The

THE NEWSPAPER OF THE LITERARY ARTS Volume 4, N umber 5 September 1994 Ithaca, New York The Impossible Country Nicolas Vaczek

In spring and summer of 1991, Ithaca’s Brian Hall traveled through the former Yugoslavia, witnessing the onset of civil war. One of the last foreigners to have traveled there unhindered, Hall in his new book, The Impossible Country (David R. Godine), has captured the voices o f the prominent and the unknown, from Slo­ bodan Milosevic to a wide variety of “real, likeable people” throughout Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia. In addition, the book provides indispensable historical background, showing how Yugoslavia was formed after World War I, and explaining why every attempt at polit­ ical compromise has been met with suspicion and resis­ tance. Nicolas Vaczek recently interviewed Brian Hall in Ithaca.

NV: Anyone writing in the travel mode on Yugoslavia has Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon to contend with. BH: Yes. It’s a fabulous book. One of the greatest travel books ever written. She was there in 1937, though it’s not clear how much time she spent. If you read between the lines it doesn’t seem long. World War II is on the way. She’s writing from 1939 to 1940, and then she could retroactively put in some of her awareness. By 1940, she’s getting bombed in London by the Germans. By that time, Yugoslavia has become for her the symbol of a certain kind of decent civilization, represented by the Serbs under siege by the barbaric Germans. By the time I started writing my book, the war had begun in Bosnia. I would write during the day and listen to the news at night. The things I chose from my notes were affected by what I was hearing every day. Since it takes a while to write, things that happen later affect the way you write. Writers try not to do this dishonestly.

see Impossible Country, page 10 Photograph: Ron Haviv Sarajevan demonstrators take cover from Serbian Snipers tiring from the windows of the nearby Holiday Inn. Rear Guard Scientists Inside be an artifact of unreconstructed ness, rattle the absolutists and H ig h er Superstition : primate behavior—an institution gnaw away at their authority. Even T he Academic Left and Its somehow less likely to inspire a leaving aside the world-shaking • Dan Finlay on Helen Prejean’s Q uarrels Wit h Science catch in the throat when observed properties of its by-product, tech­ Dead Man Walking: An Eye­ Paul R. Gross and Norman Levitt in our closest relatives, the chim­ nology, science’s awesome powers witness Account of the Death Johns Hopkins University Press panzees. Science storms the of demystification have toppled Penalty in the United States 3 14 pages, $25.95 palaces of our pretensions and more princes, freed more slaves drags us, kicking and screaming, and emptied more churches than • Robert Rebein on Cormac Ann Druyan from the center of the universe all the armies of bandilleroed McCarthy’s The Crossing where we feel comfortable and zealots combined. Science has no equal as a revolu­ large, to the galactic boondocks Hierarchy, superstition, ethno- • Nicholas Nicastro on tionary force in human experience. where we really have been all centrism, racism, sexism; these “Spartacus” Under its unblinking gaze, the along. These Great Demotions, mainstays of the right-wing owe “divine right of kings” is revealed to these intimations of our true tiny- see Scientists, page 2 page 2 1116 BOOKPRESS oeptemDer, iyy4 Scientists

continued from page 1 in science today, at least in the American Superstition. It goes in its entirety, “To our universities?...the only widespread, obvi­ wives, our children, and our students, with no debt to science. Our ancestors were ous discrimination today is against white gratitude.” Is it my imagination or does guilty of all of the above long before we males.” this sound less like a loving tribute and walked upright. But the goals of social and So that’s it. more like the passenger manifest of a economic equality, human rights, interna­ Recent attempts to redress the inequities Scythian royal tomb? The possessive tionalism, and the perspective of our and exclusions of millennia have loosed a refrain and the generic quality transforms species not as the crown of creation, but as new species of kvetch on the land, of the dedicatees into so many anonymous a part of the greater fabric of life, are as which this book is a prime, but hardly retainers. It smacks of the same paternal­ much a by-product of the Scientific unique, specimen. They frequently begin, ism that mars the substance of this book. Life Before Birth Enlightenment as the telescope and the as do Gross and Levitt, anxious to establish The notion that there might be some­ and pendulum clock. bona fides for reason and fairness. Yes, thing to be learned from “feminism and the A Time To Be Born Peter W. Nathanielsz, M.D., Ph.D. That is why the central thesis of “Higher slavery and segregation must have been history of science" strikes them as being so Discover the fascinating wonders of our Superstition” comes as something of a sur­ awful. Don’t get them wrong. Excluding ludicrous, it curdles their very typography prenatal origins, and the challenges prise. “To put it bluntly,” Gross, a profes­ women from virtually every profession or from roman into italic. Italics abound in of Independent life. sor of life sciences at the University of Vir­ from having any say in their own fates was this high-pitched polemic and there are Prom ethean Press ISBN: 0-916859-55-X unjust. All that ridicule and ostracism of more exclamation points than are usually ginia, and Levitt, a mathematics professor Available from a bookstore near you. at Rutgers, write, “the academic left dis­ the homosexual or the halt and the lame found in a kidnapping note. likes science.” were probably harrowing. But, once that’s We may ask: Against what grave threat When I read this I found myself wonder­ out of the way, lip service duly paid, they do these authors sound so strident and pan­ ing how Karl Marx would have reacted to launch into a tirade against the notion that icky an alarm? What juggernaut approach­ it. His earliest scholarly writings were these acknowledgments of longstanding es? Sloppy scholarship and trendy thinking PIANOS about the pre-Socratic philosophers, the injustice should have any operational con­ in academe? Can these distinguished histo­ inventors of the scientific method. When sequences. rians of thought actually believe this is Rebuilt he wrote “One law for science and another Proposals to compensate these inequali­ something new? Or peculiar to the left? Reconstructed for life is a priori a lie “ he was acknowl­ ties or to heighten sensitivities are, these Doesn’t the much more lavishly funded, Bought Sold days, often derided under the rubric of more widely heard antipathy to science of edging the wellspring of his inspiration. It M oved was his intention to dedicate “Das Kapital” political correctness. They are dismissed the Christian fundamentalists and the rest Tuned to someone he revered as an even greater with bitter scorn. I’m not making a pitch of the radical right pose a graver danger to Rented troublemaker—Charles Darwin. for humorlessness here. But if relatively our society? Have they never heard Rush Who, exactly, then, are Gross and Levitt small, mostly symbolic steps in the direc­ Limbaugh on the environment or Pat talking about? “We are using academic tion of a more equitable society can evoke Robertson on evolution? Could the authors left," the authors state, “to designate those such shrillness, it makes you wonder how have been caught off guard by the very people whose doctrinal idiosyncracies sus­ Gross and Levitt and the like-minded human resentment of those who have been tain the misreadings of science, its meth­ would react if actually forced to walk in systematically excluded from science? Are ods, and its conceptual foundations that the pinching shoes of the oppressed. they really surprised that some of the have generated what nowadays passes for a The meanness of spirit in this book is a aggrieved make unsubstantiated boasts politically progressive critique of it.” Oh. pity when you consider how knowl- that this or that great scientific or techno­ Ithaca Piano Rebuilders As convoluted as the preceding quota­ edgable, talented and perceptive its authors logical achievement really belongs to (607) 272-6547 tion is, the next chapter, one on the history sometimes are. Gross and Levitt do some them? Can Levitt and Gross have failed to 310 4th St., Ithaca (Off Hancock St. 2 blocks from Rt. 13) of science and political philosophy, begins persuasive debunking of deconstruction. anticipate the far extremum of the pendu­ Complete rebuilding services. as a little gem, a model of clarity and Higher Superstition is richly embroidered lum’s arc? No job too big or too small. Call us. scholarship. Gross and Levitt’s poetic with entertaining references to Goethe and I share their impatience with the anti-sci­ —powers reach their height here, as they Blake. I appreciate the way they don’t entific. But I cannot sympathize with their glide from Freemasonry to Newtonian allow their love of science to blind them to anguish and resentment over these small physics. We’re soaring along with them, its misuse. There is much here that is tren­ and imperfect remedies to bring about a until boom, suddenly we’re brought down chant and free of self-interest. And yet, long overdue inclusion—especially in mid-flight by ugly mutterings about “the despite their erudition and ambitious use of because it was their beloved scientific Publisher: Jack Goldman changing demography of the American language, like Dr. Strangelove’s irrepress­ method and its imperative to question all population.” That’s quickly followed by a ible “heil,” their affronted entitlement, things that doomed the continued monop­ Editorial: Jack Goldman, Joel Ray, wholesale dismissal of feminism as having their mysogyny, their pique at being forced oly of an almost exclusively white, Euro­ and Ben Goodman “long since wandered into its own discur­ to share the world of ideas with their pre­ pean, male endeavor. It wasn’t the small Design and Production: David DeMello sive universe.” And finally they blurt out sumptive inferiors, breaks through with targets of this book that routed those over­ Contributing Interns: Carolyn Darrow, John Stanik the real hurt that informs and corrodes this tiresome frequency, spoiling everything. privileged alphas from pride of place at Advertising Manager: Ben Goodman work: “New candidates for veneration— Gross and Levitt’s antagonism is bound­ the center of the universe. It wasn’t the Distribution: Ben Goodman writers, artists, musicians, philosophers, less. A case in point is their repeated grip­ academic left that handed out those Great Contributors: historical figures, non-Western ‘ways of ing about the whimsical dedication of a Demotions. It was science. Gunilla Feigenbaum, Kenneth Evett, Harvey Fireside, book on popular culture and science by knowing’—are put forward not for what Michael Serino, Jon Griffin, Sandy List, they are but for what they are not—white, Andrew Ross, a “glamorous” Princeton Ann Druyan is Secretary of the Federa­ Janice Levy, Robert Rebein, Mark Shechner European, male.” A hundred pages later, English professor. “This book is dedicated tion of American Scientists and author or Art.- they are still licking those same wounds: to all the science teachers I never had,” co-author of several books, popular arti­ Mi 11 y Acharya, Andrew Pogson Joanna Sheldon, Jack Sherman, Susan Titus “it seems to us quite unsporting not to Ross writes. “It could only have been writ­ cles, and television documentaries on the The entire contents of T he Bookpress are copyright ©1994 by praise male college presidents, deans, vice- ten without them.” But Levitt and Gross effects of science and technology on our The Bookpress. All rights reserved. The Bookpress w ill not be liable for typographical error, or errors in publication except the presidents for student affairs, and affirma­ can only see this laudible act of self-defla­ civilization. Her most recent book, written cost to advertisers for up to the cost of the space in which the tion as more ammunition. Aha! He even with Carl Sagan, is Shadows of Forgotten actual error appeared in the first insertion. tive action officers...But then again” they Subscription rate is $10.°° for one year (nine issues) smarm, “‘sporting’ is an encomium of admits he doesn’t know any science! Such Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are Submissions of manuscripts and art should be sent, SASE, to: crabbiness emboldens me to say what I (Hew York: Random House, 1993). T he Bookpress. DeWitt Building male provenance.” And, “What are the 215 N. Cayuga Street. Ithaca, NY 14850 realities of discrimination against women gathered from the dedication of Higher (607) 277-2254

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Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness midst of the poor, seeing daily the injustices they neglect. to death, Vaccaro to life in prison, a good exam­ Account of th e Death P enalty suffer, she begins to perceive life differendy. It Patrick Sonnier was 27 at the time of his ple of the arbitrariness of retribution. in th e U nited States is impossible to live by choice in such circum­ arrest. He and his 20-year-old brother Eddie, These cases are perfect examples for propo­ Sister Helen Prejean stances and not have one’s outlook changed. posing as security guards, kidnapped a young nents of the death penalty. Neither Sonnier not Random House, 192 pages The unexamined assumptions of life in main- couple. One of them raped the woman. Both Willie had major new constitutional issues to $21 cloth, $12 p ap er steam America are called into question. Statis­ victims were shot to death—“three times at raise, or the issue of race. Neither one denied his tics become living people. The media-otic view close range in the back of the head.” As Prejean participation in the crimes, though each denied Dan Finlay of the inner city is revealed as shallow, one­ reads the file for the first time she writes that he was the murderer. Both crimes were violent, dimensional—superficial and sensational about “the details of the depravity stun me.” The senseless, and devastating to the victims’ fami­ In 1972, the United States Supreme Court, in what it focuses on, ignorant of what it misses. brothers were found guilty of first-degree mur­ lies, who experienced the special tragic loss of a Furman v. Georgia, stopped executions of pris­ Prejean spends very little time on the impact der and were sentenced to death. Eddie Son­ young adult’s death. oners sentenced to death, on grounds that the of her move, which is only background to her nier’s sentence was commuted to life (he was How does Prejean present her view that these implementation of the death penalty was arbi­ main story. But it is significant: it is because of considered “not as culpable”). Patrick Sonnier’s men should not be sentenced to death? In part trary and capricious. The Court did not she educates us about the standard soci­ declare that capital punishment itself ological, moral, and theological argu­ was unconstitutional; it only rejected ments against capital punishment: bias the manner in which it was being runs deep in the application of the death applied. Since 1972, in response to this penalty (it is used essentially against the ruling, 37 states have created guidelines poor); defendants who have no which are meant in theory to satisfy the resources for good legal help often are requirement that they be even-handed inadequately represented in the first in applying the death penalty. Execu­ trial and have no money for the appeals tions have resumed in 23 states. process; lawyers who are assigned to New York State has been in a special indigent defendants often have no position on this issue. From 1974 to experience in criminal law or in death 1994, Governors Hugh Carey and penalty law, which is specialized; in Mario Cuomo have opposed the death some states the funds available to the penalty and have blocked resumption defense are so low that attorneys have of its use. This situation is unlikely to no interest or cannot afford to give ade­ last. The odds are good that whoever quate representation. succeeds Cuomo will favor executions, These inadequacies have two conse­ and at that point the State will resume quences. First, the principle that every killing on behalf of its citizens. This defendant should have fair representa­ likelihood should make us pause and tion before the law is ignored. Second, think. As Clinton Duffy, a former war­ the chance of executing an innocent den at San Quentin, used to say about person rises dramatically. Anyone who Californians who visited his prison, doubts this should read the 1993 staff “when anybody comes in here and report of the House Judiciary Subcom­ wants to see the gas chamber, I correct mittee on Civil and Constitutional them. I say, this is your gas chamber.” Rights (“Innocence and the Death The best-known essay in opposition Penalty: Assessing the Danger of Mis­ to the death penalty is Albert Camus’ taken Executions”), which studied the “Reflections on the Guillotine,” still cases of 48 people who were sentenced very much worth reading. But a recent to death in the last twenty years and book, Dead Man Walking, by Sister released after they were found inno­ Helen Prejean, has received national cent. The report demonstrates “that attention. Like Camus, Prejean opposes innocent people are being sentenced to capital punishment. But whereas death,” that their innocence, when Camus gives a passionate philosophical proven, is established in spite of the argument, Prejean leads us into the the­ system, and that the criminal justice oretical debate with a personal narrative system is flawed by “poor representa­ covering a decade in her life (1982-92). tion, racial prejudice, prosecutorial mis­ Her arguments come alive because they conduct, or simply the presentation of are life-and-death issues in the relation­ erroneous evidence.” ships and interactions that develop as It is worth noting that the issue of she meets and becomes a spiritual advi­ evenhandedness is a key aspect in Jus­ sor to two different men who are exe­ tice Blackmun’s recent dissent on cuted, and also engages with the fami­ denial of review in a death penalty case. lies of the victims these men killed. He writes (New York Times, Feb. 23, This weaving of narrative and argu­ 1994): ment allows Prejean to cover the main debate. Thus, when she travels to death Tw enty years have passed since this row with a lawyer she takes the oppor­ Court declared that the death penalty tunity to discuss the legal system with must be imposed fairly, and with reason­ him, and we get a review of Supreme able consistency or not at all, and, despite Court decisions. Preparing for a pardon the effort of the states and courts to board hearing, she digresses to tell us devise legal formulas and procedural the methods politicians use to distance rules to meet this...challenge, the death themselves from personal decisions on penalty remains fraught with arbitrari­ executions. As she reads her first letter ness, discrimination, caprice and mistake. from a death row inmate, she notices that “he never talks about the death the Blackmun sees a major contradiction: state has in store for him,” and she consistency requires firm guidelines, describes what death by electrocu­ which ensure that people are treated the tion—initiated “in 1890 at Auburn same way, yet any decision on a capital Prison in upstate New York”—is like. sentence must be made with the Her book is, as the subtitle indicates, an ■ r “degree of respect due the uniqueness of the individual.” These principles are eyewitness account of the death penalty Illustration: Jack Sherman in the US. Its eloquence comes from the contradictory. That is why he states “a honesty and directness with which she reports where she is that she gets involved. The discon­ sentence was overturned, then reaffirmed a sec­ step toward consistency is a step away from fair­ her experiences and successes and mistakes. nection of most of America from the life of the ond time. It is clear from subsequent informa­ ness” and why “the death penalty experiment The heart of Dead Man Walking is the politi­ poor is what informs public moods of uncon­ tion that the younger brother committed the has failed.” cal and spiritual transformation of the eyewit­ cern, hopelessness, impatience, hostility. It is a murders. Although neither of the men Prejean minis­ ness. Prejean sees herself not as the “extraordi­ part of what makes the call for the vengeance of Robert Willie and his partner Joseph Vaccaro ters to is African-American, she examines the nary person...plunged into the commonplace” the death penalty as easy as it is and as political­ were convicted of killing an 18-year- old racial bias in death penalty cases, which pro­ but rather as the “ordinary person [who] gets ly acceptable. woman while both men were on an “eight-day vides an especially striking view of discrimina­ involved in extraordinary events.” She sketches rampage across several states” in which another tion in the judicial system. There is no rational her movement from a sheltered middle-class life The two men whom Prejean meets on teenage girl was raped and her boyfriend para­ basis for denying that the death penalty is to teaching and living with five nuns in a hous­ Louisiana’s death row are Patrick Sonnier and lyzed. Willie and Vaccaro had a history of seri­ applied in a racist way. In McCleskey v. Kemp ing project in the inner city of New Orleans. Robert Willie. Both are white, both are Cajun, ous violent crimes before these events. Both (1987), where the question of race was argued, This move radicalizes her in the tradition of both have a history of crime, and share back­ were tried “in the same courthouse at the same see Breaking the Circuit, page 10 Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin. Living in the grounds of poverty, childhood abuse, and time on separate floors.” Willie was sentenced page 4 T h e ROOKPKESS September, 1994

