THE NEWSPAPER OF THE LITERARY ARTS

Breaking the Bonds: Balkanizing the Yugoslav War

Bal.Kan, is no less a personage than the ancient Haemus.” Despite the offense to Gail Holst-Warhaft classically trained ears, by the end of the century, the Turkish term—which means “wooded Mountain”—and the phrase “Balkan Peninsular,” a geographic inaccu­ When the war broke out in Yugoslavia, we soon began to see a new word, or racy, became the accepted way to talk of the southeastern part of Europe or west­ rather an old word that had fallen into disuse, bandied about in the press as if it ernmost part of the Ottoman Empire, also referred to as “Turkey in Europe.” had a meaning we all subliminally, at least, understood. The word was “Balkans.” Nineteenth-century travelers to the Balkans from western Europe were mostly The war was not in Yugoslavia, it was in the Balkans, and that was supposed to concerned with discovering what they had brought with them in the form of a clas­ explain a lot. The Balkans had always been a powder keg, a place of deep ethnic sical education. Disappointed with the present inhabitants of a region they had and tribal rivalries. Didn’t the first great war begin there? The term “Balkaniza­ peopled with the noble classical race of their imagination, they justified their loot­ tion” said it all. The carving up of what Arnold Toynbee had referred to as “the ing of classical sites as a means of preserving the treasures of antiquity from the seamless fabric of the Ottoman Empire”, into small political units became a barbarians now occupying these lands. The Greek War of Independence drew metaphor for the unseemly and primitive squabbling of unviable nation states Philhellenes to the Greek cause against the Turks, but still they were fighting for wherever it occurred. But was the war just another example of rampant Balkan an ideal, for a topos rather than its present inhabitants. The attitude remained nationalism, artificially held in check by four decades of communist rule, or was almost unchanged into the twentieth century. As one American traveler to Crete it something quite different? And did the Balkans ever really exist as an ethnic or put it: geopolitical unit? One of the first usages of the term “Balkan” is found in a letter written in 1794 The contrast between the past and the present was tremendous, as though by one of the members of the British Society of Dillettanti, John Morritt, a typical the secret of life had been lost. The men who gathered around me took on the example of a species of traveler whose Grand Tour extended beyond Italy to the appearance of uncouth savages. They were friendly and hospitable, but by ruins of Greece and Troy. After going through the Shipka Pass, Morritt wrote to comparison with the Minoans they were like neglected domestic animals. I his sister in exalted mood: “we were approaching classic ground. We slept at the am not thinking of the comforts they lacked...l am thinking now of the foot of a mountain, which we crossed the next day, which separates Bulgaria from Romania (the ancient Thrace), and which, though now debased by the name of see Balkanizing the Yugoslav War, page 10

I n sid e .- Paul West on C eline, page 6 page 2 The BQ0KEBESS April 1995 For the Affirmative

their labor force fairly reflected the racial mix loomed as dismaying; also, companies found tion, and of course they had the leverage to Edward T. Chase of their region. that diversified labor forces actually func­ bring this off. Mathabane did come, and went This new expanded notion of affirmation tioned very well. on to college. I met him through Arthur Ashe, As a beneficiary of affirmative action action to be based on “class,” the economical­ Perhaps guilt played some role in the early and was able to work with him in publishing myself and among its earliest proponents in ly disadvantaged, as a way to sidestep race postwar days. Racial discrimination had been his two national bestsellers, Kaffir Boy and the press, I naturally watch with fascination and gender, would mean, in effect, transfer “official,” so to speak. The dean of Cornell Kaffir Boy in America. Not government fiat, the burgeoning uproar over the issue in the payments, redistribution of wealth by author­ University Medical School, back in the but Arthur Ashe’s and Stan Smith’s personal media, in Congress, in President Clinton’s ity, as opposed to the vagaries of the market. 1940s, stated that the number of Jews admit­ initiative was the crucial factor. But while White House. As the decibel level of the It would be an affront to the theme of the ted to Cornell was to be proportionate to the discrimination still prevails, we must not debate rises, all segments of society are get­ 1987 movie “Wall Street,” celebrating the Jewish percentage of the state’s population leave matters to luck—the Urban Institute ting into the act. Republican strategists view ideology of today, that runs, “Greed is good. (though the medical school itself was situated reports that 53 percent of black men aged 25 affirmative action as the “nuclear wedge Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, in New York City, where the percentage of to 34 are unemployed or so underemployed issue,” as The New York Times editorialist cuts through and captures the essence of the Jews was several times higher than the state that they earn too little to lift a family of four puts it, “by concocting a fantasy that white evolutionary spirit. Greed in all its forms, average). Columbia University’s medical from poverty. The case for affirmative action males are a new victim class.” White males greed for life, for money, for love, for knowl­ school dean argued that “Representation of stands. constituted 62 percent of the pro-Republican edge has marked the upward surge of the various social and religious groups in voters in the November 1994 elections, so mankind.” Indeed, such a “class” policy medicine ought to be kept fairly parallel with Edward T. Chase is former Editor-in- they alone could “seal off Clinton from victo­ might seem to invoke the sentiment of the the population make-up.” President Lowell of Chief of New York Times Books, the New ry” should he uphold affirmative action, so communist slogan, “To each according to Harvard famously recommended a Jewish American Library, Senior Editorial Vice the Republican reasoning goes. one’s needs, from each according to one’s quota on all undergraduate admissions. President of Putnam, and Senior Editor of I was a young white male who got into elite means.” According to civil rights authority Lawrence Scribner’s, and has also been a frequent con­ Lawrenceville School for free (and this led to Of course, President Clinton doubtless Bloomgarden, Dartmouth College president tributor to Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, New a virtually free ride through Princeton) didn’t quite have that in mind. He has mod­ Ernest Hopkins defended a quota system on Republic, The Reporter, Dissent, The Nation, because my father was an impoverished artist, estly asked that there be a review of all feder­ ethnic grounds as late as 1945. and The New Leader. a painter. He persuaded the headmaster that I al affirmative action programs to ascertain Hard to believe, but things have improved was some kind of “victim” who deserved a “whether there is some other way we can radically since then. For instance, in 1974, chance to attend Lawrenceville, but that he reach our objective without giving preference Diane Joyce and Paul Johnson both applied couldn’t afford my tuition. In those pre- by race or gender.” The discourse on affirma­ for the position of road dispatcher in Santa National Endowment years, artists were still tive action so far has been and is conceived Clara Co., California. No woman had ever cfP/*iter& deemed socially worthy, it seems, so the not as a general palliative for all kinds of dis­ been considered for the job. Diane Joyce headmaster took affirmative action in my advantage per se, but for policies affecting appealed to the affirmative action officer, and plight. preference in entry-level employment, in edu­ ultimately got the job. Paul Johnson claimed I am reminded of this by the latest wrinkle cation, in public contracting and employment, discrimination and took his complaint to in the affirmative action debate, namely that and in loans. Nevertheless, the proponent of court. Their struggle finally reached the Unit­ affirmative action be applied, not to race or class-based affirmative action, author Richard ed States Supreme Court, which found, six to gender preferences, but to class, as it was in Kahlenberg, stresses the point that, as early as three, on behalf of Diane Joyce. When both B ookpress my case, the economically disadvantaged 1974, liberal Supreme Court Justice William Time and Newsweek gave this landmark case class. Articles are proliferating on this theme O. Douglas argued (in DeFinis v. Odegaard) cover-story attention, I felt it was of sufficient and Richard Kahlenberg, for one, is writing a that preferences (in law school admissions) public interest to warrant a book, and I book on class-based affirmative action. Yet so be based on disadvantage, not race, and that enjoined Prof. Melvin Urofsky, the biograph­ far, few if any commentators seem to realize Martin Luther King, too, called for class, not er of Justice Louis Brandeis, to write it, to send in how profoundly radical this could be. Indeed, race, as the criterion. King correctly realized A Conflict of Rights. It is expected to be the earliest postwar pleas for affirmative that class-based affirmative action would reissued sbon as the affirmative action debate submissions of action—the nomenclature was “the doctrine mostly benefit Afro-Americans as the propor­ intensifies. ot'-compensation” —were simple and single- tionally poorest of minorities, but that keying Sometimes luck, pure circumstance, not your work. track. In 1963,1 wrote an article for Common­ policy to class circumvented the problems of governmental intervention, can determine We are interested in wealth, reprinted by the National Urban preference keyed strictly to color. one’s fate in matters of employment and League and widely circulated. Naively enti­ In the more innocent time of my 1963 career. Case in point: a black African young­ previously unpublished tled, in the language of that day, “Quotas for “Quotas for Negroes?” article, the argument ster happened to be watching through the reviews, interviews, essays, Negroes?”; “If Quotas and Preferential Hiring for affirmative action appealed on economic fence as the American tennis stars, Arthur and original graphic art Are Disallowed, It Is Hard to See How Much grounds more than on compassion. When sur­ Ashe and Stan Smith, were practicing during Will Be Accomplished for Negro Employ­ veyed, the CEOs of our largest corporations the South African championships a few years Inquiries should be addressed ment” ran the subhead. My article found a were found to be surprisingly favorable to ago. They noticed the boy, and invited him to to: Ben Goodman, Managing Editor, welcome political climate. By the time of affirmative action because the social costs come on the court to hit a few shots. His name The Bookpress, 215 N. Cayuga St, Nixon’s administration, no less, federal con­ and heavier taxes needed to sustain a tenth of was Mark Mathabane. The Americans decid­ Ithaca, New York 14850 tractors were mandated by law to ensure that the nation in a state of pervasive dependency ed to help him go to America to get an educa­ or call (607) 277-2254 ^ Letters to the Editor

