The

THE NEWSPAPER OF THE LITERARY ARTS

Volume 5, Number 2 March 1995 Ithaca, New York A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Lincoln Center

Ph ilip Johnson: Life and Works Franz Schulze Knopf, 465 pages, $30 Kazys Varnelis

Franz Schulze’s biography of Philip Johnson begins a much-needed re-evalu- ation of the intellectual legacy of one of 20th-century architecture’s most significant figures. While the quality of his designs may be open to debate, Johnson has played a key historical role in shaping architectural discourse as the founder of the Museum of Modem Art’s architecture department, co-organizer of MoMA’s seminal exhibit on “International Style” modern architecture in 1932, and subsequent promoter of German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, historical eclecticism, postmodernism, and deconstructivism. In this first book-length biography on the architect, Schulze has some sur­ prises in store for the general public, chiefly in documenting Johnson’s activities in the late 1930s as a fascist, anti-Semite, and active propagandist for the Nazi govemment.The book may well prove scandalous for architecture, whose criti­ cal-historical establishment has maintained a public silence on the topic while gossiping about it in private. Sources on Johnson’s past—contemporary accounts, his own writings, histories of the period, even articles in magazines like The New Yorker and Esquire—were available many years prior to the publication of Schulze’s biography, but printed references to Johnson’s past in the architectural media have always been carefully circumscribed. (In contrast, over 300 articles have been published on Paul de Man’s collaboration with the Nazis and similarly copious discourse exists on Martin Heidegger.) Although not an authorized biography, the Schulze book was written with Johnson’s cooperation. While publication was originally to take place only after Johnson’s death, Schulze published it this year as the now 88-year-old architect showed no signs of slowing down. As in his book on Johnson’s architectural mentor Mies van der Rohe, Schulze organizes his narrative as a biography, paying particular attention to his subject’s psychic state. But since Schulze only grudgingly gives citations, it is often hard to tell when he has derived knowledge from interviews and publications and when he extrapolates what went on in Johnson’s head. Schulze begins with an account of Johnson’s family and upbringing. Bom in

see Philip Johnson, page 8 Jack Sherman

I nside John Vernon on The New Historical Novel, page 3 Duane Chapman on South Africa’s Kruger National Park, page 5 Edward T. Chase on Global Joblessness, page 16 page 2 The BOOK PRESS March, 1995 Letters to the Editor

politicized schools of Lit Crit, but does SDS response,” I am reduced to “a sixties tural arts” than the literary. I’ve gotta wonder Bloomdido Esolen think that they are exemplars of tem­ SDS spokesman,” the SDS theories were how it actually flies under the flag of your perate poise and balanced judgment? Harold responsible for everything bad that subse­ masthead? But why let the sign on the door To the Editor: is not the only serious critic who has objected quently happened in the University, and the limit the menu when a sweet, readable piece Gary Esolen’s commentary on Harold to the reductive obsession with race, sex, and consequence of SDS opinions is the anti- like this comes along....It was fried chicken Bloom is a lot more civil than Richard class in much current criticism and the vulgar Semitism of some black nationalists. A nice, at The Moosewood....Ithaca Hours at Wal- Klein’s disdainful bashing of him. Even so, it use of “the West” as a synonym for oppres­ comfortable piece of stereotyping, but it has Mart.... suffers from the political condescension of a sion, a crude club with which to beat up on little to do with the complicated questions Enough. You get the picture. The sixties SDS spokesman, who still finds it hard “dead white males.” that faced thousands of people in and around “Moore” piece encouraged me to plow to imagine how anyone who was not “reac­ Harold, who is passionate about Jewish Cornell in 1969. It would be tempting to start through (most of) the rest of the issue and, on tionary” could have failed to sympathize with history and Israel’s survival, was keenly arguing about details, but I doubt if it would the whole, to enjoy it. I still feel like my plow the black protestors’s repudiation of the cam­ aware in 1969, before many other intellectu­ lead to useful or even civil discourse. has hit a very large stone when I see the word pus legal system, forcible occupation of the als were, of the ominous element of anti- I will say that I think there were heroes “theory” tossed around with such abandon. student union, and importation of rifles into Semitism in some black nationalist dema­ in April of 1969, and they were the people But that is doubtless the house of cards you the occupied building. So he imagines a crisis gogues and pseudo-scholars. He admired the who put political stereotypes aside and must visit from time to time to keep the cus­ of conscience must explain Bloom’s pro­ black novelist Ralph Ellison, but Harold was looked for, and found, a workable, non­ tomers coming back. (In the post-NAFTA found agitation and divergence from skeptical that his admiration would be shared violent solution to a very tense and difficult service economy “would you like some liter­ Esolen’s support of the protestors. by a strongly politicized black studies pro­ situation. ary theory with that, ma’am?” doubtless gen­ Harold was a colleague of mine at Yale gram. In fact, Ellison was never invited to erates as many jobs as McBurger’s mini­ and a friend when he was here at the Society speak at Cornell though some anti-Semitic —Gary Esolen mum-waged billions-fold inquiry about of the Humanities in 1969. He had fears more demagogues and pseudo-scholars have New Orleans “fries”!) I hope you continue to not take the apocalyptic than mine and was as disturbed recently made their appearance at campus “literary” part too literally and leave the the­ as Esolen perceived him to be. He thought the events, sponsored by black organizations. orists to clamber [sic] for publication in their university should be closed down, while I Harold would not be surprised to hear about more “esteemed” journals. The Bookpress is thought doing so would hand the protestors it. Double Take a pretty gpod piece of work. Thanks. even more of a victory than the concessions Harold is deliberately and audaciously pro­ they did win from an administration that was voking because he knows too well the ten­ To the Editor: —Daryl Anderson understandably worried about the potential dency of many academics to join “the herd of As a recently arrived Ithacan I was pleased Ithaca for violence in the predicament they faced. It independent minds.” He has never traveled in to see the range of local-flavored alternative was one they had allowed to develop because packs. His passionate career in literature may publications—as a former writer and staff they had failed to prepare for the legal reme­ have drawn on a penchant for apocalypticism member of Buffalo’s Alt./Alternative Press I dy of an injunction and had allowed the guns in his character and outlook, but there is no know how hard it can be to keep such a beast Erin go Branagh (which they knew about) to be imported into need for a “crisis of conscience” in 1969 at on its feet. Although I never really consid­ Willard Straight Hall. But a stiff price would Cornell to explain his literary ambition. He ered myself a follower of the “literary arts,” I To the Editor: have been paid for any of the alternatives has always taken Emerson’s advice: “Whoso did cut my teeth at Alt. writing reviews (and Nicholas Nicastro’s review of the films available in April, 1969, and none of us is would be a man must be a nonconformist.” got lots of free books in the bargain!). So I “Frankenstein” and “Interview with a Vam­ entitled to be easily confident about the wis­ was especially intrigued to find The Book- pire” in February’s The Bookpress certainly dom of whatever choice we made. —Cushing Strout press stacked next to all the other papers on sheds light on the reasons for their populari­ Harold knew that the SDS response to the Ithaca some comer or another. ty with American studios and audiences. But crisis was in terms of student “power” and Maybe I just picked up an especially bad his reading of them as intending to reflect “participatory democracy.” Applied to acad­ issue that day—back in the fall—or maybe I contemporary American politics seems sus­ emic structures, it resulted in the assumption just thumbed to an especially pompous arti­ pect. Consider this: Neil Jordan, director of that all functional differences of interest Esolen Responds cle in that issue. I clearly recall that my first “Interview,” is from the Republic of Ireland; between teachers and students could be (and second) take was that you were just Kenneth Branagh, director of “Franken­ redueo4 towtuffli of power. I remember argu­ To the Editor: packaging the sort of university-town over- stein,” is from Northern Ireland and current­ ing the point with Gary Esolen in a depart­ Regarding Bloom’s reaction to the 1969 conceptual abstractification that keeps the ly lives in England. It seems more likely that ment meeting by urging that “interests” not crisis at Cornell, Strout’s memories are scribes in pen nibs, but offers little to most of the political situation they are addressing is “power” be the basis of discussion. Some entirely consistent with mine; we only seem the world. It looked like just a lot of what one the anachronistic monstrosity of the war in curriculum changes were needed and made (I to disagree on whether there was an element of my favorite book stores in town telegraph­ Northern Ireland and the “birth” of a new played a small part in working for them), but of uneasiness in Bloom’s outrage and angst. I ically labels as “Lit Crit.” High arts indeed! national “family” that might result. the grander “restructuring” program, hailed still think there was, not because Bloom was All this by way of a long-winded (but that by President Perkins as kin to SDS’s theme a reactionary but because he was not—as I goes with the territory!) retraction of that —Bridget Meeds of “participatory democracy,” soon produced said in my letter, he evidenced a genuine heretofore never-expressed negative opin­ Ithaca the predictable clanking sounds of a contrap­ anguish about moral issues of discrimination ion.... I offer a resounding Roseanne-Rosan- tion running down. No literary psychologiz­ and racism at the same time as he took his nadanna-ish "Nevermind!" Some old com­ ing is needed to understand Harold’s resis­ extreme stand in defense of the academy. I pulsion had urged me to ignore first appear­ tance to and disdain for this misguided agree that there is something fanciful in my ances and to pick up the December issue attempt to make the university a surrogate for suggestion that the moment was a genuine with the cover piece on ‘The Hands of Henry all the economic and political inequalities in turning point for Bloom and has to some Moore.” I recall wondering who Moore was, the world beyond the campus. extent shaped his subsequent career, but but that uncertainty was drowned out by my Publisher: Jack Goldman It is patronizing and fanciful to think that Strout’s account of events does not discour­ uneasy certainty that I would first have to Editorial: Jack Goldman and Joel Ray Harold’s idiosyncratic version of a Western age the fancy. discover which sodden post-modern corner Managing Editor: Ben Goodman literary canon was bom in “a defensive ges­ Strout’s letter goes further, however, in of Lit Crit theory had spawned a “hands” Design Editor: Ben Goodman ture” made in a “reactionary moment” and collapsing all the political questions that allegory. rooted in his “rejection of a deeply felt moral faced us in 1969 into a simple confrontation Well now I have an inkling of who Moore Production Assistants: Ira Apfel, Dan Collins, guilt.” All this psycho-political melodrama with what he identifies as the SDS, a refer­ was, and even a good view of the damn Worth Godwin, Russell Underwood because he disagreed with his students’ SDS ence to a student activist group known as Stu­ hands! It was a nice piece. It told a good Advertising Accounts Executive: Ben Goodman politics! Harold may have shown a “bad-tem­ dents for a Democratic Society. All support story and raised all the right questions for Distribution: Ben Goodman pered reaction” to fashionable and strongly for the black students is condensed into “the me—I am even less a follower of the “sculp­ Contributors: Kenneth Evett, Gunilla Feigenbaum, Harvey Fireside, Charlotte Greenspan, Richard Klein, Janice Levy, T h e Kevin Murphy, Michael Serino, Mark Shechner, T^riends o f the ookpress PRESS Ted Underwood, Gail Holst-Warhaft ROOK Art: M. H. 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March, 1995 The R OOKPRE5S page 3 Mugging History: The New Historical Novel entirely, and became genre fiction, like the the unexpected form of a new historical John Vernon detective novel. In the 1930s and ’40s, we novel. had the historicals of Kenneth Roberts or The new historical novel wallows in A book reviewer once accused me of C.S. Forester side by side with, say, the fic­ extravagance. It questions the basis of his­ assault and battery on history using fiction tions of Faulkner, a good number of which torical knowledge and plays loose with as a weapon, a charge I’m still not sure how were obsessed with history—Absalom, facts in an attempt to create a parallel or to answer. Should I snap my Bic pen in two Absalom, for example. In the ’60s and ’70s, shadow history based as much on invention across my knee? I thought no one cared some historical novels possessed literary as on the evidence. Its goal is to chop up the about history in America. If the pundits are ambitions, most notably those of John frozen river of history. Though it often right, if history is just another tarnished Barth, John Gardner, and E.L. Doctorow, thickens its prose with gobbets of quotidian gentleman ravaged by his excesses and now whose The Sot-Weed Factor, Grendel, and detail, it generally is not realistic in left behind by a culture of youth, what harm Ragtime respectively are precursors of approach. Its subject isn’t “reality” but real­ can it do to accost him in an alley? I wasn’t today’s historical fiction. Recently, we’ve ities, competing versions of the real. Histo­ trying to hurt him. No one told me it was also experienced a recrudescence of the his­ ry is written by the winners, says the clichd. loaded! torical romance, a form older than the novel This fiction wants to see what the losers Actually, far from mugging dead emper­ and often given to gothic effects and flames were up to. Drawn toward peasants, mer­ ors and poets, I’d like to see them wake up of desire, with history as a scenic backdrop. chants, heretics, immigrants, and native and live again, even if it does mean rear­ But roughly since the mid-’80s, as I see groups, it disdains the pieties of both the ranging some facts. And as Mark Twain it, we’ve been more and more awash in his­ past and the present by ennobling no one. Its said, you have to get your facts straight torical novels, and not just bodice rippers accounts are unofficial. It demythologizes before you can distort them. and sea yams. These are books with aspira­ heroes, but thrives on legend, folk knowl­ My crime (or one of them) was to correct tions toward art. Any short list would edge, and myth. For technique it prefers an oversight of history and allow America’s include Ron Hansen, John Fowles, Larry pastiche, filmic cuts and shifts, and the two greatest poets, Walt Whitman and John Vernon McMurtry, Brian Moore, Toni Morrison, strange and rich languages of first person Emily Dickinson, to meet and form a James Welch, Jane Smiley, Frank Bergon, accounts and counterfeit documents (letters, friendship. They never did meet in the gran­ lo for his disrespect toward the historical Leslie Epstein, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael diaries, ships’ logs, “relations”). ite of history, which most historians treat as record, which resulted, said George Will, in Ondaatje, Charles Johnson, Susan Sontag, In this fiction, anachronisms aren’t blun­ a set of foregone conclusions since they an act of “bad citizenship.” Gore Vidal also Alice Walker, T. Coraghessan Boyle, ders waiting to be axed by dyspeptic copy know the outcome. But fiction deals with tweaked noses by describing our greatest Thomas Flanagan, George Garrett, John editors. Instead, they’re part of the dialogue the ground floor of history: not its official president’s gastrointestinal difficulties and Updike, Louise Erdrich, Umberto Eco, between the present and the past, and part of versions, master narratives, public myths, alleged syphilis in Lincoln. But Lincoln’s Milorad Pavic, John Calvin Batchelor, the frank admission that all historical and large generalizations—the Enlighten­ bowels are tame stuff next to Vidal’s Live Patrick Suskind, William Kennedy, Peter knowledge is a fiction circumscribed by the ment, Manifest Destiny, New World from Golgotha, whose premise is that a Mathiessen, Mario Vargas Llosa, Guy Dav­ present. Eco’s The Name of the Rose con­ Order—but its myriad pinpricks of subjec­ computer hacker is erasing the gospels. enport, and Evan Connell. A good percent­ tains allusions to Wittgenstein, Charles tivity, each a world in itself. The best his­ Are these the new nullifidians, these age of first novels are now historical, and Johnson’s Middle Passage talks about torical novels possess a sense of history not muggers of history? In Jeanette Winterson’s plenty of mainstream writers (Updike, for spacemen, molecules, and deconstruction, being history, not having already taken Sexing the Cherry, a monstrous character example) who write the expected fictions Vollmann’s The Ice-Shirt quotes from pam­ place. They assume that if nothing has yet named the Dog-Woman rips the heads off about infidelity in the suburbs, turn to histo­ phlets published by Iceland’s tourist been ordained, then anything can happen. Puritan preachers in pestilent London dur­ ry now and then as a relief, even if they tend bureau: “We’re Rich in Viking Heritage, Consider some recent historical fictions: ing the English Civil War. Jose Saramago’s to find in history...infidelity. Others only We’re Uncommon Good Fun and...W e’re In Frances Sherwood’s Vindication, Baltasar and Blimunda describes a heretical write about the past, as though the novel­ Very Affordable.” Coetzee’s Waiting For Mary Wollstonecraft romps with William Spanish priest, Bartolomeu Lourenco—a ist’s obligation to bring us news of the the Barbarians is perhaps less historical Blake and his wife in the nude; together, the historical figure—who in 18th-century world had taken a genealogical twist and than allegorical, but history colors its Blakes cover Mary with kisses and shower Spain built a flying machine called the Pas- become the desire to find out how the world details—its world contains castles and ram­ her with visions from Blake’s poems. In sarola with the help of two peasants and became what it is. A literary and even acad­ parts, with barbarians at the gates—yet the W illiam V ollm ann’s The Ice-Shirt, two Domenico Scarlatti. (It works.) Russell emic impulse stirs others, and a significant colonel in that novel wears sunglasses. Greenland Inuit children jump into the sea Banks’ little gem of a novel, The Relation of strain of today’s historical fiction is the Incongruity is part of the strategy of these in 1385 while a Danish fishing boat from My Imprisonment, tells its story in a perfect novel about writers of the past: Frederick writers. Their prototype could be Werner the 1980s steams by. The same author’s simulacrum of American Puritan prose, the Busch on Dickens in The Mutual Friend, Herzog’s film, “Aguirre, the Wrath of Fathers and Crows describes the whores on language of day-books, sermons, and “rela­ Jay Parini on Tolstoy in The Last Station, God,” in which a Spanish soldier in 16th- the rue Sainte-Catherine in contemporary tions”—narrative accounts of extraordinary Malcom Bosse on Fielding in The Vast century Peru, struck by a spear on a boat in Quebec touching the cheek of a priest lead­ events suffered by the narrator, usually cap­ Memory of Love, J.M. Coetzee on Defoe the wilderness, cries out as he falls, ing the Algonquin convert and candidate for tivity. The prose might be familiar in its and Dostoevsky, Paul West on Byron, “They’re making the spears longer this sainthood, Kateri Tekakwitha, to his mis­ strangeness (we think of Jonathan Edwards, Frances Sherwood on Mary Wollstonecraft, year.” This has two effects: it shatters our sion up the road, in the 17th century. Voll- Cotton Mather, the Salem witch trials), but Peter Ackroyd on Chatterton, and, in Pos­ willing suspension of disbelief by inserting mann has called the series of novels of the events and beliefs are nothing we recog­ session, A.S. Byatt on two fictional 19th- a sophmoric joke into the film’s carefully which these two are the first installments a nize. The narrator has been thrown into jail century poets based loosely on Browning constructed illusion of the past; and it dra­ “symbolic history”: “an account of origins for making coffins, and for belonging to a and Emily Dickinson. matizes the incongruity which is the film’s and metamorphoses which is often untrue sect of dissenters who worship the dead, and This trend suggests that we’ve shifted (at theme. You can’t go gently into the past, it based on the literal facts as we know them, sleep and pray in their own coffins. They are long last) away from minimalism and pre­ says, because your very presence there but whose untruths further a deeper sense of Puritans, yet they aren’t, and they have their sent-tense fiction, which blueprinted the highlights the same strange juxtapositions truth.” own scripture: “Leave off undue fascination disconnected machinery of our floating that turn historical romance (the exploration Paul West makes a similar claim in The with and morbid examination of things of anxieties—disconnected because they of the New World) into visionary night­ Women of Whitechapel and Jack the Rip­ the body, I told myself, quoting the sacred lacked a past or future to refer to. That, for a mare. per: “Although I based this novel on facts, I book of Walter (x, 42).” time, was the news of the world our writers This is not the usual or traditional prac­ based it on few enough of them.” Why? Banks’ mixing of religious fable and his­ announced: that we were cut off from histo­ tice of historical fiction. As Oscar Wilde Because “where nobody knows, we must tory is typical of a new kind of historical fic­ ry and drifting in the present. This isn’t the said, “The Black Arrow is so inartistic as invent, as the great religions do, giving the tion, one likely to make the William Ben­ place to beat a dead dog. Minimalism and not to contain a single anachronism to boast mind a ride, leading it a chase.” In The netts of the world roll over in their coffins. K-Mart realism had their day and their bril­ of.” Until recently, the genre of the histori­ Women of Whitechapel, the ride leads from “They’ve knocked off literature, now liant practitioners, and may have even cal novel prided itself on its research, accu­ Queen Victoria herself to Lord Salisbury, they’re going after history. Next they’ll gore shown those who write about history a trick racy, and fidelity to the facts. But the para­ her Prime Minister, whom she asks to “take mathematics...” I see two things happening or two. For example, not everyone in past dox of its reconstructions, like those of most care of” the sordid muddles of her grand­ in recent fiction, one telescoping out of the centuries wore funny costumes, rode hors­ narrative history, is that the structures erect­ son, Prince Eddy, married to a whore with other: first, a rebirth of historical fiction, es, and swung swords at fleeing peasants. ed were always more stable and plumb than whom he’s had a child. Salisbury contacts and second, a new historical novel which, in Sometimes they were anxious consumers, their originals, which were hastily thrown Dr. William Withey Gull of Guy’s Hospital, robbing history of its sense of being over too. together in the slow gale of time, and could who lobotomizes the whore and kidnaps the and done with, treats the historical moment But when Tom Wolfe, appalled by the have collapsed at any moment. Do we real­ child. When four other prostitutes write to as though it were present in hideous closeup shrunken horizons of minimalist fiction, ly think that Williamsburg looked and the Queen to protest, Gull murders them and therefore entangled with accident, called in Harper’s magazine several years smelled like its “restoration”? Any moment horribly and writes lunatic letters to the dream, fable, and contingency. ago for a “new social novel” to supplant it, in the past is a cross-section of the older papers signing himself Jack the Ripper. First, historical fiction. It’s nothing new, he surely didn’t have in mind something past, the present, and the haphazard; The almost neural pathways West traces of course. Books as different from each like Susan Sontag going retrograde with moments in the past are filled with the junk between the high and the low in Victorian other as Gravity’s Rainbow, Joseph and His The Volcano Lover. If minimalism can be of moments from their past. The first thing England strongly resemble the conspiracies Brothers, Death Comes for the Archbishop, described as an exclusive attention to sur­ reconstructions do is to sweep away that to kill John Kennedy in Oliver Stone’s A Tale of Two Cities, Orlando, War and face, then Wolfe’s big social novel, Bonfire garbage. Pop history is superb at this. The “JFK” and Don DeLillo’s Libra; they are Peace, and One Hundred Years of Solitude o f the Vanities, looks suspiciously minimal aim of “The Civil War” “produced” by Ken magnetic resonance images of a country’s are historical novels. But the novel was itself when turned to the side. I would argue Burns, like that of reconstructed Williams­ social brain. West and DeLillo got into trou­ always a mitotic form. Gradually, in the that Wolfe’s maximalism is only minimal­ burg, was through images and documents to ble for their imagined histories, West for 19th and 20th centuries, historical fiction ism spread thin to make it stretch, and that describing violence against women, DeLil- split off from the mainstream, though never the new social novel he called for has taken see Mugging History, page 4 PaRc 4 The ffOOKPRESS March, 1995 Mugging History