Off Campus At The Bookery Good Fellas

The Bookery continues its 1994 lecture series Save Me , J oe Louis hideout comes to implicate standard, osten­ In the lecture space in Bookery II Madison Smartt Bell sibly honest, work as the same kind of empty Penguin, 351 pages, $10.95 necessity. The reader is lulled into identifica­ tion with the gang of criminals because Bell September 11 A. Manette Ansay, Gordon Sacks has taken down the conventional moral road- signs, complicating or even eradicating the who teaches creative writing at Like Moby Dick, this novel begins with distinction between right and wrong. With­ Vanderbilt, will read from her the protagonist alone in Battery Park, but out these indices the reader, like MacRae, is new Viking novel, Vinegar Hill, a MacRae, unlike Ishmael, does his swash­ adrift. story about the consequences of buckling ashore. AWOL, he finds himself The writing is vivid, and the road and a family's move to a small passively sucked into in a string of increas­ action sequences convey immediacy without Midwestern town in the '70s, and ingly brutal robberies, beginning with a sim­ acceding to the cliches of the action genre. one woman's journey to self- ple and oddly gentle mugging, and ending in The climactic battle becomes almost super­ affirmation. Reminiscent of jane murderous armed robberies. He follows the natural, as Charlie and MacRae elude the Smiley's work, Vinegar Hill is the Falstaffian lead of Charlie, matching Char­ police in characteristic styles: Charlie by debut novel of a writer who has lie’s meanness with his own indifference. absolute velocity and MacRae by total inac­ won numerous awards for her The anti-Raskolnikov, MacRae is fairly con­ tion. short fiction. A novel marked tent with his career as a criminal. Save Me, Joe Louis is a desolate but ulti­ with the integrity of "an original When the pair is forced to flee New York, mately level portrait of an underclass differ­ and powerful voice," according to James McConkey, who believes they travel south, and encounter Porter in the ing only by degree from the mainstream of Ms. Ansay is "destined to be a major presence in American course of a crime spree in Baltimore. Push­ society. Bell’s dialogue and style command the reader’s attention throughout, though the Literature." ing further south, they hide out in MacRae’s rural Tennesse home, occasioning racial theme of racial conflict is only exhibited, not conflict between various rednecks and really examined. Overall this is a moving, Alison Lurie, O ctober 2 Porter, who is black. But this element is not unsentimental novel. central to the story, despite the title’s sugges­ a Pulitzer prize-winning local tion to the contrary. Gordon Sacks is an editor living in New author considered "one of this Instead, the domestic ritual of robbery and York City. country's most able and witty novelists" (New York Times), has most recently applied her gifts to the ghost story, with her newly released collection called Women & Ghosts, tales of hauntings both literal and metaphorical. She'll Art and the read from this new work, and we will also have copies on hand of her Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, now available in paperback. New Novel

ited-edition books by artists like Pierre At 3:30 p.m. on October 6th, John Diamond-Nigh Alechinsky and Rauschenberg, but art rang­ ing from the elegant penciled marginalia of Marcelle Lapow Toor A three-day conference called “The New writers like Robert Pinget, to the laser-print­ lecturer in the Department of Communication at Cornell, Novel and Its Extensions: Literary and Visu­ ed concrete poetry of Raymond Federman. where she specializes in teaching graphic design to non-design­ al” will begin Sunday, October 16, at Elmira Also featured are a splendid suite of paint­ ers, will conduct a workshop. In keeping with the philosophy of College. Participants from more than a ings by Rafael Ferrer illustrating A Hundred dozen American universities, joined by col­ Years of Solitude', a set of “Black and White her new book, Graphic Design on the Desktop, Ms. Toor will leagues from Canada, Mexico, England, Numerals” by Jasper Johns to a 16th-century aim to demystify the design process. This event should interest Scotland, France, Germany, and Switzer­ painting by Francois de Nome, “Asa and inform novices, who may not know a serif from a dingbat, land, will explore the connections between Destroying the Temple”; and a suite of as well as those already exploring the sophisticated computer the visual arts and contemporary writing. watercolors by Francisco Toledo illustrating resources now available to the desktop publisher. The main focus of the presentations and Jorge Luis Borges’s Bestiary. discussions will be on what in France and For more information about the confer­ Latin America is termed the New Novel, ence and exhibition, contact Lynne or John sometimes referred to as Surfiction or Diamond-Nigh at Elmira College, (607) Metafiction in the US, Canada, and England. 735-1898. On October 23rd at 4 p.m. Notable practitioners of this form have been the Latin American writers Jorge Lois John Diamond-Nigh is a sculptor living To celebrate the publication of Borges, Julio Cortazar, and Alejo Carpen- in Elmira. His upcoming one-person exhibi­ The Best American Poetry 1994, tier, and in France, Alain Robbe-Grillet, tion will be held at the George Waters Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, Robert Gallery at Elmira College, October 14 to series editor Pinget, and Claude Simon. November 7. David Lehman Co-organizers Lynne Diamond-Nigh of Elmira College and Lois Oppenheimer of and Montclair State University have invited the Archie Ammons, noted French author Michel Butor to be the major keynote speaker at the conference. editor of this year's collection, Many years ago, Butor abandoned the will join a group of the contributors writing of novels to produce poetry, prose, for an afternoon of readings at the Bookery. and essays inspired by the paintings, sculp­ tures, prints, and drawings of different Those who have already agreed to participate in the event include: artists. Though Butor’s texts are usually written as responses to the art forms, the books,quality Burlin Barr Cynthia Bond written word and visual images join to con­ stitute the final work. A famous example of toys and puzzles, Roald Hoffmann Phyllis Janowitz this kind of collaboration is the work titled Fred Muratori Angela Shaw Traces Suspects en Surface by Robert & superior stationary Rauschenberg and Alain Robbe-Grillet, which is part of the print and art book collec­ selections tion at the Museum of Modem Art. Beginning the same day as the conference, The Bookery an exhibition titled “Art and the New Novel: DeWitt Building, Parallels and Generators” will be open to the public through October 30 at the Arnot Art 44 Washington Avenue, 215 North Cayuga St., Ithaca Museum in Elmira. Endicott, NY For more information call (607) 273-5055 The exhibition, curated by John and Lynne Diamond-Nigh and Arnot Museum 748-8233 Director John O’Hern, includes not only lim­ September, 1994 The R OOKPRESS page 5 Brits’ Picks Mix Flix

Along with the obvious selections—“Ode to a movie together, surely could occasion a con­ headgear featuring exotic tropical fruits”). The T h e Faber Book of Movie Verse Groucho,” “Ode to Felix” (the cat, that is), temporary aubade, a new kind of intimate notes build predictable but democratic pan­ Philip French and Ken Wlaschin, eds. “Ode to Fellini on Interviewing Actors for a afterword. Only a few poets refer to conversa­ theons (“Chaplin, the greatest movie star of all Faber and Faber, 458 pp. $ 24.95 Forthcoming Film,” or a ’’Patriotic Ode on the tions they have with friends about movies, time”; ‘The first great canine star, Rin-Tin- Fourteenth Anniversary of the Persecution of although some poems seem to be occasioned Tin was a German Shepherd bom in Germany Debra Fried Charlie Chaplin”—are poems spun from as casually as such after-the-show chats in 1916”). invented B-movies (Leon McCauley’s “Snow (“Great moment in Blade Runner where Roy The notes pretend that movies poems are This is the super-jumbo popcorn with extra White Meets the Wolfman,” Michael Ondaat- Batty is expiring,” Tom Clark starts “Final about movies, and spring solely from movies, butter. In a big, messy bucket of mostly little je’s “King Kong Meets Wallace Stevens”) or Farewell”—the notes sketch the film and cast, rather than from other poems. Literary allu­ poems, by mostly minor, mostly younger movie lines (Tom Raworth’s “You Were and obligingly identify and construe “the sions are left to themselves. When Mae West poets, film historian French and poet and film Wearing Blue”). proud android Roy Batty (the name suggest­ inspires Ogden Nash to pronounce, “West­ programmer Wlaschin have gathered not a Although the best-known contributors are ing a mad king), played by Rutger Hauer.” ward the course of vampire moves its way,” sifted garland but a mixed, if largely British, Americans, and homages to Hollywood dom­ Philip French’s notes supply, as few poems the notes inform us, “The Brooklyn-born collection of poems about the movies. Nostal­ inate, this is nonetheless a notably British do, the tenderly acquisitive drive of the buff, West (1892-1980) attained considerable noto­ gia, gossip, worship and parody, ponderous anthology (French is British, Wlaschin, an the ideal of after-movie talk where the thrill of riety on Broadway before coming to Holly­ cinematic conceits, frivolous anecdotes, and American working as a film programmer in the chase beats cutting to the chase. Frank wood in 1932 to make a series of risque come­ ’zineworthy squibs jostle together in this gen­ London). For British poets, it is often crucial O’Hara’s smitten litanies of Hollywood idols dies,” but not that Nash is doing a number on erous volume. The poets have drifted into the that the movie camera showed up in time to come closest to the glee of the annotator as a line by Bishop Berkeley; when Nash bijou on a variety of pretexts, and the editors record two world wars—there are poems pack-rat: admires “the pace that launched a thousand have grouped them into loose sections, from about soldiers on leave looking for a movie, hips,” French doesn’t direct us to Christopher poems on the silents to a closing cluster on newsreels bringing war to the home front, the Tarzans, each and every one of you (I cannot Marlowe’s Helen, the first vamp. Roy Fuller’s “TV and the Afterlife of Movies.” The core of stars felled by war (Leslie Howard), the mis­ bring myself to prefer Johnny Weissmuller to “Rosebud” prompts French to explain that the anthology is the three heftiest sections, match between onscreen death throes and a Lex Barker, I cannot!), Mae W est in a furry sled, “Stewart played the smarmy European valet at “Movie Houses and Moviegoing,” “The Stars veteran’s memories. The combinea backward her bordello radiance and bland remarks, Xanadu,” but he has no comment on Kenneth and the Supporting Cast,” and “Films and glances of the war-related poems, the laments Rudolph Valentino of the moon, its crushing pas­ Fearing’s line in “Continuous Performance” Genres,” each an anthology in itself. These for dead starlets, and the volume’s rough sions, and moonlike, too, the gentle Norma about staying through a movie he’s already groupings make it possible to read the volume chronology from silent screen to VCR makes Shearer. seen the end of in order to “learn how Alph the through as a quirky, partial history of the this, for all its hijinks and fond lore, an elegaic sacred river flows, in Xanadu, forever to a movies as reflected in poetry. But the book, as though movies were already memo­ Printed between sections, the notes—chat­ sunless sea.” French’s road to Xanadu never sequences and subdivisions of Movie Verse ries, not just like memories. ty, meticulous, and both ticklish and poker- gets past the Hollywood sign. make it even more instructive as a sampler of Mortality, the threat of fade-out, comes into faced—are among the delights of the collec­ To judge from this compilation, it is harder late 20th-century poets, where a line-up of play when French and Wlaschin’s sequencing tion. More than glosses to the individual to write a poem about the dangers of movies hopefuls gives one-shot read-throughs of a of poems borrows from montage technique. poems, they are like a maven’s enthusiasm than about their delights. Lamenting the fall of series of verse occasions or scenarios (the Berryman’s fantasy blue movie in “Dream spilling out as you duck for the lobby together. movies and stars is a very different matter poem on Garbo, or Bogart, or horror films; Song 363” of Shirley Jones and George C. They mix common knowledge and inside from lamenting the ingrained lies that movies watching a movie with my lover/mother/ Scott (“off stage moans, / we begin with them dope. Occasionally the notes are oddly reti­ may tell. Perhaps it’s simply that in an anthol­ child; lament for a demolished movie palace; in bed”) cuts to the shot-by-shot breakdown of cent—why tell us she was born Theodosia ogy, light verse can tend to drive out heavy. In my visit to Tinseltown). Roger McGough’s ‘The death of John Berry- Goodman without adding that Theda Bara some sections of the book, Frank O’Hara Unlike John Heath-Stubbs’s demolished .man in slow motion” where “We open on a unscrambled yields Arab Death? Sometimes seems the keynote speaker, and his sunny local “odeon.. .In which no ode has ever been frozen river” until “Now the body comes into French seems to add a note largely for the kick irreverence and lovable shtick of fan-as-goof- recited,” Movie Verse resounds with odes, ele­ the shot. / Falling, blurred, a ragged bearskin. / of mating film trivia with donnish cadences ball makes even lesser celebrants seem to be gies, sonnets including two double sonnets, a The shadow opens its arms to greet it.” In a (“She was especially noted for her extravagant see Brits ’ Picks, page 12 song in subtitles, a raga, and a villanelle, with number of poems, exiting a movie theatre into room to spare for free verse. True wit, near­ daylight or night is an available everyday doggerel, and sober iambics are all represent­ epiphany, but it makes poets ask if they wake ed. A couple of poets have painted themselves or sleep, and reveals movies as delicious but into the comer of having to find a rhyme for deceiving visions. By setting lovers or father “Los Angeles” (Neil Jordan’s “you’re melting and son to watching a movie together—or m v fw slowly in the haze/ that typifies Los Angeles” apart—other poems become handy shortcuts is not much of an improvement on Morris for talking about domestic tensions. Bishop’s “Its endless reels of rancid agonies.” How good are movies as a metaphor? A WALKING FIRE The editors announce in the introduction that James Kirkup ventriloquizes an aging star they have reluctantly excluded song lyrics, dogged by visions “from the black / projec­ though a few offerings seem to be lyrics in tion-room of time” and by hope-filled faces Valerie Miner search of a melody. Many selections are already dealt with “in the cutting room of fate, unapologetically light verse, such as C. A. that fabulous two-timer.” But the mask slips; Lejeune’s witty putdown of Aloma o f the Kirkup's “The Fallen Star,” like others in “Here comes a walking fire,” the “This powerful and poignant novel South Seas: “Extensive tour / of D. Lamour. / “Movies as Metaphor” and throughout the Fool says to Lear as he sees Gloucester is about the cauterizing of wounds: Nearly all / Of J. Hall.” More unabashed still volume, leaves us uncertain whether the mind personal, familial, and political. It ex­ walking across a heath carrying a torch. are a hilarious “Hollywood Jabberwocky” and that clings to such figures is pedestrian or per­ plores the lingering damage of Viet­ This novel opens in fall, 1988, as Cora, Alexander Scott’s retellings of King Kong in a ceptive, poisoned by the light or simply draw­ nam, both for those who fought in, and Robert Burns brogue. But that still leaves ing on a new technology to talk about old an anti-war activist, returns to the U.S. those who fought the war. Valerie room for scads of unmetered poems. A slack, conundrums. Fate, memory, and death will from Canada where she has lived for Miner’s analysis is lucid and unsenti­ offhand free verse outnumbers the numbers, survive any allegorical dress, and when some mental. When profound political divi­ for this is, inevitably, an anthology of modem contributor to The Parrot Book of Bodybuild­ twenty years. A college student in the poetry. Its topic lends it a relatively unvaried ing Verse introduces the Nautilus machine of mid-sixties, Cora becomes politically sions run through the center of a fam­ ily, there are no easy answers, only sheen because all its entries are from the past fate, who will be surprised? Movies teach us curious, then joins the anti-war move­ one hundred years, and the bulk from the last to take our emblems where we find them. temporary truces, and sometimes, here ment. Based on King Lear and written twenty. To judge from the section “Films and Film and there, if we’re lucky, transcendent If there are any “classics” in the genre of Genres,” most poets find their inspiration in from the point of view of Cordelia, the moments of hope. For any reader who poems about movies, they are here: Frank Westerns and monster flicks, with film noir, book weighs definitions of patriotism was politically involved in those turbu­ O’Hara’s catalogue of star vignettes, “To the melodrama, musicals, and spy films running and loyalty. In her return as in her past, lent times, there will be a strong inner Film Industry in Crisis”; John Hollander’s close behind. A few poets are caught watching assent to Miner’s work: yes, this was Cora is testing borders between suffer­ urbane elegaics, “Movie-Going”; Hart blue movies, newsreels, documentaries, and the way it was. A wise, compassion­ Crane’s “Chaplinesque”; and the longest home movies. Poems in which the monster is ing and virtue, idealism and commit­ ate, unforgettable novel." given his own say make up their own sub­ selection, Randall Jarrell’s sketches of his ment, self and family, and exploring — Janette Turner Hospital, author, Hollywood boyhood, “The Lost World.” genre—King Kong seems as vatic as Kubla The Last Magician Practically every American heavyweight who Khan—yet other personnel go unmentioned. possibilities of change. ever framed a lyric around a film reference is “Behind the Camera” groups poems about included: four of John Berryman’s “Dream directors, but no others behind the scenes: Songs” surface under assorted rubrics; both someone has yet to sing an ode to Edith Head, Robert Lowell and Jack Kerouac address or to stunt doubles, editors, and set dressers. 264 pages State University of New York Press c/o CUP Services poems to Harpo Marx; Carl Sandburg, The film fan often speaks, but is never hon­ $ 18.95 paperback PO Box 6525 • Ithaca, NY 14851 Theodore Roethke, and Edmund Wilson have ored in a poem; similarly, links between cine­ 607-277-2211 small walk-ons; and even Robert Frost ma and gay culture are everywhere evident in ISBN 0-7914-2008-6 Please add $3 shipping and handling appears in a brief cameo with “Provide, Pro­ this anthology, but you already have to know for first book ordered, vide,” teaching the old lesson of mutability who belongs to the club. The over-generosity 50