historical novelists “the past once was the strip ourself of the trappings of our own lives Look, Ma, No Hands present, and their goal is to make it present if we’re to enter the past and unlock its rules. again, to find the bomb of contingency This means not second-guessing the past nor To the Editor: always ticking in the moment.” Then he criticizing its inability to think or act beyond Publisher: Jack Goldman

My father used to say that only cranks spoils it by adding: “the sense that anything the terms of its culture.” Good advice, but it Editorial: Jack Goldman and Joel Ray wrote letters to the newspapers, and his spir­ can happen.” It is one thing for historical means that to some significant degree we can Managing Editor: Ben Goodman it might think that I prove his point. Having novelists not to be “limited to the literal enter the past and discover its meaning if we taught and written for a long time about the truth,” but it is quite another for them to think understand that it is a place in which not any­ Design Editor: Ben Goodman relationship between history and fiction, that “anything can happen.” It is the differ­ thing can happen. Braudel’s point is in no Production Assistants: Ira Apfel, Dan Collins, however, I can’t keep my fingers from my ence in quality, for example, between Doc- way consistent with mugging history. Worth Godwin, Russell Underwood keyboard after reading John Vernon’s “Mug­ torow’s The Book o f Daniel, with its histori­ Even free-wheelers, when they argue, Advertising Accounts Executive: Ben Goodman ging History: the New Historical Novel” cal insight into Popular Front Communists need logic. Distribution: Ben Goodman

(The Bookpress, March 1995). and the Rosenberg case, and his jazzy, delib­ In the end, Vernon’s justification is that Contributors: The warning flag went up when Ken Bums erately caricatured anachronisms in Ragtime. “turning history upside down” is another Kenneth Evett, Gum I la Feigenbaum, Harvey Fireside, (who has received awards from professional Carol de Chellis Hill, in Henry James’ Mid­ way of “expressing the spirit of this age.” It Charlotte Greenspan, Richard Klein, historical organizations) was said to have night Song, is playfully inventive about inter­ certainly does, but if it may often “bring us Janice Levy, Kevin Murphy, Michael Serino, aimed (in “The Civil War”) to substitute “an relating historical and fictional characters, news of our world,” it also may only reflect a Mark Shechner, Gail Holst-Warhaft authenticated nostalgia” for “the strangeness but she is also scrupulously historical about widespread present-minded impatience with Art: of history.” Burns’s documentary films on their climate of opinion and the psychologies historical consciousness. As Huck Finn said, Milly Acharya, Andrew Pogson, the Brooklyn Bridge and on Huey Long tell of the actual persons. She is not playing “I don’t put no stock in dead people.” Fortu­ Charles Sadler, Joanna Sheldon, very strange stories indeed, and they are told orthodox tennis, but her court at least has a nately, Mark Twain had what Huck lacked Jack Sherman, Scott Werder, Rhea Worrell (as is “The Civil War”) with unflinching net and lines. and therefore told us much about Huck’s The entire contents of The B ookpress are copyright respect for combining imaginative ordering Whenever I read these free-wheeling slaveholding American world and its con­ 0 1 9 9 5 by The B o o kpress, I n c .. All rights reserved. The Bookpress will not be liable for typographical error with historical events, artifacts, and lan­ (“look, ma, no hands!”) apologies for “wal­ nection to Twain’s. or errors in publication, except the cost to advertisers for guage. With Bums, artistic imagination and lowing in extravagance,” I expect at some —Cushing Strout up to the cost of the space in which the actual error appeared in the first insertion. historical consciousness are synergistic, as point to find a recourse to a dogmatic skepti­ Ithaca Subscription rate is $12.“* per year. The Bookpress is published eight times annually, February through M ay and they almost never are in the proliferating and cism about historical writing itself. Sure September through December. corrupt form of TV docudramas. enough, Vernon refers approvingly to “the Editor’s note: Cushing Strout has written Submissions of manuscripts, art, and Letters to the Editor should be sent, SASE, to: The main problem, however, with Ver­ frank admission that historical knowledge is on the relationship between history and non’s remarkable inventory of quasi-histori- a fiction circumscribed by the present.” Yet fiction in The Veracious Imagination: Essays T he Bookpress, DeWitt Building 215 N. Cayuga Street, Ithaca, NY 14850 cal fiction is the contradiction at the heart of he also tells us that he was inspired by the on History, Literature, and Biography (Wes­ (607)277-2254; fax (607) 275-9221 his case for it. I appreciate his point that for historian Fernand Braudel, who asked us “to leyan University Press, 1981). April 1995 The B OOKPRESS p a g e 3 Paleoblattidae: Or, The Cockroach

Jeff Schwaner

ETYMOLOGY (Supplied by a late con­ sumptive exterminator to a Grammar School): The pale Exterminator—threadbare in uniform, manners, and resistance to chemi­ cal antibodies; / see him now. He was ever dusting his old borax powders in the cor­ ners of his classroom, with a queer handker­ chief, mockingly embellished with all the gay flags known to fly above the State House. He loved to dust his old corners; it somehow mildly reminded him of his mortality. cockroach: (kok'roch) n. Any of various oval, flat-bodied insects of the family Blatti- dae, several species of which are common household pests. Also called “roach.” (Ear­ lier cacarootch.) — American Heritage Dictionary

kakeriakk Norwegian mort Swedish cucaracha Spanish Kuchenschabe German blatte, cafard French bicho de-conta Portugese karaluch Polish blatta Italian tarakan amerikanski Russian chang-lang Chinese abula mushi Japanese juke Hebrew

