, a ritual god had failed, and also a boy. Im­ what Promelheans!) had repeatedly began that only observant malinger­ agine my puerile agonizings as, in said so, and the dons (brain-phar­ ers at railway stations, or on trains, the spring and summer that followed, aohs) concurred. Almost broken on could spot. You had to know the I ran into fellow-competitors who, (lie wheel when young, the winners signs of this English equivalent to as the jargon ran, were “going up" breezed through the ensuing three the running of the bulls, in which, as tliat fall, or, worse, the elect preparing years as if playing snap. Into the n..and others had taught for their second or third year "in bargain, if bargain there would ever us, the young men of Pamplona, or residence.” I longed to go up, with be, I came from a secondary scluxil, wherever aficionados gather, dash all that phrase’s hint of aerial pro­ which sounded downright second- through the streets only a few yards motion, and to be in residence would class (although it only denoted ahead of fated beasts). English be enclosure in a commodious trance. post-primary), not a granunar scluxil youths in their middle teeas, in green Furtively, at soccer or cricket (where they syntactically and strate­ or brown* sports jackets and matches, I perused the foreheads of gically meant business), and still unpressed gray flannels, boarded the chosen few, eventually deciding less a public schixil, meaning pri­ trains to Oxford and ( ’ambridge, thing was to fly. field day throughout that initial bap- that the typical winner’s brow was vate, which as often as tun had closed where, accommodated in the col- I see that in reliving these initia- tism-of-fire week, side-stepping and low, concave, and signed with three scholarships available to its own boys lege of their choice and looked after tions I have already filched images weaving, importing irrelevance like undulant creases, whereas my own, only. Besides, we had girls on our by venerable servants as if already of tauromachy from the half- ersatz gold leaf, discarding the ex- impassive mirrors proved, was high, premises, which surely proved the among the elect, they would sit objectified terrors of being sixteen, amination papers themselves, boldly bulged slightly, and bore no lines at school s essential lack of high seri­ scholarship examinations whose and interlarded them with images of setting and answering (or begging!) all. In a desperate effort to make die ousness. I envisioned a hypothetical appalling demands belied the open- pomp, insensate splendor, and ma- questions of my own. My strategy, mind conform, I incised three magi- secondary scholarship, available mindedness of the examiners, niacal record-breaking. Besides the I now see, was to drive the examiners cal lines above my eyes with the only to our school, and then dreamed Knowledge counted for something, fear there was the intoxication: one out of their minds into mine. Look!, round end of a nail file, admiring the up the deaths—by traffic, pneumo­ I was told before each of my own was both bull and matador, obliged my scribbled voluntaries cried, / am kx>k of distracted maturity I thought nia, and brainstorm—of my peregrinations by steam from the to charge nobly and not be a bore to here. This is what I do. Choose me, they conferred, until the skin re- immediate rivals, at length accept­ Victoria Station, Sheffield, to the the examiners ( who looked one not them (or me among the few), gained its natural tension and 1 ing my award with the smile of a juvenile concours of that year, but it over afterwards, in between inten- After thirty-five writing hours, two became an also-ran again, fireball coming home to roost. Was imperative to display—what sive bouts of script- reading), yet interviews, and a return train journey Slogging away at my books in Studying previous papers, those were those enviable attributes un- also to execute risky passes with from Cambridge with my swollen my third-storey bcdrixim, at a table libretti of past inquisitions, 1 mar­ furled before me like demented elegance. The cleverest suitcase in the tourniquet of my to whose over-varnished top my el- velled at the arcane trophies to be pavilion-awnings from the field of boys, I presumed, would win by bathrobe’s cord, I began the wait, bows stuck fast, I ran the gamut of had. As well as Open scholarships, the cloth of gold?—flair, originality, staging the unthinkable illusion of An award would bring a telegram affronted aspiration, certain 1 would which explained themselves, there style, panache, and class. These, or being their own executioner, hold- followed a week later by a one-line glide in automatically next time were the aforementioned Closed any one of them, singled one out ing bolt-still for the most reflexive listing, precious as radium, of my provided, say, I wore an olive-green ones, restricted to Etonians, de­ from the common ruck, or so the thrust of all. But no: we were young name among others in llie better- shirt, or lurked paler than Banquo's scendants of King ( 'anutc, or anyone rumor went Not knowing very much bulls only, and the delusion of each’s class newspapers. In the event I ghost. A more pragmatic magic, bom west of a line drawn from (and, in the first of the two Cam- being his own matador came from received a letter, in which the Mas- however, set me poring over Berwick-on-Tweed to land’s End, bridge examinations I took, obliged precocity overtaxed. l>ry-nerved ter of the college explained that I paperbound volumes of past exami- but also indiscreet or painterly- to perform in both English, and rehearsals were just that. Our swords could not even be admitted as a nation papers (though I shrank from sounding exhibitions, wholly French), I myself needed as much and capes were imaginary. Our “commoner,” which was Oxbridgesc lurking in the back at those in whose enigmatic sizarships with faint con­ flair et cetera as could have wafted teachers were the picadors and the (a hangover from days of bone-deep presence I had betrayed myself last notations of glue or paste, and the Sun King Louis XIV and his college dons were the matadors ( an grace and favor) for entrance year). Within those fcrrocyanide bisected things called demy ships for court to Alpha Centauri, or some Hispanic irony I missed at the time), unfunded. I had not even been al- blue covers lay the keys of a genteel which one perhaps received only a equally silly place, in the exact time At a lower level of intoxication, lowed in. kingdom, perhaps in the compulsory half-stipend. Lowest of all were of one levee. well below the turmoil of seeming Too tired to think in terms of translation from Latin (how could commonerships, at which I now set Dazzle them, said my mentors too brilliant to live, there was the catastrophe, I leniently heard out my Tacitus’s “tempted clausa," bald my cap. Of such illustrious colleges at school on the eve of my depar- near-felony of perhaps winning a elders, who said it had all been prac- brace in a museum tongue, mean all as Cambridge's King's, which may tures, none of them I think intending scholarship for committing crimes tice; I had not been expected to “pull of “he tried to open all the closed have been only for male royalty, ;ind to evoke Diaghilcv’s Etonne-moi\, which, in a more prosaic ordeal, up any trees,” except by some doors”? Was this to be my own Trinity, only for the devout or those addressed to Jean Cocteau, of nei- would get one failed. With nothing eleventh-hour egregious act of God. motto, malefically secreted among who thought in threes, or Oxford’s ther of whom neither they ( I suppose) to lose (at worst an august farewell) Next year I would go again, trying the stuff of my undoing?). Or was it Magdalen (what if one whorishly nor I (certainly) had heard. Yet one and everything to gain (a potential for both universities, but only in in the three-hour general essay pa- mispronounced it during inter­ bell rang. I knew Rousseau’s The intellectual knighthood conferred), English: no more French, which per (“Discuss logic” or “‘The view?), and Balliol, which was full Reveries o f a Solitary Walker almost 1 felt like a gambler, more upset me (I preferred its literature to unexamined life is not worth hav­ of invincibly brilliant Scotsmen who page 9 Paul West as a Young Scholar