T h e Crossing, Volume II of T h e Border T rilogy Cormac McCarthy Knopf, 426 pages, $23 Robert Rebein

Longtime fans of Cormac McCarthy’s fic­ tion like to separate his readers into two dis­ tinct groups: those, like themselves, who were reading McCarthy back when he was the “ghost of American letters,” the “best Ameri­ can writer nobody ever heard o f’; and those of us, johnny-come-latelies by comparison, who have merely leapt aboard the McCarthy band­ wagon since All the Pretty Horses won the National Book Award in 1992. “Go back and read Suttree or Child o f God,” these oldtimers tell us. “That’s the real McCarthy, the true McCarthy.” It’s a little like listening to the Asbury Park crowd of Bruce Springsteen fans—the private god pro­ mulgated to the unknowing masses. We bandwagoners blink, not believing what we’re hearing. “I thought that old stuff was all incest and necrophilia,” we say. “Claustrophobic and messy, is what I heard, Erskine Caldwell on crack.” “Well then,” the oldtimers reply, “read Blood Meridian. Now there’s an anti-West­ ern for you.” We sigh, give up the ghost. Maybe some­ Illustration: Milly Acharya day we will read the early novels—some dark, rainy day when the apocalypse seems to have his novels on an Olivetti manual typewriter. new.” Richard Ryan, writing in The Christian hero out into a vagabond existence on the high us by the throat. But not today. Today we are He had no agent, gave no interviews, consid­ Science Monitor, proclaimed the novel “a plains, a place from which no man can return reading The Crossing, volume II of ered the profession of teaching creative writ­ masterpiece.” “The Crossing,” Ryan wrote, whole. As a Mormon hermit tells Billy early McCarthy’s “Border Trilogy,” and we are not ing a kind of “hustle.” “meditates compassionately on the short and in The Crossing: alone. “We lived in total poverty,” his second wife violent lives of its characters and over the At last glance, the book was number three has said of the eight years they spent in a bam enigmatic and inevitable passing of life Such a man is like a dreamer who wakes from a on the New York Times bestseller list. Three outside Knoxville. “We were bathing in the itself.” dream of grief to a greater sorrow yet. All that hundred thousand copies have been printed to lake. Someone would call up and offer him For the bandwagon McCarthy reader, the he loves is now become a torm ent to him. The date. According to Newsweek, one of these $2,000 to come speak at a university about his book must be reckoned both a pleasure and a pin has been pulled from the axis of the uni­ copies has even found its way to O. J. Simp­ books. And he would tell them that everything disappointment. Anyone expecting that The verse. Whatever one takes one's eye from son’s cell in the L. A. County jail. Said an he had to say was right there on the page. So Crossing would take up the story of John Cole threatens to flee away. Such a man is lost to us. exec from International Creative Manage­ we would eat beans for another week.” Grady where All the Pretty' Horses left off will He moves and speaks. But he is himself less than ment, which represents both McCarthy and Asked, in the only interview he has ever have to think again. The Crossing begins in the merest shadow among all that he beholds. Simpson, “We thought All the Pretty Horses given, if he paid any alimony during these 1939, roughly ten years before the previous There is no picture of him possible. The small­ and The Crossing might be good selections years, McCarthy snorts, “With what?” His book, and it does so with a whole new cast of est mark upon the page exaggerates his pres­ forO. J.” income was mainly the result of grants from characters—the teenage brothers Billy and ence. One can almost hear the oldtimers groan. the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Boyd Parham, their doomed rancher parents, After all, McCarthy was once cherished as the the Rockefeller Foundation, the William a half dozen family horses, and, nearly steal­ At its most basic, The Crossing is a book greatest of all writer-recluses, a man so effec­ Faulkner Foundation, and the committee in ing the show entirely, a fierce Mexican she- about this open road—its lure, its perils, and tive at avoiding publicity that he wasn’t even charge of the MacArthur Fellowship—the so- wolf. As most reviewers have noted, the book ultimately, its emptiness. Longtime McCarthy famous for it. By all accounts he’s still a called “genius grant”—which McCarthy reads like a more somber retelling of volume fans will no doubt relish this, finding in the recluse, shunning reporters at every door; but received in 1981. Slowly but steadily the I. Again we are on the US-Mexican border; novel a certain bleak majesty said to be miss­ now, like Thomas Pynchon, he’s famous for books appeared: The Orchard Keeper in again we have a series of literal crossings by ing in Horses. Conversely, those who loved it. Both Time and Newsweek have run profiles 1965, Outer Dark in 1968, Child of God in mid-century teenage boys; again we are to Horses for its unexpected tenderness—for showing the author sitting in an El Paso pool 1973, Suttree in 1979, Blood Meridian in read these crossings as a metaphor for the bor­ John Grady’s romance with the beautiful, hall wearing a tweed jacket and looking for all 1985. Sales for each of these novels would derline between adolescence and manhood, headstrong Alejandra or for the blue stem the world like a dark version of a Ralph Lau­ approach, at best, three thousand copies. Then that crucial literary realm populated by neither heaven of Don Hector Rocha y Villareal’s ren ad. “In El Paso,” reads the caption below came the breakthrough of All the Pretty Hors­ man nor boy but “kid,” as in Billy the Kid, hacienda in Coahuila—these readers will find his picture, “McCarthy lives on Coffin es, which sold 180,000 copies in hardback, Melville’s Billy Budd, Twain’s Huckleberry The Crossing to be rather tougher riding than Avenue, plays golf, shoots pool, eats at a cafe­ 300,000 in paperback. With the money from Finn, and Faulkner’s Ike McCaslin. volume I. teria—but doesn’t talk to reporters.” the movie rights, McCarthy bought a new But whereas John Cole Grady emerged One of the great pleasures of McCarthy’s McCarthy’s biography has always been by Ford pickup and set to work on volume II of from All the Pretty Horses as a seasoned yet writing in the trilogy so far has been his deft design both succinct and elliptical. He was the trilogy. still romantic adult— a hero if there ever was descriptions bf animals, especially horses, and born in Rhode Island in 1933, the son of a With the exception of Michiko Kakutani of one—Billy Parham ends up as a man who has their complex relationships with man in prominent lawyer, but grew up a Southern The New York Times, who found the book to lost everything and learned little beyond the nature. Consider, for example, the following Catholic in Knoxville, Tennessee. He be “derivative, sentimental and pretentious all hard facts of The Road. It is as if McCarthy from All the Pretty> Horses: dropped out of the University of Tennessee at once,” reviewers of The Crossing have weighed in his hands the two most persistent twice, with a stint in the Air Force in between. been nearly unanimous in their praise. In a forms his recent writing has taken—the Bil- In the days to follow the hacendado would He’s been married twice, divorced twice, has long piece in The New Yorker, Charles dungsroman and the picaresque narrative— come up to the corral where they’d shaped the one son. Far more interesting than these tid­ McGrath called McCarthy “the last of the and decided that, try as he might, he simply manada and he and John Grady would walk bits is the McCarthy Legend, that porfait of great overwriters,” a “pre-modernist” with could not balance the impulse toward devel­ among the mares and John Grady would argue the artist spread by word of mouth during the roots in the fabled American tradition of opment in the one with the impulse toward their points and the hacendado would muse and lean years. He lived alone, it was said, chiefly Melville, Twain, and William Faulkner. “His sheer movement in the other. He would have walk away a fixed distance and stand looking in hotels, banging away at successive drafts of style,” McGrath wrote, “is so old it looks to choose the road, and in doing so, cast his see Crossing Over, page 15

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Arts in Crisis: T h e National community rallied with an advocacy move­ Endowment for th e Arts ment. Jessica Tandy, for instance, testifying the House Versus Am erica before a Congressional committee with her Joseph Wesley Zeigler personal evidence (“Driving Miss Daisy” was A cappella Books, 184 pages an NEA-supported play): “I am here because $24.95 cloth, $*4-95 paper I believe in the wisdom of Congress in start­ of Feminism ing and supporting the Arts Endowment.... Beatrice McLeod Our government’s support of free expression nist philosophers, including Alison Jag- is one of the triumphs of our democracy.” Who Stole Feminism? H ow Women gar, Marilyn Friedman, Naomi Scheman, In a foreword to Joseph Wesley Zeigler’s Censorship versus freedom of speech was H ave Betrayed Women and, again, Sandra Bartky, accused Som­ book “Arts in Crisis,” Garrison Keillor points an issue eagerly co-opted by political conser­ by Christina Hoff Sommers mers of dishonest intellectual methods, out, charmingly, that “today, no American vatives, particularly the religious right and the Simon & Schuster, 320 pages, $23 inaccuracy, distortion, misrepresentation, family can be secure against the danger that American Family Association. Here the desir­ and unsound scholarship. Anyone with a one of its children may decide to become an able balance (we’re now in the ’90s) went Rohan Maitzen thinner skin, or less sense of mission, or artist”—or an actor or a director, a play­ wildly out of kilter as the National Associa­ without tenure, might have abandoned wright, or perhaps a critic. We whose concern tion of Arts Agencies moved into the action. Christina Hoff Sommers is no stranger the field by now. Sommers, however, for the theater prompts us to wire Congress of Zeigler’s reportage here becomes almost to controversy. An associate professor of believes her interpretations are fair and our objection to NEA budget cuts need to visual, as the embattled Endowment is philosophy at Clark University, Sommers her intervention important; in an inter­ know the enemy—even when it is us. attacked by foes and should-be friends. A has made herself known as an outspoken view for the Boston Globe she says, “If I Zeigler’s account of the relationship quote from Peter Zeisler, director of Theater and indignant dissident among contem­ thought they were right, I’d feel bad. But between government and the arts is history Communications Group, concludes almost porary feminists, engaging in numerous I think they’re wrong, and I’m committed which reads as compellingly as any fictional bitterly. “One hopes that the arts world has spirited exchanges with other feminist to telling it the way I see it.” thriller. When and how did Washington learned once and for all that it cannot delegate philosophers. Her new book continues Sommers’s basic thesis is that liberal become involved in the arts, how has the rela­ primary responsibility to bureaucrats; artists her crusade to expose what she considers feminism, the kind of feminism that tionship fared, and what are the future prob­ must take it upon themselves to control their pernicious trends in much current femi­ underwrote the Women’s Rights Conven­ lems and possibilities? own destiny.” nist theory and practice. Covering topics tion at Seneca Falls in 1848 and most of From the 1965 passage of Public Law 209, In his latter chapters, Zeigler’s own views from Women’s Studies curricula to the feminist activism of this century, is which initiated the birthing of NEA, to the are given visibility. The denial of a grant is domestic violence, from epistemology to being replaced, with devastating conse­ present budget-whittling, progress has been a not censorship, he says, but rather a legitimate self-esteem, Who Stole Feminism? is the quences, by what she calls “gender femi­ teetering see-saw. From the beginning, the refusal to pay for what the giver considers impassioned testimony of “a feminist nism.” Sommers defines “gender femi­ Camelot coterie cheered on the legacy of an inappropriate. This of course most often who does not like what feminism has nism” as the view that women in our assassinated Kennedy, who had spoken applies to individual artists, where the foster­ become.” society are still universally subject to a unequivocally: “I see little of more impor­ ing of quality is most difficult to judge. “Cre­ Sommers knows the risks of speaking “sex/gender system”—that male hegemo­ tance to the future of our country...than the ativity”, he concludes, “is not a function of out this way. An Op-Ed piece she wrote ny, or the “heteropatriarchy,” still perva­ full recognition of the place of the artist.... government.” But support of that creativity in 1989 for the Chronicle of Higher Edu­ sively dominates them: Society must set the artist free to follow his most definitely is. cation drew fire from many prominent vision wherever it takes him.” On the other Moving from the historical record to some academics, including a letter from the American feminism is currently dominated side thundered the roar of conservative bud- fresh ideas for the future, Zeigler explores and (then) executive director of the American by a group of women who seek to per­ get-watchers like the Representative from rejects three options for future planning and Philosophical Association (APA) calling suade the public that American women are Iowa who dismissed the idea of direct govern­ funding. His first of two positive suggestions it an “intemperate diatribe.” Philosopher not the free creatures we think we are. ment support of the arts as “a monstrosity.” is “The Audit Allowance,” which would dis­ Sandra Lee Bartky of the University of The leaders and theorists of the women’s Observing from the pivot, Zeigler the histo­ pense support based on a formula derived Illinois at Chicago tried to prevent the movement believe that our society is best rian applauds the moments of balance, while from the audits of non-NEA giving to all like publication of an article Sommers was described as a patriarchy, a “ male hegemo­ acknowledging the significance of personali­ institutions for a 5-year period. His own pref­ preparing for the Atlantic Monthly; after ny,” a “sex/gender system" in which the ties in leadership. As in any movement for erence, however, is for an ingenious and initially denying her interference, Bartky dominant gender works to keep women social change, heroes, heroines and villains “imaginative manipulation of the machinery justified it with this analogy: “I wouldn’t cowering and submissive....The “gender emerged—sometimes dramatically. In the of taxation.” As he explains it, the “10 percent want a nut case who thinks there wasn’t a feminists” (as I shall call them) believe that beginning, the Endowment had more prestige Benefit can do more for the arts than it can in Holocaust to write about the Holocaust.” all our institutions, from the state to the than money, its legitimacy enhanced by the any other way.” However one values these And in a long and heated exchange of let­ family to the grade schools, perpetuate distinction of its Council members—includ­ suggestions, they imply a need for “a compre­ ters with Sommers in the Proceedings male dominance. ing such accomplished artists as Isaac Stem, hensive, careful, insightful and challenging and Addresses of the APA, various femi­ see Feminism, page 11 Helen Hayes, John Steinbeck, Leonard Bern­ analysis of the Endowment... not only on stein, and others who functioned as advisers behalf of the arts, but on behalf of the Ameri­ Eft under the chairmanship of Roger Stevens. can people.” Prestige itself, however, has its hazards, One of the most devastating of funding cuts and the cry of “elitism” could only complicate was the elimination, last January, of funding the knotty problems of choosing award recip­ for professional Theater Training. Arts educa­ ients—individuals versus institutions, the tion had already been slashed, leaving clear established versus the innovative, literary ver­ indication of our government’s lack of faith or sus visual versus performance arts, and so on. even interest in the arts component of Ameri­ REPRESENTING It’s not surprising that many should have con­ can culture. sidered the idea absurd and impossible. “Arts in Crisis” throws down a gauntlet. The first chairman to achieve acceptable Will we who love and live in the arts world THE HOLOCAUST balance between the agency’s supporters and accept it as a challenge to action ? detractors was Nancy Hanks. A political HISTORY, THEORY, TRAUMA genius of irresistible charm, she successfully Beatrice McLeod is a regular reviewer of worked the halls of Congress, man by man, theater for the Ithaca Journal. not excluding the Executive (Nixon, at the time). She survived unscathed the first attack Dominick LaCapra by Senator Jesse Helms. She established the system of Challenge Grants, bringing non- "Dominick LaCapra's use of psychoanalytic concepts and criti­ federal money into arts support on a systemat­ ic basis, and through an Expansion Arts pro­ cal theory for the historical representation of the Holocaust is gram drew in ethnic minorities and rural com­ intellectually brilliant and challenging as well as attuned to the munities. She brought the nation’s orchestras self-reflection demanded from the historian by the very nature and other high-profile arts efforts into the of the subject." 5t fold. By the end of her term, as Zeigler points m s —Saul Fried lander, University of California, Los Angeles p p p out, “the NEA was politically connected everywhere, and its operation was superbly balanced.” Under her successor, Livingston Biddle, and in subsequent administrations (Frank $29.95 cloth At bookstores, or call Hodsoll, John Frohnmayer and Anne-Imelda 607-277-2211 (credit card orders only) Padice), political battles grew, while the see­ saw’s critical balance became increasingly precarious. Stories of the major and inevitable 1608 Dryden Road Sage House • 512 East State Street • Ithaca N Y 14850 “crises”—the Serrano “piss Christ” photo, the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition in particu­ Between Ithaca and lar—make fascinating reading-by-Zeigler. Dryden on Route 13 But the end result, transfering the determina­ Open Mon-Sat 10-6 tion of obscenity from the courts to a govern­ Sunday 12-6 ment agency, was a major change. The bal­ ance was tipping badly, and some in the arts 607- 347-4767 page 8 The R OOKPRESS September, 1994 Art and the Mechanical Image