EXTRACTS (Supplied by a sub-sub­ exterminator): —To get rid of cockroaches: catch three and put them in a bottle, and so carry them to where two roads cross. Here hold the bottle upside down, and as they fall out repeat then, I account it high time to get to the night in town I spent window-shopping on a wild set of American cockroaches, aloud three credos. Then all the cockroaches South. If they but knew it, all Northerners in King Street by the light of gas lamp and full enveloped in their shaggy watch coats, their in the house from which these three came some degree cherish very nearly the same moon, my carpetbag hoisted over my shoul­ heads muffled in their stiff wings, bedamed will go away....Blatchley happy feelings towards random water­ der, and had the leisure to remark upon how and ragged and void of stylish markings- —Cockroach? That is not a cockroach spouts, flash floods, pop-up thunderstorms, many of the other window-shoppers I and without so much as acknowledging me, that is a raisin...(swallowing the cock­ and the mosquito-and-flea-pattemed quilt of chanced to meet were cockroaches. There they proceeded to caper about most roach). ... renowned Danish baker humidity the South wraps about itself each were the tawny German roaches, small but obstreperously. —On this trip I had them served to me in summer without losing so much as a tooth in quite numerous, who had left their hotplates The American roach, most enormous of three different styles. Alive in strawberries, the width of its famous smile. and refrigerators and stoves to peruse King all (one-and-a-half inches), has long been h la carte with fried fish, and baked in bis­ Having seen cockroaches only in zoos or Street’s well-displayed antique shop win­ the merchant marine of the lot, coming cuit.... Caudell on cable TV programs, I decided it best to go dows. Some must have even been friendly across the Atlantic directly in the first slave- —The ravages they committed on every­ directly to the historical seat of cockroach with a merchant or two, since I was to notice boats. They are the only species actually thing edible was very extensive; not a bis­ dissemination on this continent, the place more than once a small family admiring a known to fly, though they only do so in the cuit but was more or less polluted by them, where so many would step off with (or in) certain roll-top desk at very close quarter, South, and while on shore leave are often so and among the cargo 300 cases of cheeses, their carpetbags and enlighten the low coun­ going so far as to perambulate the drawers sullen as to withhold from demonstrating which had holes in them to prevent their try with their utility much as whale oil was themselves. this ability. I did my best to ignore the bunch sweating, were considerably damaged, disseminated from old Nantucket and lit up These fellows were quite polite and defer­ myself, although I could not help but notice some of them being half devoured, and not the grateful towns of New England in the ential, eschewing their right-of-way and a singularly brawny one, whose face was one without some marks of their resi­ days of the spermaceti. But older than the clearing ample space for my boots to land brown and burnt, making his shiny wings dence..../?.//. Lewis, 1835 sperm whale, older than the great white on the sidewalk and carry me on my way. dazzling by comparison, while in the deep —Hubbard tells us that the cockroaches, shark, older than the churches of Charleston Though they are less friendly than the shadows of his eyes floated some reminis­ even in dwellings, were nearly all destroyed and the palmetto tree itself, is the being that German roach, I did notice a few clusters of cences that did not seem to give him much in Florida during the severe freeze of 1894 would make itself so at home here, settling in the brown-banded roach about town. The joy. At some point I simply nodded into when so many orange trees were killed....It the folds of the palmetto and dropping from most recent to move to the low country, slumber, and was woken only once more, as will shed some light upon the habits its leaves onto passing tourists at night, probably around the turn of the century, the a cry had gone up among the remaining pal­ of our present-day roaches if we remember called variously the water-bug, the croton- “brown bandit” as he is unjustly called, metto bugs of, “Bulkington! Bulkington! the moist, warm environments under bug, the palmetto bug; greeted over the cen­ spends most of his time among books or where’s Bulkington?” at which they darted which their ancestors appeared and turies with sodium fluoride, borax, hydro­ televisions, and is careful to deposit its eggs out of the house in pursuit of him. lived....Herrick cyanic acid gas, the clamor of rubber ham­ in out-of-the-way places. His lack of refined —As late as the sixteenth century, physi­ mers and the malice of boot-heels, he has social skills is undoubtedly responsible for HARK! cians were still prescribing cockroach found himself welcome, and without the his failure to secure a spot on Charleston’s The following morning, letters of refer­ entrails as an excellent remedy for sore ears. slightest attempt at adaptation has spread social ladder. Still, he is known to show up ence in hand, I hiked up to John Street and In 1725, Jamaican children were still being democratically from the four comers of law uninvited to gala occasions and, morose at the offices of my new employ. The Upwith fed cockroaches as a worm cure. The fact is, to all points on the peninsula. going unrecognized, sulk over some snacks Herald. The Herald was an odd rig with reports of cockroaches being used medici­ and a Braves game in the TV room. marvelous features, a full floor of worn and nally and nutritionally persist around the CHARLESTON Less social than the chatty German roach, wrinkled decks (which, I suspected, held world even today....Frishman, 1980 The cockroach has preserved itself and its and even the brown-banded roach, is the their own share of stealthy blattidae ten­ customs for 350 million years, making it a Oriental cockroach, commonly called the ants), a thing of trophies, a cannibal of a LOOMINGS highly respectable citizen of a city famous Black Beetle or Shad Roach, who, like a craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All Call me a little crazy. Some months for preservation. Through the dismissal of its certain tattooed harpooner, may without noble things are touched with that. ago—never mind how long precisely—hav­ proprietors, a revolution against its mother­ warning choose to share your room for a As I was discussing my commission with ing little or no money in my pocket, and land, and occupations by military forces both fortnight, especially if it adjoins a bath or the editor, Bates Hagood, I couldn’t help but nothing particular to interest me in the foreign and domestic, and a location that has shower-room. His large size (one-and-one- hear, thumping about in the next room like a Northeast, I thought I would rent a Ryder left it vulnerable to floods, hurricanes and quarter inch) makes him an ungainly bedfel­ giant’s irregular heartbeat, the sound of a truck, pack up all my belongings and see the disease, Charleston has endured with grace, low even in the politest of circumstances. man limping heavily on a cane. Or was it a watery part of the world. It is a way I have of and has attracted those who would seek to He is more of a cool-weather visitor to the man with a wooden leg? But the sound was driving off the spleen, and regulating the emulate its success. city, and I am not ashamed to say I was so hard and resonant, might wood not even circulation. Whenever I find myself grow­ The whalers who came to Nantucket from relieved to arrive finally at my chosen lodg­ suffice? Might the false appendage be made ing grim about the crisp June air on Cape the four comers of the world settled into their ing for the night and not see this unexpected of an ancient, resonant ivory, torn from a Cod, whenever the horrible crunching of own quarters all about town; and the cock­ roommate drawing a bath. living creature while its own heart still colorful autumn leaves fills my ears; when­ roaches of Charleston are equally diverse But late into my slumbers that night, I pumped wildly within its ribcage? ever the green stalks of the first crocuses and well represented, there being in force all awoke to the sound of heavy tramping in the perforate the last spring snow’s blanket, the four major species. In fact, my very first entry; the door was flung open, and in rolled see The Cockroach, page 15 page 4 April 1995