thought all night in calculus, I had as “the other place”; yet it was a die title, Aula Sancti Fdmundi, I ran gloriously reassuring myself dial, if mere chronicity. A diousand per­ no hopes. In fact, I was addressing serious jocularity, and what Oxford into Vice-Principal Kelly, a forbid­ all else failed, I was the only one of ceptions added up to fifteen my endeavors to St. Catherine's and respected in its less fruity sibling dingly tall aquiline-faced theologian die group who liad played cricket for sentences an hour, penned oblivious Selwyn Colleges, Cambridge, com­ was a medieval childhood held in whose handshake descended diago­ his County’s Boys. Surely Derby­ of clock or question. 1 wrote what I bined, and St. Hdmund Hall, Oxford. common. Arriving at the porter’s nally from a black-clad altar six feet shire sporting prowess would win had come diere to write, engraving Amazing as it now seems, not every lodge, one was put into the custody high. It was like shaking hands with the day should the lowdown on the the tablets before me with an hor­ college offered an examination in of a “scout,” who, presumably St. Patrick himself, except dial this Sitwells fail. 1 dashed a few lines rendous mixture of gossip, purloined linglish Literature, almost as if, knowing his way through the saturnine young cleric spoke in im­ home on letterhead I was not entitled epigrams (just one of my own dial compared with the intricate prelimi­ Mohicans and Comanches of the petuous diphthongs about iiavingjust to, in a t envelope enhanced widt St. began, “ Hie annals of anguish belie naries of Medicine, I.iterae academy, conducted one to yet an­ played squash, of which game I had Hdmund’s arms. diemselves”), and quotahons learned Humaniores, or what ('ambridge other set of temporary nxims, whose never heard, even dtough I played it Weird as it felt, I was beginning by heart and fist and squeezed forbiddingly temied Moral Sciences, absent tenant had his embossed call­ later on and became almost profi­ to know my way round colleges. through the cheesecloth of critics it weren't a serious subject at all. ing card set in a little brass frame let cient. 1 had never met such jovial Such familiarity would never be al­ whose true vocation, I later saw, Anyone worth his salt knew it back­ into tire oak, as the outer door was fellows in my life, not even those lowed to go to waste. Again, should have been astrology. ward, hein'l, and would not persist called. To be private here, for what­ who rented out donkeys at die sea­ porridge, beans, marmalade, and with anything so ephemeral; but for ever purpose, one locked it, and this side or massacred rabbits in the metallic-tasting tea begat our day. secondary schoolboys it might just was known as sporting the oak. Sitwell woods, and could only con­ Burned, flour-costive soup aid vile t. lulmund's had telephoned do, like them having come so re­ Needless to say, I sported mine as clude that these sublime beef curry, followed by jam tart, St. Cadierine’s, as if Uirough cently into being, an upstart lit. for soon as 1 amid, and tixik out my last- luminaries—Fellows indeed—- who were the lunch. Pipsqueak ironists, some interdenominational an upstart lot. minute notes. ran colleges were forever either ill- we protested our conviction that Sholy line. I had to choose, diey said; Furtive, voluptous comparisons, suppressing convulsions of mirth at Hnglatd had won die w a, mil lost it, if ('ambridge, it would have to be however, strayed through my con­ die awkward anfics of examinees, or so why die front-line rations? One Selwyn College because it was o I forgot Oliver Cromwell’s centration. After all, I would be off were tuned in to some acerb tnuisub- boy fished out a cherrywood pipe Selwyn's turn (some such rigma­ college and, to equip myself to ( ’ambridge in a couple of days. standal farce. One looked around and lit it, biliously intense. We all role). To ecclesiastical, redbrick with a unique, local angle, ( 'ambridge gowns were voluminous, for the master of the revels, in the dated out for postcads and little Selwyn 1 walked, choked widi mys­ S tery, but in die end chose St. 1 dniund, began to study the poems of Hdith tlxise of Oxford mere rectangles with dreadful iron-clanging, earthenware- handbooks to die colleges. A Lon­ Sitwell, in whose family’s village I ribbons. At the former, one was cistemed lavatories, in die staircase don candidate actually pachased the perhaps because of dial ancient was bom. Not daring to present catered for by a “bedder,” an appel­ tunnels that led from quad to quad, college's tie, which o a Oxford con­ graveyard, or lofty Kelly in his dog myself for interview at the portals of lation whose overtones reinforced even in die examination rixmi itself, tingent thought a bit thick, though collar, or those vast fires they built haunted Renishaw I till. I schooled themselves in the fact that some where, let it be said at once, the just as sure of ourselves as he. We you to write by. myself in village gossip, amassing bedders were female. Oxford had scouts of St. Hdmund continually invested shillings in gifts at one re­ The impossible had happened. gaudy, antagonistic yarns of Iklnh's no female scouts, however, and 1 stoked up ;uid fussed over a fine that move, those of die tourist radier duui Then the possible erupted. There ring-encrusted hands, her habit of detected, I thought, generalizing had no right to be indoors: a 1 iicken- the rightful occupant: mugs ablaze would be a mandatory two-year de­ sleeping in a coffin in ornate robes, wildly on too narrow a base, a sian conflagration that made me king witii shields and unglossed Latin, lay. While I did my military service, her basilisk's eye, her Plantagenet magistral teak in the scout, that for the moment when the hour calendars of punts on the river and returning veterans would complete nose like a molten suing bean, the bedders lacked; a sour politeness chimed and someone said, "Gentle­ daffodils on the banks their interrupted studies, and Uien 1 iron mask she had been forced to which proved who really ran that men, you may begin ” You literally It rained each day. T here were, could take up my schoktrship There wear as a child Opening the local ancient seal of learning. warmed to your task as, outside in of course, no daffodils We poled no was no way round it; the rule held at (lower show on St Peter’s cricket My bedroom overlooked the the cold, young men still in resi­ punts. The college was eerily still, a bodi places, and, it was suggested, a ground, where I had often flung red college cemetery, an oblong trap of dence even durum die vacation hcli-jui lot wtMid sjimJcc' ami liif reck couple of years ui uniform made a leather balls at clay-brown stumps, headstones and curbs all at conflict­ coughed and joked on their way of boiling greens. I bought a big map boy into a man as well as into a she looked like some hopelessly ing angles, as if scrambled by a across the quad in bulky red-and- of (’ambridge and eyed the jet-black maturer student. But, having tasted etiolated macaw, not of this aviary minor earthquake. I thought of Paul ycllow scarves. plan view thereon of Oliver ambrosia, 1 wanted a steady diet of at all but rented for a fee to be paid in Nash's wartime painting, Foies Cromwell's aillege, but stayed away. it; I waited to hcaime not a nuui but mutant orchids. Fervently 1 worked M eer, in which fragments of With several other candidates, 1 1 felt a gadiering sense of being in die a student, aid an immature one at out close analyses of her most sen­ airplanes canted up from die bowels entrained for ('ambridge, an old liand midst of what the Greeks called that. So I made what was then a suous poems, evolving bogus of a lugubrious marsh as if trying to on dial battlefield, 1 reckoned, vain­ , seasonal time as distinct from sickening decision, almost as bad as theories (if indeed the expression recombine themselves into a going military. I settled for a red­ itself is not redundant) of verbal Frankenstein Hying machine: a brick university on another award I enamel and the annular baroque, Junkerschmitt 17, say, or a F'ocke- never even competed for, but which identifying at a class-conscious dis­ Doniier 109, which as the last trump came like a free sample ion the mail tance with her exotic aloofness, and sounded would bomb us all over after I passed a routine exam. Not even going so far afield as to rehearse again, this lime with tons of meth­ quite my own executioner, but feel­ little monologues on Sacheverell ane-heavy magma. St. Hdmund's ing every inch my own pawnbroker, Sitwell's poems, Osbert’s slapdash graveyard threatened a like resur­ 1 one day tcxik the train to Birming­ use of die dash. A contribution to gence, its composite outcome a giant ham, and three years later kept my knowledge it was not, but it was Latin-booming head on a sketchy appointment with Oxford, not in St. viaticum and exam fodder in one. trunk, come to repel boarders from Hdmund’s aula after all, but in the After a few months immersed in the uncouth north. I shivered for all aillege, Linailn, that unleashed John Facade and Child Coast Customs, our three days; the tiny Hall stotxl over Wesley on the pagan world. Anti­ man from Renishaw was ready for an icy meer, I guessed, and the little climax it surely was, yet one loaded the Goliath brains of next Decem­ electric fire in my silting room with procrastinated joys. It began ber’s inquisitors. 