ry through the first decades of this century Arnold Singer grievously offended American sensibilities. When the Philadelphian Albert Barnes A magician is the supreme illusionist, and exhibited the first sizable collection of Post- momentarily excites by subverting truth. Impressionist work on this side of the The dramas of a Moliere or an Ibsen, Atlantic, the response was so hostile that he resides being high theatre, are revelations of all but closed his galleries to the public. Jtemal truths. The love affair with photogra­ The Post-Impressionists rejected that phy on the part of the general public, as well aspect of the Renaissance associated with rs the tastemakers of our cultural establish­ illusionism. Cezanne, for example, wor­ ments, is the result of an apparent merging shipped Poussin, but that did not prevent pf both magic and truth. him from evolving images that seriously Photography is magical, of that there is no violated Renaissance perspective, in the ioubt. Press a button on an ingenious knowledge that Poussin’s immense strength machine and, wonder of wonders, a mirror resided in attributes other than those associ­ mage of whatever its glass eye was directed ated with scientific illusionism. oward is instantaneously or soon afterward Other Post-Impressionists and later the nanufactured. That a mechanically realized Cubists, as well as painters such as Matisse mirror image represents truth is accepted and Klee, found their spiritual and aesthetic inconditionally by the public at large roots in pre-Renaissance Europe, Africa, vhich, it is unnecessary to point out, has and the Near and Far East. The one excep­ tever been particularly discriminating in tion was Degas who was influenced by pho­ iistinguishing between its absence or pres- tography and hence created more realistic, :nce. familiar images, though he was not by any That the culturally sophisticated whom stretch of the imagination a photo-realist. ve expect to be fastidious in matters of cre- Perhaps the most explicit definition of the itivity accept the camera’s mirror image as means by which painters have resolved the ruthful and, consequently, possessing the problem of going beyond photographic illu­ :apability of qualifying as art, represents a sionism is offered by Barnes in his 1936 leparture from time-honored norms. Never study, The Art of Cezanne: refore has exact pictorial replication sans :onceptualization and invention been The characteristics which are absolutely indis­ iccepted as art. The stage was set for this pensable in architecture— solidity, weight, adical shift by a revolution in taste after the equilibrium, balance of forces— are those ntroduction of Impressionism. most evident in his work. In a good building The three most popular forms of image- there can be no mass which is not supported, naking in the modern era, Impressionism no thrust not taken up by some counter­ as distinct from Post-Impressionism), thrust, no force exerted which is not planned Abstract Expressionism, and the various and provided for: design is a practical as well chools of photography have, despite exter- as aesthetic necessity and improvisation in tal dissimilarities, a common dependency essentials is an impossibility. >n immediacy and spontaneity. Impression- sm Was concerned with the visual moment; It was Cezanne’s insistence upon pene­ Abstract Expressionism with the emotional trating beyond appearances to the essentials noment; and photography with the visual of phenomena that made his images “diffi­ ind/or emotional moment. cult.” For the photographer the full manipu­ The history of modern art can in part be lation of form necessary for the task of inderstood in terms of conflict between the going beyond externals is impossible. Pho­ >ermanent and the transient. Painters we tographers are of two minds whether it dentify as Post-Impressionists, Cezanne, should even be attempted. The Winogrand- Seurat, and Van Gogh, following a brief Frank school feel it to be an abuse of the arly interest, abandoned Impressionism medium. Others such as Adams, Weston, or >ecause of its inconclusive, ephemeral Penn believe the framing of a motif plus lature, and Renoir in his maturity, for the darkroom adjustments will bring images up ame reasons, denounced it. In contrast, to the compositional level of good painting. vlonet became more radically impressionis- Some photographers are better at this than ic as he aged and as a result is the most pop- the image ensures a measure of truth. But it translate those intangibles into concrete others and succeed in producing pleasing ilar of modern painters. Novice art students is a paradoxical form of truth, as Janet Mal­ form, is prerequisite to the highest levels of images. But Barnes describes a process md dilettantes most frequently identify their colm points out in her survey of photogra­ creativity. which goes beyond mere tasteful composi­ avorite painter as Monet. phy, “Diane and Nikon”: “If the camera Further confirmation of the necessity for tion to the very heart of creativity in the Abstract Expressionism was character- can’t lie,” Ms. Malcolm states, “neither is it contemplative, analytic study comes from plastic arts, namely finding the formal archi­ zed by the compulsion to muscularly trans- inclined to tell the truth, since it can reflect an unexpected source. Henri Cartier-Bres­ tectonic equivalent of reality. For the seri­ ate intense emotional states or truths into only the usually ambiguous and sometimes son, one of the most gifted of contemporary ous painter it is difficult; for the photograph­ >aint. Expressionists, unlike Impressionists, outright deceitful surface of reality.” Pho­ photographers, now prefers to draw, and er it is out of reach. tften started a canvas with only a vague idea tographers by and large are either unaware characterizes photography as quick-sketch­ >f what might evolve. Planning and research of the implications of Malcolm’s observa­ ing—presumably the ten- or twenty-second Arnold Singer is a painter and emeritus n the form of drawing was anathema to the tion, or else deflect the charge by claiming exercises practiced in many art classes. professor o f art at Cornell University. Expressionists as it was to the Impression- ambiguity as a virtue. Favored by Cartier-Bresson is the medita­ rts, for that time-consuming traditional pro- As the old saying goes, “appearances are tive, thoughtful expression offered by draw­ edure interfered with the urge to convert deceptive.” In painting or any of the arts, ing which places no premium on speed and eeling into form as quickly as possible, transcending appearance requires a dedica­ emphasizes objectives defined by Flaubert 'hough boasting of liberation from academ- tion few achieve. “Talent is long patience,” and Le Corbusier. c constraints, Abstract Expressionists Gustave Flaubert advised his protege Guy Apart from the compulsive spontaneity of stablished their own hierarchy of de Maupassant. “You must scrutinize what­ the past half-century, Renaissance scientific bsolutes. The kinetic brushstroke or the ever it is you want to express so long and so illusionism has been a dominant presence in ouring or flinging of paint was de rigueur attentively as to enable you to find some American art. Though the foremost Renais­ nd the “drip,” a natural desire of excess aspect of it which no one has seen before.” sance artists kept illusionism in check by aint to succumb to gravitational forces, Words such as “scrutinizing long and atten­ maintaining an unwavering respect for clas­ /as obligatory. The Abstract Expressionist tively” are not in the vocabulary of the sical concepts, and the Post-Impressionists 'as not interested in externals; paint itself Impressionist, Expressionist, or photogra­ and later the Cubists made a frontal attack nd its emotive potential was truth enough, pher. upon it, photography, in its whole-hearted ibstract Expressionism remains the most Strikingly similar words are found in Le affirmation of illusionism, represents a ret­ opular of painting styles since the fifties. Corbusier’s treatise Creation is a Patient rogression, not the least of whose conse­ A minority of distinguished and accom- Search: “when one uses one’s eyes and quences is the blurring of the distinction lished painters rejected Abstract Expres- draws so as to fix deep down in one’s expe­ between commerical and non-commerical onism as well as the short-lived move­ rience what is seen, to trace the lines, handle art. Said Charles Baudelaire about the ments which followed and paid the penalty the volumes, organize the surface—all this invention of photography and subsequent 'relative obscurity. Our novice art student, means first to look, then to observe, and efforts to confer upon it legitimacy as art: ■ miliar with Jackson Pollock and William finally perhaps to discover.” Observation in “Art and progress are enemies, when they eKooning, will probably never have heard depth as called for by Flaubert and Le Cor­ meet on the same road one must give way.” Stuart Davis or Will Barnet. busier, provided of course it is accompanied The anti-illusionistic nature of the new In photography, the mechanical nature of by good sense, insight, and the talent to European painting from the mid-19th centu­ September, 1994 The R QOKPRESS page 9 Of TIme and the Artist

Kenneth Evett

One of the commonly revered precepts of the American Academy of The New has been the imperative that an artist must be “of his time.” While the concept was an effective weapon in art world warfare, used to defend an ally or banish an enemy to outer darkness, in an era of great com­ plexity and contradictions it imposed a difficult task on the artist, who had to fig­ ure out the meaning of his own brief moment in time, and then express it in a way that would conform to the subjective expectations of others. Artists of any sensibility are bound to be affected at all levels of their existence by the temporal environmental threats, technological miracles, global hostilities, and everyday cruelty and folly of the human race, but each artist responds to these realities in a personal way, and since anyone living and working at a given moment is, perforce, of his time, the precept was untenable on the face of it. Another equally unrealistic and widely accepted Academy doctrine has been the conceit that contemporary art must be entirely novel. Artists were urged to stake out a claim “on the frontier,” “break new ground,” or work “at the edge.” Driven by such admonitions, American artists responded with such a vast outpouring of inventive and idiosyncratic creations that at last the operative imperative became “anything goes,” thus reducing the Acad­ emy itself to an anachronism, making it hard for any arbiter of taste to separate the saved from the damned, or for college art professors to maintain the myth of a disci­ Plateau by William Bailey (Courtesy of the Andre Emmerich Gallery) plined approach to art. Ideally, whatever raw medium the words “Boni Lux” and defines his forms with a craftsman’s “Three Musicians,” Hindemith’s “Mathis iconographic and formal system an artist fast-moving ribbons and sweeps of color regard for the quality of his materials. As der Maler,” or “Four Minutes and Twenty may devise to project his awareness of rode across each canvas. As a prime though these old-fashioned attributes Seconds of Silence” by John Cage, the existence should be respected and evalu­ example of the current fashionable taste weren’t enough to bar him from the estab­ short stories of Barthelme or V. S. Pritch­ ated on its immanent qualities alone, for the charm of ineptitude, the entire lished precincts of Modernism, he ett, or for that matter, the paintings of without regard for stylistic, sociological, exhibit seemed to me a calculated pose, a depends on the pure abstract powers of Schnabel or Bailey? While I have no or art historical classification. self-conscious glorification of bad taste symmetry and asymmetry, proportion, doubt about which of these artists best Even though the standards for deter­ and pretentious vulgarity, the ultimate color, contours, and texture to provide represents what I value in the arts of my mining timeliness or the degree of novel­ fulfillment of the don’t-give-a-shit drama for his work. time, their social significance eludes ty in a work of art are only relative, the approach to painting that has sustained In a typical Bailey still life, ceramic objective definition. search for relationships between social one school of American art for the past household containers; cups, bowls, and What does matter is the existence of an conditions and art is a diverting pastime, forty years. pitchers are seen at eye level, lined up on open-minded audience that is liberated particularly if a link can be found between Given my political and aesthetic preju­ a flat horizontal plane that is parallel to from the constraints of fashion and theo­ art that is loved or despised and a social dices, my contribution to the game of the lower boundary of the rectangle. The retical doctrine and is therefore capable of phenomenon that is admired or deplored. finding revelations of timeliness is to sug­ vertical axis of each container is main­ direct response to the pure abstract imma­ Luckily there is no known authority with gest a connection between Schnabel’s tained throughout, and the links, impinge­ nent power of the arts to provide coherent the power to enforce a uniform interpreta­ work and that period in the eighties when ments, and openings between the objects visions of form and feeling that can, like tion of these relationships, and since no Reagan and Bush governed the country are defined with unequivocal simplicity. the brave music of Mozart, bring momen­ one of any visual or cultural acuity takes and Schnabel was granted all the rewards This dense cluster of forms occupies a tary joy, heartbreak, pride, and comfort to the Academy imperatives seriously any­ the art world had to offer: a one-man zone low on the rectangle, leaving a large us humans before we, along with Pros- way, we are all free to play that game for show at the Whitney, sales to provincial open area above that generates a sensation pero’s actors, are all “melted into air, into the fun of it. museums across the country, and his work of grand amplitude, dignity and a miracu­ thin air.” I recently saw two shows in New York sought after by status-minded internation­ lous expansion of space beyond the that presented a challenge to the specula­ al collectors. Though it may seem far­ boundaries of the rectangle. Because of Kenneth Evett is a painter and emeri­ tive power of anyone interested in the fetched to connect Schnabel’s gross prod­ Bailey’s sovereign disregard of current tus professor of art at Cornell University. harmless pursuit of finding connections ucts to the glitzy vulgarity of Ron and formal cliches, his work assumes a dis­ between art and life. Both exhibitions Nancy, or the plodding country-club ordi­ tinctive authority; to come upon it imme­ consisted of recent work by living artists. nariness of the Bush family, it seems to diately following a visit to the poisonous- Each show was presented in an eminent me that the childish intellectual level, ly chic Schnabel exhibition across the gallery situated on opposite sides of 57th hypocrisy, opportunism, and shoddy stan­ street was to discover a revelation of clas­ Street, that long-established uptown arena dards of the Reagan-Bush era are reflect­ sic grace and serenity. for the display and promotion of contem­ ed in Schnabel’s art and career. Such qualities seem to transcend what porary American art. It would be hard to But what can be made of the William is merely up-to-date and to evoke an illu­ find a more unlikely pair of messengers Bailey exhibition directly across the street sion of the timeless nature of great art, for news of the temper of the times. in the Emmerich Gallery at 41 East 57th despite all the contrary evidence of fluc­ At the Pace Gallery at 32 East 57th, in Street? I can’t come up with any contem­ tuating taste, accidental destruction, and the same space occupied by the Kraushaar porary examples of political or cultural losses in the past. And even though a Galleries in 1949 (where I had my first conditions that relate to his work or moment’s reflection on time, entropy, and one-man New York show) was an entirely indeed any evidence that it belongs in the the death of the sun reminds us of the ulti­ different kind of exhibition by Julian conventional corpus of 20th-century art at mate fate of all the creations of mankind, Schnabel. Schnabel’s display consisted of all. Acting as though the ancient Greek our human longing for continuation and large vertical rectangles, all the same size, precepts of moderation, clarity, and order the approval of subsequent generations all framed in wide convoluted moldings, were still valid, as though still-life con­ leads to a deluded preoccupation with each frame tinted in a kind of pale pink tent like that found on the walls of Egypt­ posterity, a place in history, and, for the peach and banana ice cream tonality. All ian tombs and Roman villas was still artist, the vain hope of reaching an audi­ Still Life Travels the marks in each painting were conven­ interesting, Bailey ignores the common­ ence that recognizes the hidden meaning tionally oriented to the flatness of the pic­ place modern usages of ambivalent and value of his work and grants him aes­ KENNETH EVETT ture plane and on each surface, a piece of iconography and ambiguous space. With­ thetic justice at last. Sept. 16 - Oct. 15.1994 SOLA ART GALLERY cloth, rag, bag, or banner was attached. out shame, he employs the traditional So what does it matter and who is to say Dewitt Mall Across this shallow protuberance and its Renaissance devices of volumetric mod­ whether or not our era is best expressed in Ithaca. MY 14850 272-6552 surrounding clots of pigment and pools of eling, perspective, and local color and Pollock’s “Blue Poles” or Picasso’s Mon.-Sat. 10:30-5:30 . -----— . .. p a g e 10 The ftOOKPRESS September, 1994 Impossible Country