continued from page 3 ends said he never returned from Egypt in whose triumphant consummation—despite at least suggested an antithetical strange­ 1799, but sent a double back to France, in individual tragedies—has the familiar ring ness. I began reading historians whose erase the strangeness of history and replace which case the double left on St. Helena in of accounts written by the winners. premise was that history is more unfamiliar it with an authenticated nostalgia. The Leys’ novel would be a double doubled. The shift away from such accounts has than we ever suspected. Fernand Braudel’s effect is that now, at violin recitals, children Such legends are part of the myth of occurred for many reasons, but, in my view, preface to The Structures of Everyday Life play “The Civil War” theme (written for the Napoleon and of the more ancient myths chief among them are the reaction to the made this point forcefully. If we could be series), and their parents remember where concerning kings and emperors who dis­ Vietnam War and the end of the Cold War. transported to Femey and talk with Voltaire, they were when they watched Shelby Foote guised themselves as commoners and min­ These aren’t unrelated; Vietnam was one of he said, we’d have no problem in under­ tell stories about Lee. gled with their people, or who, Christ-like, the Cold War’s hot spots. And the questions standing each other. “In the world of ideas, Instead of historical accuracy, the new survived their own death and were rumored raised about Vietnam were also questions the men of the eighteenth century are our historical novelists are interested in histori­ to exist among their subjects. We know it about the moral absolutes assumed by the contemporaries.” Instead, the shock would cal possibility, sometimes improbability. isn’t true, we know it’s a story. But the Cold War. As with any war, the goal in come from the material differences between They ask, “What if?” They assume that the story itself contains truths about our culture. Vietnam wasn’t just to defeat the enemy, his world and ours, from the smells, lack of past once was the present, and their goal is This is as far from Kenneth Roberts, but to justify his defeat by portraying it as heat and light, strange-tasting food, condi­ to make it present again, to find the bomb of MacKinlay Kantor, and C.S. Forester as we ordained, because deserved. But Vietnam tions of hygiene, the experience of being contingency always ticking in the moment: shall get. It’s also quite a haul from those was our first foreign war whose moral sick, being cured, dying. Braudel concluded the sense that anything can happen. For this current novelists who are doing their best to meaning became a matter of intense nation­ that we must strip ourselves in imagination reason, their concern is not limited to the elevate the genre of historical fiction into al debate, not only while it was being of the trappings of our own lives if we’re to literal truth or untruth of a fact. They want more than just an entertainment—people fought, but to this very day. The generation enter the past and unlock its rules. This also to know how the “fact” resonates through a like Thomas Flanagan, Barry Unsworth, of novelists who came of age during Viet­ means not second-guessing the past, not culture. They’re drawn to legends, folk­ and Patrick O’Brian. The traditional, main­ nam experienced the uncertainty of the pre­ criticizing its inability to think or act tales, and myths, as well as facts. In Simon stream, well-researched historical novel, sent not just in the ifttfolding war itself but beyond the terms of its culture. Leys’ The Death of Napoleon, a double is about Momentous Occasions, usually wars, in the battle to understand and interpret it as It struck me at the time that no one was smuggled onto St. Helena island to die in is a product itself of our century of wars, it unfolded. To experience the uncertainty writing novels based on such assumptions, Napoleon’s place, while the Great Man both hot and cold. The best novels of that of the present is to recover the contingency though I’ve since learned I was wrong. I himself returns to post-Napoleonic Europe sort do us a service by dramatizing the sen­ of the past. liked the idea of not writing about myself, disguised as a demobbed army vet. Leys’ sory immediacy of the past. Their formulas Nor is this just an American phenome­ of stretching memory until memory lost its novel is based upon legends current in often involve ordinary people acting out non. The Cold War was global, and Viet­ connection with the ego. It was a kind of Napoleon’s own time, to the effect that he their little dramas in the shadow of great nam, a war begun by the French, was pas­ reverse immortality, a feeling of transcend­ escaped from St. Helena and left a double heroes. But most of them still share a sionately debated across Europe. But Amer­ ing one’s own limitations by attempting to behind. One version had the real Bonaparte myopic view of history as something expe­ icans have a special claim on the uncertain­ assume those of the past. I probably knew selling spectacles in Verona. Earlier leg­ rienced only by one class and one sex, ties released by the recent thaw of historical then what I know now, that our knowledge absolutes. Ours is a mix and match history, of the past is conditioned by the present, and a history of disparate immigrant groups, that even my desire to escape such condi­ native peoples, and cultural cross-dressers. tioning is itself one of the terms of my cul­ O ff Campus Part of our history has been learning to ture. That doesn’t invalidate it. A dialogue thrive on crises of self-interpretation. Who with the past is imagination’s two-way mir­ At The Bookery can claim to be “we” to everyone else’s ror: I may finally be unable to avoid writing “them” in this country? In both hemispheres about myself, but the self from which I'm of the Americas, one of the most obsessive writing glimpses other worlds through the cracks in its blindness. The Bookery continues its 1995 lecture series and recurrent themes of the new historical fiction is the confrontation between New If there’s a downside to this, it comes not in the lecture space in Bookery II World indigenous groups and European from lack of respect toward historical fact, immigrants. Thomas Berger’s Little Big but from treating history as exotic novelty. Man is one precursor, but recently we’ve That’s a risk we have to take, and one that Friday, March 10th from 7:30-9:30 pm had William Vollmann’s Seven Dreams our legacies urge us to take. We’re a product series, Louise Erdrich’s Tracks, Frank of the past, but the past never discharges its Marcelle Lapow Toor, Bergon’s Shoshone Mike, James Welch’s curses predictably, as the ancients knew. In Lecturer in the Department of Communication at Cornell, Fools Crow, Brian Moore’s Blackrobe, the Sixties, we thought that surely by now Malamud’s The People, Leslie Epstein’s we were entering the Age of Aquarius, the will host the opening of a two-week exhibit on Pinto and Sons, and many others. global village inhabited by children of the One-of-a-Kind Books. Supine on his hammock in Brazil fifty rainbow. Shouldn’t the end of the Cold War years ago, Claude Levi-Strauss made the have hastened this paradise? Fat chance. A The books represent the final projects of students discouraging observation (recorded in better name, maybe, for the age we’ve in Toor's "Art of Publication" course and will be on display Tristes Tropiques) that when two cultures lurched into is Vico’s “Ricorso,” the at The Bookery until March 24. Toor, who has taught the course meet, one usually destroys or absorbs the Return. Characterized by anarchy, the dis­ for the last seven years, is author of Graphic Design on the Desktop: A other. Yet we wouldn’t want a world of persal of nations, and the abuse of luxury Guide for the Non-Designer, published in 1994 by Van Nostrand Reinhold. insulated cultures—that’s culture death. (all Vico’s terms), the Return means a Between Babel and silence lies a landscape return to self-protected enclaves and nests, of plural cultures whose assumptions and to the narrowest definitions of national, categories are often incommensurate. Pic­ racial, religious, linguistic, and sexual iden­ Announcing Book A Saturday... tures of this landscape are like images on tity. Even Americans sometimes forget that radar screens made from deerskin. No history is bunk when the past becomes a Once a month, "The Owl's Nest" at The Bookery w ill offer parents an doubt, our novelists are drawn to such pic­ refuge and a wellspring of comforting opportunity to browse while their children listen to stories. We will have tures partly because of our own cultural essences. Sure, it’s fun to envision a world visiting authors, guest readers, and activities for children ages five and upheavals. We know that official accounts of cultural play lovingly watched over by older. During each Book A Saturday, there will be a 10% discount of history once effectively ignored large the benign god of Difference, but tell it to chunks of the past and domesticated a con­ the Serbs. As E.M. Forster said, or had India on all children's books. Dates and times will be announced: tentious world with bromides about human say, on the last page of A Passage to India: nature, that shibboleth of normative homo­ “No, not yet.” Saturday, April 8 at 11:30 am geneity. In their quiet ways, Moore’s Black- In writing about cultural, instead of mili­ Anne Mazer, robe or Bergon’s Shoshone Mike, and in tary wars, the new historical novelists are their noisy ways, Vollman’s two novels, all seeing the past in a fresh light, yes. Often, will read selections and sign copies from portray incompatible versions of human they’re scatologically turning history upside her published and forthcoming children's destiny and spirituality, tragic in their rela­ down. But they’re also expressing the spirit books. Her writing spans across age- tive blindnesses and exhilarating in the of this age. They’re bringing us news of our specific reading levels and includes the knowledge inseparable from those blind­ world, as all novelists do, and the news is picture book The Salamander Room, the nesses. Johnson’s Middle Passage does this this: that the world is being Balkanized. We middle-reader book The Ox Boy, and the in a comic way. These are the real culture may feel right now the accidental nature of young adult multicultural anthology wars, the ones that defined and are still the present, but this is because we’ve been Going Where I'm Coming From. defining us. Once novelists jump into that newly introduced to a past whose accidents Anne attended the School of Visual and thicket, they find they can’t treat cultural have returned to haunt us. The most dramat­ Performing Arts at Syracuse University differences with benign irony, with blank ic result of the Cold War’s demise, the one and the Sorbonne in Paris. checks written in heavenly vacuums. They that caught us all off guard—the resurgence have to try some sympathetic magic of old ethnic and national hatreds—only instead. They have to be freshly born into confirms Francis Bacon’s little plum: these the past. times, he said, are the ancient times, when My own attraction to historical themes the world is ancient. The Bookery came as a surprise when I began writing fic­ DeWitt Building, tion; it hardly seemed to be a matter of John Vernon teaches at Binghamton choice. My suspicion now is that it hap­ University. His new novel, All for Love: 215 North Cayuga St., Ithaca pened because the fiction around me, in Baby Doe and Silver Dollar, will be For more information call (607) 273-5055 converging on the present, portrayed a published by Simon and Schuster next world so predictable and banal that the past September. March, 1995 The B QOKPRESS page 5 Eco-logic in the New South Africa