O ff Campus Streets of Death At The Bookery after his abduction. Despite this clear evi­ Nancy Tierney dence, the court official assigned to the case has refused to act. Even after Casa Alianza In October 1994, US attorney Jennifer filed two complaints with the General Super­ The Bookery continues its 1995 lecture series Harbury staged a month-long hunger strike visor of Courts, the official’s posture has in the lecture space in Bookery II in front of Guatemala’s National Palace to remained unchanged. protest the disappearance of her husband, When I asked the children about their guerrilla commander “Everardo,” and to experiences with the courts, they unanimous­ Sunday, April 23 at 4:00 pm decry the impunity with which the ly expressed reluctance to file complaints, in Guatemalan government has murdered and part because of this past obstruction of jus­ tortured thousands of its own citizens. tice. Claudia, a teenager who spent nine Helena Maria Viramontes, Despite recent progress toward the signing years on the streets, indicated that she hadn’t professor of Creative Writing at of a peace treaty in the country’s thirty-five reported an attack by a police officer who Cornell University and author of the year civil war, atrocities are still common­ kicked her in the stomach and severely beat collection The Moths and Other place. In 1993, the Guatemalan Archbish­ three of her friends because it would have Stories, will read from and discuss op’s Office on Human Rights received more been futile: “the denouncements here, in her long-awaited first novel, Under than 1,300 complaints of abuses, including Guatemala, are worthless,” she said. She also the Feet of Jesus, the story of a family assassinations and intimidation of activists, revealed that on the street she had to stay of Mexican-American farm workers organizers, and student leaders. The long list quiet, “because, if not, at times they took you struggling to overcome the poverty, of murdered and tortured also includes many in. It depends, they kill you sometimes, they from among Guatemala’s population of do different things.” injustice, and racism that street children. The most recent wave of violence against circumscribe their lives. These children, who live and work in the Guatemala’s street children coincides with EJxrj Rodriguez streets of Guatemala’s largest cities, face an increased militarization of Guatemala continual harassment by police officers and City. Taking advantage of complaints by Friday, April 28 at 8:00 pm other security forces. Casa Alianza, the Latin angry residents about increasing street crime, American branch of New York’s Covenant the army has used this climate of fear to for­ Ellen Frye House, has investigated over 150 cases tify its position within the capital. Voters will read from her new historical involving street children in just the past five gave the party of ex-General Rios Monlt, novel, Amazon Story Bones (1994), years, ranging from police forcing children Guatemala’s bloodiest dictator, a majority of a collection of familiar Greek myths, to swallow sniffing glue, to immolation, seats in the August 1994 congressional elec­ abductions, shootings, and other instances of tions. The party’s campaign relied heavily on which revise the ancient world in torture and homicide. Despite the environ­ the ideology of “law and order.” Notwith­ their retelling from an Amazon, ment of deep trauma and persecution, many standing Rios Montt’s 1982-83 scorched feminist perspective. Frye lived in children, because of their drug addictions, earth campaign, during which entire villages Greece in the early 1960s and is remain on the street, rather than entering of indigenous farmers were annihilated, the author of the novel The Other shelters like Casa Alianza. former dictator’s colleagues voted him Pres­ Sappho as well as a collection of During a recent research trip to Guatemala ident of the Congress and named him a mem­ Greek folk songs, entitled The City, I interviewed thirty children about the ber of the body’s human rights committee. Marble Threshing Floor. everyday violence they witness on the The dangers to street children, whom lead­ Stephanie Smith streets. Their stories are incredible. Carmen ers consistently associate with gangs of vio­ has seen seven of her street friends die in the lent criminals, are rising. Military Intelli­ Sunday, M ay 7 at 4:00 pm past five years. She is a tough 18-year-old, gence now operates in several of the city’s but even she avoids spots in the city that she poorest neighborhoods, ostensibly to crack loan Kessler, considers too dangerous. She talked about down on gang activity. In December, Rios associate professor of French at one of the city’s busiest streets, where armed Montt issued a statement to the press vowing SUNY New Paltz and visiting men abducted four boys, later found mutilat­ to shoot all delinquents. Because of lecturer at Cornell University, will ed. For years, she said, “I wouldn’t walk Guatemala’s internal culture of terror, lead­ read selections from her newest along 18th Street because it made me scared. ers in the international community must work, Demons of the Night: Tales of You know, because of what happened respond decisively to these increased threats. the Fantastic, Madness, and the before, with the boys they’ve killed there. I The recent decision by the US government to Supernatural from Nineteenth- thought about all of that. And it made me suspend the final remnant of its once substan­ tial military aid package to Guatemala repre­ Century France, a gathering, for the scared.” Casa Alianza reports that 14 street chil­ sents a positive change in the long, troubling first time in English, of classic fiction dren were murdered in 1994. In July, armed history of US intervention in Guatemala. by such authors as Balzac, Dumas, men abducted two teenage boys, found later Given the past ineffectiveness of such Verne, and Maupassant. in a garbage dump with numerous bullet standard diplomatic measures, however, the wounds. On September 13, a National Police US and other members of the international agent fatally shot a 19-year-old boy through community must develop an economic strat­ Sunday, M ay 14 at 4:00 pm the head after he had stolen a pair of sun­ egy to pressure the Guatemalan government. Jane Dieckmann glasses. Later that month, a 12-year-old Discontent within Guatemala’s business street child died when a bomb, given to him community contributed to the ouster of Rios will introduce her most recent work, in a fast-food bag, exploded in his hands. Montt in 1983. Certainly, business leaders History of Wells College, with Also in late September, heavily armed today are less tolerant of government policies particular emphasis on the question private security guards opened fire on a that could jeopardize their international of education for women and the group of street children in a busy city bus trading position. In fact, the business com­ links between Wells and Cornell. terminal. Two died and a third required munity played a formidable role in the 1993 Dieckmann is the author of A Short hospitalization. rejection of then President Serrano’s attempt History of Tompkins County, co­ Like the captors of commander “Everar­ to assume dictatorial powers. The interna­ editor of Ithaca's Neighborhoods, has do,” those whc abuse street children act with tional community should send clear signals published five cookbooks, and writes impunity. Only three of Casa Alianza’s cases that any initiatives benefiting Guatemalan on music, literature, and food for the have ended in conviction. Blatant examples business, such as the recent proposal to Ithaca Journal and the Ithaca Times. of police incompetence, indifference, and include textiles under the Caribbean Basin Jo n R eis outright interference have occurred at all Initiative, will depend on the government’s stages of the investigatory process. Officers compliance with international human rights have ignored arrest warrants, allowed private norms. Such steps may promote internal Sunday, M ay 21 at 4:00 pm citizens to beat street children in their pres­ checks on abuses and preclude the need for ence, and “mishandled” evidence on numer­ stronger sanctions in the future. They also Paul Cody, ous occasions, stalling or preventing the fil­ may help to rescue Guatemala City’s street ing of formal complaints. Their failure to children from the terrifying conditions they Associate Editor for Cornell Magazine, will talk about his new book, cooperate stems from very real interests: presently endure. The Stolen Child, the fictional account of a young boy's abduction police and other security officers form the in 1963, whose story unfolds through shocking vignettes chief suspects in roughly half of Casa Alian­ Nancy Tierney completed her Master’s narrated by the characters who cross his path. za’s cases. degree in City and Regional Planning at Court officers, too, have on occasion been Cornell University in February 1995. openly hostile when assigned to street chil­ dren’s cases. In the August 1991 abduction Editor’s Note: Congressman Robert and torture of 16-year-old Edwin Garcia, the Torricelli (D-NJ) revealed on March 22, The Bookery police collaborated with Casa Alianza to that, even as Cornell graduate Jennifer DeWitt Building, determine the license plate of the car used in Harbury ( ’74) was on a recent hunger strike 215 North Cayuga St., Ithaca the attack. They also located the exact site of near the White House for news of her hus­ the torture and found physical evidence still band, Guatemalan guerilla leader Efrain For more information call (607) 273-5055 present. Witnesses testified to seeing Edwin, Bamaca Velasquez, federal officials knew hi ______stripped and badly bruised, several hours had been killed by a CIA informant in 1992. April 1995 The BPOKTIUgB page 5 A Madame Zzaj for Modern Times