continued, from page 1 ing to them; they call it South Serbia. There are many different reasons for the That scenario would be the really big paralysis in Bosnia. One of them might just NV: How would you describe the ratio of Balkan war. Obviously one can never be that hard issue of it being a problematic your experiences, notes, and final version? be sure, but the nightmare scenario population for a lot of people. I tend to think BH: Travel writers may intentionally visit people love to talk about, which is of a possible analogy to the problematic pop­ a place for a short time, in the belief that plausible, is that Bulgaria would also ulation of Jews during World War II. There fresh first impressions are the most commu­ come in, because they believe the was a feeling: “What are they doing in nicable to other people. The longer your Macedonians are basically Bulgari­ Poland anyway—an Oriental population?” stay, things begin to interest you because ans. Greece, of course, feels that inde­ The lack of response to Nazi actions, despite they reflect a longer background of knowl­ pendent Macedonia will inevitably good evidence then, has been well docu­ edge. That may not interest the reader as lay claim to the northern part of mented. You wonder about the things you ' much so you may use less of that material. Greece. That’s the main argument can’t put your finger on directly in the press, The Zagreb part of this book is one quarter they offer for their blockade. And that add up. or so of the whole. I was there for two weeks then there’s a possibility of Turkey NV: Are you encouraged by the new and in the whole country for four and a half getting involved, probably not as a Bosnian Muslim-Croat Federation ? months. In total I’ve used maybe 10% of real fighter, but its problems with BH: It’s only a small step. Everyone what I had. The beginning weeks are Greece would only worsen. This is agrees that the Serbs have to be brought in expanded while the end of the trip’s material what everybody has been talking on this for it to work out. But it’s likely the is less detailed. Of course, publishers care about for a long time now. People say, Federation will continue purely as a Muslim- about book length. Rebecca West was “Why didn’t we do something Croat one on 30 to 40% of what used to be already well known before Black Lamb, before...if only...when a few thou­ Bosnia. The Serbs will eventually connect which was over 800 pages. sand soldiers would have served, now with a so-called larger Serbia. There isn’t a NV: You end the book in Kosovo. What is we need tens of thousands.” Which big argument so much over where “Bosnia” it like there now? may turn out to be true. Six hundred was. What Serbs and Croats disagree on is BH: A contact of mine there makes it Americans are there, but nobody whether this thing called Bosnia was part of sound like the end of civilization. Electricity seems to be paying any attention. Serbia or Croatia in the past. They both look one night a week in the capital. He burns NV: You don’t visit Macedonia in upon it as a regional name, a region that was Brian Hall crossing what used to be three candles a night to get through, reading your book. part of their state. They look back in their the bridge at Mostar. and drinking. A lot of Albanians have moved BH: From my own earlier travel history to find associations. to Macedonia which is now being blockad­ experiences I knew that just talking about have done in this war. It is true that this time One place I part company with a lot of the ed. Papandreou was angered by the US Serbs, Croats, and Muslims would be com­ around most of the violence has been perpe­ analysis in the West about what has hap­ ‘•" recognition of Macedonia. There always plicated enough if I really wanted to go into trated by the Serbs, probably because they pened in Bosnia is the picture of it as a multi­ have been a lot of Albanians there, 25 to it at all deeply. Macedonia is equally compli­ happened to have the weapons, the opportu­ ethnic state that was invaded and dismem­ 40%, but there are more now—which may cated but a whole separate set of issues. I nities, the numbers. I certainly don’t pretend bered by the Serbs. In my view, Bosnia as an help to destabilize Macedonia, since they decided not to do Slovenia for the same rea­ to be totally objective. My experience there, independent state was a completely unwork­ don’t get along with the Slavs. I don’t think son. though it was over several years, is of course able arrangement right from the beginning. anybody at this point would voluntarily go to NV: Your book gives the reader a real relatively limited. If I had been there for Bosnia declared its independence because it Albania. For the last few years people were sense of histories and histrionics. It is a good twenty years, perhaps I could be a little more had to after Croatia and Slovenia were rec­ well aware that the Albania that exists now is antidote for our American ignorance about confident about my opinions. ognized. After they were gone, the Croats nothing they’d like to belong to. The Serbs that part of the world. I tend to feel most sympathetic toward the and Muslims of Bosnia knew that they had would always say the Albanians of Kosovo BH: When I first started working on this Muslims. I think most people do, possibly lost their allies in any kind of decision about were separatists and as soon as there was a the wai hadn’t started yet and so my back­ because the Muslims are the most urbanized Yugoslavia’s future. Yet Bosnian Serb reac­ republic they’d secede and join Albania. The ground assumption was'that Americans of the groups in Bosnia. They have tended to tion against an independent Bosnian state response to this argument, basically, was would not even know who Serbs and Croats be more cosmopolitan, with a broader out­ was completely foreseeable. It was clear that “C’mon, look at Albania.... Are we stupid?” were. Yugoslavia was just Yugoslavia. In look than the average Serb or Croat. So the any decisions about Bosnia’s future had to Now, maybe, things are so bad in Kosovo 1989, when an editor from the New York Bosnia that’s referred to in the West as a be made as agreements among all three that there may not be much difference. The Times assigned my first article on the rise of multicultural entity, the ideal that'the nation­ groups. Serbs were not going to allow them­ impression I’ve gotten, though, is that in Serb nationalism, he asked me how I alist vision has destroyed, it is more a Mus­ selves to be detached. spite of the blockade, things are even worse planned to get from Belgrade into Serbia. lim ideal. You see many references to the victory of in Albania. That geographical confusion was very com­ Even though the news media has por­ nationalism over multiculturalism. It’s There is a lot of movement among the mon. Since the war, the geography has trayed them as the main victims, many claimed to be a tragedy: a multi-ethnic state Albanian families in Kosovo and Macedo­ become part of our political awareness. But people in the West have a hard time identify­ being cantonized. That is a misleading view. nia. They don’t feel that there’s any differ­ in picking up terminology, people have ing with Muslims. You have to wonder at the The multi-ethnic parts of Bosnia were large­ ence between them. That’s a potentially dan­ acquired preconceptions as well. My book strength of the reaction in the press had the ly in the cities. You didn’t find a lot of inter­ gerous situation. Fighting could start in tries to present each side from within its own ethnic situation been reversed and Belgrade ethnic understanding in the villages. They Macedonia between Slavs and Albanians. viewpoint, so that if what they’re doing was perceived to be funding a territorial war certainly lived together. They didn’t shoot This is more likely as the economy there seems unsympathetic, at least it’s under­ of conquest against a population of Chris­ each other, but they didn’t love each other. falls apart or if the government collapses. standable. tians. There are those who argue that we There were large areas that were not in any Then the Kosovars may act in solidarity. My own impression has been that all three would have flattened Belgrade a long time way really Bosnian, except in name. Serbs tend to think of Macedonia as belong­ sides are capable of doing what the Serbs ago if it had been a Muslim city. see Impossible Country, page 16

C ^ > Breaking the Circuit continued from page 3 instance. In other countries, the political nature bargain.” capital punishment, what is left to justify it? evidence showed that in Georgia homicide cases of the death penalty is more obvious and more If we accept the view that arbitrariness and Actually deterrence retains tremendous emo­ “the death penalty was eleven times more likely clear....But you cannot forget this is a tool of prejudice exist in the application of the death tional power in the debate in spite of insufficient if the victim was white than if the victim was repression.” penalty in our society, there is still a long way to evidence that it works. Susan Jacoby, in Wild black and if the defendant was black and the vic­ Millard Fanner, a lawyer known for his work go to acceptance of the abolitionist argument. In Justice—a book Prejean refers to several tim was white, the defendant was twenty-two on death penalty cases, makes the same point: the current mood of fear, anger, and frustration times—theorizes that this power comes from the dines more likely to get the death penalty.” The “the death penalty is part of the political process, about crime, it often seems that the real passions fact that we are not comfortable with advocating Supreme Court has acknowledged that “there it is not part of the criminal justice system.” He are about revenge and deterrence rather than openly for revenge: exists in capital sentencing a discrepancy that notes that local district attorneys have a great fairness. appears to correlate with race.” But the Court’s deal of power over these cases through plea bar­ Advocates of the death penalty are convinced In a culture that regards “ legalized revenge” as a majority saw this as inevitable in our criminal gaining, but they are elected officials who can it is a deterrent. This position is a favorite of term of opprobrium, there is a deep need to justice system. As writer Guy Davenport has and do use the death penalty as a campaign strat­ politicians who want to appear tough on crime— ascribe vengeance to other, more socially accept­ observed in a different context, “ racism is a pre­ egy. This is true, of course, even in presidential Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro just as much as A1 able motives; rationalizing the death penalty as a cise prejudice, you never know who a man campaigns. President Clinton flew back to D’Amato. There is no political cost to taking this form of deterrence fulfills this emotional need. might not be.” Arkansas to ensure the execution of Ricky Rec­ position, but there is no convincing proof that Prejean notes that a very small percentage of tor, a man so severely brain-damaged from the capital punishment acts as a deterrent. No Jacoby, like Prejean, opposes the death penal­ murderers are executed (“1 or 2 percent of the shootout in which he killed a police officer, that research supports it, and as Prejean notes, “in the ty, but she argues for retribution even if it has no thousands who commit homicide every year”). he did not know what was happening to him. US the murder rate is no higher in states that do deterrent effect. It is necessary, she says, for The racist bias in the application of the death Prejean gives Farmer’s summary of the socio­ not have the death penalty than in those that do.” social order, because justice cannot restrain penalty combined with its exclusive use against logical argument about the arbitrariness of capi­ What seems to matter more are social and cul­ revenge (“wild justice”) unless there is certainty the poor add up to a political policy. A former tal punishment: “race, poverty, and geography tural conditions which create a climate of vio­ that it metes out retribution. This is the middle prosecutor, Andrea Lyons, has writtten: “the determine who gets the death penalty—if the lence. Texas is a good example. It leads in exe­ ground that Prejean agrees with—that an eye for death penalty’s purpose is primarily political, victim is white, if the defendant is poor, and cutions and its murder rate remains high. an eye is excessive, but that a few short years in whatever it may seem to be in the individual whether or not the local D.A. is willing to plea If deterrence falls away as a rational basis for see Breaking the Circuit, page 14 September, 1994 The R OOKPRESS page 11 Feminism A Survivor’s Testament continued from page 7 Unlike the liberal or “equity” feminist, who demands “for women what she what in this awful time.” wants for everyone—fair treatment, with­ This situation was not to out discrimination”—the gender feminist Witness to Annihilation last. With a surplus of doctors, rejects “Enlightenment principles of indi­ Samuel Drix, M.D. and as execution became the vidual justice” as indelibly tainted with Brassey’s (Macmillan), 249 pages, $23 standard “treatment” for ill­ sexism (and racism) and views “women ness and injury, he was sen­ as a political class whose interests are at Karey Solomon tenced to grinding physical odds with the interests of men.” Patriar­ labor. chal oppression or discrimination is part Accounts of the Holocaust can be Like other camp inmates, of the structure of our society, not inci­ strangely abstract, catalogs of human suf­ Dr. Drix endured hunger, dental to it, and thus piecemeal reform fering so vilely inflicted that the totality typhus, and the continuing must give way to wholesale transforma­ strikes its audience as unreal. We tend to emotional strain of watching tion. Gender feminists see the worlu forget that the whole horror didn’t occur at others die, often at the whim of “through the lens of sexual politics,” a once but built moment by fearful moment. their captors. A minor infrac­ lens Sommers is convinced rather distorts Dr. Drix remembers. In his memoir, Wit­ tion of camp order, a question than discloses realities. ness to Annihilation, he offers his first-hand asked, a stumble while march­ Sommers’s critics reject the term “gen­ experience, complete with gritty detail and ing off to work, a suspicion of der feminism,” calling it an invention an element too often missing from such rec­ working too slowly, even designed to obscure what they consider ollections—the ability to take the reader using the latrine at night could significant differences among feminist back with him to the Lw6w Ghetto in become the occasion of a beat­ theorists. In a letter to the APA Proceed­ Poland, to the infamous Janowska camp, to ing, torture, or execution. Liq­ ings, Sandra Bartky lists no fewer than a terrified life in hiding. uidation quotas provoked mass twenty varieties of feminism, including When Poland was conquered in 1939, executions. Like others in the “Marxist feminists, socialist feminists, Samuel Drix was already a physician and a camp, Dr. Drix was a forced lesbian feminists,...existentialist femi- newlywed. In 1940, his daughter Sylvia was spectator to these events, ever . nists, psychoanalytic feminists (be they born, a sweet, solemn-faced little girl wondering whether he was to Freudian, Jungian, Kleinian, Lacanian or shown in photographs being held between fall the next victim. He reports object-relations oriented mothering theo­ her smiling parents like the promise of a several occasions when he rists),... post-modern feminists who fol­ new world. himself was marked for death low Derrida, post-modern feminists who Wartime hardships were mitigated by a but circumstances somehow follow Foucault,” and many more. Lump­ large and loving family, meaningful work, contrived to exempt him. Samuel Drix and his wife Alice today, with their son Severin, his ing them together as “gender feminists,” wife Pamela, and grandsons Julian and Nathaniel. and the certain knowledge that war could As news of the outside world Bartky contends, “facilitates the discra"! not last for long. As for rumors of extermi­ trickled in, he learned of the gradual attri­ tle in New York City. How did he find the iting of feminist philosophy.” Sommers, nation filtering into the Jewish conscious­ tion of his family, sustaining himself in this courage? One can only consider such a however, denies that all these distinctions ness of early 1940s Poland—unthinkable. sorrowful time by the knowledge that his story with awe. really indicate diversity: “to me,” she Would anyone in a position of power pur­ young daughter needed him alive. Why else Especially because Dr. Drix is not one to told the Chronicle of Higher Education, posely wipe out a large skilled labor force? was he spared? continuously dwell on past hardships. He is “it’s just the gamut from A to B.” Anti-Semitism was pervasive, but it must And then, the final blow. He learned that a cheerful, smiling man, recently retired Because of its centrality to Sommers’ have seemed for a time too unworthy a sen­ his daughter Sylvia had probably also died. from medical practice, an opera buff, argument, it is worth noting here that var­ timent to become a reason for concerted delighted grandfather, a person who appre­ ious feminist writings do, in fact, lend action. Until, inevitably, the Nazi death I drank my cup of bitterness to the bottom, to ciates fine art, chocolate, and the antics of credibility to her taxonomy, not by con­ machine met the Russian Army on the bat­ the very bottom. I did not have anybody any­ children. firming the unity of “gender feminism” tleground of Poland. more. The murderers took my last ones. I I met Dr. Drix long after our families had as a theoretical entity but by consistently Caught in the crossfire, Dr. Drix some­ was left as just one, terribly lonesome.... become close friends. When I came to know differentiating most of the admittedly times hid, or fled, or held his ground, as My companions started to comfort me. "It him a little, I was surprised that his attitude numerous varieties of feminism from lib­ occasion demanded. He tells his story can’t be helped, nothing can be done, this is toward his wartime experiences was so dif­ eral feminism (which is apparently as far sequentially, with an exactness of recollec­ our fate. All this awaits us as well.” These last ferent from anything else I’d encountered. right on the political spectrum as feminist tion which later served to convict several of words sobered me up. What? No, I would In other families of Holocaust survivors, theorizing gets). Naomi Scheman asserts his tormentors in war trials. Here, his testi­ not go like a sheep to the Sands, I would one grows up to accept “don’t ask” as an that “Most self-identified feminist mony vividly gathers the reader into the break away!— not to live, for I did not care answer to questions, knowing that this rela­ philosophers would disagree” with “the sights-, sounds, and, most important, the for living anymore, but I wanted to live in tive could not have children, that others agenda of...liberal feminism” (“The emotions generated by the turmoil and order to avenge the blood of the innocent must take “rest cures,” and that still others Unavoidability of Gender,” Journal o f uncertainty of that time. ones, to pay for my mother and stepfather, mutilated themselves and/or committed sui­ Social Philosophy, Fall/Winter 1990) We are there with his family in the ghetto for my sisters and brother, for my wife and cide, hounded by personal demons raised Similarly, Louise Antony notes that both in early 1942, cut off from all sources of child, for my relatives and friends, for all of by the unspeakable offenses committed Sandra Harding and Alison Jaggar, two food, yet trying to assuage the hunger pangs them. And I knew that only a few would against them. leading feminist philosophers, “have of two-year-old Sylvia. First, every materi­ believe me. I knew, for I would not have been Dr. Drix remembers, feels the pain—and encouraged the idea that acceptance of al object of value was bartered for their able to believe all these horrors myself, had I transformed his grief into a sacred duty to mainstream epistemological paradigms is lives (“I remember well how I gave a new, not lived through them. make his story and the story of the Jews of tantamount to endorsing liberal femi­ luxurious couch with a glass bookcase Lw6w known to the world. He told me once nism,” a conclusion meant to be a knock­ attached to the back for a not-too-great sack The dramatic story of Dr. Drix’s escape that he lights yartzeit (24-hour memorial) down argument against such acceptance of potatoes.”) Then, in a series of “actions,” from the camp and his time in hiding is, like candles and says Kaddish (prayers for the (A Mind of One's Own, ed. Louise members of his family were apprehended his camp experience, a series of miraculous dead) for all those he knew who died. Antony and Charlotte Witt, 192). Alison and sent to several camps. near-death experiences. What seems most Witness to Annihilation, like a yartzeit Jaggar’s Feminist Politics and Human In the early days, he writes, “It was a remarkable is that he not only survived, but candle, is an aid to memory and a light in Nature examines four kinds of feminism: tremendous help for my survival that I was that he did so with his humanity intact. the darkness. liberal, Marxist, radical, and socialist. a doctor, for I was spared physical labor and His story can be told because he some­ Although Jaggar explores many differ­ had a warm room to be in. I also took satis­ how endured the war, remarried and had Karey Solomon is a writer who lives in ences among the last three, liberal femi­ faction in being able to help people some­ another child, and made his way west to set­ Ithaca. nism is clearly the odd woman out. Som­ mers’s term “gender feminism” thus legitimately distinguishes feminisms that reject liberal individualism and its asso­ How W itness came to be written. ciated values from liberal or “equity” feminism. That there remain theoretics- hen Ithaca High School math teacher Severin Drix was For Pamela, it was a painful process because some of the material differences within these general cate­ growing up, much of his family’s history was unknown to was so harrowing. “I have a vivid imagination. I didn’t want to gories does not suffice to invalidate W him. In fact, with no grandparents, aunts, or uncles, he had become hardened to it,” she says. “There was unbelievable violence them. little family at all except for a few distant relatives. “There never done to these people.” At times, she was so disturbed by the narrative Sommers herself spends little time in seemed to be time to tell the story from beginning to end.” that “The intensity was more than I could take in. I had to put the Who Stole Feminism? defending her That time came when his father, Dr. Drix, retired from medical book down a couple of months. I needed time to heal from it.” vocabulary. After briefly setting up the practice and began dictating his memoir in Polish. Cassette tapes But they kept going back to it. As Severin sums it up, “My father (for her) crucial and undeniable distinc­ were sent to Poland to be transcribed, then roughly translated into was anxious, I was overwhelmed, Pam said, ‘Let’s do it.”’ tion between gender and equity femi­ English. Then Severin and his wife, artist Pamela Rozelle Drix, went Putting together the past in this way increased Severin’s admiration nism, she devotes most of her book to to work. for his father and gave him something of his own as well. “My father tracing what she sees as the undesirable has such a positive attitude toward life,” Severin says. “He kept his Most evenings for 3 1/2 years, after their two children went to sleep, effects of gender feminism. Her first sev­ sanity and his faith in goodness and God.” they booted up their computer and went to work on the manuscript. eral chapters focus on feminist transfor­ After the translation, “Some paragraphs were so rough we had no And in the course of preparing the book, he was shown the few pic­ mations within the academy, from curric­ idea what they meant. They were in stilted English that didn’t seem to tures of his family for the first time. “It gave me something solid to ular revisions to pedagogical practices. be what Papa had intended. So we would go back to Papa with lists of hang on to,” he says. “A sense of connection and being able to mourn. * In general, Sommers argues that current questions—which often led to a whole different story. About a quar­ How do you mourn someone you never knew?” trends threaten the quality of education ter of the book is based on these follow-ups,” Severin says. see Feminism, page 13 page 1 2 ______The BOOKPMSS September, 1994 Hollywood Brits’ Picks continued form page 5 on the Tiber the life of the poetry party. Charles Stetler through a morning of his son’s TV cartoons as the Roman treasury, Crassus met his end offers “A Toast” “to nick and nora Charles shocks Howard Nemerov into unleavened edi­ Nicholas Nicastro when he was defeated on a battlefield in Asia, /pioneer hedonists who brightened the way / torial prose: “I am horrified / by the unbridled captured by the enemy, and (according to one out of our grim cotton mather past,” capturing violence and hostility / of the imagined world Right up to its 1991 re-release in its full 197- account) forced to drink molten gold. the anti-puritanical pleasures with a telling he takes in stride.” But his gruesome examples minute form, “Spartacus” (1960) was a film More than vain spectacle, then, “Spartacus” movie line: “nick usually set the morning of cartoon butchery—“a tribe / of savage defined mostly in negative terms. For auteurists, did much to discredit the fashionable complaint tone: ‘how about a drop to cut the phlegm?”’ Negro mice is put through a wringer / and it represented the least Kubrickian of Stanley that the widescreen format had rendered the With Asta wagging his tail a page away, it is stacked flat in the cellar”—makes the cartoon Kubrick’s efforts, due mainly to the overriding close-up and the intimate performance impossi­ hard to get into the spirit of Maya Angelou’s so vivid that the father’s carping can’t find a influence of star-producer Kirk Douglas. For ble. The Technirama-70 system used by bitter reminder of the cruelty of slavery elided language beyond griping. film historians, it marked the progressive devel­ Kubrick was actually well suited to the stage- in Gone With the Wind’s adoration of the This assemblage of poems teaches that opment, but not the triumph, of the rising trained Olivier, since theatre, to an even greater southern belle, “Miss Scarlett, Mr Rhett and mugging for the camera may be the best way widescreen aesthetic. For reviewers, it was a degree than widescreen, has no close-ups, no Other Latter-Day Saints.” to undermine its powers of fakery. One of the technical achievement undone by the banal sen­ way to force the viewer’s attention to any partic­ Angelou is not the only casualty of this mut­ funniest poems in the book is at the same time timentalities and uneven articulateness of Dalton ular detail. His work, along with the throwaway ing effect: a hazard of anthologies of this kind one of the most cutting in its critique of Amer­ Trumbo’s screenplay. The picture’s most endur­ brilliance of Ustinov, and a silky and smart per­ is that black poets may tend to sound like sour- ican movies, prudery, and politics. The Glas­ ing contributions to popular culture seems to lie formance by Laughton, in fact leave us hunger­ pusses or literalists. “Movies as Metaphor” gow-born Carol Ann Duffy puts on a Yank in the winking homoeroticism of its gladiator ing for more of the “small stuff,” and fewer gal­ gathers amusing but predictable laments that accent and does a better job than American scenes—and the oft-quoted refrain “I ’m Sparta­ loping horses, surging crowds, and sun-splashed relationships are not movie-perfect and first- poets’ ponderous head-shakings. Duffy takes cus!” vistas. person musings that begin “We met on the over for French in providing a headnote: “At a But nothing as big as this can be simple. Right If the humanist piety of Dalton Trumbo’s cutting room floor / Examining one / Anoth­ preview of That Hagen Girl in 1947, when on the surface, the film’s assemblage of major script looks lame by our more cynical standards, er’s rushes” (Israel Halpem) or “I look at our actor Ronald Reagan became the first person stars (Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Charles it’s probably because the writer had larger scores life together /as one watches a movie without on screen to say ‘I love you, will you marry Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Tony Curtis et al.) is to settle. “Spartacus” was the first credit Trumbo sound” (David Kirby), or discovers “a heart is me?’ to the nineteen-year-old Shirley Temple, little short of galactic: today, paying a cast of received under his own name since he, along not / an editing machine—we can cut / out there was such a cry of ‘Oh, no!’ from the corresponding heft and box office appeal would, with nine other Hollywood “fellow travelers,” nothing” (Liz Lochhead). Among these chic invited audience that the scene was cut out by Itself, exceed the original $12 million budget was convicted of contempt of Congress for unweepy Dear John letters, Ishmael Reed’s when the film was released.” Here is Duffy’s for the entire production. refusing to answer questions posed by the House “Poison Light” opens on a note that seems “The B Movie”: More significantly, we are confronted with Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. familiar, “Last night / 1 played Kirk Douglas the relative brilliance of “Spartacus”’ supporting Trumbo went to prison two years later, and was to/ Your Burt Lancaster,” drawing out the Lap dissolve. You make a man players, especially placed against the “punch the obliged to work under a pseudonym throughout comparison with the usual winking self-depre­ speak crap dialogue, clock” mentality apparent in other star-studded the fifties (in 1956 he won, but did not collect, an cation: “Ours as a bad performance / The audi­ one day he'll make you eat your words. OK? s. This probably had more to do with the Oscar for “The Brave One” as “Robert Rich” ). ence, our friends /Panned it.” Then comes the Let's go for a take. Where's the rest producers’ unorthodox casting strategy than In “Spartacus” there’s an implicit invitation to shock of Reed’s warning: “We must stop of me? 'Oh, no!' with any desire to vindicate the dramatic possi­ replace the phrase “Roman tradition” with “the behaving like / The poison light we grew on.” bilities of widescreen. According to Olivier American way” in any of Crassus’ reactionary For black poets, more is at stake in copying Things are different now. He's got biographer Anthony Holden, “All the film’s excretions. The scene where the ancient movie swagger and swoon than ending up star billing, stars...later learned that they had been sent dif­ McCarthyite boasts that “the enemies of the state with a lousy relationship, or an old age of cen­ star wars, applause. Takes her in his arms. ferent scripts in advance by their costar and pro­ are known, arrests are in progress, the prisons sored footage instead of unblinkered memory. I'm talking about a real weepie. Freeze frame. ducer, Kirk Douglas, in which their own part had begin to fill” is a further gob of spit at the black­ Among poems taking movies as metaphor for 'Oh, no!' been written up to tempt them to climb aboard list. While the film’s righteous sanctimony is personal rather than collective life, it takes a the “Spartacus” bandwagon. By the time they undeniable, Trumbo earned that right after years deft touch to dump on Hollywood’s minstrel On his say-so, the train wipes out the heroine arrived in Hollywood, their roles somehow of involuntary creative silence and anonymity. show, but Patricia Jones has it. Her “Why I and there ain't no final reel. How do seemed to have shrunk.” All except for Olivier, Against this background, there is some Like Movies” builds from flippant naivete to you like that? it turned out: stealing a march on his rivals, he poignance in the fact that while Crassus chooses keen observation—“Those natives in Tarzan / My fellow Americans, we got five minutes. arrived a week early and impressed the writers to gainfully employ Antoninous as his personal movies with processes and straightened 'Oh, no!' into a further rewrite, this one enhancing his own tub slave, freedom-loving Spartacus lets him hair”—to stinging indictment: “I like movies part of Marcus Licinius Crassus. keep his profession as a “singer of songs.” because / 1 never saw myself in them.” Classic. He holds the onion to The film is fortunate to have been stolen by Director Kubrick took over the production Many women never saw themselves in water such sorrow. Olivier. After all, Douglas’ Spartacus might as after Douglas fired Anthony Mann. Kubrick has movies. A number of women’s elegies for We need a Kleenex the size of Russia here, well have been killed in the arena for all the dra­ since repudiated the film, but if anything, the female stars shatter the distorted mirror while no kidding. matic excitement he raises following his escape restored version underlines his visual imprint. admiring its sheen. Sharon Olds marks “The Have that kid's tail any time he wants to. Yup. from the gladiators’ school. After that, he One spectacular low-angle shot of Spartacus Death of Marilyn Monroe” by its effect on the becomes an ideological mouthpiece, declaiming framed against open sky, jumping and ducking erotic imagination of the men who handled the The audience cried “Oh, no!” because they a credo of crypto-socialist gung-ho. In a sense on a piece of Roman-era Nautilus equipment, corpse. In Susan Griffin’s “Grenadine” a knew how a Shirley Temple movie is sup­ the character does die, because he doesn’t anticipates the odd-angle gymnastics of “2001” mother subjects her grown daughter to the posed to go, and this wasn’t it. It’s fun to come change. The virtuous may be intrinsically dull, eight years later. The overabundance of shots of boozy confession that the movies ruined her to recognize the tics of a genre, the tricks or but Trumbo and Douglas hardly help matters by migrating refugees (over mountains, through life, while a George Sanders oldie droning on short-cuts that show up in films from different giving Spartacus no other imperative than win­ deserts, in the snow) is clearly the work of a TV fills in the awkward silences. After “‘your studios and directors, to know when the musi­ ning his physical freedom, then having him win mind that later would believe ordinary moviego­ father and I’” went to a movie, the mother cal number is going to start, or to leam to pre­ it only an hour into the picture. ers would sit through “Barry Lyndon.” Interest­ explains, ‘“I’d come out / being Carole Lom­ dict that the cut to the ringing phone will be Olivier’s choice to play a lovelorn Crassus (I ingly, Kubrick didn't disown the film enough to bard, / only he refused / to be Humphrey Bog­ followed by a close-up reaction shot of the say Olivier’s because it’s not clear how much of refuse to direct, by remote control, Sir Anthony art.’” Drowsing over her bourbon, the mother blond, then the phone again, then the man in it is in the script) is smarter because his drive is, Hopkins’ looping of Olivier’s missing lines in is too late for Reed’s caution against swallow­ the shadowy phone booth: the reliable gram­ by its nature, unfulfillable. Whether it be Curtis’ the originally censored “oysters and snails” ing the toxins of Hollywood fantasies. mar tells the story while reminding the viewer Antoninous, Jean Simmons’ Livinia, or Rome scene. That kind of critical distance is a hard pose what kind of story this is. A marathon of herself, there’s always another focus for Cras­ While it’s hard to shed a tear for the bombast, to sustain at Frank O’Hara's party. Sitting see Brits’ Picks, page 15 sus’ bottomless desire. Aptly, Olivier’s line waste, and outright distortion typical of “Sparta­ readings belie the appearance of smug aristocra­ cus” and its epic cousins, there’s something cy, adding layers of selfloathing, omnisexuality, inspiring about a medium confident enough in Cornell nresents doubt. According to Holden, Douglas stood in its interpretative powers to take on all of record­ :inema p re s e m s awe of the way Olivier took a line like “Never ed time as its subject. Dedicated narrowly to the have I faced a battle with such confidence” and bottom line, most recent Hollywood “period Les Choix des Pianistes 3 extraordinary silent film accompanists accompany 6 extraordinary "jnade it mean the exact opposite. He started off pieces” are either about nostalgia (“Forrest short and feature-length silent films of their selection with a great firmness and ended hesitantly.. .and Gump”), about reviving old genres (“Maver­ in one line had transformed complete self-assur­ ick,” “Wyatt Earp”), or else true oddities (‘The S e p t. 24 S e p t. 25 S e p t. 25 ance to complete insecurity.” Age of Innocence,” “Last of the Mohicans”). Special lecture/demonstra- Olivier’s portrayal of a “hard-up” Crassus The dusting-off of “Lawrence of Arabia” in tion on the techniques of Les deux Barbed Wire also serves to complicate his political rivalry 1989, “Spartacus” in 1991, and “El Cid” last silent film accompaniment. timides starring Pola Negri with Charles Laughton’s Gracchus. More than year are welcome celebrations, but there’s a stale Free and open to the public directed by shown with the latter’s power, the ungraceful Crassus seems air of the museum around them, like that Saturn 3:00 Goodness to covet Gracchus’ effortless affability, the love V moon rocket now tipped on its side at Cape Rene Clair of the mob the optimate tries to convince himself Canaveral, forever earthbound. There’s some I KissYourHand. shown with Gracious! he does not need. The maniacally-prepared question whether we’U ever reach that far again. Madame The Exploits Or Olivier was almost certainly aware that the his­ starring Marlene Dietrich of Elaine Movies as torical Crassus wasn’t just a snob, but a man Nicholas Nicastro is a writer who lives in shown with They whose hunger to match the popular renown of Ithaca. 4:30 Jean Renoir’s Shouldn’t Be first Pompey, then Caesar, drove him to humbly Charleston solicit votes in the streets of Rome, exist on a (Cornell Cinema will be showing “Spartacus” in 7:15 All shows in 8:00 first-name basis with thousands of clients, and to Willard Straight Hall in early October. Call Willard Straight Theatre organize Rome’s first private fire department (607) 255-3522 for more information. Ticket price $4.50/$4.00 students; $3.50 matinee; (albeit at a considerable profit). Literally as rich $9 for ail three programs. September, 1994 The ftOOKPRESS page 13