'Ibis time, although wanned only the peeling frame. Yet one of the liappiest limes of my lite, the two examinations almost over­ tlx.' magic of old Oxenford prevailed; perhaps because, once installed, I lapped, there would be no sixteen one came here precisely to be cold, did next to no work at all, having papers in six days (which fiad meant for cold made the mind adept. The done it, as it were, before arrival, three papers on four), but, in either only hot water of the day arrived in during a succession of radiant sum­ place, a civilized new-style triviuni a tin jug with the scout at seven a.m. mers whose uninsistent fleecy clouds of Authors, Periods, and (Jeneral, to and poured from a kettle at leatime. partnered in my mud the blackened be followed by an interview, at which “Gently with the gas, sir, and the margins of innumerable books, and one stood a fair chance of being power,'' he said, as if advising how print that swam and jigged until I incompletely exhausted. Oxford to liandle two beloved artefacts. “The knew not page from sky. I had came first. austerity, you know.” Certainly 1 (Town blind through books, had would be careful, gentle, with them learned the clouds by heart, confus­ t. Hdmund Hall was a tiny both. The tiny kitchen reeked of ing knowledge with magic, as place just off Oxford's thun­ grease and mousedirt, but it was always. Not facts but the finger­ derous High Street, where Cathay to me. Some of the head­ prints on them were my obsession; SUniversity College and others were stones 1 perused were of the or, indeed, the etching of the whole subsiding an inch each year owing fourteenth century. I had taken a palm: whorls, forks, asterisks, to die vibration from traffic and, train right into history, a train that semiquavers, and scalpel-sharp some decades hence, would disap­ did not stop and had no terminus; no crescent moons; or even, after over- pear from view into a Dark-Ages matter how many times you changed, zealous chiromancers of the compost that no doubt included the it bore you on. then dropped you off eighteenth century, the signatures boncmeal of Oxford’s heraldic ox. while other passengers went grate­ or planets of our feet which, facing The formulas of arrival did not vary fully ahead. earth, receive the weakest light and markedly from those of what Oxford Awed, ;ind with chattering teeth, dwell, according to one FTudd, in a men referred to, with jocular hauteur, my mind intoning a round based on see Rooms, page 15 page 10 the BOOKPRESS March, 1993 Survival ripoff of Jack Kerouac’s On the San Francisco, New York, India, put it, “everyone plugged in at once continued from page 1 literary than any of the other Beat Road, with George Mahans playing writers, he rescued himself through Italy, France, Colorado, and Havana announce [sic] the Coming Union of our time and our greatest, if not a Kerouac look-alike. A major books. What shall we make of the and Prague in 1968. Then back to All consciousness ...” Years later always our best, poet, lbs Collected subplot is the story of America itself, vision of William Blake that set his the home bases: New York, San Timothy Leary would say that “we Poems, 1947-1980 is less the record struggling to make sense of itself career into motion but this—that Francisco, and these days Boulder, started planning the psychedelic of unbroken creative achievement and declaring war on the very writers here was a man on his way down Colorado and Cherry Valley. revolution” after an evening at than a goulash of jeremiads, dreams, who later became its own symbols, who was saved by poetry? He is a Ginsberg is the Wandering Jew as Ginsberg’s house. After the spells, anathemas, and prophecies, ('rhis background information about living defense of the literary homosexual Buddhist minstrel, disillusionment, Ginsberg, like many some of them galvanic, many of the pop culture spinoffs and ripoffs vocation, and ironically honored in bringing the news about music, survivors of the 1960s, exchanged them soporific. A clutch of post­ comes not from Schumacher but the academy, to whose basic harmonic breathing, pacifism, and drugs for religion, the quest for a war American poets can lay claim to from a recently-released CD the cosmic mind to a world hungry wider consciousness finding its final more consistent careers and collection from Rhino to hear about such home in Tibetan Buddhism, whose sustained poetic work, but none can Records entitled The things.The “axial “wild wisdom” had a particular boast those moments of illumination B eat G e n e ­ line” of such a appeal for him. that Ginsberg achieved in “Howl,” ration.) life, taking a Therein lies the moral tale— “Kaddish,” “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” phrase Ginsberg's survival as others fell by and several other spikes of the wayside, and survival, moreover, consciousness. Randall Jarrell once after testing life in some of its more said, “A good poet is someone who hazardous registers. He counts as a manages in a lifetime of standing living example of William Blake's out in thunderstorms to be struck by proverb: "'I'he road of excess leads lightning live or six times. A dozen to the palace of wisdom.” And yet or two dozen limes and he is great.” the Ginsberg we see these days, tire By that standard, Ginsberg is great. smiling public man among school Nonetheless, the example of the life children, in a white shirt and tie, and the myths attending it arc likely seems anything but a libertine, let to outlast the work. Ginsberg's alone a reformed libertine reciting writing is background to the man, litanies of regret for his misspent evidence of his moral character, and youth. that is why the biographers have been called in to tell the story. Iherc It is common enough for the is a moral tale to be told, and while libertine to become a teacher late in not everyone finds it edifying, it life, since libertines, after all, have does make a gripping story. lessons to teach. In Ginsberg's case, the odyssey of consciousness had Ginsberg's life is like a turned him into something Shakespeare play, veined with resembling a rabbi speaking with subplots. There is the legend of his the voice of ancient prophets, whom mother, Naomi, whose fall into he calls William Blake and Walt insanity was the main event of his Whitman and Gautama Buddha, youth, making hallucination his daily rather than Isaiah or Jeremiah. Tawg bread and setting into motion his ago he renounced his Judaism—and own fascination with altered states sometimes in fairly ugly ways—- in of consciousness. Her death would favor of a floating pan- be mourned in the greatest of his denominational spirituality, later in poems, “Kaddish.” There is the favor of Buddhism. As a Jew he chronicle of excess and its martyrs, could never liave spoken as he did to the soldiers of new consciousness non-Jewish America, but as a who stumbled and fell along the Buddhist standing outside all the way: Jack Kerouac, who tasted American categories, he could success only as ashes and drank address us all. But behind the himself to death; Neal Cassady, who mantras and the sutras, the breathing burned out on his own fires and died and the OMMMMing, the chants alone, sprawled along some tracks and the finger cymbals, one can hear, in