Akiyoshi invests her compositions with you’re good enough. It’s not there for Ben Goodman humanism as well as beauty: “My music,” women....Japanese musicians also have a Akiyoshi said, “expresses the contrast harder time breaking into jazz....The young In 1956, when Toshiko Akiyoshi came to between the superficially luxurious life of people who come to this country can't have the United States, she was somewhat of a some of these women and the tragic denial [the kind of experience I did] because the novelty. Already the highest-paid free-lance of human rights they suffered.” Yet business has become very productionized. A arranger and studio musician in Japan, she Akiyoshi has brought more than just a com­ lot of clubs have closed. Many places for moved to Boston to pursue a scholarship at poser’s point of view—for the last 22 years, young people to woodshed are gone. Berklee College of Music. But while jazz she has consistently written, directed, per­ flourished in 1950s America, so did racial formed, and produced (she and Tabackin But even for Akiyoshi, these political bar­ and sexual prejudice. In an interview with have formed their own record label, Ascent, riers still seem to persist. If starting her own Leonard Feather, Akiyoshi explained that “I distributed by JAM records since 1981) her record label (due to RCA’s withdrawal of played clubs and TV wearing a kimono, own music in an ensemble that has renewed support) was not sufficient indication, con­ because people were amazed to see an Ori­ and transformed the sound of big band jazz sider, for example, the limited availability ental woman playing jazz.” internationally. of her most recent album, Desert Lady-Fan­ In 1995, the amazement persists— Her latest album, Desert Lady-Fantasy tasy, despite its continual praise: go to any although today the focus is less on her sex (Columbia, 1994), speaks to each of these record store and check out their Toshiko or nationality and more on the music. Com­ Toshiko Akiyoshi accomplishments, featuring Akiyoshi on all Akiyoshi collection—supply is not always a poser, arranger, musician, director, sides. From her operatic piano intro amidst function of demand. And certainly the most Akiyoshi is founder and feature of what cian. Writing multi-part harmonies across the bright Latin bop of “Harlequin Tears” to pervasive inequality remains in the realm of may well prove to be one of the most suc­ an enormous range of instruments (nearly the brilliant dialogue of her accompani­ the printed word. Despite a growing succes­ cessful big bands in this half of the century. every part requires doubling instruments), ment—answering and often anticipating sion of feminist and other categorical col­ She is consecutive winner of polls both here while introducing “unconventional” (that is, Tabackin’s tenor solo—in “Broken lections (see, for instance, Linda Dahl’s and in Japan (for leader of the No. 1 big non-Western) tonalities and rhythms, Dreams,” Akiyoshi showcases the musical Stormy Weather, Sally Plackstin’s Ameri­ band, as well as No. 1 composer and No. 1 Akiyoshi synthesizes social as well as musi­ skills which first brought her to the US. But can Women in Jazz, Mary Unterbrink’s Jazz arranger) and a four-time Grammy winner. cal realms to produce a truly global art. “I’m it is tunes like “Bebop,” a Dizzy Gillespie Women at the Keyboard, and Atoinette D. Feather, in his 1987 retrospective The Jazz trying to draw from my heritage and enrich original that Akiyoshi has arranged to fea­ Handy’s Black Women in American Bands Years, remfhds us that “Toshiko was not the jazz tradition,” Akiyoshi told one inter­ ture a stunning reed soli, and “Desert Lady- and Orchestras), it would seem that “main­ merely the first woman, or the first Asian, to viewer. “I’m putting into jazz, and not just Fantasy” (in which Akiyoshi and Tabackin stream” society has yet to open its eyes to write an entire library of original music, taking out.” From the use of traditional both collaborated) that really exemplify her the rest of the modem world: neither Eric organize an orchestra to interpret it, and Japanese instruments to a wind section artistry. Beginning with Tabackin’s flute Hobsbawm’s The Jazz Scene nor Paul F. reach the highest peak in her profession; she comprising anywhere from one to five solo, “Desert Lady-Fantasy” enchants the B erliner’s recent Thinking in Jazz (both was the first musician, regardless of sex or flutes, or combinations of flute, piccolo, listener with its Near-Eastern harmonics—a highly acclaimed for their extensive explo­ origin, ever to register such an accomplish­ saxes, clarinet, and bass clarinet, the six­ bass clarinet ostinato beneath a flute soli ration and coverage of the historical and ment.” teen-piece ensemble produces a wide vari­ backed by muted trumpets—before it artistic development of jazz) mentions even Born in 1929 into a comfortably-off ety of textures, “putting into” her composi­ segues into a haunting African pulse (featur­ a sentence on Akiyoshi. The closest either Japanese family living in Manchuria, tions elements of African-American, Latin, ing Daniel Ponce on congo drums), illumi­ comes is this quote taken from one of the Akiyoshi grew up playing piano, first devel­ Asian, and,European, as well as African, nated by trilling Somalian vocals and a 883 pages in what seems to me Berliner’s oping an interest in jazz, prevalent in post­ Afro-Cuban, Near-Eastern, and Middle- tremendous trombone solo. The effect is ultimately disappointing book: “In experi­ war Japan, after her exposure to the voic- Eastern musics. At ments of [musical ings of Teddy Wilson. Her initial gigs were times, her creative fusion], artists like as a dance-band accompanist in Tokyo, but eclecticism is obvi­ Toshiko Akiyoshi of by 1952 she was already established with ous, as with the Japan, Gato Barbieri her own group and plenty of engagements. pairing of baritone of Argentina, and Following the recommendations of Oscar sax and piccolo Abdullah Ibrahim of Peterson and her desire for further study, in the intro to South Africa, and she accepted a scholarship to Berklee Col­ “Quadrille, Any­ others across the lege in 1956 and moved to Boston. one?” or the use of world, in endless Akiyoshi spent most of the ’60s working vocals in “Children variations, combine in a small-group context with artists such as in the Temple jazz elements with Charles Mingus (bass) and then-husband Ground” (both the timbral colors of Charlie Mariano (saxophone). But as her . from Long Yellow indigenous instru­ solo and compositional work, influenced Road, RCA, 1975). ments, traditional greatly by the stylings of Bud Powell, con­ At other times, tuning systems, tinued to develop, she sought new outlets however, the infu­ scales, melodies, for her complex orchestrations, which tend­ sion is more indi­ rhythms, composi­ ed to stretch the boundaries of traditional rect, with the tional forms.” If this big band and then-popular “combo” ensem­ rhythm section is Berliner’s “prod­ bles. In 1973, following a move to the West oscillating between uct of more than fif­ Coast with husband Lew Tabackin (saxo­ African and Latin teen years of immer­ phone, flute), she organized a rehearsal rhythms and the sion in the jazz band “to showcase [her] compositions and Japanese “arched world,” his inclusion allow for improvisation within a tightly beat” (even bor­ of Akiyoshi is organized, challenging ensemble context,” rowing devices remarkably concise. says Linda Dahl in her 1984 book Stormy from Noh drama), On April 28, Weather. Assembling some of the best tal­ while the horns Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band Toshiko Akiyoshi ent on the Coast, Dahl adds, “the Akiyoshi- sing overhead in will visit Ithaca for a Tabackin big band became her instrument, close harmonies (frequently a whole tone quite extraordinary, like nothing you’ve performance with Cornell University’s Jazz with Tabackin playing Billy Strayhorn to apart), a technique rarely practiced in tradi­ ever heard. And that, of course, is the bril­ Ensembles. If only for a night, the curtain her Duke Ellington.” tional Western arrangements. liance of Toshiko Akiyoshi and her orches­ will rise to expose one of the world’s truly What has emerged over the course of the Writing what she calls her “programmat­ tra—it is ever inventive, reforming and cosmopolitan artists: a musician who has last two decades is a musical ensemble of ic” music, Akiyoshi often looks inward as reformulating sounds to produce a music all combined her passion for expression with great precision, preserving the intimacy and well as outward, deriving many of her com­ her own. the pain of her experience. “In America,” intellect of a gifted composer. Her own positions from her personal experiences in For all her successes, however, musical says Akiyoshi, “there are still barriers to piano playing, derived from a hard-driving Japan and the US. Akiyoshi states: and personal, the jazz world has not been overcome, but I’m very proud of what I bebop style, casts forceful linear lines, soar­ entirely sympathetic. Speaking of the late have accomplished. I don’t want to sound ing and spinning into dense arrangements Most of the big band writers were arrangers 1960s, Akiyoshi admits that she “almost arrogant, but I do feel that everything I’ve against a solid anchor of chord voicings rather than composers, except for Ellington, quit jazz for good.... All of a sudden, I felt as achieved, I earned it. I always had to fight across multiple registers. Like Powell, of course— they played popular tunes and had insignificant as the sand on the beach. I for everything, and I’m just going to keep on whom she met in New York in 1964 (and to a singer, and so on, but their music wasn’t looked at the jazz scene and saw that I fighting.” whom she has recorded a tribute album, programmatic, it didn’t tell a story. In my hadn’t changed anything.” And though the Remembering Bud / Cleopatra's Dream, mind, it’s very important to have a certain change in the music as well as her recent Selected Discography: Evidence, 1991), Akiyoshi, who also cites attitude, it must reflect my view of certain popularity would seem to indicate other­ Long Yellow Road, 1975 (RCA 1350) drummers Max Roach, Arthur Taylor, and things—that’s what I like to bring into the wise, a glance at the cover of March ’95’s Tales o f a Courtesan, 1975 (RCA 10723) Roy Haynes as major influences, explores music I write—a point of view. JazzTimes seems to confirm past doubts: Road Time, 1976 (RCA 2242) fluent rhythmic variations and articulate “Racism and Jazz: Same as It Ever W as.. .or Finesse, 1978 (Concord Jazz 4069) improvisations which lead her from single­ With pieces like “Kogun” (Road Worse?” The article, written by James T. Remembering Bud, 1991 (Evidence 22034) note punctuations to chord clusters to flut­ Time, RCA, 1976)—a tale of tragedy Jones IV, explores the racial and sexual Carnegie Hall Concert, 1992 (Columbia tering runs. inspired by the news of a Japanese soldier prejudice which has persisted in the jazz 48805) Akiyoshi has called herself a “member of discovered in the Philippines thirty years world and worldwide. In it, Akiyoshi recalls Desert Lady-Fantasy, 1994 (Columbia society first and a musician second,” though after the war had ended—and “Tales of a her own experiences while examining 57856) the two often occupy the same role in her Courtesan” (Tales of a Courtesan, RCA, today’s scene: daringly diverse compositions, which 1975)—which deals with the West’s false Ben Goodman is a jazz musician who expand the limits of both music and musi- romanticization of the Japanese courtesan— If you're a man, you can join a big band if lives in Ithaca. page6 The HOOK PRESS April 1995 Dot Matrix and the Screaming Abdabs