Fcontinued eminism from page 11 sive). Such views, Sommers argues, feminist art project by nine women stu­ sioned by the American Association of and contribute to the continuing decline sound suspiciously like male-chauvinist dents at the University of Maryland: University Women (AAUW), “suffices to of academic performance among Ameri­ generalizations about women “as the “[they] distributed posters and fliers all raise grave doubts about its philosophy, can students. For instance, while she naive sex that thinks with its heart, not over the campus with the names of methodology, and conclusions.” For one readily agrees with other feminists that with its head.” They excuse lack of rigor dozens of male students under the head­ thing, “the concept of self-esteem is gen­ “high culture is largely a male achieve­ and precision, and, together with other ing ‘Notice: These Men Are Potential erally considered to be unstable and con­ ment,” she worries that feminist revisions transformations in education from ele­ Rapists.’ The women knew nothing what­ troversial,” and even if a definition of of the canon and hostility to traditional mentary school to college, Sommers ever about the bearers of the names; they self-esteem were widely accepted, there standards of excellence throw the baby believes, they dilute scholarly standards had simply chosen them at random.” One are reasons to doubt whether the out with the bath water: and encourage self-indulgent and intel­ such indefensible incident is one too AAUW’s survey measures it reliably. lectually second-rate scholarship. many. Sommers cites numerous experts on ado­ The evidence that women have been Sommers is equally critical of the Even those unmoved or put off by lescent development and psychology who excluded, and their abilities as thinkers and “feminist classroom,” which, she Sommers’s early chapters, however,- challenge the AAUW’s findings as writers demeaned, is everywhere. But once charges, “wastes [students’] time and should read on. Chapters 7 through 11 “inconsistent with the recent literature,” a woman appreciates the extent to which gives them bad intellectual habits.” She cover examples of what Sommers calls or otherwise suspect. Even granting the culture and civilization have been male- bases her complaints on what she sees as “advocacy research.” The media have AAUW the soundness of its research dominated, two roads lie before her. She the highly ideological agenda of most already widely reported some of Som­ methods, Sommers finds the survey’s can learn what can be learned about feminist pedagogy and the overt commit­ mers’ more remarkable examples of dis­ actual figures somewhat different than women’s past achievements, and learn as ment of many feminist educators to torted or downright wrong information reported. For example, while there is a well the reasons that their contributions to “recruitment” and consciousness-raising. disseminated to a trusting public: for wide gap between the number of boys the larger enterprise were not greater; and Dismissing the familiar line that “all instance, oft-cited figures putting the and the number of girls who regard “I am she can then avail herself of the freedom teaching is ideological,” she insists that death toll for victims of anorexia at happy the way I am” as “always” true she now has to accept the challenge to join “objectivity remains the ideal toward 150,000 per year, when the actual num­ (46% and 29% respectively, a gap of 17 with men on equal terms in the making of a which fair-minded teachers aspire.” In ber of fatalities is closer to 100. Or the points), when the responses “sort of true” new and richer culture. O r she can react to contrast, many feminist teaching prac­ “news” that violence against women goes and “sometimes true / sometimes false” the cultural and scientific heritage as tices are characteristic, she says, of up by 40 percent on Super Bowl Sunday are included, the gap narrows to 4 points “androcentric” and move consciously to indoctrination rather than education. (in fact, there is no perceptible change). (92% of boys, 88% of girls). Only “sort reconstruct the “knowledge base.” It is at Again, Sommers fears that the real casu­ Or the claim that domestic violence is the of false” and “always false,” Sommers this juncture that equity and gender femi­ alties are the students. “What has real leading cause of birth defects (a state­ argues, really indicate dangerously low nist academics begin to go their separate feminism to do,” she demands, “with sit­ ment by the March of Dimes comparing self-esteem, while “always” may indicate ways. ting around in circles and talking about screening and follow -up procedures for anything from high self-esteem to imma­ our feelings on menstruation?...While both birth defects and battering was wild­ ture bravado or egotism. Further, girls We can reform our view of the past, of male students are off studying such ‘ver­ ly misrepresented). Sommers’ object in actually score higher than boys do in literature, of the arts, of society, Som­ tical’ subjects as engineering and biolo­ recounting these and other cases of inflat­ some areas, such as the percentage who mers contends, “without deciding that the gy, women in feminist classrooms are sit­ ed or false reporting is not to downplay think the statement “teacher is proud of rational response is to overhaul the entire ting around being ‘safe’ and ‘honoring’ the seriousness of problems like wife­ me” is “always” or “sort o f’ true (41% of canon of Western experience.” feelings. In this way, gender feminist beating or anorexia. Her concern is that girls to 36% of boys), and 17% of girls Sommers rejects feminist calls to over­ pedagogy plays into old sexist stereo­ policy-makers pick up on this kind of (compared to 16% of boys) are “always” turn supposedly patriarchal standards of types that extol women’s capacity for misinformation, which then guides their proud of their work in school. Results greatness. “It is in fact true that the study intuition, emotion, and empathy while efforts, and the less accurate their infor­ were reported selectively, Sommers of women’s contributions to art has been denigrating their capacity to think objec­ mation, the less good they can do. “In all argues, in order to bolster the thesis that neglected and that this neglect must be— tively and systematically in the way men we do to help,” she states, “the most loyal girls are losing out. and is being—addressed and repaired,” can.” ally is truth.” Her analysis of “findings” Sommers also questions the impor­ she says. “But the loveliest quilt is plain­ In these early chapters, Sommers’s about important social and educational tance of self-esteem in the first place. ly inferior to the canvases of Titian and rhetoric frequently betrays her anger and problems suggests we may, some of us Some of the experts she consulted point Rembrandt in subtlety, complexity, and impatience, and her anecdotal approach, with the best intentions, be misallocating out that links between self-esteem and power”; why, Sommers wonders, are while entertaining, would be more per­ scarce resources by trying to solve prob­ performance are hard to establish, and the feminists “playing an undignified game suasive if one had some way of ascertain­ lems that don’t really exist (or which we AAUW findings in fact show an inverse of one-upmanship that we are bound to ing just how representative her examples haven’t properly identified), in the relationship between self-esteem and lose?” As a liberal feminist, Sommers are. Nonetheless, some of her anecdotes process creating a climate of fear, hostil­ achievement: “how is it,” Sommers asks, opposes barriers that prevent women are certainly thought-provoking. Take ity, and gender antagonism. “that those who score highest on the from pursuing artistic, literary, scientific, the 1992 National Women’s Studies Sommers devotes two chapters to AAUW’s self-esteem measure [African- or any other goals—impediments to Association (NWSA) Conference. Even recent and highly publicized studies, one American boys] are educationally at risk, achievement, not standards of achieve­ if the incidents Sommers lampoons were purporting to show a dangerous drop in w hile the group with the lowest confi­ ment. only the worst of what went on, it should girls’ self-esteem when they reach ado­ dence does so well?" This paradoxical Sommers is especially skeptical of give us pause when we hear of a group of lescence, the other reinforcing the mes­ result comports with international com­ feminist claims “that science itself—its adult women holding sing-along ses­ sage that America’s schools are short­ parisons in which American children rate methodology, its rules of evidence, its sions, talking about “ouch” experiences, changing girls. The basic argument is that high in self-satisfaction and low in acad­ concern for empirical grounding, its ideal hugging the.mselves, and being sum­ low self-esteem adversely affects girls’ emic performance. The great danger of of objectivity—is an expression of a moned back from a break by “two little achievement; the imbalance must be focusing on a (poorly established) gender ‘masculinist’ approach to knowledge.” puppets, a dog and a teddy bear.” Or con­ redressed to avoid depriving both the gap in education, Sommers emphasizes, Drawing on feminist theorizing about sider the “ground rules” used in some girls and America of their potential con­ is that it distracts us from the real prob­ women’s different ways of knowing, college courses around the country that tributions (Sommers cites the Gender lem: we need to give all of our students gender-feminist critiques of the physical require students simply to accept the Equity in Education Act introduced not inflated egos but something to be sciences, mathematics, logic, and analyt­ highly debatable premise that “one of the before Congress in April 1993 as evi­ p ro u d of. And events like “Take Our ic philosophy reject so-called “vertical” mechanisms of oppression...is that we dence of just how seriously these reports Daughters to Work Day” wrongly single approaches (methodical, precise, aiming are all systematically taught misinforma­ are being taken). out girls for special treatment, leaving at “mastery” of a problem or subject) in tion about our own groups and about Sommers contends that “a most casual behind boys who, other research shows, favor of supposedly more female members of both dominant and subordi­ glance” at the self-esteem study, commis­ see Feminism, page 16 approaches (connected, relational, inclu­ nate groups.” Still more disturbing is the Qenesee ‘Baroque Biayers 'Dana Maiben, Music Director TRATTORIA TRE STELLE feu> for/^State's Orchestra on Original Instruments Specializing in: Celebrating Peace and Sovereignty Divine: Wood Fired Pizzas 1994 -1995 Season An Early American Sampler Roasted Seasonal with Ensemble Sine Nomine Meats & Vegetables Ithaca: 8 October 1994 • 8:15 p. m. Syracuse: 9 October 1994 • 4:00 p.m. Wild Mushroom Dishes Magnificat / Gloria with Ensemble Sine Nomine, Guest Director, Thomas Folan Italian Desserts Syracuse: 3 December 1994 • 8:00 p.m. Ithaca: 4 December 1994 • 4:00 p.m. and Wines Caroling one half hour before performance Menu Changes Weekly Rule Britannia! For concert and ticket information: Guest Director, Steven Lehning New York State Early Music Assoc., Inc. 607/273-1581 or Ithaca: 1 April 1995 • 8:15 p.m. 120 THIRD ST., TWO BLOCKS SOUTH, OFF RT. 13 Dewitt Mall Ticket Center 607 / 272-4497 Syracuse: 2 April 1995 • 4:00 p.m. 607-273-8515 - OPEN DAILY, EXCEPT TUES. & WED. The KOOK PRESS September, 1994 gBreaking g i l the Circuit