Mexico, and a dozen others who unmistakably, the voices of ancient fell from rooftops or windows, who rabbis. Ginsberg is, willy-nilly, cast themselves out of subway cars, saturated in the manners and who were shot by their husbands mannerisms of the Jewish prophetic (Joan Burroughs) or stabbed by their tradition. lovers, “who cowered in unshaven Despite himself, Allen Ginsberg nxtms in underwear, burning their has become the prophet from money in wastebaskets and listening Illustration: Milty Acharya Paterson, recognizably the to the Terror through the walls.” descendant of the Hasidic masters, (Sec how easy it is to fall into the the Baal Shem Tov or Rabbi litany of “Howl”?) There is a history The big story, however, is one values—dispassionate toil, restraint, from Saul Bellow, would be an Nachman of Bratslav, rallying his of the Beal movement; how it arose of survival and transcendence. objectivity—he seems unalterably odyssey of consciousness itself. volunteers on to holiness, be it the from the doldrums of the post-war Ginsberg's has been a mythic life. opposed. “Widen the area of consciousness,” holiness of the naked body, the years to become the top-billed He is the legendary man who escaped What a long, strange trip it’s he wrote in his journals, and in one holiness of homosexuality, the cultural event in America. There is the initial ground rules of his life and been. Ginsberg has gone from being way or another he lived up to that holiness of the cosmic mind, the the story of the 1960s and the great created himself as a visionary figure. Louis and Naomi Ginsberg's baffled maxim all his life. holiness of pacifism and self-control. battles that were fought over, it would Born into a Jewish family in son to undergraduate at Columbia, It is difficult to imagine anything seem, the soul of America. In those Paterson, New Jersey, his father a which expelled him for writing The point of departure for that, more improbable, which is why we days, an entire youth culture would poet and schoolteacher, his mother a obscenities on his dorm window and so much more, was Naomi read his biographies in such look at times like Allen Ginsberg's communist at first and a (“who were expelled from the Ginsberg’s madness, a con­ astonishment. invention. There is the Hollywood/ schizophrenic later, Ginsberg was academies for crazy & publishing sciousness, one thinks, dangerously masscult/mediacult story and the handed an unpromising life script. obscene odes on the windows of the widened. It progressed through transformation of the Beat image The most harrowing passages in this skull”), to Beat poet and cohort of Ginsberg’s visionary interludes and into pulp fiction (Bang a Beatnik, by biography arc the accounts of Naomi Jack Kerouac and William efforts to recapture them ("who Ira Staver; Espresso Jungle, by Ginsberg’s breakdowns, especially Burroughs, to advance man for drove crosscountry seventytwo Howard Baker; Beat Girl, by Btxinie the one in 1941, when a 14-year-old magic mushrooms and the unity of hours to find out if I had a vision or Golightly), Beatsploitation flicks Allen had to guide his raving mother all being, to international celebrity, you had a vision or he had a vision to (The Beat Generation, 1959; The from bus to bus to reach a rest home to tone setter for the anti-War find out Eternity”). The normal Beatniks, 1960; A Bucket o f Blood, in Lakewood, New Jersey. He was movement, to musician (who would catalysts for vision were either 1960), and at least two TV series, cut out to be a lost soul and a victim, perform with John Lennon, Bob garden variety or exotic hal­ The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and yet he altered the prognosis: by Dylan, and The Clash), to eminence lucinogens, the climax of this phase (1959-63), with Bob Denver as way of Blake and Buddhism he grise of the Other America. It has of Ginsberg’s odyssey being his America’s favorite Beatnik, became that mythic American, the been a peripatetic life, from Paterson cnisadc in 1960 to initiate his friends Mark Shechner is a writer living in Maynard G. Krebs, and Route 66, a self-made man. More bookish, more to Columbia to Mexico to Tangier, into a cult of psilocybin, to get, as he Buffalo. page 11 Hyperspace technocracy, in which “tools play a bious vision of society as a static, always keep close to your heart the left about the new cultural technolo­ continued from page 7 central role in the thought-world of monolithic entity. It is only against narratives and symbols that once gies is that o f monolithic, pan-opti­ ship to the future, and dial choices the culture" Here, tools “attack the such a backdrop dial one could de­ made the United States the hope o f cal social control, effortlessly can and need to be made. “Technol­ culture” and “bid to become the clare “that’s enough, we don't need the world and that may yet have achieved through a smooth, end­ ogy," he writes, “is not a genie in a culture.” Technopoly, by extension, any more technologies.” Cultures enough vitality to so so again. lessly interlocking system of net­ bottle or an overwhelming tide en­ “is totalitarian technocracy.” don't work that way—they are fluid works of surveillance. Although I gulfing us from afar. It is not some­ Tcchnopoly, elaborates Postman, and diverse and arc constantly de­ Postman extends this argument believe that this story, when told thing that happens to us inexorably veloping and recombining. into an “idea-centered and coher­ inside and outside the classroom, for and chaotically like a Tolstoyan war. consists in the deification of tech­ Ultimately, Postman bemoans ence-centered” school curriculum example, is an indispensable form of It is something we create or sup­ nology. which means that the cul­ precisely what is celebrated in post­ with an aim toward historiciz.ing “consciousness raising, ” it is not press, largely as we see fit.” ture seeks its authorization in modernism: the loss of meta-narra­ “the anti-historical, information- always the best story to tell....The technology, finds its satisfactions in tives. saturated, technology-loving char­ critical habit of finding unrelieved technology, and takes its orders from acter of Technopoly.” domination everywhere has certain t first glance, Neil Postman technology. This requires the devel­ There are those who believe—as did consequences, one of which is to disagrees. In Technopoly, opment of a new kind of social or­ the great historian Arnold Toynbee— eeking to steer a course be­ create a siege mentality, reinforcing A:-Postman extends his anti- der, and of necessity leads to the that without a comprehensive reli­ tween the “postindustrialist the inertia, helplessness, and de­ TV critique, arguing that Western rapid dissolution of much that is gious narrative at its center a culture S fantasy of technical sweet­ spair that such critiques set out to civilization generally, and the United associated with traditional beliefs. must decline. Perhaps. There are, ness and light” and the “disem- oppose in the first place. States specifically, are surrendering Those who feel most comfortable in after all, other sources—mythology, powering habit of demonizing tech­ “culture to technology.” Although Technopoly are those who are con­ politics, philosophy, and science, for nology as a satanic mill of Ross finds a model for activism in Postman makes a show of impiirlial- vinced that technical progress domination," die editors of computer hackers w Ik i infiltrate large ity toward technology, it's clearly is humanity's supreme Technoculture, Constance computer systems and sometimes an empty gesture, "livery technol­ achievement and the instrument Pen ley and Andrew Ross, infect networks with viruses. Using ogy is both a burden ;md a blessing," by which our most profound write: the “viral attack engineered in No­ he writes: dilemmas may be solved. vember of 1988 by Cornell Univer­ They also believe that infor­ To deny the capacity o f ordi­ sity hacker Robert Morris on die In the United States, where televi­ mation is an unmixed blessing, nary women and men to think national network system Internet" sion has taken hold more deeply which through its continued and o f themselves as somehow in as a point of entry, Ross likens the than anywhere else, many people uncontrolled production and charge of even their most mostly