London Bridge tion, played a word-game with London places our flags! Anchors fucking away! Two years! imagination, making Henry Miller look rather Louis-Ferdinand Celine and London talk, deliberately turning the Ten years if we need to! All our worries over­ tame, because not inventive enough; Celine Translated from the French by name O’Callaghan into a place name: board! Southward bound! Someplace where scrambles things and people as Picasso scram­ Dominic Di Bernardi O’Callagham. Indeed, C61ine invents a verbal nobody’ll know us anymore! Whoah! hold on! I bled them, and you have to be willing to live Dalkey Archive Press, London fog of his own, amid which his see a cop! among poisonous confetti to get him at all. 449 pages, $23.95 weirdos and nasties can please themserves, I do, although each time I embark on a work consecrated to a cult of mere energy, like sur­ You do not lose the sense of tumult, but you by him I get that old oh-not-again feeling: why Paul West realists who have read too much Bergson. gain something almost Dickensian (Pickwick doesn’t he invent a new trick? But Celine is an Eliot’s and Celine’s London fogs are not that Papers, anyone?) and you end up respecting obsessive, a truculent and scabrous one who Some authors appropriate certain punctua­ far apart and have something in common with the author for managing to hold on to the sen­ harps on how ungenteel and pungent the tion marks to themselves, so much so as to Pound’s stuck-up Chinese. Obscurity for all tence convention in the very teeth of abandon. human chemism (as Dreiser called it) is. He is make trademarks of them: Emily Dickinson three became a kind of pseudo-calculus, Yet this is not Celine’s favored mode; he also funny, in the sense that Ionesco was; he the dash, Juan Goytisolo the colon, and Celine denoting despair but touting defiance. If we prefers to show disintegration in a disintegrat­ rips the absurd out of its context and dangles it the three dots learnedly dubbed ellipsis. are going to read C61ine at all, we have to ed way, and you say, well, look at his materi­ in front of you like some demented fairground Celine signs his work constantly, forever reckon with the disrupted Europe he lived in al. He creates a finical Frenchman who, want­ barker. Then he rams it down your throat, interrupting, leaving things incomplete, and could not cope with. ing to go to Tibet, tries to finance the trip by adding a manufactured absurd to the one implying that literary artifacts are always London Bridge begins as follows, with a winning a gas-mask contest. And all the tera­ vouchsafed by nature. It’s not a bad formula worthless, never really worth embarking on fairly gentle version of his spatter-splatter. tology of war comes to bear: the blinded, the for writing destructive novels which, far from because...words are vapid and human nature You feel the presence of a saliva machine, a mutilated, the “shell-shocked,” not to mention being satirical, make you loathe the human wretched. Why bother recording a trashy schizophrenic who-is sneezing all over you: rejected civilian volunteers with mightily condition and set you thinking C61ine was species in a trashy medium? He poses the bloated sex organs, who have no place at the really enamored of stuff delicate and chaste, to question and then returns to the onslaught, as The door’s already mobbed.. .Even though we’d front (“how swollen up he was.. .big as a cau­ be found on what planet? He is always saying if flicker vertigo were his cup of tea. He finds raced over...so’s the gate...so’s the side­ liflower”; “big as a cantaloupe”). He does not how disgusting we are, how loathsome life is. humans revolting, but ends up happy to dab­ walk...and every copy o f the T im e s opened let you forget the military gas mask’s khaki The “Cupid with his arrow ripping apart my ble in them, in no way approaching the moral- wide...Every last one of them had to be here nozzle with its ribbed tube or the glass eye­ guts” is really Boethius saying ‘To be healed, ism of the Dada movement. To some, this is about the want ad... A great-looking pieces, the way the masked human resembles you must first bare your wound.” What he the ideal fate for an anti-Semite who fled from house...real posh...surrounded by a big gar­ an ant. Indeed, although this is World War calls “caca,” “crapola,” “the monstrous France in 1945 into exile in Denmark. But den...flower beds, roses, out of this world... One, there are intimations of bizarre astrono­ whambams,” are what Gide found the fruits of Celine says evil be thou my good, or at least some flunkey held the people back...urging my to come (a substance “supercompressed” the earth (les nourritures terrestres), and, in a depravity be it. His best-known novel, Voyage patience. until “a piece the size of a thimble weighed a way, Celine readies you for life, as if you, the to the End of Night (1932), announces the ton!”). An inexplicit horror movie uncurls reader, were an intern in a raucous, blood- arrival of a prose both violent and ragged, The question here, as always in Celine, is throughout this long disheveled novel. The bathed trauma center. (I wonder, by the way, something monstrous to the gurus of decorum. how much difference do the dots make? If we technology of extermination somehow justi­ if those monstrous whambams are what I used London Bridge, written in similar style, imagine the text without them, have we lost fies Ferdinand’s affair with a bawdy English to know as the screaming abdabs.) resumes Guignol's Band (1944), addresses some subtly infiltrated phantom of life’s ter­ aristocratic nymphet who coaxes him into Perhaps the most visionary sequence in this itself to the underworld of London during minal disjointedness? You wonder because incessant sexual frenzy and scapegrace exag­ turbulent book, is that in which Ferdinand and World War I and picks up the harum-scarum Cdline also writes pages of fairly orthodox gerations muttered during this or that act: Virginia-enter a bookstore and look through career of young Ferdinand, a fugitive from the prose, providing a counterpoint for his dot shelves devoted to human inventions, from trenches who wangles his way into the com­ matrixes but also evincing the virtues of the slink their crotches right up over my nose...I’m the wheelbarrow to the racing car, and Vir­ pany of one Cascade, super-pimp, who fluent, complete manner, as in this: lodged in their pink smothering thighs, steeped ginia, fourteen years old, recognizes none of it informs him that pimps called to the colors in the incense, the aroma of ass, the fra­ as part of human history. She has never heard hand over their whores to Cascade. Dominic He’ll jinx me for sure! Let him go off himself to grances...waves...of heat that could set you of anything; she is “clueless” about everything Di Bernardi, whose translation is slangy and dig up his demons! plus his ancestors while he’s nibbling and gobbling for centuries on end, asses but sex. She has no idea how to choose a book; vivid, as it should be, provides a useful sum­ at it! it’s all just a bunch of depressing, mumbo made in heaven, the blonde [sic] tufts of angels, she does not know what books are for. Celine mary of the earlier novel, reminding us that, jumbo!! and then there’s sex-crazed Pepe with oh how like slices of ham cured in Paradise.... makes us choose between her tabula rasa and when London Bridge came out in France in her jade temples! Oh! I'm telling you, I wanted an overknown history that teaches us nothing. 1964, it was both uncorrected and unrevised; to put all that stuff behind me! The whole crew A daft logic holds the book together, as the C61ine had gone. The revised French text, can all go and get embalmed! W e were off to ghastliness of war drives Ferdinand to more Paul West won the 1993 Lannan Prize though edited by its author, retains many the other side of the world! my gamine my and more severe extremes, even as Inspector for Fiction with Love’s Mansion. His most incorrect place names and idioms, here to sweetheart my bird! she’d be my totem! my sal­ Matthew of Scotland Yard pursues both Fer­ recent books are Sheer Fiction III (essays) some extent corrected; but it may well be that vation! we'd have the Tragacanth Sea all to our­ dinand and his Virginia, and London fills with and A Stroke of Genius, a memoir of C61ine, intent upon expressionistic obfusca­ selves! All for just us two! Virginia! Let’s hoist unorganized whores. C61ine has a radical illness. The Doctor of Letters

A Stroke of Genius numerous books since his stroke, and this one medicine expects from the “model patient.” “The general way that people have of refer­ Paul West is among his best. He all but becomes an expert on his illness, ring to phenomena...appeals to me not at all Viking, 180 pages, $21.95 Not a depressing book at all, despite its and this leads to several confrontations with and sometimes causes me severe aesthetic grim subject matter, it gives us fascinating doctors and hospital staff. One time he was distress. I am a microscope and telescope Chris Furst glimpses into the complexities and frailties of told that hospitals did not exist for the conve­ man, a demon of the magnifying glass. I want the body as well as into the processes by nience of their patients, a bloody-minded to know what I am among, and no generics.” This is a book that might never have been which the imagination comes to grips with its expression of hubris on the part of too many A bald retelling doesn’t interest him, allied as written if “medical events” had turned out own demise. “Prey to miscellaneous degener­ physicians. About doctors, he “now began to it often is with a terminal incuriosity which differently in 1984. While teaching as a visit­ ations, I want them to be an opera, say, or a discover their nature. Some were fine, some elides the details in the supposed rush to get to ing professor at the University of Arizona, fathomable tableau.” Operatic it is, orches­ were not; what both groups had in common the heart of the matter. West’s matter is the Paul West felt a strange sense of well-being, trated with the full resources of the language, was an almost total ignorance of the fact that a heart, not only the faulty pump in his own but there were warning signs amid the famil­ abundant with metaphors which link the sep­ sick patient was not someone to spar and chest, but the seat of the emotions, and he iar migraines that he had known for many arate worlds of medicine and literature. argue with.” When asked to describe his recounts how he learned from the Hopi to years. Sitting on his writing desk in Tucson West’s work refuses to acknowledge the symptoms, West angered one doctor with the pace himself after the stroke, “doing every­ was the kachina Sotuqnangu, “the harbinger received idea that disciplines should be kept offerings from his novelist’s imagination. If thing slowly, to make it last,.. .and the proces­ of trouble amid homogeneous peace.” This apart. In this, West is more akin to Sir West wasn’t going to provide him with the sional view you develop if you shed the cate­ Arizona idyll saw him begin The Place in Thomas Browne, and he manages to become impoverished language of spare medical gorical thinking of an impatient civilization.” Flowers Where Pollen Rests, what he calls his a kind of doctor of letters while meditating reportage, he wasn’t going to put up with such For all the pain he suffers, you never get the Hopi novel, a book watched over, and, in part, upon his illness. playfulness. “It was his professional solemni­ sense that he wallows in pity or expects pity narrated by the presence of Sotuqnangu. That West explores his symptoms with a philat­ ty that I upset, and it did not occur to him that, from the reader, and though he meditates on summer, West returned home to Ithaca and elic exactness, giving a “grudging tribute to if there was any solemnity to what was going what it means to be a “patient,” a “sufferer,” had a mild stroke, which turned out to be the disease’s ingenuity and brilliance.” He also on, it was mine. All this was about me, not the owner of a damaged heart, he emphasizes first of several health problems he continues becomes a philologist of pharmacology, con­ about him or his reputation.” the “infernal wizardry” with which disease to endure, including heart disease and dia­ sulting his Merck Manual and Physician’s Virginia Woolf wonders in her essay, “On carves into us. Because he is so precise and so betes. Never one to take things for granted— Desk Reference in order to understand the Being 111,” why “illness has not taken its place specific, he can speak about everyone, prov­ in fact, he fits Henry James’ definition of the battery of drugs prescribed to counteract heart with love and battle and jealousy among the ing again that it’s the particular that makes us man on whom nothing is lost—West went fibrillations, to reduce his cholesterol, to keep prime themes of literature,” and calls for a human. Painstaking scholiast of his illness, a into overdrive, not so much making up for his blood thinned, and to lower his blood new language, “more primitive, more sensual, master stylist of metaphorical power, West lost time (a Proustian note that he dwells on pressure. Learning the names for his drugs more obscure.” We are accustomed to regard­ describes with “rueful jubilation” the opera­ throughout the book) as proving that the presents him with the chance to display what ing the body as “a sheet of plain glass.” West tions of mortality, and refuses to be silent threat of death wonderfully concentrates the he calls “voodoo etymology (find its origin, sees that as a holdover from Puritanical times, about it, “sapping the damage on show of its mind. “My body’s stammering downfall has exploit its heart),” and he revels in the Greek if such times are really over. The brisk mod­ horror, and the heart of its potential for inspired me, which is to say animated me and Latin roots and the stories behind the em roundheads who would ignore details and harm.” beyond the usual....When obsession meets names. This is his way, he says, of “befriend­ human quiddity as just so much chaff can find the incurable, creativity sprouts wings.” ing my elixirs.” their views canonized today. West operates Christ Furst is a writer who lives in Always a prolific writer, West has written West rejects the passive role that modern on a fuller idea of what it means to be human. Ithaca. April 1995 The ROOKPRESS Page 7 They Saw the Gorgon