achieved its success by single-minded disci­ Duane Chapman pline. It has a significant research program that provides the basis for what is fairly It is said that on Liberation in Zimbabwe cer­ called scientific management. The 150 tain villagers went out into the bush and slaugh­ research projects cover tsetse fly and malaria, tered large numbers of rhinos and other ani­ cheetah demographics, elephant ecology, and mals, because concern for them had become water and air pollution. associated with white values: care for animals, The contemporary reality of wilderness but indifference to themselves. preservation is plain in Kruger. Wilderness —Doris Lessing, African Laughter must be managed in order to be protected. Fences, for example, are necessary to sepa­ Writing about Zimbabwe, Doris Lessing rate animals from people, but in the process has also defined the dilemma of South the fences halt the seasonal and drought cycle Africa’s Kruger National Park. South migrations of wildebeest and elephant. Ani­ African blacks have no ideological or emo­ mal populations in a “wilderness” are in fact tional attachment to the white monuments of artificial, in the sense that habitat, food, and the past. Both the Voortrekker monument in predation are all strongly influenced by Pretoria and the Kruger National Park in the human actions on both sides of a park’s Eastern Transvaal could go. However, the fence. In some years, major rivers in the Park Park is a unique asset and problem for the are now dry even at the end of the rainy sea­ world, as well as for South Africa. Its son. Diversions for agriculture and industry, indisputable success has created the condi­ and perhaps climate change, have eliminated Carol Chapman tions which might lead to its own destruction. the rivers’ flow through the Park into African Elephant mother and calf, Kruger National Park In 1902, the newly created Reserve held Mozambique. So wells and windmill pumps few people or wildlife. Two thousand blacks now create ponds and lakes, providing sub­ the Anglo-Boer War and his exile. In the last per and gold sites were first worked by black and 60 whites lived there. There were no ele­ stitute water sources. 36 years, the chief warden has usually been Africans before their later development by phants, or white rhinos. Careful tracking The modem goal is biodiversity, or ecodi- Afrikaner, as have been almost all of the Europeans. But, throughout the Park’s his­ counted one black rhino, five hippos, five gi­ versity in a broad sense, setting aside from National Park Board Trustees. The Park’s tory, this black history has been ignored. The raffes, and nine lions. The great herds of human-induced extinction as much as possi­ offices and housing are spartan. Headquarters goal was to present a picture of an empty gar­ zebra, buffalo, and antelope had been ble of a region’s original plant and animal is not in Johannesburg, but literally in a field den developed by whites. One Park leader decimated by hunting before and during the life. The Park is managed in such a way that in the Park. I admire and support this com­ suggested that this whitewashing was done to Anglo-Boer War. Probably, disease and cy­ all of the endangered large carnivores and mitment to accomplishment, not show or sta­ reduce future black claims for reparations. clical drought had prevented this “lowveld” grazers common to Southern Africa are pre­ tus. But the strengths of this Afrikaner Now the Park administration is scrambling from ever attaining stable, high levels of ani­ sent in stable populations. The biological commitment to the Park carry the seeds of to correct this problem. It is developing major mal life or human society. ecosystem—grass, trees, and water—is man­ colossal failure. It was the Afrikaner’s educational programs on black African gold Now, a century later, concentrated focus aged to provide an almost natural environ­ apartheid itself which created the social prob­ works in the North, and iron-making near on effective management of nature and ment for these animals. The Park has more lems that may destroy the Park. Palobara. Another indication of the new atti­ tourism has transformed the five million wildlife species than any other park or tude is the concept of a new Environmental acres of the Kruger National Park, and the reserve in Africa: 200 tree species, with * * * Sciences College sponsored by the Park. It 525,000 acres in private game reserves on the another 180 shrubby trees, and 1,600 species would be open to everyone in Africa, provid­ western edge of the Park, to create a dramat­ of grass and bush; 150 kinds of mammals, It is still with shock that I recall Richard’s ing a place to exchange learning and ideas on ic picture of wildlife success. 500 bird species, and more than 100 types of claim to be the first Jew to work in the Park. topics from elephant ecology to acid rain The Table shows the South African reptiles. The number of insect species is Richard says his interest in tourism led him prevention. achievements. In combination with potential uncounted: there may be 2,000 different from a Teknikon in Durban to park adminis­ These efforts are more than a penance. The neighboring territories in Zimbabwe and species of dung-eating beetles alone. tration, and he finds his work taking tourists’ Park—and the large majority of South Mozambique, this region could become the But accepting the goal of ecodiversity rais­ reservations for rondavel huts and chalets to Africans of all races—wants to accommodate global African equivalent of America’s es unpleasant choices. For example, in dry be a short-term, but interesting job leading to a new government and a new South Africa. Yosemite Valley. years unrestricted elephant populations a career in tourism or hotel management in The Park’s Afrikaner management has would exterminate the Park’s spectacular South Africa. He says that no Jew wanted to * * * prehistoric baobab trees. This unique tree work in the Park, and the administration grows like a sponge in wet years, and holds didn’t want anyone but Afrikaners or Eng­ The African National Congress and the Table of Wildlife moisture in dry years. The oldest individuals lish. Richard’s family has been in Africa for Mandela government have more pressing exceed 2,000 years in age. Moreover, 300 years. concerns than the Park; black unemployment in Kruger N ational Park extreme fluctuations in animal population By coincidence I introduced Richard to exceeds 50 percent, and education, health levels would result in painful suffering from Matthew one evening, and listened to them care, and the economy are all declining. The 1903 1993 starvation and thirst in bad years. This is exchange stories about their respective expe­ ANC’s first concerns are political rights and because good rainy seasons accelerate popu­ riences over several evenings at dinner. economics. Elephant 0 7300 lation growth, and subsequent drought can Matthew is the first black to have a pro­ My friend Paul Jourdan, whose family wreak catastrophic loss. The Park’s approach fessional job in the Park; he is an assistant (White Afrikaner) has been in Africa for cen­ Black Rhino 1 220 to this dilemma has been culling, a polite manager in one of the Park’s grocery stores. turies, now works for the ANC, hammering word for removal with consequent process­ Actually, in South Africa’s complex termi­ out economic policies on mine ownership, W hite Rhino ‘exterminated’ 1400 ing in meat packing operations. I write this nology, Matthew is coloured, meaning his macroeconomics, trade, and, when there is Hippo 5 2700 without pejoration. It may be inevitable, first European language is Afrikaans rather time, environmental policy. Paul believes given the existence of human-made wil­ than English, and his ancestors are Dutch and that hunting in the Kruger should be studied. Giraffe 5 5700 derness and the goals of biodiversity and sta­ Nguni. He was bom just west of the Park, and His focus is on the trophy fees that might be ble populations. went to Johannesburg for work. He is in his collected for an ANC government. In Tanza­ Buffalo 8 28,000 In good years with high rainfall and little 40s, and he studies at night to improve both nia these average from $4,000 for an elephant disease, the Park’s population goal is 7,000- his English and Afrikaans. He is very inter­ to $600 for a buffalo. Total fees paid to the Eland ‘exterminated’ 850 7,500 elephants. This means each elephant ested in accounting, and only a little in Tanzanian government exceeded $12,000 for Roan ‘exterminated’ 420 has an average of 600 acres, which they share wildlife. each hunter in 1991. with, on average, 4 buffalo, 18 impala, 4 If Matthew had attempted to pursue a One serious obstacle to the introduction of Tsessebe 'exterminated' 1200 zebra, 2 wildebeest, and lesser numbers of degree in science or management between hunting in the Kruger, however, is the inter­ other animals. 1950 and 1980, he could have been jailed. action between animal life and tourism. Wildebeest 50 13,500 In contrast with Kenya, Tanzania, Zaire, Math, science, engineering, and business Today, the Kruger mammals do not associate and Zambia, where no adult elephant is safe management were prohibited for blacks at vehicles with hostile intent. A car, even an Kudu 35 10,500 from poachers, the Kruger Park still has adult white universities in South Africa. If he con­ open vehicle, can approach a relaxed lion or Ostrich ‘exterminated’ some males with large tusks. The major reason is a tinued to attempt to study at a white universi­ elephant as close as thirty yards before irritat­ military-type discipline in dealing with ty after his release from jail, he could have ing the animal. Antelope and baboons are Zebra 40 31,000 poachers. The South African Defense Force been murdered. To my knowledge, by 1990, equally accustomed to tourist visitors. This worked with the Park Ranger staff to develop no black South African had been permitted to accommodation of tourist and animal is pos­ Impala 9000 130,000 armed response teams using helicopter earn a Ph.D. in science, engineering, math, sible now because there is no hunting within attacks from remote locations in the Park. If business, or economics, at any predominantly the Park. Lions 9 2300 poachers survive arrest, they are imprisoned white university in South Africa. The coexistence of wildlife and tourism Leopard ‘numerous’ 900 for 10-15 years. The number of impover­ Now, President Mandela leads the New could be destroyed if hunting is initiated. The ished, well-armed Mozambican refugees South Africa. The Park’s white leadership smaller hunted animals would learn to avoid Cheetah ‘very scarce’ 250 who have passed through and around the would like to work with black colleagues, but all humans, including tourists. The larger ani­ Park is informally estimated at half a million, those black colleagues are not present. mals would probably have a more complex Crocodiles ‘swarming’ ‘thousands’ but poaching is now usually less than 20 ele­ “Whitewashing” extended even to the era­ reaction. They could become quick to anger phants and 5 rhinos each year. sure of black history in the Park and through­ or flee, and might learn to retaliate against Visitors 0 700.000 The Park is named after Paul Kruger, out the country. Before the arrival of the humans without guns. Cars 0 200,000 Afrikaner President of the Boer South Afrikaner settlers, the northern half of the In 1993, ten people in game reserves were African Republic in the Transvaal in the late Park was the location of mining, smelting, killed. Three were trampled by elephants, and Revenue 0 $26 million 1800s. His 15-year struggle to establish a and fabricating with gold, iron, and copper by wild game reserve in the lowveld ended by African blacks. Many of South Africa’s cop­ see Eco-logic, page 6 jpagejj The ROOKPRESS March, 1995 Eco-logic in the New South Africa

continued from page 5 and ecosystems. It is safe to predict that in any sections of the Kruger opened to com­ six were killed by lions. The chief anti­ munal cattle ranching the land would degrade poaching ranger in the Kruger was killed by until it matched the land now on the west side an elephant a few days before I was to meet of the fence. And the people involved could with him; I was in his office the day of his be bound to a life of eternal poverty. funeral. One of the lion victims lived across Prof. Sangweni emphasizes his belief that the street from my friends’ home in Durban, economic opportunity in South Africa’s where I stayed. She was eaten and her hus­ industrial areas would enable the residents of band badly mauled in a Natal game reserve. the Lebowa and GazanKulu areas and the In several of these cases, the animals have Mozambican refugee camps to escape those been trapped and relocated. In the Kruger locations to better lives. In the end, the future case, the probability is high that the attacking of the Kruger depends upon the growth in liv­ elephant had been part of a clan that had been ing standards in the entire country. People culled or poached. This suggests that Kruger must have houses and regular meals before tourism and Kruger trophy hunting are they can think about watching wildlife rather incompatible. than eating it. Nor does hunting in Kruger make econom­ ic sense. Notwithstanding the high fees from * * * trophy hunters, several hundred trophies and hunters would add just pennies each to the Until then, there are two ways that I think the Kruger can make an economic contribu­ per capita income in the Eastern Transvaal Carol Chapman region where the Park is located. Trophy White Rhino, favorite target of poachers tion to its region. First, the Park can raise its hunting by foreign tourists is simply not the fees to foreign visitors and distribute this rev­ basis for economic development in a populat­ but if I were eligible to vote on hunting in the Another one and a half million people live in enue within the region for public sector ed region. Kruger, my vote would be No. the so-called “homelands” of Lebowa and investment in schools, health care, and roads. Furthermore, there are enough eccentric, GazanKulu, which were created as a hybrid Twenty-five percent of KNP tourists come foreign hunters to bring the whole activity * * * cross between the US Indian reservation and from outside of Africa: Europe, Japan, Aus­ into question. I’ve heard of hunters who wait­ the British concentration camp. They were tralia. The typical trip costs the visitor about ed until their rhino had been wounded and Professor Stanley Sangweni (University of wholly corrupt, their leadership supported by $2,000. But at the Park, the revenue is only immobilized by their guide and then, when it Natal at Pietermaritzburg) was active at the funds from the old apartheid South African $40 for a stay of several days. This $40 was safe, drove up in their Land Rover and ANC’s Environment Desk before assuming a Government. includes accommodations and meals as well emptied dozens of pistol shots into the para­ government position in Cape Town. He is Prof. Sangweni’s childhood home was in a as fees. The admission fee itself is only $8, lyzed animal; of a rich marksman who did not particularly interested in reclaiming for black rural community to the southeast of the whether the stay is one day or several weeks. know that his quarry had been drugged by his blacks land from which they were dispos­ Kruger. His personal and political identifica­ Admission fees alone for foreign visitors safari for him; and of another marksman who sessed by the apartheid system. Eighty-seven tion is wholly with the blacks at the Park’s could easily be increased by $50, adding $20 did not know that the safari ranger staff stood percent of South Africa’s land has been taken boundary, where ANC supporters live in dust million to the Park’s revenue, without reduc­ behind him as he fired and gunned down the by white South Africans in the past three and poverty. Their average income is about ing visitor levels. This increase would add game he was unable to hit. centuries. $300 per capita per year, most of which only 2.5 percent to the visitor’s cost for the I am not a vegetarian and not opposed to Understandably, the management success­ probably comes from remittances from rela­ trip. hunting. My own perspective is that hunting es at the Kruger are not high on Sangweni’s tives in urban areas, and from the trickle- Ecotourism is often seen as a possible as a sport means individual effort, on foot or list of significant objectives. He does think, down effect of government expenditures. In engine of clean and green economic growth horseback, with a good chance of survival for however, that the economic potential of buf­ economic terms, the gross private domestic in South Africa. But ecotourism by itself can­ the hunted, and at least a small risk for the falo ranching in the Park should be carefully product (the income originating from private not significantly raise living standards in the hunter. I have tracked bear cross-country, in investigated. His motivation is concern for sector activity in the region) is essentially nil. region. Research has shown that 70-90 per­ Maine and Montana, without a gun, and improving the living standards of the blacks The situation is even worse in the Mozambi­ cent of the wildlife tourist dollar goes to the found them. For me, big game hunting in near the Park. can squatter camps. tourist’s home country for air fare, car rental, Africa, with vehicle teams and aerial spot­ The population in the Eastern Transvaal The potential pasture on the east side of the in-country hotels, and so on. In addition to ting, radio communication, and back-up bordering the Park is about two million. Kruger boundary fence understandably looks the low economic multiplier, tourism in the sharpshooters, does not qualify as sport. There are three major groups. One is Mozam­ attractive to individuals who graze animals in Park cannot increase above its current Entertainment perhaps, but not sport. bican refugees, perhaps as many as half a dust and rocks outside the Park. The ANC’s 700,000 visitors without significant increases In the end, Africans will have to decide; million, concentrated in the northwest. former position was that this possibility of in Park investment in lodging and roads. The farming merits investigation. This is partic­ consensus of KNP personnel is that 700,000 ularly true for the 525,000 acres of privately- visitors is the sustainable carrying capacity; owned game reserves within the Kruger beyond this the negative impact is believed to 1926-1995 ecosystem. These private reserves are on the be more than proportional to the increased Kruger side of the fence, and wildlife can benefits. move unhindered between public and private Considering the context of the real conser­ James Merrill lands. vation achievements at the Park and the hor­ The day I visited a private camp in the Sabi rendous political problems that are the legacy Sand reserve, accompanied by a knowl­ of apartheid, I think international financial edgeable and enthusiastic ranger, we had support is an obvious basis for guiding the 25,000 acres completely to ourselves. We Park into the future. Perhaps this should be walked the river beds and bush before dawn, part of a larger program for conservation sup­ SCATTERING tracking leopard, rhino, buffalo, and zebra. port, analogous to the Global Environmental Rates at the private reserves begin at $300 per Facility at the World Bank. Funds allocated day per person and range up to $700. So the directly to the government and to the KNP OF western fence separates the homelands, would be money spent for a good purpose. where people exist in poverty, from visitors Economists have an arcane phrase, “con­ SALTS who spend $300 plus to rent pretty much the tingent valuation.” Translated, it means valu­ entire Park. ing places that have significant non-dollar However, buffalo ranching in the Kruger value apart from markets. The Kruger quali­ fies on two counts: option value and exis­ In addition to his fifteen volumes of poetry, Merrill authored several novels, has no economic future. These lowveld plays, essays, and a book of memoirs. He received two National Book Awards, regions were abandoned by white ranchers tence value. Option value means that I may a National Book Critics Circle Award, the Bollingen Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and farmers because of little rainfall, poor wish to see a contribution made now so that and the Rebekah lohnson Bobbitt Prize awarded by the Library of Congress. soil, and widespread disease. In this region at some future date I can choose to visit the the average large grazing animal requires 35 Park. Existence value is related but distinct: it acres, and in densely populated areas in reflects the value we may see in the existence Because Merrill has found a way to put everything from murder to mindlessness into a style that could have been purely decorative, the GazanKulu each animal may require 100 of a species, or an historical area, or a unique­ style itself has stretched its possibilities...so puns, ambiguities, and the acres. In extreme contrast, the best pasture in ly beautiful place. We need not ever consider stanzaic shapes o f English expand and grow. the US can support one animal per acre. seeing the object of existence value in close —Helen Vendler, The New Republic One way of approaching the economics is physical proximity. We value its existence to begin with the concept that sustainable uti­ apart from ourselves. lization would be applied to wild game, and On this basis, a new Kruger Park in a new look at the potential sales of buffalo carcass­ South Africa deserves our support. es. Slaughtering 3,000 buffalo annually would permit a constant buffalo population Note; A bibliography of references on the of 25,000-35,000, the current level in the Kruger National Park is available from the Park. Sales would be about $2 million annu­ author. ally, which translates into $1 per person per year. Increasing this by 1,000 percent still Duane Chapman, professor of Resource would mean only $10 per person per year, Economics at Cornell University, would like and would require much higher cattle num­ to thank Eleanor Smith for assistance in the bers and a reduction of other kinds of wildlife preparation o f this manuscript. March, 1995 TbeBQOKPRESS £ ag _7 Chain Saw Massacre