white, uppcr-middlc-class find it a blessing, not least those who dissemination offers increased highly mediated environ- computer buffs to past icons of hav'e achieved high-paying, gratify ­ freedom, creativity, and peace ments is to cede any opportu­ alienation. ing careers in television...On the o f mind. nity of making popular other hand and in the long run, appeals for a more demo­ It may he that, like the J.l). rebel television may bring a gradual end But what does it mean dial cratic kind of techno- without a cause o f the fifties, the to the careers of schoolteachers, “tools did not attack, the dig­ culture....There may be little disaffiliated student dropout of the since school was an invention of the nity and integrity of the culture to be gained from simply sixties, and the negationist punk o f printing press..:. There is something into which they were intro­ Mlding to the paranoia and the seventies, the hacker of the perverse about schoolteachers' be­ duced”? As an example, sense o f victimization that is eighties has come to serve as a vis­ ing enthusiastic about what is hap­ Postman offers the mechanical often produced by critics o f ible public example o f moral malad­ pening. Such enthusiasm calls to my clock. Clearly, the clock was the scary new panopticon, but justment, a hegenwnic test case for mind an image o f some turn-of-tlte- not intended to attack medi­ there is arguably much more redefining the dominant ethics in an century blacksmith who... sings the eval society, but all the same it h anzine from Textual / oachers [() f)e ^()s[ ^ asserting tfje advanced technocratic society. praises o f the automobile. worked to transform the social or­ example—but it is certain that no "leakiness" ofpanoptical systems ganization of its world. Strangely, culture can flourish without narra- proves that the sponsorsof techno­ Ross also attempts to increase It is obvious that technological Postman appears to concede the lives of transcendent origin and logical rationality are on the verge the ranks of computer guerillas. It’s shifts have benefits and liabilities, shakiness of his three categories. power. o f being brought to their knees. not just nerdy high-school and col­ but it seems peculiar to assert that After quoting Marx to the effect Unit lege computer geeks who leant to individuals cannot adapt. Wliat could “die hand-loom gives you society This tack, this overarching need for Technoculture's range is wide control such systems-office work­ the blacksmiths have done in die with the feudal lord; die steam-mill, continuity, ultimately drives him into and the quality consistently top- ers typically invent “strategies for face of die automobile? he asks. society with die industrial capitalist,” the arms of Allan Bloom, in whom drawer. The contents cover essays slowing down the temporality of die “Weep, if nodiing else,” is his only Postman adds, Postman senses a kindred spirit on video, rap, comic hooks, AIDS work regime” and, on occasion, answer. “Bloom's solution,” writes Postman, activism, “reproductive discourse,” engage in “sabotage, time theft and Postman devises three kinds of Marx understood well that, apart “is that we go back to the basics of cyperpunk science fiction, and an strategic monkey wrenching. ” cultures: tool-using cultures, tech­ from their economic implications, Western thought....he is a moralist interview with Donna Haraway Such protopolitical hijinks can nocracies, and tcchnopolies. Tool­ technologies create the ways in who understands dial Teclinopoly is (who also contributes a “Postscript lead to programmatic change. using cultures, which are disppearing which people perceive reality, and a malevolent force requiring opposi­ to ‘Cyborgs at Large'”). The edi­ “Ivvery successful hack or computer rapidly, are characterized by tools that such ways are the key to under­ tion.’' tors’ contributions are particularly crime in some way reinforces the designed to solve “specific and ur­ standing diverse forms o f social and Posunan himself sees a way out aimed at appropriating technology popular percepdon dial information gent problems of physical life" or to mental life. of the “great symbol drain," the as a means of empowerment. systems are not in-fallible,"writes serve "the symbolic world of art, eventual emptying out of a “narra­ Ross’s “Hacking Away at the Ross, who believes that such politics, myth, ritual and religion." If technologies create the ways tive of [its] organizing power and Counterculture" attempts to find a “technoskeplicism” is a precondi­ More importantly ‘tools did not in which people think, how does one inspiring symbols," in die figure of way out of the epistemological tion for meaningful action. Such attack...the dignity and integrity of get the distance from those tech­ "die loving resistance fighter,” who labyrinth into which the "critical analysis results, however, in a con­ the culture into which they were nologies to distinguish between gixxl left” has wandered. clusion that is fairly obvious to any­ introduced" The next level (up or and bad ones? Underlying that dis­ in spite o f the confusion, errors, and one acquainted with computers. down, in Postman's cosmology) is tinction, however, is Postman's du­ stupidities you see around you,... must One of the stories told by the critical see Hyperspace, page 14

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Emily Rhoads Johnson remain somewhat blurred. One consider 1967 to be a landmark year way people really talked, which Avi, author of the award-winning textbook defines it as anything that for young adult literature, when meant that sometimes they used novel, The True Confessions of readers between the approximate writers and publishers turned in profanity and ungrammatical Charlotte Doyle (Orchard Books, When I was growing up in the ages of twelve and twenty choose to radically new directions. It was the constructions. And something else 1990), says in a recent issue of The 1940s and ’50s, there were no such read. Although it is generally year of SJE. Hinton’s The Outsiders, happened that was unusual in books Horn Book that “children’s literature things as young adult books in our accepted that young adult novels about two gangs, the Greasers and for children: not all of these stories is a cry for help from adults to school libraries—at least books that must have young adult protagonists, the Socs, told through the eyes of a ended happily ever after. Not children.” He has noticed a shift were labeled as such. We jumped language and style can vary from gang member named Ponyboy; and surprisingly, many adults (parents, from protagonists who return home directly from Black Beauty and Sue fairly simple to as complex and mostly) were outraged by the new at the end of a book (The Wizard o f Barton, Student Nurse to A Tale o f sophisticated as that found in adult “tell-it-like-it-is” books and Oz, Alice in Wonderland) to those Two Cities and Twenty Thousand novels. demanded that certain titles be who choose at the story’s conclusion Leagues under the Sea. A few titles The phenomenon of young adult banned from library shelves. Books to leave home instead, which he sees such as Little Women and The Count books is relatively new, the first ones for youngsters should extol moral as a metaphor for changing the world. o f Monte Cristo helped to bridge the appearing about a hundred years ago. virtues, they argued. They should He goes on to say that "fiction in gap; but on the whole, kids entering The reason no books were written make children feel safe and happy, children’s literature is about their teens had to settle for stories specifically for teenagers befoi the not burden them with the truth. unfairness, inconsistency, and lack about adult characters involved in late 1800s is that teenagers as an Despite the censorship battle (or of justice in the adult world. The experiences far removed from their identifiable group did not yet exist. possibly because of it), and because constant struggle to adjust good with own in both time and emotional Prior to the Civil War, children were they were exciting and offered bad. Save us, we are saying to the complexity. recognized as —and in many ways readers a chance to read about children, save us from what you are Today, on the other hand, actually became—adults as soon as characters with