Admitting the Holocaust: and The Literary Imagination (1975), Ver­ sions of “cultural resistance to genocide,” or about the camps? Langer doesn’t address Collected Essays sions of Survival: The Holocaust and the suggestions that art had leverage of any sort that directly, nor is he obliged to. The choice Lawrence L. Langer Human Spirit (1982), and Holocaust Testi­ against the organized might of a murderous to confront this testimony is a personal one Oxford University Press, monies: The Ruins of Memory, which won the modern state. Devastatingly illustrative of that each of us makes out of personal tem­ 202 pages, $23 National Book Critics Circle Award for 1991, art’s insubstantiality against power is Israeli perament and a desire to know. Nothing about has devoted a lifetime to Holocaust writing playwright Joshua Sobol’s account, in Art this writing commands us, a truism that Art From the Ashes: and survivor testimony. He reminds us time From the Ashes, of the feverish theatrical applies to any writing but is especially appo­ A Holocaust Anthology and again in his collected essays, Admitting activity in the Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania) site to texts that we know in advance will Lawrence L. Langer, ed. the Holocaust, that “the one theme that ghetto in 1942-43, even as it was being bring bad dreams and self-doubt rather than Oxford University Press, weaves through these testimonies like a scar­ destroyed. The last theatrical revue, notes vicarious wish fulfillment. My own answer 694 pages, $30 let thread is the utter irreconcilability of the Sobol, “was staged just when deportations to comes in three parts. death camp experience with any prior consol­ Estonia were at their worst, and continued 1. To read is an act of Yizkor, or memory, Mark Shechner ing system of values.” Declaiming against until the liquidation of the ghetto on Septem­ and, therefore, a sacrament. We pay respect to others who have sought tragic affirmations in ber 20 [1943], when the songs of the revue the victims in their mass graves. As Joshua How insubstantial the review is as a medi­ the slaughter—Victor Frankl, for one, who accompanied the last of the Vilna Jews being Sobol writes in the preface to his play Ghetto, um for talking about reproduced in its entirety Lawrence Langer’s latest in Art From the Ashes: books, which one would “History should be a con­ prefer to read aloud, page stant and permanently liv­ by page, to anyone within ing presence, the fruit of earshot. But who would sit creative and imaginative still to listen? Such memory. Maybe because it books—especially the is the only possible way to anthology, Art From the assume it and yet to go on Ashes—change the mean­ living, to survive.” ing of publishing just as 2. We read in uneasy surely as they redefine recognition that extraordi­ what we mean by writing. nary things were achieved Writing and publishing, by people either on the however we usually con­ edge of death or reflecting ceive of them, are activi­ on the deaths they had ties within imaginable been spared. In spite of range of things we do our­ the prohibition we may selves. How, then, do we observe against taking come to terms with words pleasure from art produced that were smuggled out of under these circumstances, death camps, that were we may still find ourselves found in the pockets of the captivated by the words dead after they were of Paul Celan, Abraham exhumed from their Sutzkever, Tadeusz Bo- graves, that were sealed up rowski, Primo Levi, Nelly in chimneys for a half cen­ Sachs, Charlotte Delbo, tury? And what of the lives Jean Amdry, Pierre Gas- and deaths revealed in car, and Aharon Appelfeld, them, the worst that can be among many others, and known about the human the drawings and paintings condition? The alienness of Leo Haas, Karel Fleis- of the experiences in Art chmann, Peter Kien, and From the Ashes, overlain Fritz Taussig. The furtive by the grip they exert upon and irrepressible aesthete us, resists the normal prac­ in each of us, in whose tices, the routine conden­ behalf Theodor Adorno sations and summaries, of (reprinted from Art from the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology, Oxford University Press, 1995) once declared that to write the book reviewer’s trade. Leo H aas, Expecting the Worst, Terezin Monument, Terezin, 1943-45. poetry after Auschwitz We normally trust litera­ was barbaric, bootlegs a ture to affirm our common humanity, and wrote in Man's Search for Meaning that “if taken to the camps.” The mind simply reels in measure of shameful enjoyment from images even when a writer works out of a psycholog­ there is a meaning in life at all, then there the face of such a vision: the obstinate, muti­ sharp as knives and words hard as steel about ical dungeon, like Fyodor Dostoyevsky, or is must be a meaning in suffering”—Langer nous persistence of the creative impulse in the things that can only be known to us through chained to the rock of nada—Samuel Beck­ counsels us to give up all moral tranquilizers, face of its inability to alter history by an inch them. This isn’t classic Schadenfreude, plea­ ett—or is a dweller in mental labyrinths— words like “redemption,” “martyrdom,” and or an ounce. sure in disaster, but a more complex and trou­ Franz Kafka—the imagination, the raw “heroism,” that seek to ennoble suffering and If, as it seems, we share no common lan­ bling emotion to those who experience it, power to embroider all that gloom with inven­ death. The moral balances of classic tragedy, guage with the victims or framework for embarrassed excitement despite the knowl­ tion, lightens the darkness with its great “I from Job to Sophocles to Shakespeare, had no understanding either their experiences or their edge of horror. (Adomo warned that art, even am.” place in a world where the innocent were tenacious clinging to art under the sign of as it does homage to suffering, also transfig­ Where The Holocaust is the subject, how­ summarily killed, the survivors were crippled annihilation, what can we learn or how are we ures it, palliating some of the horror even as it ever, we have no common experience to draw by guilt, and many of the perpetrators walked strengthened by reading Langer’s collected bears witness. This is a paradox, which one upon, and affirmations seem blasphemous. away with their skins intact and consciences essays, Admitting the Holocaust, or the com­ simply faces and acknowledges in reading Langer, professor emeritus at Simmons Col­ clear. panion anthology, Art From the Ashes, 694 lege and previous author of The Holocaust Langer is especially indignant about illu­ pages of journals, fiction, poetry, and art from see They Saw the Gorgon, page 12

THE Death a n d Amos AFTERMATH Deliverance LIVING WITH THE “Euthanasia” in Germany 1900-45 Under this Blazing Light HOLOCAUST Michael Burleigh