weighing on you. You’d have to be a rare those bulldozers aren ’t burnin ’ water." This than you expected of cement plants, electro­ Daryl Anderson owl indeed not to be anticipating some sort is not “forestry” by any stretch of the imag­ plating factories, foundries, coal mines, and of dreadful, immense clear-cut—ancient ination. No thinning of stands or selection tanneries. Furthermore, you see them from Everyone is lugging around a handy-cam forests slaughtered left and right. Well, it’s of more or less competitive species for per­ the unpretty backside, where they load and these days. They’re omnipresent talismans odd, but we never encountered any such petual yield. Even after you’ve started to unload. Regardless of the pronouncements at our tribal rituals—weddings and bas mitz- spectacle. Never saw an ancient forest at all, notice the replantings in various stages of of information-age prophets, the sinew of vahs and first haircuts—but you also spot for that matter. What we did see, and the growth, you never lose the feeling that this this economy, huge in scale and scope, is them in the usually quiet places, in the back relentless, oppressive reality of it, turned out resource isn’t being cultivated or harvest­ still industry—and it’s damn messy stuff. country, indiscriminately gathering up the to be worse than any nightmarish expecta­ ed—it’s being mined. So instead of mining gravel, we’re just living landscape. The Luddite in me won­ tion. Only after a long day’s drive does it begin mining trees. Of course it’s a messy busi­ ders if there isn’t more to seeing than point As you edge beyond the civilized glow of to seem a whole lot more complicated than ness. Have you ever looked at a cut-over and shoot, more to remembering com field? Or sniffed an acre of than curling up on the couch tomatoes after the last economic with one hand in a bowl of pop­ pick has left the rest to rot? corn and the other on the fast- That’s messy. But the cycle­ forward button. I didn’t bring time there is a year—next June back any movies from my sum­ it’ll be a pretty little cornfield mer vacation in Oregon a few again. The cycle-time for trees is years ago, just memories. twenty or thirty times that long. We had hoped to get a flavor In Europe, where they’ve had of the place with an eye toward a a few hundred more years’ expe­ westward move. We weren’t rience at “taming” nature, stud­ alone. Lots of folks are noticing ies have shown that, by the third Oregon these days—many of or fourth replanting, it gets them lunging upstream like REAL HARD to produce a dying salmon from the clogged healthy “crop” of timber. In this cultural artery that California has country, the paper and lumber become. Whole towns in Oregon companies eschew science for have been transformed into more practical concerns. Almost lifestyle destinations for house- daily a new swarm of corporate rich, community-poor Cali­ lawyers, PAC-flacks, and MBA- fornians. The natives (“it’s Ora- mice is loosed on the Swiss GUN”) don’t like it. They suffer cheese that is US environmental even more from the conflict law in the post-Reagan era—and between their resentment of the you could now roll the General outsiders’ owlish opinions of Sherman Sequoia, sideways, their one primary industry—tim­ through the gaps. ber—and recognition of the A big paper company might essential role those same out­ spend a few bucks an acre to siders play in the economy as replant, and then advertise its tourists. efforts in a foldout spread for Mindful of these concerns, Earth Day or something. But if and knowing that most Ameri­ the bottom line is squeezing cans considered our then-home­ down tight, it’s just as easy to town of Buffalo as a sort of line up a steady supply of small alchemist’s rusty inversion of timber-plot owners (out of work, the Golden State, we left behind more than likely, from the mech­ our “Hug A Tree” T-shirts in anization of the industry over favor of “Go Bills” sweaters. the past decade). Better yet, they Clutching traveler’s checks as could “contract out” the cut to protective amulets, we set out one of the many fly-by-night with an honest desire to reserve operations that the same eco­ judgment on matters weighty nomic dislocations have created. and woody. It was harder than If these contractors fail to you might think. replant, or even disappear in four or five years, it’s not the The first thing you notice are paper company’s concern. the trucks. Even where replanting is extensive and successful, you’ve It’s surprising to realize how only got to catch one of these much of the pulse of industry is “forests” at the right angle from hidden from us in anonymous- the highway—the stripes jump looking trailer trucks or rail cars. right out at you—to realize that Scott Werder Think how we react when even here we’ve fundamentally NAKED COMMERCE occasionally does Portland, down into the Willamette Valley that. changed the nature of the landscape. It may flash by on the highway—a truck loaded between the Cascades and the Coastal There really are lots and lots of trees here. be green and full of trees, but in truth it’s no with gabbling, terrified chickens in stacked Range, you really do start to notice a whole Just because you’ve already got your house more an eco-system than a golf course. cages; or a flatbed trailer carrying some lot of green—arboreal green that is. Trees. and a new deck doesn’t change the reality of huge geared and flanged device, with warn­ You start to lose that anticipatory dread of the need for more timber to keep building Clunk! A jolt from the highway and ing signs and banners. In Oregon the indus­ the cuts and lose yourself instead in the them for your kids and grandkids. Just you’re back from philosophy class, back to try is logging, and there’s little reason to woody fantasies that brought you to the because you can hide from it back in the the trees, lots of trees, stretching to the hori­ enclose raw timber in a semi-trailer. So Pacific Northwest in the first place. Nothing rolling dairy lands of New York doesn’t zon. There’s another cut, a big one. Why everywhere you go, you see these skeletal obviously huge or ancient or old; just lots of mean it isn’t part of the dirty, messy founda­ there, why not this hillside over here? open-frame trucks, loaded with dead trees. trees. tion of our post-hunter-gatherer society. There’s another one; there, on the horizon, Imagine the effect on tofu sales if all the Hell, you want a tour of a slaughterhouse? you can see it like some sort of punk hairdo beef and pork and other carcasses that travel Then, all of a sudden there’s this mess. Of a steel mill? Of the, ahem, production in profile. On and on.... the interstates were hung up in open-air facilities in China where that shirt of yours But let’s face it, most of what you see is transports. Tangled scrub. A few tall, skinny soli­ was manufactured? Whaddaya think that living, green trees. So what is this nagging So there you are, surrounded by all these taires. All sorts of branches, stumps, and chair is made of...soybeans? Look at this sense of dis-ease as the scattered but relent­ trucks and feeling like a hard-core monkey- clumps lying around crushed up in clods and little logging town here. Do you think we less progression of clear-cuts straggles by? wrencher thinking about CORPSES, when, muck and rocks, crisscrossed with raggedy- can just put up a bunch of Burger Huts and Perhaps the problem is that so many of these inevitably, you come upon either the source looking road cuts. Perhaps a tractor or a bank branches and, voila...throw down your logs are three or four or even six feet in or the destination of the logs. The order of weird, clawed crane left to scour for left­ chain saws, you’re a service economy? The diameter. You do not have to drive past an discovery depends on whether you are overs. Then it’s past. Your first clear-cut. eco-saint shirt begins to seem a bit starchy. ancient forest being clear cut to see the end inland or on the coast. Neither is a pretty Only a few acres, it seemed. Off the road, product. Perhaps part of it is just your sight, but the marriage of the two is more though, a ways off up a steepish slope, all One thing you lose if you travel by train, mind’s inability to sum up all the parts in than doubly disturbing. It becomes evident the easy stuff has been gotten at already. as we did, is your “industrial virginity.” play. The many hundreds of ten- or twen­ that a large chunk of this devastation is Then it’s back to trees, trees, trees.... Unlike the interstate highways which tend ty-acre cuts aren’t easily combined into a geared toward the export of raw timber Strange. It’s the fundamental messiness, to blot out the landscape, or the airlines with sense of overall destruction. For this you across the Pacific. No American homes, and the disorder of it all, that first strikes you. their “point-to-point” transport, the rail­ have to detour to the coast. Not to one of the precious few jobs, are being built from these It’s evident that the essence of the whole roads, which grew up around and within the pretty little windswept resort towns, mind trees. business is just that: it’s a business. "Move industrial economy of the past century, take you, but to a working port. That’s where Still, it’s the front end of the equation, the ’em in, take 'em down, and move ’em out you right through it. Certainly you see all loading point for the trucks, that’s been boys. We're paying you by the hour, and sorts of open countryside, but also far more see Chain Saw Massacre, page 15 page 8 The ffOOKPKESS March, 1995 March, 1995 The B OOKPRESS page 9 Philip Johnson: The Element of Self-Exposure