real conflicts similar becoming. Save us from what we teenagers can find a multitude of they went to work, which for most to their own, these new novels are teaching you to become.” books written especially for them by children was between the ages of ten continued to be popular throughout Gary Paulsen, another highly a host of fine writers who explore and fifteen. After the war, however, the 1970s and early ’80s. Then regarded author of children’s bks, themes of growth and change, so many technological advances things began to change again The delivered a similar message in his alienation, loneliness, love, and the occurred that more years of schooling AIDS epidemic brought sex keynote address at a writers' search for values. Whether the genie were required to Pain young people Robert I.ipsytc’s The Contender, the education out in the open, and conference in North Dakota that I is realistic fiction, fantasy, science for new kinds of jobs. I he result was story of a black boy hoping to use television especially has assured that attended several years ago. "Young fiction, or mystery, the main the creation of a new societal boxing as a way out of the ghetto. In teenagers today are being exposed people have almost no hope,” he characters tend to express the same category. Because teenagers hovered 1968 came The Pigman by Paul to the same information available to told the audience concerns and share the same intense, in a kind of limbo between childhood Zindel, and in 1969 Sounder by adults. Writers for young people chaotic emotions as their readers. and adulthood, the search for identity William Armstrong. Dozens of must keep this constantly in mind. I think it's our fault. Our parents Categorizing young adult books became an ongoing issue for them, others followed, mostly books about Young adult novels cannot be bland blew it big time, and we blew it by age group is difficult because and is still a prominent theme in teens from lower-class families or watered-down or falsified in any worse. Between the nuclear thing they cover such a wide range of young adult books today. grappling with the harsh realities of way, or else readers will reject them and pollution and various forms of reading and maturity levels. Some Although a growing number of poverty, violence, drugs, as a betrayal of their intelligence and technological ruin, we haven 7 given are identified “for ages 10-14,” authors were writing books for alcoholism, abortion—topics that sophistication. Characters cannot them the tools they need. We must others for “12 up,” and still others teenagers before the 1960s (Maureen had barely been touched on before be stereotypes, and the novels’ find a different way of writing that for “12-adult.” The definition of Daly, Betty Cavanna Esther Forbes, in books for children. The authors central issues must really matter to blows the past away and elevates the young adult literature, too, tends to John Tunis, Mary Stolz), critics of these “problem novels” wrote tlic the protagonists. young to a level above us because

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adults can no longer make a haymeadow in the mountains where means excludes humor, or romance, however, helps him to see his own weren't together. He would know difference. he must stay for three months, with or fantasy, or science fiction, all of life more clearly, and he resolves to just how he was like his son, and how only two horses and four sheepdogs which are terrifically popular with live a life based on truth and integrity. they were different, and where their Those were tough words, and it to assist him. The trials he faces— kids today. As children’s book editor souls touched and where they didn't. angered some of the listeners to be an attack by coyotes, a stampede, a Jean Karl says in her book, Jimmy thought about his having a told that their endeavors were flash flood, loss of food, serious Childhood to Childhood, “a good child. It seemed so far off, like The Horn Book calls Somewhere in useless. But what Paulsen was telling injuries—all make for a fast-paced book of fiction is not about something that could never happen, the Darkness “one of Myers’s most us was that we need to show kids adventure in which John must draw something. It is, instead, an but somehow would. He thought memorable pieces of writing...a through our writing that preserving experience. The reader is not told page-turner elevated to a higher plane life is worth the effort; otherwise what happens. He sees it for by its theme of the universal quest of they aren't going to care any more himself.” a son for his father.” about the preservation of our planet It is this sense of being there that A list of other notable authors of than we do. Paulsen’s own books the most successful of today’s writers young adult books would have to attest to his belief in the strength and are able to convey to young readers. include Richard Peck, Robert frailty of the human spirit. They are Cynthia Voigt (whose latest novel Westall, Margaret Mahy, Norma box books full of hope, which depict Orfe, from Atheneum) accomplishes Mazer, William Mayne, M. li. Kerr, human beings at their most it in Homecoming, and its sequel, Sue Hllen Bridgers, and Virgina vulnerable and show them struggling Dicey's Song (also from Atheneum), Hamilton, to name only a few. to learn what they must leam in about 13-year-old Dicey Tillerman In high school English classes order to survive. and her younger sister and two kids are still reading The Scarlet Two of Paulsen's most popular brothers who are abandoned by their Letter, Macbeth, Ethan Frame, and books are Dogsong (Bradbury, 1985) emotionally ill mother in a shopping other classics that, when taught and Hatchet (Bradbury, 1987). His mall parking lot and must find then- creatively, will open new worlds most recent release, The Hay meadow own way to their grandmother's and give them a solid grounding for (Delacorte, 1992), is again about house by walking the length of the future encounters with good survival and change. Connecticut coastline, Their search literature. Experiencing these books constantly upon his own courage for their roots as well as a home about what he would do with the is important; but with so many other Yesterday, he thought-1 was and resourcefulness. When his father eventually takes them on to child if it were a boy. He wouldn't things vying for their attention— fourteen yesterday and nothing finally joins him with fresh supplies, Maryland—”a journey of delights, know much about getting money to homework, jobs, sports, television— changed. He wasn't sure what he the two of them manage to forge a dangers, sorrows and discoveries.” buy food for him, or what things to teenagers have little lime left for wanted to change, or how it should new bond of love and respect. Walter Deiui Myers' latest btx>k, tell him to do except to be good and "outside” reading. This is indeed a change, or even why it should change We are living in frightening, Somewhere in the Darkness not to get into trouble. But he would tragedy when there are so many hut he wanted something to change volatile times when it is more (Scholastic, 1992), is about a 15- tell him all the secrets he knew, extrordinary books available to them and nothing had and he felt cheated. important tlian ever to provide young year-old black boy named Jimmy looking right into his eyes and telling dial could change their lives. readers with books that speak to who meets up with the father he him nothing but the truth so that + Fourteen-year-old John Barron lives their specific needs—books with hasn’t seen since he was a baby. The every time they were together they on a ranch in Wyoming with his strong, believable characters who, father has escaped from prison and would know things about each other. Emily Rhoads Johnson teaches father, a stonily silent man still through their own uniqueness and is critically ill, and it isn’t long before That way there would be a writing and literature at Empire Stale mourning his wife’s death. John is inner resources, find solutions to the Jimmy’s dreams about him are connection, he thought, something College in Ithaca. She has published forced to drive a flock of sheep to a problems facing them. This by no dashed. His disillusionment, that would be there even when they two novels for children.