continued, from page 10 horrible death on him and who, from that moment victims: “Mr. LeBlanc, I don’t want to leave this has built connections between her abolitionist prison for murder is wrong too and fuels public onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. world with any hatred in my heart I want to ask group and Survive, a victim assistance organiza­ outrage. Her position on “measured retribution” Such a monster is not encountered in private life. your forgiveness for what me and Eddie done, tion. relies on longer prison sentences: but Eddie done it.” He is executed. “Warden It is with the families of the murder victims All our media myths of justice as revenge Maggio looks up at the clock and announces the that Prejean faces the theological arguments Such measured retribution is attained, I believe, by know this truth: kill in the heat of the moment or time of death: 12:15 AM. His eyes happen to most intensely. Where else could the exegesis of sentencing which requires nonnegotiable long­ the heroism of the avenger is jailed with the pris­ look into mine. He lowers his eyes.” On the way an eye for an eye be argued more fiercely? Here term imprisonment for first-degree murder....At oner and dies with him. In fact many guards and home Prejean has to pull off the highway and too the theme of forgiveness surfaces. “Forgive­ least forty states in recent years have revised crim­ wardens have difficulty with death row work vomit. This is the same reaction Camus ness” may not be part our our political vocabu­ inal codes to require life without parole or lengthy (Arkansas has taken to executing several men at described years ago in his father, a judge, upon lary, but it comes up naturally enough for all the mandatory minimum years served for convictions the same time to “reduce stress” on its staff) returning from an execution. participants in this book who share a religious they deem most serious. In a growing number of because they have to kill a man who is helpless language to debate it with. They take different states— twenty-five as of 1992, including and they have to do so after years of relating to By media standards, there is nothing spectac­ stands: Sonnier seeks it. Willie is too busy Louisiana— life-without-parole sentences are true him. Morris Thigpen, a commissioner of the ular in the physical deaths of Sonnier or Willie. defending himself to look for it. The Harveys are life sentences. Alabama Department of Corrections from 1987 Like all of us, condemned men face death alone, too pained to consider it. Prejean ends her book to 1993 who witnessed eight executions, writes: with the style of who they are and how they have though with Lloyd LeBlanc, who values it. She “I have never heard anyone who has participated lived. The intensity of the moment comes from had kept in touch with him over the years, and For Prejean, seeing the humanity of the crim­ in an execution say,’ I would like to do that witnessing the deliberate killing of a human when she learns one day in a phone conversation inal does not mean explaining away the crime. again’....The crimes they committed are being. Though Prejean’s reactions to the second that “he goes to pray every Friday from 4 to 5 She challenges both Sonnier and Willie to take heinous. However, I still feel compassion for death are different, what changes most is her A.M. in a small ‘perpetual adoration’ chapel,” responsibility for their deeds. Nevertheless, Pre­ them... I have found that the person we execute evolving relationship to family members of the she asks if she can join him. They talk after­ jean also sees the human being in the criminal. is not necessarily the same person he was when victims. Our views of the relatives of victims are wards. This is her special contribution. Camus noted the crime was committed years earlier.” as stereotypical as our views of the criminals. long ago that there exists a gap that cannot be So it is with Patrick Sonnier. The details of his Yet people have to respond as individually to Lloyd LeBlanc has told me that he would have bridged by reasoned argument between the two last moments bring home the deliberateness of tragedy as to death. Their lives are shattered. been content with imprisonment for Patrick Son­ sides of the death penalty debate: “No fact, no the process. Prison officials emphasize good They are often isolated from friends who avoid nier. He went to the execution, he says, not for reasoning can bring together those who think order and normality not just for security reasons them. They go through years of court proceed­ revenge, but hoping for an apology. Patrick Sonnier that a chance must always be left to the vilest of but to keep emotions in check. The guards place ings that focus on the perpetrator. If they are had not disappointed him... He [LeBlanc] says that men and those who consider that chance illuso­ black curtains over the windows so that other poor and black, they are usually neglected by when he arrived with the sheriffs deputies there in ry.” Prejean’s religious and moral values mean prisoners won’t “see the lights dim when the prosecutors and law-enforcement officials. the cane field to identify his son, he knelt by his that from the beginning, even with the sense of switch is pulled.” Coffee is brewed for the wit­ Initially Prejean makes the mistake of assum­ boy— “laying down there with his two little eyes shock at the crime, she relates to Sonnier as a nesses. They have forms to sign. Prejean is inter­ ing that she will only hurt the parents of Son­ sticking out like bullets"— and prayed the O ur person. She learns not only about “systems”— viewed to make sure she understands “the event nier’s victim if she contacts them while she is Father. And when he came to the words: “ Forgive the prison, the judiciary—but also who this par­ is to be carried out with as much dignity and ministering to Sonnier. But after a pardon board us our trespasses as we forgive those who trepass ticular man is—the color of his eyes, his gait, the respect as possible”—i.e., no scenes. She is hearing where she and Lloyd LeBlanc testify on against us," he had not halted or equivocated, and way he smokes, what he thinks, what angers asked to help plan “disposal of the remains” and opposite sides, she meets him face to face on the he said, “Whoever did this, I forgive them.” But he him, his feelings of remorse. she challenges the assumption behind this ques­ way out: acknowledges that it's a struggle to overcome the Sonnier and Willie come alive in these pages. tion—that the chaplain collaborates with the feelings of bitterness and revenge that well up, We prefer to keep such men anonymous, focus­ smooth planning of the operation. My heart is pounding. I fumble for words. “ I’m so especially as he remembers David’s birthday year ing only on the details of their crime, which These lasts moments also bring out the physi­ sorry about your son," I say. LeBlanc says, "Sister, by year and loses him all over again: David at twen­ highlights their inhumanity. They are thus easier cal vulnerability of a condemned individual. I’m a Catholic. How can you present Elmo Patrick ty, David at twenty-five, David getting married, to kill. This is an age-old process: make the Malraux once wrote of condemned prisoners of Sonnier’s side like this without ever having come David standing at the back door with his little ones enemy an abstraction. We saw no images of war, standing naked in front of a trench, about to to visit with me and my w ife...to hear our side? clustered around his knees....Forgiveness is never wounded Iraqi soldiers buried alive in sand, we be shot, sneezing in the cold before their death. How can you spend all your time worring about going to be easy. Each day it must be prayed for will see no live executions on TV. The flicker of The body’s fragility and uniqueness is height­ Sonnier and not think that maybe we needed you and struggled for and won. humanity in the object of hate complicates our ened. Prejean notices a tattoo on Sonnier’s arm. too?” I thought I would only add to your pain,” I response to the demands of justice. The title She has the visual shock of seeing his head and say. I am shocked by what he is saying to me. I feel Lloyd LeBlane’s personal struggle to come to Dead Man Walking is a perfect example: it is the eyebrows shaved (to reduce the risk of fire dur­ that I have made a terrible mistake and done what terms with forgiveness may seem impossible to phrase San Quentin guards used to yell when a ing electrocution). She notices he has one pant I was most trying to avoid— added to their pain. translate to the public sphere. But we forget that death-row inmate was let out of his cell. “Dead leg cut, for the electrodes. She watches his sense voices like his have been heard in the past and Man Executed” could just as easily be the stan­ of humiliation as he is required to wear a diaper From this point forward she tries to relate to are still heard today. Coretta Scott King, whose dard AP dispatch or TV sound-bite, for all we for his execution. She hears an exhaust fan come both sides—no easy task, for Vernon Harvey, husband and mother-in-law were murdered, has know about whom we kill. on “to get rid of the smell of burning flesh.” the father of Willie’s victim, is a man who exults written, “the truth is, we all pay for the death As Prejean’s narrative describes the execu­ Sonnier writes a letter to his brother. He in the execution, who only wishes it had been penalty, because every time the state kills some­ tions, it becomes a sustained reflection on one of writes his name and his date of death in his slower and more painful, and who “when asked one, our society loses its humanity and compas­ the commonplaces of the anti-death penalty Bible. Facing death, he opens up about himself: ifhe’shappy [after the execution]...says, ‘do you sion and we sow the seeds of violence.” This fall argument: that the special inhumanity of execu­ want to dance?”’ Over time, Prejean establishes in Georgia, Murder Victims Families for Recon­ tions is their lengthy deliberateness and premed­ his talk a torrent, a flood, all coming together now, a relationship with the Harveys. They become ciliation, a national organization, is sponsoring a itation. Again Camus: snatches from his childhood and teasing Eddie and public advocates on opposite sides and they two-week march and educational program school and the sugar-cane fields gleaming in the encounter each other as they cross Louisiana. called Journey of Hope. Members are “people Many laws consider a premeditated crime more sun and Star [his daughter] , what will happen to Neither persuades the other, but they find mutu­ who have had someone murdered in their family serious than a crime of pure violence. But what her, and his Mama, to please see about his Mama, al respect. Harvey never gets over his daughter’s and advocate the abolition of the death penalty.” then is capital punishment but the most premedi­ and Eddie, will he be able to keep his cool in this death. “He had walked away from the execution Relatives of men executed can join. tated of murders, to which no criminal's deed, place, and if only he knew when the current first chamber with his rage satisfied but his heart The abolitionist argument needs to be urgent­ however calculated it may be, can be compared? hit that he would die right away... empty.” He finds no peace of mind, but after ly heard in this state. The death penalty debate For there to be equivalence, the death penalty Willie’s death he shifts his energy to helping rel­ can appear as polarized as the abortion debate, would have to punish a criminal who had warned With his last words before his death, Sonnier atives of murder victims, and here he and his yet there is good evidence this is not so. Prejean his victim of the date at which he would inflict a chooses to address one of the two fathers of the wife have common ground with Prejean, who observes that public support for the death penal­ ty drops sharply in polls when an alternative is Tl offered, such as long mandatory sentences com­ i bined with restitution. Nevertheless, this is frag­ AIternahve Press anc) 3 ile middle ground. As Michael White, an Aus­ HarcJ to Fiivid IinFormatIon tralian psychotherapist, observes, “It is a cultural $ Moosewood Restaurant practice to strip problems from their social rela­ s tions and assign them to persons.” That practice DeWitt Mall, Ithaca 273-9610 is alive and well in the current political climate. i l Fine International and Original Cuisine It provides the illusion of addressing crime as a problem, but refuses to look hard at the roots of S 1 injustice. If the best of the pro-death penalty l argument is a passion for justice, the worst is its passion for scapegoating. By what measure of 3 i justice does this society, neglectful as it is of its A Project of CRfSP children, of basic human needs of the poor, and s tolerant as it is of the glorification of violence s and the ease of access to weapons, consider itself & A UnIque CoIIeciIon of Over 6 ,0 0 0 Winter Hours innocent enough to execute its criminals? If the > apes book*, 6 0 0 Audio T , I 50 Lunch 11:30am-2pm Mon-Sat death penalty returns to New York, it will be a VWeov ane! JOOpEttlodicAls Cafe 2pm-4pm Mon-Sat Dinner 5:30pm-8:30pm Sun-Th solution to nothing, and it will do what it always 5:30pm-9:00pm Fri and Sat does—widen the circle of violence. ANAbd TAyloR HaII * C orneII IMvERsiiy T-Shirts, Aprons, and Gift Certificates Available for Holiday Gifts (607) 25 5-6486 Dan Finlay is a family therapist practicing in MONTW?:*0 E OOp. • WED»:fO »:00p« Ithaca. SAI 12:00 4:00p* • SUN 7:10- 10:10pm