continued from page 1 his return to the US, Johnson and Alan Black­ frequently contributed, but “The Jews bought burn, a friend from Harvard and MoMA, the magazine and are mining it, naturally.” 1906, Johnson grew up in New London, Ohio, began to take an interest in the writings of His interest in controlling a periodical the son of a well-to-do lawyer who generally Lawrence Dennis. An active figure in the thwarted, Johnson began setting his thoughts ignored him, and an independent woman extreme Right, Dennis predicted the coming on paper, contributing to three right-wing pub­ who believed strongly in her children’s cul­ of fascism in the US, adding that it would lications: The Examiner, a publication dedicat­ tural enrichment. Indeed, the trips to Europe come not from the masses but from the disen­ ed to understanding the good points in fascism that his mother would take him and his two chanted elite. and put out by critic Geoffrey Stone, a close sisters on appear to have instilled a love for In December, Johnson and Blackburn quit friend of Wyndham Lewis; Social Justice, architecture in young Philip. But Johnson’s their positions at MoMA and went to which by 1938 had become notorious for its early life was unsettled: at Harvard he dabbled Louisiana to offer their services to the King- anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi slant (most notably for in a number of fields, none very successfully, fish, Senator Huey Long, whom Dennis reprinting a speech by Goebbels essentially and suffered several nervous breakdowns, believed was “the nearest approach to a unchanged under Coughlin’s name, as well as apparently while trying to come to terms national fascist leader.” Through his MoMA for publishing the Protocols of the Elders of with his homosexuality. He graduated three exhibitions, Johnson had become quite well Zion and defending the Nazis after Kristall- (reprinted from Philip Johnson: The Glass Htnise, Pantheon Books, 1993) years late. known and the move made the papers. John­ nacht); and Today’s Challenge, a journal dis­ Philip Johnson, interior of The Glass House, Johnson’s residence, New Canaan, But fate was kind to Johnson: as a coming- son told a reporter for The New York Times tributed by the American Fellowship Forum, Connecticut, 1949. The brick cylinder at the center of the house contains both of-age gift from his father he received a block that the two hoped to meet Long and perhaps an organization with close ties to Lawrence fireplace and shower. “The cylinder, made of the same brick as the platform from of stock in Alcoa. It swiftly multiplied and serve as his brain trust. They saw the trip as a Dennis, funded by the German government which it springs, forming the main motif of the house, was not derived from Mies, made him financially independent, allowing great adventure and hoped to take walks in the and dedicated to disseminating pro-German but rather from a burnt wooden village I saw once where nothing was left but him to follow his interests in modern art and woods and learn to shoot. In a front-page arti­ propaganda to more upper-class types who foundations and chimneys of brick. Over the chimney I slipped a steel cage with a architecture. Johnson soon became friends cle, the reporter for the Herald Tribune noted might not read Social Justice. glass skin. The chimney forms the anchor” (Philip Johnson). with Alfred Barr, a fellow Harvard alumnus that Johnson’s office at MoMA was filled with In his writings, Johnson promoted an anti- —Philip Johnson: The Glass House who would become the director of the newly catalogs of firearms. Blackburn, Johnson told Semitic, pro-German political stance that went founded Museum of Modem Art. With Barr’s the reporter, was in favor of large pistols, far beyond what Paul de Man wrote in his arti­ help he attached himself to the institution and whereas he himself favored the submachine cles for Le Soir. Johnson attacked the Jews has retained a considerable degree of influence gun. repeatedly, depicting them as invaders, com­ there ever since. Schulze recounts that Long, suspicious of paring them to the plague, and finally lying In 1930, Johnson founded MoMA’s Depart­ the two Harvard graduates, sent them away to about their condition in 1939 Germany and ment of Architecture, installing himself as Ohio to organize for a possible 1936 run at the Poland. Johnson’s anti-Semitism fit in with the head. Two years later, with the help of archi­ presidency. When Long was assassinated in publications he wrote for. Coughlin’s Social tecture historian Henry-Russell Hitchcock, he 1935, they joined up with Father Charles E. Justice played a key role in spreading anti- organized the 1932 exhibit on “the Interna­ Coughlin, whose weekly radio programs had Semitism in the pre-war US. Indeed, during tional Style,” the first successful attempt to gained him tremendous grass-roots support. the period of Nazi rule, it was very difficult for introduce Americans to modern architecture. With his powerful National Union for Social European Jews to immigrate to this country In the process, Johnson learned how easy it Justice, his weekly newspaper Social Justice, because of the Roosevelt administration’s fear was for him to rewrite history, taking what and a natural gift for oratory, Coughlin was, of catalyzing the anti-Semitic movement into a were diverse trends, reducing them to one according to Lawrence Dennis, the other pos­ successful political party. homogeneous movement, extracting the work sible leader for an American fascism. Johnson Johnson made his position on Jewish immi­ from its historical and generally Leftist politi­ supported Coughlin in a variety of ways, gration clear. In “Aliens Reduce France to an (reprinted from Philip Johnson: Architecture 1949-1965, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1966) cal context, and excluding those whom he felt supervising the printing of Social Justice, con­ ‘English Colony’,” published in Social Justice did not belong. tributing large sums to his causes, and organiz­ Philip Johnson, entrance to Roofless Church, New Harmony, Indiana, 1960. on July 24, 1939, he wrote: “Lack of leader­ But while he believed in taking the politics ing a rally in Chicago at which eighty thou­ ship and direction in the State has let the out of architecture, Johnson himself had sand spectators paid fifty cents each to hear the Reich,” published in a 1933 issue of the Har­ unknown,” Johnson hoped that if “the young If in the arts she sets the clock back now, it one group get control who always gain power (reprinted from Philip Johnson: The Glass Himsr, Pantheon Books, 1993) become attracted to the politics of the extreme priest speak. In one of his first architectural vard magazine of the arts, Hound and Horn. men in the party, the students and revolution­ will run all the faster in the future. in a nation’s time of weakness: the Jews.” Right. Also in 1932, during one of his visits to works, Johnson designed a podium for Cough­ While the journal’s ostensible audience com­ aries who are ready to fight for modem art,” Schulze does not include other disturbing parts Philip Johnson, The Painting Gallery, New Canaan, Connecticut, 1965. “His Germany, Johnson attended a Hitler rally in lin after the one used by Hitler at the Potsdam prised Americans interested in modernism in had their way, they would turn to his friend Johnson’s interest in monumental architec­ of the article such as Johnson’s assertion that: Kunstbunker, as [Johnson] fondly called it” (Franz Schulze). Potsdam and, as he told Schulze, was thrilled rally. the arts, Johnson’s piece was primarily a Mies van der Rohe: ture and in promoting Mies shows up again in — Philip Johnson: Life and Work by “all the blond boys in black leather.” This Johnson’s first article sympathetic to the polemic meant to affirm his friend Mies van a disturbing letter he sent to Alfred H. Barr in It would seem that only Jews have freedom in attraction, however, wasn’t just libidinal. After Nazis was entitled “Architecture in the Third der Rohe’s suitability as an architect for Nazi A good modern Reichsbank [by Mies] would 1936. In the letter Johnson attacks the Good­ the Third Republic. Small wonder one hears Schulze also neglects an article published ment on this question is an interesting com­ Germany. But since the article was published satisfy the new craving for monumentality, but win and Stone design of the new quarters for so many reports of growing anti-Semitism by Johnson in the August-September 1939 mentary on its policies in general. There are at a time when many modem artists and archi­ above all it would prove to the German intel­ the Museum of Modem Art: “I know you will among the common people of France. Today’s Challenge, in which he again stated two decree laws which concern the press, tects believed that Minister of Propaganda lectuals and to foreign countries that the new snort, the building is Jewish. It looks like an his position on the Jewish refugees in France: one against publishing propaganda paid for by Josef Geobbels had modernist sympathies, Germany is not bent on destroying all the upper Fifth Avenue front.” In contrast, John­ Neither does Schulze report the way Johnson a foreign government. Under these laws, the Johnson’s real intent may have been more splendid modern arts which have been built son proposed that the building be ended his article: Another serious split in French opinion is that patriotic weeklies Le Deft and La France complex than simply promoting his friend. up in recent years. All the revolutions, seem­ caused by the Jewish question, a problem Enchainee were just recently suppressed, pre­ Johnson explained that under the Third ingly against everything of the past, really build a temple of art...the most beautiful and use­ But let France speak for herself. The following much aggravated just at present by the multi­ sumably for getting money from Hitler; but Reich, “architecture will be monumental.” on the positive achievements of the preceding less building in the world, small galleries, dark, L’H u m an itf which no one doubts gives out While its actual form was “as yet completely decades. Germany cannot deny her progress. cool and gorgeous....! mean a lot of wasted Russian propaganda, paid for by Russia, has space. One should enter a museum up steps been left alone. W hat is freedom of the press and one should be impressed and rather I mean the Idea of a glass and for whom is it done, the French ask. afraid to enter. house, where somebody just Schulze recounts that Johnson and Viola Johnson’s continued involvement with Bodenschatz toured Poland a month before the MoMA, even after his 1934 resignation, outbreak of the war. Johnson reported his brings up another significant issue which might be looking.. .That little impressions for a Social Justice article pub­ Schulze leaves to future historians. The Muse­ lished on September 11, alter the war began: um of Modem Art had carried out a massive edge of danger in being caught salvage operation in Nazi Germany, buying Once on the Polish side [of the Polish-Ger­ up at heavy discount seminal works of modem .. .And the whole question of man border], I thought I must be in the region art that the Nazis had labeled as “degenerate.” of some awful plague. The fields were nothing Had Schulze investigated Johnson’s role in but stone, there were no trees, mere paths the acquisition of these works he could have safe danger in my plans. instead of roads. In the towns there were no made a significant contribution to the history shops, no automobiles, no pavements and of MoMA. —Philip Johnson: The Architect in His Own Words again no trees. There were not even any Poles In 1938, after Blackburn left politics to get to be seen in the streets, only Jews! married, Johnson returned to New York and began spending more time with Lawrence was told me by a patriotic Frenchwoman, a tude of 6migr6s in Paris. Even I, as a stranger Getting lost in the narrow streets of the town Dennis. With Dennis’s help, Johnson was well-known writer and journalist, whose in the city, could not help noticing how much of Makow, Johnson found his car surrounded invited by the German government to attend a name I must withhold for obvious reasons. German was being spoken, especially in the by Jews. He described the moment to Schulze Sommerkttrs fiir Auslcinder in Berlin, an intro­ ‘My heart aches for the future of my coun­ better restaurants. Such an influx naturally in language that underscored how he has duction to Nazi politics for foreigners, and to try. When I see my beloved city of Paris over­ makes the French wonder, not only about changed over the years: see Hitler speak at the Nazi ceremony at run with German, Czech and Hungarian Jews, these incoming Jews, but also about their co­ Nuremberg, marking five years in power. I say to myself are these the “Frenchmen” religionists who live and work here and call A t first, I didn’t seem to know who they were At about this time, according to Schulze, who with their “French” cousins are to rule themselves French. The facts that Blum and except that they looked so disconcerting, so Johnson had become friends with Viola France? And am I not even to be allowed to the men around him are Jews, that there are totally foreign. They were a different breed of (reprinted from Philip Johnson: The Architect in His (him Wonts, Rizzoli, 1994) (reprinted from Philip Johnson: The Glass House, Pantheon Books, 1993) Bodenschatz, an American journalist married raise my voice against it?... two Jews in the present cabinet, Messrs. Zay humanity, flitting about like locusts. Soon Philip Johnson, The Ghost House, an homage to Johnson’s friend Frank Gehry, Johnson’s private study, New Canaan, Connecticut, 1980. “Its disoriented geometry to Major General Karl Bodenschatz, Hermann ‘W ith our internal affairs in the hands of the and Mandel, and that the Jewish bankers enough I realized they were Jews, with their New Canaan, Connecticut, 1984, “It keeps the deer out and it keeps the lilies called up the haunting work of Aldo Rossi, along with some of Rossi’s own sources Goring’s top aide. In a letter to her, dated Jewish bankers, our foreign affairs in the hands Mannheimer, de Rothschild and Lazard Fr6res long black coats, everyone in black, and their inside. Preserved. The great enemy in our part of the country are the deer. The in Boullee’s conical chimneys, with their sinister contemporary reminiscence of April 23, 1939, Johnson wrote that he had of Great Britain, and our country rent by dis­ are known to stand behind the present gov­ yarmulkes. Something about them...desper- Bambi lovers won’t let me shoot them” (Philip Johnson). death-camp crematoria” (Vincent Scully). planned to buy The American Mercury, a pop­ sension, what is to be the end for France? ernment all complicate the situation. — Philip Johnson: The Architect in His Own Words — Philip Johnson: The Glass House ular conservative magazine to which Dennis W ho will save her?’ The position taken by the Daladier govern­ see Philip Johnson, page 10 page 10 March, 1995 Philip Johnson and his friends:

continued from page 9 Instead, in another article not cited by attitude. I have given him no more than a few Schulze cites a letter written by Johnson to Schulze, “Inside War-Time Germany,” for the bored grunts. Viola Bodenschatz after his return from post­ ate, as if they were pleading about some­ November-December 1939 Today's Chal­ invasion Poland, in which he recalls driving thing...maybe because we w ere Americans, lenge, Johnson depicted Germany as general­ After his return from Europe, Johnson through the same town he described in the pre­ with our American license plates. You know ly content and united. Hitler had provided a served as a mouthpiece for Nazi propaganda, invasion Social Justice article as being full of how in your dreams your world sometimes positive revolutionary ideal for which the repeatedly distorting what he saw in post-inva­ Jews: drops from under you? I felt out of my depth. people were prepared to sacrifice their lives, sion Poland. Schulze cites another Johnson he explained, and the preconditions of revolu­ article from the November 6, 1939 Social Jus­ I was lucky enough to get to be [invited by the Johnson explained his position on race in tion—“starvation, oppression, suffering”— tice: “...99% of the towns I visited since the German government as] a correspondent so his writings for The Examiner, finding what remained “very far from being sufficient to war are not only intact but full of Polish peas­ that I could go to the front when I wanted to he saw as a healthy and positive attitude in cause a revolt.” Those opposed to Hitler con­ ants and Jewish shopkeepers.” Johnson also and so it was that I came again to the country Hitler’s racism. In a 1939 review of Mein stituted a diverse group—from “lawyers who gave at least three speeches on the war. As that we had motored through, the towns Kampf, Johnson commented: miss the good old days when lawyers were accounts of two of these exist and are probably north of Warsaw. Do you remember looked up to and paid well” to “artists who the most damning of all the evidence against Markow [sic]? I went through that same If, however, we overlook the terminology resent the official disapproval of their art”— that Hitler inherits from Gobineau and Hous­ incapable of uniting on a common front. ton Stewart Chamberlain— and that has Nazism wasn’t as bad as it was made out to be become so repugnant to Americans because in the American press: it has been made to appear primarily anti- Semitic— we shall find a different picture than None of those opposed to Hitler that I know we have been led to expect by reading would prefer the liberalism of the Weimar excerpts from the more lurid German Republic to National Socialism as a system of ‘anthropologists’. Reduced to plain terms, government. They do not like Hider, but they Hitler’s ‘racism’ is a perfectly simple though feel that if Hitler were not Hitler but some far-reaching idea. It is the myth of ‘we, the imaginary person that would be nice in their best,’ which we find, more or less fully devel­ own particular way, then National Socialism oped, in all vigorous cultures. Thus Plato con­ or rather national socialism, would be a good structing the ideal State in his Republic idea. Such thoughts are not the stuff of revo­ assumed that it would be Greek: apparently lutions. even in the realm of Ideas nationality occurs, and one’s own takes precedence over all But by that time the nature of the Nazi others. regime should have been clear to Johnson. Schulze relates a chilling incident told to him In “A Dying People?”, an article published by Johnson about his first-hand experience in 1938 in The Examiner and reprinted in with the anti-Semitic violence of the Nazis. 1939 in Today’s Challenge, Johnson elaborat­ Passing through Brno, Johnson called upon ed his ideas on race further. He argued that Otto Eisler, an architect who had participated the population rate of the white race within in the International Style exhibit and was a the US was falling and that Americans (he Jew and homosexual. Eisler, Schulze writes, did not include non-whites as Americans) “could only keep his head up at a distorted, were in danger of dying out. Only by think­ painful angle. ‘Obviously you don’t know,’ he (reprinted from Philip Johnson, George Braziller Publishers, 1962) ing beyond sentimentality and in terms of said, ‘but I’ve been in the hands of the Philip Johnson, New York State Theater, Lincoln Center, New York City, 1962, self-preservation could the white race save Gestapo, and they let me out just the other model. “The first modern Volkstheater—a large theater for the masses, a non- itself: day. I don’t know how long I can talk to artistic house, with elegance” (Philip Johnson). you.’” Johnson was shaken by the incident —Architects on Architecture: New Directions in America Human will is a part of the biological process. and wrote architect J. J. P. Oud to ask him to O ur will, for example, interferes constantly in help. Oud could not do anything and Johnson Johnson, it is disappointing that Schulze did square where we got gas and it was unrecog­ the world of the lower animals. W hen English quickly put the incident behind him. While in not look into them. In a 1988 article on John­ nizable. The German green uniforms made sparrows threaten to drive out our song­ his contemporary writings Johnson was eager son’s political activities for Timeline, the jour­ the place look gay and happy. There were not birds, we shoot the sparrows, rather than let­ to repeat quotations from individuals like the nal of the Ohio Historical Society, historian many Jews to be seen. W e saw Warsaw burn ting nature and Darwin take their course. French woman, he would not repeal Eisler’s Geoffrey Blodgett recounts that, in mid-Octo­ and Modlin being bombed. It was a stirring Thus the songbirds, thanks to our will, statement. ber 1939, Johnson told the New London spectacle. become the ‘fittest’ and survive. At the invitation of the German Propaganda Rotary Club that journalists were distorting Ministry, Johnson joined the foreign press the war. The New London Record reported, Just how long Johnson continued to be Following this logic, one would have to corps accompanying the German army into “He found, especially in Poland, business as involved with fascists is unclear, but by 1940 wonder what Johnson thought of the Nazi pol­ Poland to see the invasion first-hand. In his usual, the citizens contented and more or less pressure to end his involvements was mount­ icy toward the Jews. But Johnson generally Berlin Diary, journalist William Shirer satisfied with the change of government, and ing. According to Schulze, that May the FBI did not mention the plight of German Jews. described his encounter with Johnson on the the Jew but very little molested.” At a Spring- began to assemble a dossier against him, and trip: field, Massachusetts meeting of the American by June internal documents in the Office of Fellowship Forum in January 1940, Johnson Naval Intelligence marked him as a suspected Dr. Boehmer, press chief of the Propaganda gave a similar speech. According to the spy. The September issue of Harper's Ministry in charge of this trip, insisted that I account in the Springfield Evening Union, described his activities as one of ‘The Ameri­ share a double room in the hotel with Philip “The newspapers lied about the war in Poland, can Fascists.” Johnson, an American fascist who says he he said, averring that the countryside was not That fall, with his political career in sham­ represents Father Coughlin’s Social Justice. made destitute as reported. He said only one bles, Johnson returned to Harvard to study None of us can stand the fellow and suspect town actually was destroyed and the half of architecture as a graduate student and to begin tC- < (/'tint's / he is spying on us for the Nazis. For the last another. The first town had been used as a fort, reconstructing his image. After graduation hour in our room here he has been posing as he said.” and a short stint in the army as a latrine order­ an anti-Nazi and trying to pump me for my But Johnson knew what was going on. ly in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, Johnson was able BOOKPRESS =n \ AliERNATivE P r e s s anc! in o tte s^ f/o u l H arcI t o Fiisd hfoRMATioN $ to send in c submissions of I your work. ? I t e r * * * IS We are interested in