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continued from page 11 Kirk/Spock (K/S) fans, who lived relation to the world.” and intelligence to those on the re­ pleasurable to the reader"). While de ceiving end. Where Mark Crispin Certeau believes that readers may The growth of public data net­ do more than “make do ” lwith what Many fans think that their experi­ Miller defines television watching become “writers” by marking their works, bulletin board systems, al­ they have]; they make. Not only have ence with extrapolatory fiction has as “passive, mesmeric and undis­ texts, by “scribbling in the margins," ternative information and media they remade the Star Trek fictional given them a privileged sense of criminating,” Jenkins sees fans “as that possibility is denied to televi­ links, and the increasing cheapness universe to their own desiring ends, “thinking global” and that they are active producers and manipulators sion viewers since, according to of desk-top publishing, satellite they have achieved it by enthusiasti­ more likely to be concerned with of meanings.” Like Penley, he fo­ Jenkins, de Certeau maintains that equipment, and international data­ cally mimicking the technologies of environmental issues..../Trek fan­ cuses on Michel de Certeau’s notion “the concentration of economic bases are as much the result of mass-market cultural production, dom] represents one of the most of “textual poaching" to explore how power and cultural production seems local political “intentions ” as the and by constantly debating their own important popular sites for debat­ fans “construct their cultural and so immense t o there are much more fortified net o f globally linked, re­ relation, as women, to those tech­ ing issues of the human and every­ social identity through borrowing limited opportunities for viewers to stricted-access information systems nologies through both the way they day relation to science and and inflecting mass culture images.” directly intervene in the production is the intentional fantasy of those make decisions about how to use the technobgy. Of course, it is precisely the process.” For Jenkins, who seek to profit from centralized technological resources available to desire to construct a “cultural and control. The picture that emerges them and the way they rewrite bodies Slash fandom takes this program one social identity” out of shlock (Dr. the fans' meta-text, whether per­ from this mapping of intentions is and technologies in their utopian step further, extending “these issues Who, Twin Peaks, The Rocky Hor­ petuated through gossip or embod­ not an inevitably technofascist one, romances. and debates about science and tech­ ror Picture Show, etc.) that leads to ied within written criticism, already but rather the uneven result o f cul­ nology to the realm of minds and the images of fans as acne-scarred consititutes a form o f rewriting. This tural struggles over values and If nothing else, the slash fans bodies.” When the mostly hetero­ losers with nothing better to do than process of playful engagement and meanings. relegate the stereotype of the passive sexual female slash fans write their to memorize the “Star Dates” of active interpretation shifts the pro­ TV watcher to the dustbin of criti­ pornography and distribute it every Star Trek episode or dress up gram 's priorities. Fan critics pull Penley’s piece, “Brownian cism. Penley uses various concepts tlirough contemporary technological like Darth Vader. Taking issue with characters and narrative issues from Motion: Women, Tactics, and of Michel de Ccrteau to ground her means, “they creatively rcintagine this view, Jenkins writes: the margins; they focus on details Technology,” kxiks at the phenom­ observations. The “Brownian mo­ their world through making a tac­ that are excessive or peripheral to enon of Star Trek "K/S” or “slash" tion,” of the articles’s title is de tics of technology itself.” Far from sycophantic, fans ac­ the primary plots but gain signifi­ fandom and dopes out how “women Ccrteau’s term “to describe the tacti­ tively assert their mastery over the cance within the fa n s’ own concep­ can manipulate the products of cal maneuvers of the relatively imilar fan strategies are dis­ mass-produced texts which provide tions.... mass-produced culture to stage a powerless when attempting to resist, cussed in Henry Jenkins’s the raw materials for their own popular debate around issues of negotiate, or transform the system Textual Poachers: Television cultural productions and the basis Much of Textual Poachers is technology, fantasy and everyday FansS A Participatory Culture. for their social interactions. In the devoted to close readings of various and products of the relatively power­ life.” “Slash” fandom, overwhelm­ ful.” Undergirding Penley’s analy­ Stereotypically depicted as con­ process, fans cease to be simply an fan works (which include videos and ingly if not exclusively female, re­ sis is “de Certeau’s claim that temptible losers, fans arc instead audience for popular texts; instead, music as well as more traditionally volves around the creation of consumption is itself a form of pro­ seen as challenging producers’ at­ they become active participants in literary forms) and the book is illus­ homosexual pornography involv­ duction.” tempts to impose and regulate the construction and circulation of trated with fan-generated artwork. ing Captain Kirk and Spock. (The What do the slash fans get out of meanings and values. textual meanings. Ilie nuige of interests in these tilings “slash” refers to the slash between imagining that Kirk and Spock are Jenkins, an assistant professor (typically published in small circu­ K and S and serves as a code to lovers or that “Spock...has extra of Literature at Massachusetts Insti­ In emphasizing the activity of lation “fanzines") is bewildering. those purchasing fanzines through erogenous zones (especially the tips tute of Technology and a self-con­ fans, Jenkins meaningfully revises Ians, it seems, are willing to boldly the mail.) This does not seem to be of his pointed ears) and a double- fessed fan, reacts against media de Certeau’s concept of "textual go where no television producer lias exactly the stuff of social revolution, ridged penis?” According to Penley, theories that focus mostly on the poaching" (“an impertinent raid on gone before and stretch any number but Penley convincingly demon­ the fictional construct of Star Trek production end of tilings and that the literary preserve that takes away of narrative and sexual conventions. strates the creative ingenuity of the allows fans in general “to articulate a refuse to ascribe critical interaction only those things that are useful or see Hyperspace, page 15 r

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continued from page 9 warped Boy's Own Astronomy inches and twenty-two thousand continued from page 14 nologies, fans "assert their own right microcosmic night. An additional Handbook still tells the truth, light years from my retinas. M 13’s Jenkins discusses, among other to form interpretations, to offer source of delight was that 1 remained sidcreally reliable although written electric bull’s-eye of spattered light, things rcworidngs of The Man from evaluations, and to construct cul­ still unclaimed by the military; what before the I liroshima bomb. I can a boy’s rune, awes again, forever U.N.C.LF. (“Napoleon and Iliya tural canons." These “canons” may on earth, 1 wondered, would I have still, thank goodness, lean my el­ crinkling like silver paper in a within a world harboring...cat not be accepted by large segments of been useful for in Korea? bows on the sticky-topped table and match’s flame. Yet it has a hum­ people”); Doctor Who (“The society, but they don’t have to be— drum counterpart on our own planet: TARDIS has materialized every their value is not dependent on ow stably one goes home not the photograph in my old album, place from the Planet of the Apes to “dominant cultural hierarchies” but again, unerringly plants a but one of tlu>se miraculous patterns Fawlty Towers, even on the set of instead on people who take pleasure love-tap at first base. The traced by programmed worms. Wheel o f Fortune"); Beauty and the from constructing them. In eluci­ Heyrie room in which I studied looks Fuzzy as the state of mind in which Beast (“Vincent’s late-night visits dating and underscoring the devel­ out still at a golf course where, dur­ I competed for my sweet tomorrow, to Catherine"); and, of course, the opment of these systems of value ing winter floods, a friend of my this pattern’s winning caption says, Star Trek series (“Jane land’s and meaning, Jenkins not only rede- _ mother’s drowned while saving a after a number: cloud path gener­ Demeter. ..puts Uhura and Chapel fines the stereotyped “tan,” but also sheep. My school books are there, ated by a gentle worm. in command of an all-female land­ increases our understanding of how like empty