/ September, 1994 TheHQQKPRESS page 15 CLASSIFIEDS Crossing Over B rits’ BOOKS LEW DABE HAS OVER 3,000 out of continued from page 6 is a being of great order and that it knows print books on art, photography, architec­ back and nod and muse again and walk off with what men do not: that there is no order in the ture, antiques, plus many other subjects. his eyes to the ground to a fresh vantage point world save that which death has put there”; Picks A t Serendipity II Antiques and then look up to see the mare anew, willing the wandering Mormon who tells him that this continued from page 12 R t 14, Pine Valley, NY to see a new mare should one present itself. world “which seems to us a thing of stone and Large stock of Old Prints W here he could find no gifts of either stance o r flower and blood is not a thing at all but is a poems about movies yields favored tech­ Plus eight Antique dealers. conformation to warrant his young breeder's tale”; the prima donna travelling with gypsies niques, too, but their repetition is less consis­ Open every day (7 17) 247-7285 confidence John Grady would likely defer to his who tells him that the “shape of the road is the tently satisfying. Serendipity (607) 739-9413 judgment Yet every mare could be pled for on road. There is not some other road that wears The slip from lyric “I” to a more offhand, the basis of what they came to call la unica cosa that shape but only the one. And every voyage impersonal, or participatory “you” is a feature WRITING WORKSHOPS and that one thing— which could absolve them begun upon it will be completed. Whether of modem poetry that movie verse finds it of any but the grossest defect— was an interest horses are found or not.” And so on and so hard to resist. Never present to us, but power­ in cattle. For he’d broken the more promising forth. Passages such as these, which often ful enough that we dream about them, movie EMMA’S WRITING CENTER mares to ride and he'd taken them upcountry stretch for pages at a time, cry out to be quot­ stars inspire poets to feats of invocation. A FOR WOMEN through the ci6naga pasture where the cows ed in academic articles explicating the so- bald cry of “Orson Welles, Are You Listen­ offers on-going, small-group workshops for and calves stood in the lush grass along the edge called hidden meaning of McCarthy’s work. ing?” can be charming, but often it seems too women at all levels of writing experience. of the marshlands and he would show them the No doubt they will be quoted, at length. The easy for a poet to shift from the “you” of apos­ Individualized editorial and consulting services cows and let them move among them. And in general reader, however, soon learns to flip trophe or poetic supplication to the fantasy are also available. the manada were mares who took a great inter­ past them to the story itself. “you” of the desire to talk to a movie dream For more information, contact est in what they saw and some would look back That story, a good hundred pages longer boat, and from there to what poet Jonathan Irene Zahava at the cows as they were ridden from the pas­ than Horses, suffers at times under the colos­ Holden has called the “blurred-you” that is a (607) 273-4675 or 273-2325 ture. He claimed that cowsense could be bred sal weight of his prose, but it is always light­ lazy substitute for “I” or an easy grab at the for. The hacendado was less sure. But there ened again by one of McCarthy’s fine descrip­ reader’s collar. In this context there’s a ART INSTRUCTION were tw o things they agreed upon wholly and tions, improbable scenes, or wonderful pieces refreshing literalness in Laurence Goldstein’s that were never spoken and that was that God of tongue-in-cheek cowboy dialogue, such as poem about a Detroit audience addressing Drawing and Painting Lessons had put horses on earth to w o rk cattle and that the time Billy loses his horse taking the wolf questions in person to a visiting legend: ‘“I My studio or your home. other than cattle there was no wealth proper to back to Mexico and comes upon a pickup can’t believe (‘Yes, it’s true, darling’), I can’t Credentials:Teaching Artist Southern Tier a man. truck driven by a rancher and his hired man. believe / I’m talking to Bette Davis!’).” Institute for Arts in Education, CSMA Narrative accounts of what appears on Kaleidoscope. A ranch hand I know, who has to be hogtied The boy stood holding the wolf. He looked off screen comment more incisively than attempts Teaching all mediums, all ages, and levels to read anything, thought this passage the down the road in the direction the horse had to address the screen or climb into it. Death Benn Nadelman truest thing he’d ever read about horses and gone. was “All that they earned / for being perfect (607) 539-6065 cattle. We get some of this crisp observation W ill that thing ride in a truck? the man said. samples of their kind— / Black, Asian, in The Crossing, but it comes mainly in the The boy gave him a peculiar look. White—blonde, redhead or brunette,” Fiona novel’s long first section, which deals with Hell, the man said. I want you to listen at me. Pitt-Kethley says of the girls in James Bond CLASSIFIED RATES Billy Parham’s relationship with a wolf he RL can you take him in the truck to catch his movies. Even more telling is May Swenson captures and attempts to return to Mexico. horse? watching “The James Bond Movie”: Classified ad rates are $ 10.00 for the first The section is reminiscent of Faulkner’s “The Yessir. Is his horse hard to catch? ten words and $.75 for each additional word. Bear,” and like “The Bear,” it is sure to be Your horse hard to catch? the man said. bubble-bath, room-sized, in which 14 girls, Send te x t with exact capitalization, amputated from the novel and excerpted in all N o sir. delectable punctuation, boldface, and itaks indicated to: The Bookpress, The D eW itt Building future anthologies of American literature. He says it aint. 215 N. Cayuga St, Ithaca, NY 14850. Indeed, it is almost as if McCarthy wrote the W ell unless he just wants to go ridin I reckon and sexless, twist-topped Creamy Please indude check or money order. section with this in mind—as the one piece of I can get his horse for him. Freezes (their blonde, work by which his reputation could stand or You dont want to ride with that wolf is what fall—for the rest of the novel, while full of it is, the man said. red, brown, pinkish, lavender or silver wiglets wonderful McCarthy set pieces, pales in com­ It aint that I dont want to. It’s just that I aint all parison to what he achieves here. goin to. screwed that high, and varnished) W ell I was fixin to say that since it’s liable to Cayuga That night from the edge of the meadow where jump out of the bed of the truck why don’t you None of this is as absorbing as what to do he made his camp he could see the yellow win- take it up fro n t in the cab with you and the boy when “The popcorn is greasy, and I forget to Landacape dowlights of houses in a colonia on the Bavispe can ride in back? bring a Kleenex,” and the moviegoer has to -Ithaca, NY ten miles distant. The meadow was filled with “try / with the 2-inch-wide paper to blot butter floweFS that shrank in the dusk and came forth off my fingers.” Swenson’s movie poem ends again at the moon’s rising. He made no fire. He Passages such as these confirm what is not with Bond’s mission accomplished, but and the wolf sat side by side in the dark and rarely said about McCarthy: that, dark as he with her small, private one: watched the shadows of things emerge on the can be, he is also a very funny writer. meadow and step and tro t and vanish and All the Pretty Horses ended with John Cole I've got most of the grease off and onto return. The w olf sat watching with her ears fo r­ Grady riding into a desert sunset. The Cross­ this little square ward and her nose making constant correction ing ends with Billy Parham watching the in the air. As if to make acts of abetment to the “godmade sun” rise in a similarly desolate of paper. I'm folding it now, making creases life in the world. He sat with the blanket over place. Yet it is strange how the setting sun in with my nails. Superior his shoulders and watched the moving shadows the first novel seemed hopeful, almost while the moon rose over the mountains behind prophetic, while the sun that rises at the end of It’s a tidy ending. The fidgeting, gum-chew­ Nursery him and the distant lights in the Bavispe winked The Crossing does so “for all and without dis­ ing viewer is fully aware of the patent fakery out one by one till there were none. tinction.” What we are to make of this para­ of the movie—she needs a Kleenex, unwraps dox is unclear, but it does create a certain “a Dentyne” after the popcorn, calls the hair­ Stock The situation, the sentiment, and especially anticipation for volume III of the trilogy. Will dos Creamy Freezes and doesn’t identify with 257-3000 the prose here shimmer with what we have John Cole Grady return? Will he meet up with those “nose-perfect replicas of each other.” 2712 N. Triphammer Rd. long considered great in a certain kind of Billy Parham somewhere deep in Mexico? This is the side of movie-going that neither American writing. It is Whitman’s open road, Will the novel accelerate past midcentury and O’Hara’s camp swooning nor the all-purpose Melville’s high seas, Huck and Jim’s raft rap­ show us these characters as old men? Or will “you” can make palpable. Some poets can do ture transported to the high plains of fifty we be given a new set of characters, a final amazing things with a little square of paper, Cafe Dewitt years ago. Reading the novel, we must work variation of the trilogy’s principal themes? others need a Kleenex the size of Russia here, hard to remind ourselves that Billy and Boyd As with so many other things connected no kidding. Parham are not 19th-century cowboys, but in with Cormac McCarthy, there is simply no French and Wlaschin have poured with Sunday fact of the same generation that produced the telling. A few things, however, are becoming such a generous hand that there are more than beat characters in Kerouac’s On the Road. apparent. When volume in of the trilogy does enough drops of the good stuff to cut the 11-2 Which is to say, The Crossing is not so much come out, two or three years down the road, it phlegm. If the book had an index of movies or about a recognizable place and time as it is will sell in the hundreds of thousands and seal stars referred to (it doesn’t have a proper table about a timeless realm of human experience. McCarthy’s reputation as perhaps the greatest of contents, or an index of first lines or titles, We are never quite prepared when a pickup of contemporary American writers. Not long just an alphabetical index by poet), it might be truck suddenly looms on this novel’s hori­ after, he will join the elite circle of Heming­ a handy addition to the shelf by the VCR, zons, radio blaring news of the day’s cattle way, Faulkner, Toni Morrison, and Saul Bel­ between Katz’s Film Encyclopedia and Kael’s market. low, by winning the Nobel Prize for Litera­ 5001 Nights at the Movies. On the poetry What is tiresome about The Crossing is ture. When you think about it, nothing could shelf, it testifies to the aptness of the epigraph, what is tiresome in all of McCarthy’s work— make McCarthy’s many fans, new and old citing Ava Gardner getting a lesson from the long, periodic digressions from the narra­ alike, happier; especially when you consider Robert Graves: “Poems are like people, he tive itself into a gloomy brand of opaque phi­ that McCarthy, famous recluse that he is, told me; there aren’t that many authentic ones losophizing, what my ranching friend would probably won’t bother going to Stockholm to around.” call “big words that don’t say nothing.” In his pick it up. travels, Billy meets up with a huge cast of Debra Fried is an associate professor of Dewitt Malt Ithaca McCarthy mouthpieces. There is the nihilistic Robert Rebein teaches English at SUNY English at Cornell University. old wolf trapper who tells him that “the wolf Buffalo. 273-3473 page 16 The WOOKPRESS September, 1994

Fcontinued eminism from page 13 requires “credible and trustworthy infor­ improvement,” she adds, but she rejects would take only a courageous few to are substantially more at risk in many mation.” She criticizes rape research for trendy, Foucault-influenced arguments launch the long overdue critique that will ways: more boys drop out of school; being equally unreliable and ideological­ that women have merely internalized puncture the intellectual affectations of more boys than girls are suspended, have ly motivated; one of her more disturbing their oppression. Feminists committed to the gender feminists. Open criticism of disciplinary problems, or get in trouble conclusions is that skewed studies and this theory end up, as many of the rape an academic feminism that has subordi­ with the police; boys commit robbery and reporting mean “the attention and the researchers do, denying women’s own nated scholarship to ideology would other violent crimes more often than money are disproportionately going to accounts of their lives: disagreement with quickly halt the pretentious campaign to girls; and five times more boys than girls those least at risk”—women on college the feminist analysis shows how com­ ‘transform the knowledge base’ and die by suicide. Sommers concludes that campuses instead of those in poorer pletely you have been taken in by, or eventually open the doors to more repre­ the “tribulations of schoolboys are not an urban communities with less effective have sold out to, the patriarchy. Sommers sentative, less doctrinaire, and more urgent concern of the leadership of the lobbyists. The much-invoked “one in finds this attitude patronizing and disre­ capable women scholars in the women’s AAUW.” four” statistic, Sommers shows, is at best spectful toward women, a protest she reg­ studies programs.” Other chapters take a critical look at dubious. isters still more fully in her final chapter, Who Stole Feminism? is bound to make still more sensitive topics. Under the In a chapter called “The Backlash “The Gender Wardens.” a lot of people angry and defensive. If heading “Noble Lies,” Sommers reveals Myth,” Sommers disputes writers such as “An illiberal authoritarianism is Sommers is right, though, a lot of people inconsistencies and exaggerations in Susan Faludi who argue that, however implicit in the doctrine that women are have gone unchallenged for too long and, reports about domestic violence and better things seem to be for women, they socialized to want the things the gender as a result, a lot of damage has already argues against claims that “physical men­ are, if anything, worse: “It disturbs [the feminist believes they should not want," been done. Her book invites those who ace toward women is the norm.” She cites gender feminist] that the public may be Sommers argues. While “there is nothing really care about the issues she discuss­ figures showing that women commit as lulled into thinking that women are doing intrinsically illiberal about seeking to es—from education to violence against many violent acts against their spouses as well and that men are allowing it. The make [women] conscious of their subju­ women—to exercise their critical facul­ men, although they inflict fewer serious gender feminist insists that any so-called gation,” Sommers believes that women ties. At feminist conferences, Sommers injuries; she also quotes research about progress is illusory.” Claims that women today are not educated into subordination says, “I find myself looking about for battering within lesbian relationships still earn only 59 cents to a man’s dollar and so there is no good reason to consid­ some innocent or intrepid soul who looks which controverts assumptions about the are just wrong, Sommers shows; in 1992, er their choices inauthentic. Feminist as if she might speak up and say what I, patriarchal or misogynistic underpin­ in fact, women were making more like 71 activists in many arenas, however, prac­ as an observer, must often refrain from nings of domestic violence. Cynically, cents to the dollar. “By most measures,” tice intolerance that Sommers considers saying.” Who Stole Feminism? ought to she points out the rewards reaped by Sommers says, “the eighties were a time simply censorship. Moderate feminists persuade more people to be “intrepid”; researchers who report very high figures of rather spectacular gains by American often hesitate to challenge them, rightly the ultimate cost of timidity may be truth, for violence against women (and the women—in education, in wages, and in fearing that they will be labeled “right- justice, or, as Sommers fears, feminism threats made against those whose figures such traditionally male professions as wing ideologues” (as Sommers has been, itself. come in too low), and she reiterates her business, law, and medicine.” “This is even though she is a registered Democ­ concern that “sound public policy” not to say that there is no room for rat). Who Stole Feminism? ends with a Rohan Maitzen is a graduate student call to arms: “Inside the academy, it in English at Cornell University. Impossible Country

continued from page 10 Croat Federation. At the moment they defi­ NV: You are making some important dis­ nitely do have a cease-fire. They haven’t tinctions here—just as you do in the book, gone much farther than that. They haven’t via the voices and characters you interwove. made progress in building federative organs. These contentions of self-definition make it The level of trust is absolutely zero. The last seem like an impossible country—and coun­ thing Croats really want is for the Muslims tryside. to get a lot of weapons. The Croats would of BH: You can make the argument that the course shave off what they could. war in Bosnia is a war of the rural against the The Muslims are in terrible shape as far as urban. It’s certainly a good way to look at the getting weapons clandestinely. Unfortunate­ siege of Sarajevo. Someone told me when I ly for them, the Serbs have helped the Bosn­ - was there in 1991 that as bad as it got in the ian Serbs and other countries are strongly rest of Bosnia, the fighting would never helping Serbia, breaking the UN sanctions. come to Sarajevo because it was so ethnical­ If the so-called contact group—Russia, ly mixed. That quickly turned out to be a Britain, France, Germany, and the US—real­ profound misunderstanding. The ethnic ly wants to impose sanctions on Serbia, they identification that fuels a national war like will have to compensate Romania, Bulgaria, this is not bound by respect for one’s own Macedonia, and Hungary—countries which ethnic group. In many ways, the biggest are also hurt by those sanctions. However, it enemy of Serb nationalism is not the Croats, seems that even the current very leaky sanc­ but Serb non-nationalists. Serbs in the hills tions do exert pressure on Serbia.and Milo­ above Sarajevo don’t have any trouble blow­ sevic does want to end this. The contact ing up the Serbs in Sarajevo whom they con­ group has disagreements over how to pro­ sider to be traitors to the Serb nation. ceed since the Bosnian Serbs have rejected NV: You were recently back in that part of its proposals for a negotiated resettlement the world. What were your impressions? and Milosevic appears to support the UN on BH: Itk easy to see why lifting the arms this. embargo is the popular answer for this coun­ I would be curious to see at what point the try and why Congress and Clinton want only US would take real action in the Balkans. I that. We don’t want to put troops in, even to think we would leave it up to the Greeks and enforce a peace agreement. Lifting the Bulgarians to take care of the Serbs. The embargo would cause the fighting to esca­ argument of “You know how they are. late, making it unlikely that our troops could They’ve always done this. It’s a complicated function as peacekeepers. civil war, why shpuld we get into it?” could Photograph: Steve Connors None of the parties has really wanted a be even more compelling if the war got big­ negotiated settlement. It’s all about holding ger, spreading, say, into Macedonia. land and territory. They don’t pay attention NV: Savagery certainly has been chosen turned out to be true. began in the Balkans and Europe was to what they sign. The only way this is going over and over again there. I have no answer to the question of where dragged in. That is pretty self-serving. to get solved is through power. They’re just BH: In the particular case of Yugoslavia, the violence is coming from. I think what’s People in the former Yugoslavia told me that going to have to keep fighting it out for a the baggage everyone brings is so violent. more important than the issue of brutality is what’s happening there is just a harbinger of while. Much of the population who experienced the ways of thinking that help fuel it—the a new wave of nationalist aspiration that will It would be Clinton’s worst nightmare if World War II is still alive and family memo­ underlying feelings of absolute right and sweep across western Europe. With the end there were a settlement. He would have to ries are very strong. People fighting this war absolute wrong. I wonder where that comes of the bipolar world system and the form of put up or shut up. I think he would shut up are living under the same roof as the people from and whether it’s stronger than in other stability it brought, and with the decline of and not send 25,000 American troops. Refer­ who fought the last one and they have plenty places. Rules don’t matter when there’s that socialism, maybe it will turn out that there is ring to recent peace plans, a UN staff mem­ of opportunity to talk about what the other feeling of absolute righteousness. nothing “Balkan” at all about “crazy nation­ ber said: “I don’t know what depresses me side did the last time. When I first arrived, NV: All this is going on next door to the alism.” more—the thought of all the parties saying everybody there kept telling me: “When this budding European Union. ‘No’ or all the parties saying ‘Yes.’” war starts people are going to be amazed at BH: There is the argument—“Oh, that’s Nicolas Vaczek is an anthropologist who The big danger in lifting the arms embar­ how bad it is going to be.” I kept thinking the way they are down there in the Balkans.” has worked extensively in Hungary. He lives go is that it could break apart the Muslim- this was some kind of bravado. Quickly it The phrase you hear is that World War I in Ithaca.