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Cayuga St., Sunday 1 - 5 Ithaca, New York 14850 March 14-April 8, 1995 Dewitt Mall or call AnaM TAyloR HaII * C orneII UNivERsiiy Ithaca, MY 14850 (607) 25 5-6486 607-347-4767 DISCOVER (607) 277-2254 Tel: 607-272-6552 A m e ric a n MONTH 9:10- 6:00 pm • WED 9:10 - 9:00dm E x p re s s ■ Gallery Hours: Mon. - Sat. 10:30 - 5:30 SAX 12 :0 0 -4:OOpM * SUN 7:J0 - 10:I0pM , March, 1995 The ffOOKPRESS page 11 Suppressing the Past to return to his position in MoMA’s architec­ Johnson’s neoclassicism and Nazi neoclassi­ leader of American architecture, making the ture department and, soon after, became a cism, which also had its roots in Schinkel’s cover of Time magazine, receiving the Ameri­ practicing architect. monumentalism. For Adolf Hitler and his can Institute of Architects gold medal, and in In the late 1940s, Johnson built his Glass chief architect Albert Speer, as well as for 1979 receiving the first Pritzker prize, the House in New Canaan, Connecticut. Deriva­ Johnson, neoclassicism served as an expres­ architectural equivalent of the Nobel. tive of the work of Mies van der Rohe, this sion of power, a celebration of empire, and a Regrettably, Schulze does not go into detail glass and steel weekend retreat established claim to a place in history. The formal similar­ on the suppression of Johnson’s fascist past. Johnson as an important architect and, as a site ity between Johnson’s neoclassical mod­ Johnson’s political activities were always pub­ of numerous high-society parties, soon ernism and Nazi architecture contradicts John­ lic; they had been written up in the Harper's became identified with Johnson’s persona as son’s subsequent claim that architecture is out­ article, in Shirer’s Berlin Diaries, and later in power broker. In a 1950 essay in the British side of ideology. Arthur Schlesinger’s The Politic of Upheaval, periodical Architectural Review, Johnson pre­ The ideas that Johnson promoted as a pre­ David H. Bennett’s Demagogues in the sented a series of historical justifications for its war politician were at the core of his post-war Depression, and Sheldon Marcus’s Father design. To explain the brick cylindrical core attitudes toward architecture. If Johnson the Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life o f the Priest of which contained both the fireplace and the politician believed that everything ultimately the Little Flower. But Johnson’s control over bathroom, he wrote: boiled down to the will-to-power, Johnson the architecture, as its foremost power broker, architect did as well, referring to Nietzsche to assured that members of the discipline would The cylinder, made of the same brick as the justify his monumental works: “In architectur­ remain silent. Over and over, in monographs platform from which it springs, forming the al works, man’s pride, man’s triumph over and articles on Johnson within the field, his main motif of the house, was not derived gravitation, man’s will to power assume visi­ past was omitted, a rewriting of history not from Mies, but rather from a burned-out ble form. Architecture is a veritable oratory of altogether unlike the rewriting that Johnson wooden village I saw once where nothing was power made by form.” himself produced in 1939. left but the foundations and chimneys of brick. For the post-war Johnson, any political While biographical articles in popular mag­ Over the chimney I slipped a steel cage with a position was acceptable, as long as it support­ azines like Esquire and The New Yorker glass skin. The chimney forms the anchor. ed good architecture. In a 1973 interview con­ would often mention his political activities— ducted by John W. Cook and Heinrich Klotz if not his support of the Nazis, at least his inter­ Certainly most readers would not have known for their book Conversations with Architects, est in Long—the architectural media treated about Johnson’s visit to post-invasion Poland Johnson commented on the legacy of the the matter like an open secret. With the excep­ or his reasons for going there. Why then did Nazis: tion of architect Michael Sorkin’s 1988 article Johnson make the connection with the war? “Who Was Philip?” for Spy magazine, the In his 1979 introduction to Johnson’s col­ H itler.. .was, unfortunately, an extremely bad architectural media would only address John­ (reprinted from Modem Architecture since 1900, Pliaidon Presss, 1982) lected writings on architecture, Johnson’s pro- architect The only thing I really regret about son’s past in interviews. Even so, whenever teg£, architect Peter Eisenman, analyzed the dictatorships isn’t the dictatorship, because I his political activities were brought up, John­ Philip Johnson, AT&T building, motif and provided this answer: recognize that in Julius’s time and in Justinian’s son would make some gesture of regret and New York, 1978, model. time and Caesar’s time they had to have dic­ would be exonerated by the interviewer. The the Glass House is Johnson’s own monument tators. I mean I’m not interested in politics at matter would be laughed off as the folly of one’s principles for cold cash, power, or the to the horrors of war. It is at once a ruin and all. I don’t see any sense to it. About Hitler— youth, or as an experience that taught Johnson chance to get buildings built and books pub­ also an ideal model of a more perfect society: if he’d only been a good architect!... If you go the futility of political commitment and drove lished, then we haven’t moved much beyond it is the nothingness of glass and the whole­ to Rome today, you’ll find that the Terza him into architecture. 1945 after all. ness of abstract form. How potent this image Roma was much better than what’s been Although Schulze does not sufficiently But it wasn’t just Eisenman who was will remain long after all of us have gone, as a done in the Republic, in the same area, since address this suppression of Johnson’s past bought off: the larger historical-critical com­ fitting requiem for both a man’s life and his the war. So let’s not be so fancy pants about within architecture, he does recount one munity in architecture was as well. Even now career as an architect! I know of no other who runs the country. Let’s talk about remarkable episode. In the late 1970s, John­ that the Schulze book is out, the public secret architect’s house that answers so many whether it’s good or not son’s protegd, Peter Eisenman, began working is at work again. A New York Times review, questions, has such a symbiotic relationship with Johnson on a biography, spreading the by the notoriously pro-Johnson architecture with personal atonement and rebirth as an “Hitler,” he concluded, “was a terrible disap­ word in architectural circles that it would critic Paul Goldberger, barely mentions John­ individual. pointment, putting aside the social prob­ reveal a great deal about Johnson and perhaps son’s fascist past. Brendan Gill, in his New lem....” Johnson hastened to add that he justify his work theoretically. It now appears Yorker review, depicts Schulze’s biography Eisenman did not explain the connection of wasn’t wedded to the Right: he had hoped that that Eisenman wanted to usurp Johnson’s as the splendid narrative of Johnson’s tri­ the cylinder to the war. Perhaps the chimney is Stalin, too, might build something of lasting position as power broker. Schulze recounts an umphant wresting of a life of play out of near not a confession but a cynical joke. Perhaps value. incident related to him by John Burgee, the disaster and good ideas gone bad. Such Johnson had the capacity to appropriate any In comparison with the material on John­ former partner in Johnson’s architectural firm. rewritings of history are chillingly similar to image, no matter what its context, for purely son’s fascist past, most of the rest of Schulze’s According to Burgee, at a party a drunk Eisen­ Johnson’s tactics in 1939. While Jews were formal purposes. Schulze offers another plau­ book makes for slow reading. Endless tales of man told him, “I’m going to get him. I’ve got being murdered in Germany and Poland, sible explanation: confident that few would Johnson’s lovers and his efforts to get his gen­ the goods on him. I’ve got photographs of him Johnson was enthusiastically promoting know of his connection to the war, Johnson erally not very interesting buildings built sim­ riding in a Nazi car. Lovers in Cambridge dur­ racial purification in this country and mislead­ was searching for any possible historical cita­ ply are not compelling material. Schulze ing school. I’m going to pull him down for ing Americans about the situation overseas. If tion to make himself seem more erudite. Ulti­ quickens the pace with his description of how good this time.” Burgee told Johnson about his political activities and his philosophy of mately, Johnson’s true intent remains in the mid-1970s, having survived a heart Eisenman’s intentions, and Johnson paid architecture were motivated by the same unknown. bypass and the unpopularity of his neoclassi­ Eisenman ten thousand dollars to abandon the drive to aesthetic purity and the will to power During the 1960s, Johnson’s architecture cal architecture, Johnson began to surround project. over all else, is his architectural legacy really took a turn toward neoclassical modernism, himself with the young movers and shakers of Eisenman has since denied that this event all fun and games? an episode that culminated in his New York American architecture. Johnson played both ever occurred. Yet, whether it did is largely State Theater at Lincoln Center. Schulze dis­ sides by courting neo-modernists Peter Eisen­ irrelevant. Eisenman knew about Johnson’s Kazys Vamelis completed his Ph.D. thesis cusses this period in some detail, attributing it man and Richard Meier, as well as postmod­ fascist past and ultimately did not make it pub­ on Philip Johnson, Peter Eisenman, and cyn­ to Johnson’s lifelong interest in the nine­ ernists Robert Stem and Michael Graves. Dis­ lic. Thus Eisenman’s own project of trying to ical reason in postwar American architecture teenth-century German neoclassicist architect pensing favors and public praise and in turn create an architecture that would express the (now being converted into a book) in May Karl Friedrich Schinkel. But he could have receiving the same, Johnson was able, by inability of art to speak after 1945 becomes a 1994 at Cornell University. He currently lives probed further to examine the link between 1978, to maneuver himself into position as the cynical gesture. If surviving means trading in Ithaca.

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great American middleweight fighters health, spendthrift of his life (his heroes are keeps him from becoming part of the view Robert Hill Rocky Graziano, Jake LaMotta, and Tony Lords Nelson and Byron), the product of out his fourteenth-story window. Alcohol, Zale (whose eyes Bernard once described middle-class bohemian parents and “an it seems, is both muse and hard master. In an age principally remarkable for its as killer’s eyes, “eyes the color of dirty expensive but bad education,” irascible, Just as he did years before in Sporting absence of humor, any humor, even ill, is ice”); novelist Graham Greene (who chauvinistic, irreverent, irresponsible, lazy, Life, his Spectator pieces chronicle failure; precious as the mist of one’s last breath on claimed never to have been bored in Jef­ skeptical of “job satisfaction” as a working his principal topics have always been alco­ a mirror. When niceness is enforced; when frey’s company), playwright John Osborne concept (if there were any dignity in manu­ hol, horse racing, women, and, in recent our public sweetness cloys; when a puritan­ of Angry Young Man vintage, Soho play­ al labor, “the Duke of Westminster would years, his medical history—in approxi­ ical moral dogma will, we hope, oil the wrights Frank Norman and Keith Water- be digging his own garden”), and conserva­ mately that order. It is a rare thing to be ways for the kingdom of heaven, then a house, actors John Hurt and Peter O’Toole, tive—thoroughly insular in a way one able to write about getting drunk, waking scoffer can be grit in the right place. Yes, up with a hangover, impatiently filling time Jeffrey Bernard is all right. until the 11 a.m. legal opening at the pubs, Jeffrey Bernard’s “Low Life” diary getting dunning notices from the Barclay- appears nearly weekly in the Spectator, the bank people, chronicling what happened at puckishly literate London magazine of the track or the betting shop or in the Coach British and international politics, opinion, and Horses, coming across an old divorce arts, and literature. Its tone is irreverent, notice in a box of curling photographs, sensible, usually royalist, High Anglican to being hauled into court for fighting with Catholic in its sensibilities, and politically waiters or for throwing a potted restaurant conservative insofar as it is more self-con­ palm downstairs (“first a palm tree, now sciously patient with the boldly ludicrous kicking a car,” once observed a magistrate mistakes of Margaret Thatcher and George “What next, Mr. Bernard?”), and still to Bush than with the timid and self-serving remain interesting and engaging to a signif­ blunders of John Major and Bill Clinton. icant portion of a periodical readership. Jeffrey himself is a self-described alco­ Bernard’s writing is more than merely a holic hack who has lived most of his adult seedy chronicle because he is possessed of years in Soho; he is a fixture in the neigh­ a diarist’s attention, a jaundiced eye, tren­ borhood pubs, most prominently in the chant opinions, acerbic descriptive powers, Coach and Horses, and, for 15 years or so, and, most importantly, thoughtful and has provided a counterpoise to Taki’s more courageous reflection on his own life. He gossipy “High Life” column. He is by turns allows that he is what he is, remains res­ (usually all at once) insensitive, rude when (reprinted fr om Just the One: The Wives and Times ofJeffrey Bernard, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992) olute, remorseless, unabashed, and when he is at his best (which isn’t always any not sober, morose when he is (as he has Bernard outside the Theatre Royal, Brighton, after the world premiere more), he is without self-pity (“If you have been of late), highly social, comically o f Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell on September 26, 1989. astringent, politically most incorrect, impa­ tears, prepare to jerk them now. No, don’t. tient of fads of any stripe, with a penetrat­ countless lesser West End theater types, might expect of an island dweller. He was It’s been quite a laugh.”). ing eye for details of setting and character, jockeys and horse owners, London and always a bad influence, rarely a prig, never The late playwright and frequent Specta­ and able in a wry, sardonic way to make the American journalists, and Soho artists like merely a joker. tor diarist John Osborne (who gave us daily round as generally interesting as it can the late Francis Bacon. “I sometimes sit His journalistic career began, in as much “Look Back in Anger” and “The Entertain­ be seamy. In spite of his unrelenting dis­ here on my sofa thinking how extraordi­ earnest as Jeffrey ever began anything, in er”), in his introduction to a collection of soluteness and his remaining rough edges nary it is that I have ended up meeting and 1971 when he became the horse racing Bernard’s columns (Low Life, Duckworth, he has always possessed charm and mag­ knowing most of the people I ever wanted columnist for Sporting Life. Racing, he 1986), found in them things “as astonishing netism for both sexes. His friends have to years ago,” Jeffrey once said. said, was a bit of “an alfresco drinking and stimulating as anything in Pepys or been a widely demotic mix, including those He has loved and lost almost numberless club.” He quickly became the most widely- Boswell.” For my part, I doubt literary his­ women (another demotic mix of socialites, read sportswriter in England, writing wry tory will place Jeffrey Bernard in such BBC actresses, career women, and more little pieces about grooms and trainers and, company, much as I like his vinegary little obscure types) who found inevitably that characteristically, about losing, as much as pieces. But Osborne is onto something; his charm, although genuine, faded in the about champion horses, nobly won races, Bernard is sharp and deft and crazily asso­ intense flame of his bibulousness. Jeffrey and noble owners. One year from the day ciative in ways that show up low life and has been bereft by death or divorce of four he was hired, covering a race in France, Jef­ low characters against a particular setting wives (“it’s been a strange war between frey was given the sack for collapsing leg­ and against—well, against life. Sitting out­ us...but we’ve had some terrific truces”), less in alcoholic slumber at the speaker’s side in the sunshine with his customary has by his own account been evicted from podium during the post-race banquet where vodka, he notices the ice melting away more apartments and tried to start more he was to be featured speaker and represen­ “faster than a man you’ve helped.” Some­ families “than you’ve had hot meals,” tative of Britain’s principal sporting rag. one he meets in passing he pegs as “shal­ turned at least one of his internal organs The £50 he won on the race promptly dis­ lower than a single scotch.” And of some into a waxen effigy of St. Pancreas, and has solved in the indeterminate champagne expensively turned-out women he observes finally, in his early sixties, lost a leg to dia­ fund the grooms and trainers kept at the that “Butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths betes (better a leg than a soul, quipped course paddock, and Jeffrey was defiantly but gold ingots might.” Taki’s post-op column). He has survived unrepentant (though subsequently spending He claims to write many of his pieces at many of his more temperate friends and one two-and-a-half years on the wagon, his a desk in the Coach and Horses where he is of his doctors. He even, in his younger longest dry stint). He has recommended a fixture. True or not, the Soho pub is his days, survived a blind date with an openly himself indelibly to the Queen Mother’s preferred blind, his observatory, his anthro­ contemptuous Lauren Bacall. But he was memory by barfing on her stockings at pological laboratory, his salon, and the drunk at the time. Ascot and has spent enough nights in the confined stage on which he sets perverse Against the current polarization of gutters to consider himself an outdoorsman. little morality plays. He approaches life as American political opinion—Anglo-Euro- All that is over now, the loss of the leg from does Swift, with the dark suspicion that it pean attitudes are more difficult to charac­ advanced diabetes forcing him in recent terize. Bernard has been liberal with his months from vodka to Prozac, a drug that see What Next, Mr. Bernard?, page 14