oxygen cylinders, dusted ing party on a voyage to a lesbian more culturally-sanctioned inter­ off by my mother the same day each separatist space colony”). The pretive activities (such as academic week, in case I ever need them agitin, power of Jenkins' (and Pcnley’s) literary criticism) work and gener­ need to start over. No, dial room is Paul West's thirteenth novel. The analysis comes from a willingness ate community. a bit of a shrine for a mostly absent Women of Whitechapel and Jack to engage fan creations on their own The differences between the au­ son. The gilt on the spine of the the Ripper, has won the 1992 Grand terms and from an emphasis on pos­ thors discussed here are, of course, Short History of English Literature Prix Halperine-Kaminsky for the sibilities for action. Instead of see­ large and meaningful, but so are the has wanned beyond bleach into in­ best foreign hook published in ing individuals merely as similarities. When a diehard apolo­ visibility; the cover of my pocket French (Les Editions Rivages). His automatons programmed by outside gist for capitalism like George (iildcr selection of French verse from next novel. Love’s Mansion, pub­ forces, Jenkins stresses activity over and a member of the critical left like Ronsard to Valery has given its lished by Random House has been passivity and empowerment over Andrew Ross begin to converge, friendly cobalt blue back to the Illustration: Johanna Sheldon chosen for the Best 25 Books of “marginali-zation.” Still, he is no when a critic like Neil Postman be­ pouring afternoon sun; Russell's 'Die 1992 by The Village Voice Literary Pollyana; he concedes dial a fan’s gins to talk of “resistance fighters,” Problems of Philosophy falls apart Supplement and is tvnong the Nota­ relationship to the “text remains a when “fans" like Constance Penlcy _ if moved, into tiles of pages dan­ peer again at the black-and-white ble Books o f the Year chosen by the tentative one," often existing “on and Henry Jenkins explore the gling from glue-faceted threads that photograph of the globular cluster M New York Times Book Review. the margins of the original text and audience's control over mass-pro­ set the teeth on edge; the damp- 13 in Hercules, scintillating eight West lives in Ithaca. in the face of the producer’s own duced texts, some new consensus is efforts to regulate its meanings.” being approached in discussions of But he also recognizes that fans, electronic media, countering ten­ Classifieds SMEDLEY'S BOOKSHOP FAST, thmugh a critical give-and-take will) dencies of cultural despair on both Ithaca's feminist bookstore. 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continued from page 2 upon identification of the Gates’s assessment, that Vested transsexualism are rebuked for being jacket and its content, it's an signify; clothing guarantees the transvestite. Garber does not Interests “is a big book in every “divisive rather than helpful,” but interesting coincidence that these passage from sentience to meaning.” theorize the mechanism by which a sense,” is that the book is so big that Garber unproblematically takes issues should be so clearly evoked Garber divides the argument into culture, threatened by a collapse of it loses track of its most critical issues. transvestism as her explicit subject on the jacket while generally evaded two halves, which the reader is its categories, comes to choose its Unanswered questions traverse matter and then conflates the in the text. The promising queries instructed to regard as not apotropaic transvestite figure — be Vested Interests like subterranean transvestite with the transsexual on on die front flap — “Is transvestism “completely separate or separable, a sign of homosexuality?” “What but rather as complementary mirror are the politics of drag?” — are lost images of each other.” The first in the Ixxik amid discussions of why half, “Transvestite Logics,” details Peter Pan is played by a woman, “the way transvestism creates when the gendered meanings of pink culture,” while the second half, and blue got reversed, how the Order ‘Transvestite Effects,” explores the of die Garter came by its motto. inverse, the way that culture creates Additionally, die use of an image of transvestites. The perplexing idea hermaphroditism on the cover of a of complementary mirror images — book ostensibly concerned with identical but also crucially different, cross-dressing begs die question of each providing the other with what it terminology once again. The lacks — is not, unsurprisingly, home stability of the taxonomic system out by the text. The division of the which distinguishes between the book into its two halves is not “third terms” of transsexualism, grounded on any discernible transvestism, and hcrma-phioditism distinction. The difference between is based upon die gender binarism the transvestite creating culture and which Garber suggests is culture creating transvestism is never deconstructed by the very existence made clear. of die transvestite. If the transvestite Throughout both halves of the is defined as one with “an abnormal book, Garber treats the transvestite desire to dress in the clodies of die as a recurring figure in the collective opposite sex," is gender essentialism “dreamwork” of Western culture consolidated, rather than exploded, (read: the US and Great Britain). by this implicit equation of gender First identifying an “over- identity widi anatomical sex? If the determined” transvestite figure, be adjective “transsexual" denotes not it an individual (Rudolph Valentino) only an “overwhelming desire to or a type (the cross-dressed nun), belong to die opposite sex," but also Garber then proceeds laterally, “of or pertaining to both sexes” following a chain of association [OED, emphasis added), wliat room composed as often of coincidence does this leave for the differentiation and offhand comment as by a of the hemiaphnxlite? Eidier gender structural similarity between one identity is recognizable, essential, case of transvestism and another. in spile of the contradictory For example, Garber finds a testimony of the body, or die body is continuum of transvestism linking resorted to as the arbiter of its own Rudolph Valentino to Liberace, truth. In failing to address the Liberace to Elvis, and Elvis back to assumptions underlying cross- Valentino; the argument is supported gender terminology, and in implicidy not only by the similar sartorial equaling cross-dressing with tendencies of the three entertainers anatomical transsexualism or but also by the fact that both Liberace hermaphroditism, Garber ends in and Elvis had. twin brothers who perpetuating the notion of an died in infancy, and by a comparison emancipatory “diird sex." What are between Elvis’ funeral and that of die vested interests inherent in this Photograph: Chris Makos Valentino. Garber’s historical taxonomy of the body’s gender and anecdotes are nothing if not Andy Warhol from Vested Interests sexuality? Garber’s argument for fascinating, and she must have had the transvestite as the harbinger of an army of facl-cbeckers at her it Elvis, Captain Hook, or the Big faultlines, not readily apparent but several occasions. While it is Western category crisis is disposal for the writing of this book. Bad Wolf. Vested Interests is productive of extreme discomfort all doubtless true that clinical underpinned and undermined by a The trouble is that every detail is undoubtedly, to quote more of its the same. The appearance ol taxonomies not only fail to be terminological chaos which presented as equally capable of jacket copy, “encyclopedic” and a homosexuality in conjunction with “helpful” but are often harmful, emerges, or rather fails to emerge, as carrying the burden of proof. Garber “survey,” but it does not make a case transvestism in literature and in film Garber would do well to examine die most interesting problem of her catalogues so many instances of for Garber’s initial diesis, “that the is described at length, but the the politics of these terminological book. transvestism, and at such a hectic transvestite makes culture possible, implications of this link for gay self- distinctions, radier than dismissing pace, that her evidence is leveled that there can be no culture without identity and for the cultural the issue while retaining the terms. and her argument remains circular. the transvestite because the construction of homosexuality are Recalling the argument The transvestite is cited as evidence transvestite marks the entrance into hardly explored. The taxonomi/ing inverting the relation between figure Susan Malka Choi is a graduate of a ‘category crisis’; henceforward the symbolic.” practices of professional medicine and ground, clothing and the body, student in English at Cornell a category crisis is simply assumed The downside of Henry Louis with regard to transvestism and and, bv analogy, between the book's University

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