All films in Cornell Willard Straight Hall cinema PRESENTS An Alex Cox Film HIGHWAY Friends Robin Viliams in with Kerry Fox PATROLMAN March 16, 9:30 March 14,9:30 If you enjoy the Please send a gift subscription of The Bookpress to the March 18, 7:15 March 18,9:40 stim ulating collection of following addresses. Enclosed is $12 for each subscription (Visa / MC / Discover, check, or money order accepted.) March 19, 7:30 reviews, interviews, and March 24,9:30 essays that The Bookpress Name:______Address: ______brings to you eight tim es a March 26, £30 year, then why not make a g ift o f The Bookpress to a Phone: ______friend out of town, or to ones who are leaving town? Name: ______For only $12, the next eight Address: ______issues will be delivered directly to their door. ® KURYS FILM A perfect gift for those Phone: ______who love reading, thinking, Please make checks payable to The Bookpress, and good discussion. DeWitt Building, 215 N. Cayuga St., Ithaca, NY 14850 J March, 1995 The R OOKPRESS page 13 What Children Can Teach About Art

brandt also chose not to allow the infant’s Arnold Singer head to sink into the pillow as it normally would, for he was determined that the shape of At first glance, two more dissimilar images the infant’s head, as well as the supporting are unimaginable, though both portray sleep­ form of the pillow, had to remain inviolable. ing infants. The child’s drawing is a typical In consequence, nothing is left to the imagina­ work of a five- or six-year-old. The Rembrandt tion. Picasso carried this idea even further is an example of that sublime master’s mature with his paintings of Paloma asleep in a crib. period. For the purpose of this essay I will Three centuries after Rembrandt reconciled focus upon the image of the infant and the the relationship of the infant’s head to the pil­ space it occupies in both compositions. My low, Paul Klee was to define his own aesthetic aim is to show that crucial similarities exist in in relation to similar problems of representa­ the best of art between the naive and the tion; “I project on the surface, that is; the sophisticated vision, and also to suggest that essence of the subject must always become the intuitive or unspoiled vision must be kept visible, even if that is impossible in nature.” In alive without succumbing to, or being domi­ other words, forms are manipulated across the nated by, fashionable or scientific preroga­ surface in a non-illusionistic manner. Klee tives. pushed this concept as far as it would go with­ There is no intent of attempting to equate out moving into pure abstraction. It is this the child’s drawing with the Rembrandt in overriding commitment to the truth of the terms of aesthetic achievement. The former is form that distinguishes the true artist from the delightful and expressive as children them­ illustrator or photographer. selves can be, whereas the Rembrandt possess­ The child artist, Rembrandt, Picasso, and es resonance, sobriety, maturity, and speaks to Klee have all distorted in an effort to express us as we can imagine Rembrandt himself the greatest truth possible. Of all four, Rem­ might, with wisdom, depth, and compassion. brandt is the most subtle, concealing distortion The most distinguishing characteristic of in the manner of the most accomplished artists children’s art, besides its inventive, sponta­ of his time. While the child doesn’t give a fig neous, ingenuous, and often unpredictable about pleasing anyone but herself, and Picasso imagery, is the manner in which forms are and Klee challenge viewers to accept their arranged vertically and horizontally across the daring interpretations, Rembrandt makes it page. This is instinctive with children and, easy for us by attempting to synthesize truth when done well, contributes to a highly pleas­ and illusory appearance. However, when it ing expansivencss. It is a manner of represen­ became necessary to choose between the two, tation definable as non-illusionistic; that is, it as it often was, Rembrandt opted for truth, does not conceive of the page as a window which in all probability is the reason his popu­ through which the world is perceived in depth. larity and economic well-being suffered a seri­ That novel idea originated during the Renais­ ous decline midway through his career. One of sance and culminated in the photographic the giants of Western painting died a images of today. pauper. Van Gogh and Gauguin, with their interest The determination to express essentials at in non-Western art, were the first to question the expense of Renaissance illusionistic Renaissance pictorial ideology. Later the (reprinted from Rembrandt: Selected Paintings, Phaidon Press, 1944) finesse has been the primary reason the out­ Cubists and others, such as Paul Klee, The Holy Family with Angels (detail) by Rembrandt, age 39. standing modem artists, beginning with Van Wassily Kandinsky, and Piet Mondrian, Gogh, have initially been rejected. It is also explored and formulated radical alternatives. the reason why works by painters such as It must be remembered, however, that the L£ger, Matisse, Picasso, and Klee occasional­ Finest Renaissance painters kept illusionism ly possess a child-like quality. “My child can firmly under control. Though scientific per­ do better” is a phrase which ill-informed indi­ spective and foreshortening are frequently viduals often employ when looking at art of employed, they rarely take center stage. The the School of Paris or that of Klee. Though reverence for classical ideals of form kept some first-class modem work does possess a Renaissance painters honest. Picasso’s well- child-like quality, it is a mistake to believe it to known aversion to Caravaggio was the result be the result of conscious imitation. Seeing of that painter’s descent into formal deca­ and responding to the world in a totally fresh, dence, of his departure from the constraints of non-formulaic manner is quite different from the classical concepts of non-illusionistic imitation, though at times the results have a space and order. certain commonality. In the child’s drawing, the bird, baby in car­ While other artists traveled to Italy for the riage, and mother are displaced across the purpose of studying the Renaissance and page and can be read almost as text or hiero­ Baroque masters, Rembrandt never left Hol­ glyph. Compositionally, this provides the ulti­ land, content in having the art come to him. mate opportunity for clarity, definition of An omnivorous collector of Italian paintings, scale, and height of the various forms from the prints, and casts from the antique, his collec­ inferred ground plane. Space, the distance tion rivaled that of a small museum. Mantegna between forms, is actualized by real distance seems to have been of particular interest, for across the surface rather than by imagined Rembrandt possessed copies of all the engrav­ depth. Of incidental interest, but nevertheless ings. His well-known etching “Virgin and very touching, is the tear falling from the eye Child with Cat” is a derivation of the earlier of the bird, which indicates anxiety on the part master’s Virgin and Child. of our young artist (resulting perhaps from the In addition to art of the Renaissance, Rem­ presence of the competitive and unwelcome characteristic of that particular situation; has, lous, charming, meaningless meandering. brandt collected and frequently copied Persian sibling, smiling contentedly in the womb of in fact, reduced it to to the simplest and most Placing the form of the baby deep within Miniatures which Dutch traders had carried the carriage). direct terms. In a manner often verging on the the carriage made it necessary for the child back from the Near East. Besides providing The appearance of ineptitude and clumsi­ miraculous, the child artist has, in this artist to render the carriage diagrammatically, reference material for the oriental costumes ness on the part of the child artist is simply a instance, created an abstract formal equivalent as if transparent, so that the baby remains vis­ depicted in his biblical paintings, the Persian result of her determination to express “truth.” which represents what she knows of a given ible. Rembrandt resolved the same problem art occasionally offered compositional ideas. When the child defines the infant in the car­ situation, rather than what she merely sees. It by raising the infant higher than it normally Rembrandt could not have failed to be riage as a form (the baby) within a form (the is the recognition of this phenomenon that has would be in a cradle, thus allowing for a con­ impressed by the absence of illusionistic per- baby’s gown) within a larger form (the car­ rescued children’s art from the commonly vincing representation of both baby and cra­ riage), the child is realizing the most salient held opinion that it is nothing more than frivo­ dle while retaining a sense of enclosure. Rem­ see Children and Art, page 15

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( cooperative m a r k e t ) favorite publican, fully expecting he will the lads down the local. I may have fifty pence reflect upon his general debauch, to come find the foot cloven. on the Grand National, but both my feet are to terms with it, and arrive at a sort of wis­ 701 West Buffalo Street His little articles ramble crazily, as do firmly on the ground....I'm not frightened of dom about it. His has admittedly not been 607-273-9392 many of Montaigne’s essays, from one anything except possibly...there not being the temperately wise Socratic life—not the NEW HOURS: M-Sat 9-9, Sun 10-7 loosely related thought to another. He enough rain for the herbaceous border. prudent life of the unfailingly balanced per­ OPEN TO EVERYONE begins one article wondering what it must sonality who could drink all night with be like to be a guide dog, ends by choosing No thanks, says Jeffrey, I won’t but you go Alcibiades and the boys, take his ablutions recipes appropriate to cook specific people ahead. He has thought about what he’s stone sober at sunrise, and go about his day. he knows in the event he is ever in “your done, at least when he’s been able to think, But that sort of wisdom is more a polished PIANOS Andes-air-crash-and-subsequent-starvation and he understands and accepts it without literary fiction, a moral ideal (worthy of our situation.” He has been on the far side of endorsing it for anyone except himself. It consideration because its attainability and • Rebuilt sense since before there was “The Far seems to me there is at least as much moral desirability are always debatable), and • Reconstructed Side”: a horse trainer once explained, when wisdom in that refusal as in knowing-that- even a kind of stasis in which the moral • Bought Jeffrey noticed the superb condition of his you-don’t-know-nothing-’tall. He under­ creature comes across as good as dead. No, • Sold horses, that that was because they didn’t stands as well his appeal to the many who wisdom is a sometime thing in any real M oved stay up all night drinking whiskey and read him; his unrelenting chronicling of (non-still) life, a state one plight achieve at • Tuned • Rented playing cards. Which prompts Jeffrey to loss, he observes, “may be why some one time, fail of at another; a slow acquisi­ further Swiftian (and Larsonian) musings people enjoy reading about low life in the tion when it ever comes at all, and not in about what would happen if animals treated Spectator. It probably makes them feel every case reliably there when (we think) themselves the way he treats himself: safer. If you’re living where the grass is we should have it. So if Jeffrey Bernard’s greener it must be reassuring to glance life seems to us an unwise one, as it admit­ I’d very much like to wake up one morning occasionally at a rubbish dump.” There’s a tedly does, still I think one has to live at with a cow of the Friesian variety and walk cautionary tale there, little doubt of it. some extreme or the other, off at the hard her down to Soho to the Coach and Horses, There have been those weeks, it must edges of the mainstream, if wisdom is ever stopping on the way to buy twenty Players, come as no surprise, when Jeffrey has been to come. The life itself may have been an Ithaca Piano Rebuilders ply her with vodkas until closing time, whip unable to meet his obligations at the Specta­ unwise series of choices, but if all those (607) 272-6547 her off to an Indian restaurant, take her up to tor. Then the magazine inserts a terse coded cockups can bring insight one day, then 310 4th St., Ith a c a (O ff H ancock St. 2 blocks from Rt. 13) the Colony Room till 5:30 and then to the notice in 8-point type in the place where his perhaps in the final analysis the price was Yorkm inster, Swiss Tavern, Three G rey­ article usually appears, “Jeffrey Bernard is worth it—so long as Jeffrey was the one Complete rebuilding services. hounds, get beaten up by Chinese waiters at unwell” (one notable deviation from this paying it. Sainthood has rarely come to No Job too big or too small. Call us. midnight, have a row with a taxi driver, set message was the notice he insisted upon in good citizens, nor wisdom to the unshak- the bed on fire, put it out with tears and then February 1994, “Jeffrey Bernard has had ably sane. A wastrel life can bring wisdom; wake up on the floor. Could you then milk his leg o ff’). Its appearance is always a dis­ a wise person must occasionally purchase creet understanding amongst friends, a sure that commodity late, the hard way. But that Think Springl the said cow? I doubt it sign that he has long had a following; in may have been the only way, and who’s to He has as well a raconteur’s economical 1989, when a Soho friend and sometime say that was too bad? Need new solutions to facility to suggest a richly delineated world Spectator contributor Keith Waterhouse Bernard is also a reminder that wisdom is old property problems? in a brief story: the restaurateur who fought wrote and staged a West End play, “Jeffrey rarely discerned in the indefatigably busy. a kitchen blaze with champagne while he Bernard is Unwell,” Jeffrey became a cult Socrates was regarded as an idler around Hope to reduce yard and waited for the fire department to arrive— figure in London. The play was staged Athens, and enough essays have since been garden maintenance? “I’m not claiming that it was Louis Roeder- twice in eighteen months to sellout written “In Praise of Idleness” to remind us er Cristal Brut, neither is he, but it does crowds—first with an old Bernard acquain­ that a comic insight requires considerable indicate a certain amount of imagination tance, Peter O’Toole (who eerily resembles leisure to sharpen it up. Sloth is a sin, but Now is the time to plan! and a healthy contempt for wine with bub­ Bernard and has been there a few times thank God for the slothful. They can be a bles in it.” It was the same restaurateur who himself), the second time with Tom Conti. merry lot with plenty of time for conversa­ Call swallowed a dead cockroach on a lost bet, Waterhouse’s first scene is of a closed and tion and the other social graces, and where but maintained enough verve to wash it darkened Coach and Horses where in the would we be if everyone were determined down with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot. gloom strange muttering and scuffling is to keep a steady job? Full employment is Bernard is also master of the just conclu­ heard, and a figure rises painfully from not necessarily good for civilization. When L U M l ^ S sion tersely drawn: “Never trust a man beneath a pub table. It is Jeffrey, waking to he wasn’t off for a walk or a talk, Thoreau who’s not grateful for small mercies,” he discover that he has been locked unnoticed raised a few beans. There are choices to be concludes, apropos of the man who cut off in the place for the night. What follows is a made, naturally. Not everyone likes beans, his penis to improve his devotion to God. series of drunken disquisitions on various nor has much to say. “I have come to terms Jeffrey is a confirmed Londoner with the topics and desultory arguments with neigh­ with the fact that my dinner is in the oven Garden consultants hard-boiled manner of the urbanite. But on borhood friends who appear as imaginary and always will be,” Bernard concedes, Trumansburg, NY his other side is the romantic who read presences. Some of the script is lifted from referring to the note his fourth wife left D. H. Lawrence as a youth and was so Bernard’s own columns in the Spectator, when she left for good. swept away that he went to work in the coal some is Waterhouse’s imaginative dialog, Frankly, there have been weeks in the Cafe Dewitt pits until he very quickly had enough of Jeffrey carping and arguing, playing the recent past when Jeffrey’s failing health, that and of Lawrence. He has left Soho for drunken naif, and generally bringing the his increasing invalidism, and dependence short stints to live in the countryside nearer house down. Waterhouse’s son Bob, on nurse aids have made him a bit peevish Sunday the racing crowd. When he is writing about founder of Buffalo’s Ensemble Theater, and self-indulgently whiney. He’s been run something he truly loves it is in a style so staged the American premiere of the play in over by a postal truck, taken numerous 1 1 - 2 clean and melodic, of the England Buffalo in January 1994. As soon as he stitches in his head after falling down con­ Lawrence also described in prose no sweet­ received the American rights, Bob prompt­ crete stairs, has broken limbs and ribs in his er nor clearer than Bernard’s: ly wired his father, forbidding him to attend days and nights of leglessness. Little won­ der he is sometimes unwell and a little = Waffles rehearsals. The play has been staged subse­ You should go up on the Lambourn Downs quently in Dublin, where Jeffrey is eagerly cranky. And then, living on Prozac is not always as fascinating to oneself or to others = Fritters early one spring morning when they’re on read in syndication. The notoriety has made the gallops riding work. If you stand on the him a little vain and more querulous—only as getting irascibly drunk. One-legged natural, I suppose. (ironic that “legless” should be his word for = Crepes top looking towards the village you can pick them out in the distance coming out of the He is a caution, no question. What he inebriation), living in a fourteenth-floor flat, and probably with a hell of a lot more = Omelettes mist. As they get closer the noise of the might have been without the bottle-a-day hooves comes through, and then as they slam years on end is a little like wondering, as do than fifty pence riding on the Grand etc... those hooves into the turf it’s like small thun­ those sentimental pro-life television adver­ National. Not something most of us would der intermingled with the jangle of bits, bri­ tisements, what a fetus might have been but strive to attain. But, judging from a dis­ dles and stirrups, and the bellows of the for the abortion: something rare like a brain tance, I’d say his foot is on the ground and horses’ lungs, the air coming out of their nos­ surgeon or a competent mechanic? Or just always will be. Dewitt Malt Ithaca trils like plumes on a cold bright morning. another lawyer, someone to read yet anoth­ 273-3473 And they call that low life? If I was a poet I er paper at the MLA convention? Jeffrey Robert Hill is a writer who lives in could convince you. Bernard might have had that little mock- Ithaca. March, 1995 page 15 Children and Art CLASSIFIEDS WRITING WORKSHOPS continued frontpage 13 Twenty-four years earlier, in “The Anatomy “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deyman,” Lesson of Professor Tulp,” Rembrandt had employs a drape to conceal the lower extrem­ EMMA’S WRITING CENTER spective and foreshortening in the miniatures. extended the cadaver in the conventional hor­ ities other than the feet and raises the chest FOR WOMEN Though the Italians also had a significant izontal manner across the lower segment of and head. Both paintings convey a feeling of offers on-going, small-group workshops for impact upon Rembrandt, it was primarily in the composition. completeness, invariably absent in foreshort­ women at all levels of writing experience. the employment of chiaroscuro and occasion­ An interesting speculation suggests that, in ened representations by lesser artists or the Individualized editorial and consulting services ally in the area of composition, as in the exam­ the interval between the two compositions, camera. are also available. ple of Mantegna, or in his version of Leonar­ Mantegna’s Dead Christ became known to And in both, as in children’s art, a dominant For more information, contact: do’s “Last Supper.” When illusionistic fore­ Rembrandt. Historians inform us that other movement across the surface prevails. Irene Zahava, shortening and perspective does occur in Italians besides Mantegna may have influ­ Although illusionism is certainly a factor, a (607) 273-4675 Rembrandt’s work, it is usually held to a min­ enced Rembrandt in this particular instance; compensating horizontal expansiveness is imum. In the many hundreds of extant draw­ however, given his demonstrably good taste, it insisted upon. The infrequency of severe illu­ ings, etchings, and paintings, most of which is probable that Mantegna was his source. sionistic foreshortening in Mantegna and 2 1 st ANNUAL involve representations of the human body, Other than Putti on the ceiling of the Ducal Rembrandt suggests that both masters were FEMINIST WOMEN’S figures are stretched full-length or nearly full- Palace at Mantova, the “Dead Christ” is the uncomfortable with it. WRITING WORKSHOP length across the surface of the picture plane. one example of radical foreshortening found Technological progress and art are, as Poet-in-Residence, Ruth Stone A startling deviation is found in ‘The Anato­ in Mantegna. In it Mantegna miraculously Baudelaire pointed out in his generally sup­ July 9th-16th, 1995 my Lesson of Dr. Deyman,” which defines the defines every segment of the body, omitting pressed essay on photography, enemies. The SASE: Box 6583, Ithaca, NY 14851 corpse feet-forward, receding into space. nothing; it is a tour de force. Rembrandt, in art avant-garde believes quite the opposite: that art and progress go hand in hand, that CLASSIFIED RATES photographic illusionism, whether hand- painted or the real thing, will dominate the Classified ad rates are $ 10.00 for the first future. Thirty years ago, at the time our fledg­ ten words and $.75 for each additional word. ling artist portrayed the baby in the carriage, Send text, with exact capitalization, grade-school art teachers, feeling compelled punctuation, boldface, and italics indicated to: The Bookpress, The DeWitt Building to keep up with the times, had their young 215 N. Cayuga St, Ithaca, NY 14850. wards put aside pen, pencil, and crayon in Please include check or money order. favor of “letting themselves go” with paint in the approved orgiastic abstract-expressionist mode. Today, were it not for economic con­ siderations, there is a good chance grade- school art studios would be converted into NEW TITLES dark rooms. But children should be encouraged to do what is natural for them. Whether using chalk An Anthropologist on pavement or pen and paint, children will on Mars spontaneously externalize their thoughts and by OLIVER SACKS feelings. For adults to impose their aesthetic concepts upon children is a violation of their Reconstructions of the acts of seeing, the transport of memory, and the imaginative integrity. There is no easy answer nation o f color provoke a new sense when it comes to effecting the transition from o f wonder at w ho w e are. child artist to adult artist. Intelligent, insight­ Knopf, $24 cloth ful supervision and encouragement, such as was evident in Mozart’s and Picasso’s devel­ Moo opment, as well as a climate sympathetic to high culture, may be essential. by JANE SMILEY!______The creation of the society within a (reprinted from Andrea Mantegna, Martinus Nijhoff, 1931) Arnold Singer is a painter and emeritus Midwestern agricultural college comically portrays society at large. Dead Christ by Andrea Mantegna. professor of Art at Cornell University. April, Knopf, $24 cloth

Novel Without a Name by DUONG THUN HUONG A piercing, unforgettable tale o f the Chain Saw Massacre horror and spiritual weariness of war. Morrow, s23 cloth continued from page 7 sense of natural wonder in the midst of such devastation. That with a few more well- destruction, such feverish images? greased congressional palms even the inade­ Being Digital they bring most of the trees. There they lie, I imagine that the in-and-out visitors, the quate replanting we saw would cease. That a by NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE spread before you in numbing vistas of now- one-day wanderers at Yellowstone, may hostile-takeover attempt on one of the paper “Computing is not about computers horizontal, now-dead wood: the sum of all suffer some loss from the one-dimensional companies would quickly shrivel its plan­ anymore. It is about living." those clear-cuts deposited in piles fifty feet perspective that this initially overwhelming ning horizon from twenty- and thirty-year — Nicholas Negroponte high, slowly being loaded onto waiting ships vision of dead trees imposes. But we had a “crops” to those of the next fiscal quarter. Knopf, S2j cloth to be milled by cheaper labor and reappear week to wander, and time allowed for, per­ That, in the broadest sense, things were out transformed, perhaps on the foothills of Mt. haps insisted upon, the growth of a certain of control—largely because they were sub­ Women Singing Fuji. depth of perception. We began to notice the ject to the essentially immoral forces of the Nevertheless, we left Oregon with the wildflowers. Everywhere. A carpet of color marketplace. In Yellowstone, the sense of in the Snow sense that there was more than this vague besieging the dead black trunks. The elk and inevitable, unstoppable life was everywhere. A Cultural Analysis of Chicana and ungenerous xenophobia at the root of bison are plentiful and seemingly well-satis­ Having had the rare good sense long ago to Literature our unease, more than just a childish “these- fied with the newly opened foraging. The build a foundation of simple preservation, by TEY DIANA REBOLLEDO are-my-trees-and-you-can’t-have-’em” atti­ one-, two-, and three-year-old pines are we humans are now really only monitoring, April Arizona Press, sjS cloth, $16.95 paper tude. It was only when we arrived at Yel­ ubiquitous—tiny, persistent heralds of the visiting, observing, frequently disturbing, lowstone Park, however, that our nagging future. but certainly not controlling, a set of Krik? Krak! doubts were answered. Yellowstone—with Eventually, I realized that although sur­ processes that transcend and likely redefine by EDWIDGE DAUTICAT its immense spaces, its incredible assembly rounded by much more destruction than in morality. “Dauticat’s clarity of vision takes on of wonders, its native elk, bison, and bears— Oregon, I was much less troubled, much less the resonance of folk art. Extraordi­ retained a sense of preserved and ongoing concerned with one million dead acres than Somewhere between the yammer of the narily ambitious.. .extraordinarily wildness. As we came upon the First of the one thousand. Some of it surely stems from chain saw and the silence of the pines a quite successful.” famous boardwalk trails that wind along the imagining out beyond the horizon of visible gripping drama can be found. As we humans — The N ew York Times Book Review Madison River, we were stunned to see all destruction along the Oregon highways; stagger through the final decade of the cen­ April, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, $20 doth the trees dead, blackened. Still standing, but there we saw only a tiny part of the timber tury and the final scenes of our quincenten- starkly and insistently dead. Memory “industry.” But mostly, I think, it arises nial tragedy, we have only begun to recog­ recalled the fires of ’88. Big national media from the fundamental contrast between the nize that we did not script and will not be The Brick Reader controversy. Jeez, what a mess. wonder of death as a regenerative, amoral allowed to direct this production. On stage by LINDA SPALDING & MICHAEL ONDAATJE, eds. Where we saw thousands of acres clear- thread connecting all life, and the obscenity for a geologic eye-blink, merely a bit-part, cut in Oregon, here we saw hundreds of of death indifferently dispensed by a species we lurch about as noisome fools who must “Brick is one of the best, if not the thousands of acres of lodgepole pines killed capable of moral thought but mired in mer­ ad lib for already forgotten lines. Our audi­ best, journals of ideas published in the English-speaking world.” by dozens of separate fires that raged cantilism; between destruction as a requisite ence seems largely silent. But even the dead — Russell Banks throughout the summer of 1988. It’s a stun­ for renewal, or as a mere side-effect of will speak—if only we take the time to lis­ Coach House Press, $16.95 paper ning and overwhelming sight. Visions of industry; between the wolf-killed moose ten. Hiroshima, of Dresden chased each other and the slaughterhouse beef. through my mind. Then guilt flared: these In Oregon there was always the sense that Daryl Anderson is a full-tim e father o f are only trees, not people, their homes, their an increase in the price of lumber, or of typ­ four who recently moved from Buffalo to he AT THE BOOKERY families. How could I expect to regain a ing paper, would inexorably result in greater part o f the Eco Village project. page 16 The P OOKPRESS March, 1995 Down and Out in London, Paris & NY

exceeding $4 million, who have continued to puters, compared to over 50 percent today. mans, some one million of whom have been Edward T. Chase gain the most. So averaging the incomes of The declinists observe that joblessness is a unemployed for a year or longer, have taken the colossal gainers of the top fraction of global problem, with Spain experiencing a 24 the lead in the effort to widen the distribution Nobel Prize-winning author Czeslaw Americans with the “rest” presents a grossly percent unemployment rate, and the other of jobs. On January 25, the umbrella labor Milosz recalls his membership during the misleading picture. With big corporations and developed European nations confronting organization DGN (Federation of German early 1930s in “Zagary,” a literary group government “downsizing” to become leaner unemployment rates of 10 percent or worse. Trade Unions) agreed for the first time to a whose world view became known as “cata- and meaner, and workers’ overtime hours The devastating reality is that today there shorter work week with reduction in wages. strophism.” It was the nadir of the Depres­ reaching unprecedented levels, unemploy­ exists a global surplus of labor which far The Volkswagen Corporation’s four-day sion, and for the catastrophists the future ment (currently about 5.6 percent) and under­ exceeds the finite number of jobs available to week and a recent settlement on shorter hours seemed hopeless. Now a new book try employment have become our biggest the human work force. This extends to middle by the huge metal-working industry helped Michael Bernstein, entitled Foregone Con­ headache. According to economist Lester management and the new high-tech jobs as pave the way for this precedent-making deci­ clusions: Against Apocalyptic History, dis­ sion. The pressure for sharing available jobs misses such portentous visions of the future through a reduced work week is now intense as flawed, regularly overtaken by new reali­ in Europe (there are instances of its adoption ties. He identifies Marxism and Freudianism, in France), but American corporate heads are hitherto deemed prophetic of the inevitable, still reluctant, stressing that it would require as discredited theories, relics of our penchant multilateral agreements with all other for the grand synthesis theory that insists on nations—a move intended to create a “level its historical inevitability. playing field,” preventing firms from exploit­ Bernstein’s plea, that thinking should be ing cheaper surplus labor overseas. devoted to what is “singular, specific and pro­ One is tempted to add to the “declinists” saic,” might well be the motto of a new group Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of political-economic thinkers called “declin- Alan S. Blinder, a Clinton appointee who was ists.” They aren’t cranks. They do not espouse formerly with the Council of Economic grand foregone conclusions; only one, name­ Advisers and a professor of economics at ly that joblessness is going to be in our future Princeton University. In his book, Growing to a major, unprecedented degree. To make Together: An Alternative Economic Strategy their case, they draw upon the standard con­ for the 1990s, Blinder, like all the others, cites ventional statistics of the last two decades, 1973 as the turning point when economic illuminating and emphasizing the schizoid stagnation and decline' set in, except, of character of the current economy. course, for the top 5 percent of US house­ Who are the “declinists”? They include holds, which began to see spectacular gains. prominent but disparate writers such as Blinder quotes Kevin Phillips on the 1980s: Richard Barnet (Global Dreams), Robert “The changes posed by excessive individual­ Heilbroner (Buying America Back), John ism, greed, and insufficient concern for Kenneth Galbraith (The Culture of Content­ America as a community went beyond the ment), Kevin Phillips (Arrogant Capital), issue of fairness.” One wonders how Chair­ Jeremy Rifkin (The End of Work), Stanley man Alan Greenspan reacts to Blinder’s Aronowitz and William DiFazio (The Jobless assault on Paul Volker’s tight money program Future), and Gerard Piel of Scientific Ameri­ for “triggering the worst economic turndown can. since the Depression,” as Blinder notes that in Daily the public reads headline announce­ the 1980s, the richest fifth of families realized ments of job growth and economic recovery. income gains of over 26 percent, the top 5 Yet, in the body of the longer articles, lurk percent gains of over 34 percent, while “the dismaying statistical details which reveal poorest fifth of families lost out not just rela­ declining or stagnating incomes and job dete­ tively but absolutely.” rioration since 1973 for the majority of Amer­ Given Blinder's concern about poverty and icans. Unemployment and underemployment unemployment, the Fed’s continual hiking of arc rife, and the new jobs are mostly no-bene- interest rates to preclude inflation, which fit, part-time, low-pay, dead-end service jobs, requires maintaining unemployment at six frequently contingent contract labor. Indeed, percent, must fortify his declinist perspective. half of the 12 million jobs created in the His sophistication is such, however, that he 1980s paid an annual wage below the official knows that basic technological change, not poverty level. Since 1973, only the top quin­ Fed policy, has allowed global unemploy­ tile of Americans has enjoyed a rise in ment to persist. It is this dawning realization income. The other four-fifths have seen their that lies behind the pervasive sense of decline incomes stagnate or decline, while the bottom and malaise—the uneasy and widely shared Rhea Worrell quintile has declined absolutely. view that the developed world’s market-dri­ Among all the advanced nations, the US Thurow, if we count those discouraged from well, where positions for “symbolic analysts” ven social and political institutions are not boasts the largest split between top income seeking work as well as the underemployed are scant. And today national borders are vir­ delivering as promised. earners and the rest of the population, with who seek full-time jobs, the realistic jobless tually meaningless, allowing capital sources after-tax income of those at the top 44.5 times figure could be as high as 15 percent. What’s to search almost anywhere for labor. Edward T. Chase is former Editor-in- greater than that of the lowest quintile. Recent more, it is estimated that one-third of US jobs Although the possibility of sharing the lim­ Chief of New York Times Books, the New studies show that one-half of one percent of are at risk to the growing productivity of low- ited number of jobs sounds reasonable, the American Library, Senior Editorial Vice the population (500,000 US households) own wage workers in China, India, Mexico, and shift to a shorter 30-hour, four-day work President of Putnam, and Senior Editor of 39.3 percent of our wealth, distributed in the Latin America. White collar jobs continue to week is unpopular with American manage­ Scribner’s, and has also been a frequent con­ form of securities, cash, real estate, life insur­ shrink as well, due to the gradual takeover of ment, which relies on overtime labor because tributor to Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, New ance, art works, jewelry, etc. And it has been computer-mediated work processes: in the it reduces the expensive benefits owed to Republic, The Reporter, Dissent, and The this top half percent, those with fortunes 1980s, only 20 percent of workers used com­ additional employees. Interestingly, the Ger­ New Leader. i New York State Early Music Assoc., Inc., Peter & Elizabeth Hedrick. Artistic Directors, presents - 4 f. * (jenesee ‘Baroque Biayers mS I Oftto yorkis Orchestra cm Original Instruments AUTP Special Project: Blue Window bp & raig e£ucas London's greatest hits of the late 1600’s, March i, 2, & 3 at 8 pm, March 4 at 2 pm ule Britannia! Black Box Theatre—$2 Steven Lehning. Guest Director Heermans-McCalm Andrea Folan, Judith Kellock, and Nancy Zylstra, Sopranos Playwriting Contest Reading Philip Wilder. Countertenor; Patrick Mason. Bass March 5 at 8 pm; Class of ’56 Flexible featuring Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas semi-staged with baroque Theatre - Free p J flS theatrical gestures, with Thomas D'urfey’s epilogue spoken by DANCE CONCERT 95 Diane Ackerman in Ithaca and R hea J e ze r in Syracuse. March 9, 10 8 11 at 8 pm; March 12 at 2 pm iN f © Sat. 1 April 1995 - 8:15 PM - Ithaca • Sun. 2 April 1995 - 4:00 PM - Syracuse Proscenium Theatre—$6 G $8 B * S * * V W

TICKETS: at the door or call NYSEMA (607) 273-1581 General admission: S12. American College Dance Festival In Ithaca at Dewitt Mall Ticket Center (607) 273-4407 Student/senior $8. tru est Concert Name______Ithaca __1 April March 22 at 8pm; Proscenium Theatre—$TBA Syracuse __2 April Address, (ff/ala C o n c e r t City____ State _Zip_ Phone: Day_ . Evening_ March 25 at 8pm; Proscenium Theatre—$TBA P.9RNELL