Published for the first time in English, this AARON HASS The thorough documentation and chilling quotations collection of essays reveals the personal and bring out the extent o f the complicity o f the medical political thoughts of one of Israel's most profession, and the extent to which the programme A remarkable account of how celebrated novelists, including a look at the was ideologically It also a powerful study human beings can, despite great driven. is Palistinian conflict, Israeli socialism, the concept o f the ulay propaganda can make the unthinkable suffering learn to live, hope, of the "Homeland," the Kibbutz, and Zionism. seem normal. trust and even love again. —Jonathan Glover, author of Causing Death, Saving Lives Bom in Jerusalem — William Helmreich in 1939, Oz is the From its origins in the concept of “negative author of fifteen human worth” to its chilling emergence in the books, including My The Aftermath offers a perspective of how one who has lived with Michael, In the Land terror for years is able to avoid paralysis and move forward. Il is death camps, the author has exhaustively researched of Israel, To Know a a book about how people live with gnawing doubts and uncer­ the role of all those involved: bureacracts, doctors, Woman, and Fima. tainty concerning their past and future actions and inaction. It is a lawyers, relatives, and the patients themselves. He is currently a tale of the anguish they feel because of their first-hand knowledge professor of Modem 384 pages 45 halftones $18.95 paperback of the evil in their fellow human beings that so unjustly struck and Hebrew Literature deprived them of what w as rightfully theirs. offers at Ben-Gurion The Aftermath University. the most comprehensive examination of the psychological impact of the Holocaust on survivors ever undertaken. 224 pages $19.95 cloth 272 pages $22.95 cloth p a g e s April 1995 April 1995 The B OOKPRESS page 9 THE PLANET OF THE BLIND

master.” It’s a poem I’ve always loved, in rored walls—all lit by indirect lighting and ness imagines itself as an old man holding or Huckleberry Finn. Blind;” or—“Library of Congress.” find that I cannot see the famous paintings Stephen Kuusisto part for its stoic acceptance of decline in high-intensity bulbs—can reduce my objects close to his face. of Veldzquez and Goya because they are age, but also because it’s a severe test of momentum. The darkness of restaurants and I can still hear that actor’s voice I’d follow each rhapsodic hanging behind ropes that prohibit the The following selections are from The irony, which is, after all, the truest defini­ bars quickens and tightens my chest. I edge At ten or eleven, I listened to recorded with its bass notes, or the static twist—Perry tries to find insane from drawing too close. Since I can’t Planet of the Blind, a memoir in progress by tion of growing old as a process...how’s along the bar, without poise, feeling sudden books from the Library of Congress for and hiss of records played all afternoon the path to emptiness draw near, I see oceans of mud in vast gild­ Stephen Kuusisto. Kuusisto was born with a your irony doing? In the face of anger and reverberations of alarm. In a room designed whole days at a stretch, sometimes feigning ed frames instead of the ceremonial world condition known as the “retinopathy of pre­ loss? When your will is flapping like a tom for urbane and sexy people, I feel the boy­ illness to stay home from school and while They’d arrive in black, metallic cartons- crossing polar ice— of court or the sprawl of lusty peasants. I maturity "—a form of blindness which has sail...how’s your irony? The art of losing hood panic, but my myopic self-conscious­ away the hours with Life on the Mississippi their labels fading: “Matter for the or Huck slips away walk through the immense museum looking allowed him to navigate the world on the isn’t hard to master. Of course. from the Widow’s fetters, for shafts of sunlight and watch the swirling margins of vision. His poems and transla­ dust motes. Then I go to a souvenir counter tions have appeared in numerous maga­ and the needle would stick—then silence. to buy a museum guide—I’ll read about the zines including Antioch Review, Partisan I’d flip it over, paintings I can’t see—but the print is micro­ Review, Poetry East, Poetry, and Seneca It’s the word “blind” that I’ve been run­ feeling for the center scopic, smaller than the telephone book. Review. He lectures widely on disability ning from. I began with my mother’s fears As I walk through the museum, I feel like issues in higher education and is an active that, as a category, blindness meant a with practiced fingers, some great, totemic zebra-god, as Kafka- alumnus of “Guiding Eyes for the Blind, ” reduced life for her child. To her credit, she as the Duke and Dauphin hovered esque a museum-goer as you’ll ever find, one of the nation's leading guide dog strove to give me an ordinary boyhood, one in blackness all the while, aware that watching, I will be watched. The schools. with bicycles and motorboats. I learned to light in the Prado is alternately prismatic, pilot a boat without seeing where I was suspended in their violence. and dark as a jail. I stand in the sunbeams going. I navigated by an odd series of con­ Books might last for days, under the oval skylights and watch the vulsive impressions and memories. Some­ but I had them to afford world break up into rainbows. Then I turn a In a photo I can’t find anymore, a dozen times an adult would say “can you see that comer into a great, vaulted darkness of non- blind men sit at a table in a coffee ware­ Stephen Kuusisto and his dog, Corky. breakwater over there? Aim to the left of in half light, and dark ascensions, being where an important painting hangs house. It’s 1885, the “Gilded Age,” and it.” But I could rarely see what they were listening without moving. behind a veil, black as an abandoned light­ there’s something grand about American feel a wind blow right through her head, and talking about. I just aimed the boat and hit The machine was government issue, house. progress, a palpable thing transmitted by then she was blind!” the throttle. I go whirling slowly about, wrapped in telephone and electric light. There’s a new He puts special emphasis on the word a veteran of the “New Deal”— ribbons of refracted light from the great scale: American railway stations are loftier blind. I look at the high-speed stained glass (the blind began to “read” in that vaulted dome of this cathedral to Goya. But than the palaces of Europe, and even a cof­ of my own myopic Manhattan as the cab Depression.) I’ve traveled so far and I hate to be circum­ fee warehouse in Manhattan arches like a races down Fifth Avenue. I ask the driver if I run because I’m having trouble reading. It sent off heat like a stove. scribed by tricks of the light, so I fall in with cathedral, sunlight from its windows pierc­ his aunt has people to look after her? “No,” The day begins with a heaviness, a wintry a group of American tourists from the Mid­ ing like spotlights and catching the blind he says, “no one will go near her—she has feeling, even in summer, the pages all red I leaned close, clutching a tissue, west who are dutifully following a Spanish men at their table. They look as if they the voodoo now.” and blue and brilliant and unreadable. I’ll and heard the reader’s stem appeal— woman tour guide. She spots me as an might be sitting in Bamum’s center ring, a When we get to my street, the driver is go running. I’ll run right out of this body. this book resumes on the next record.... imposter, a freeloading listener, and, as my novelty, twelve blind men drinking coffee. disappointed to discover that I can count my To trick myself into motion I sometimes say eyeball’s pupil strains to see the fetlock of a It’s an oddity of proportion: the benighted money by myself. that everything real is artificial. I’m the only A child who often stayed alone in rooms, painted horse, she points me out to the in a vast industrial room, their faces lit by real thing, running blind. listening as a daily ritual, hardens his mem­ group. “This man is not in our tour,” she towering sunbeams, each one unaware of c x > Today I ran six miles and collided with a ory, makes his tongue sharp. He disappears says. “Sir, you will have to leave.” I leave the camera’s invasion. They’re shown in pair of shopping carts in the tricky shade of like dew, leaving the warmth of an inverted the museum, a flapping windmill, and find varying aspects of consideration with head Legally blind, I know the eternal Freudi­ several trees. I ran from sunlight into dark. childhood that was quickly filling with the myself doing the muddy umbrella-dance in tilted up or down or slightly to the side, as if an slip of misread signs and advertisements, A big clash of cymbals. Rimsky-Korsakov. words of wise adults. How I longed to be the icy, wet park. Two students approach a confidence were about to be shared with the whirlwind of colors and halos, a road of I nearly gelded myself. old! and ask if I’d care to buy a comic book to the empty air. Their faces have that particu­ mental escapades—I’ll meet you in the help disabled school children. I give them lar blankness that comes from introversion, falling blue light beyond the caverns—let’s some money, thinking of Indra, who a childish submission to a mood. meet there in the overflowing dawn. I shift appears in Indian mythology as an agted A caption said that these were “blind cof­ my glasses—a slow moon appears in the My mother told the school officials that At the unemployment agency, a woman dancer, a presage of victory in battle. fee tasters.” The photo tells us that there’s corridors of dreams. It’s a fun-house world she wouldn’t send me to the Perkins School has read my application and has seen that something of the “savant” about them: of things appearing and disappearing, for the blind. She would enroll me in public I’m classified as “legally blind,” and now they’ve sharpened their intuitions, they waves crowding on a beach, ferns swaying school. I am sitting at the front of the class, she guides me to her desk. Though the act is wear the contemplative mask of people who behind a thin curtain. Everywhere, colored hunched over a special desk with a top that kind, there is a faint whiff of fragility in the A woman guides me across the street— know something. But it’s more than that: leaves have hidden the path I was walking raises like an architect’s table so that my enterprise, as though, if she hadn’t guided she’s recognized my white stick. It turns out it’s a dreamy appearance, a far-off look, the on. The days are like Zen-autumn, each books might be closer to my eyes. Jokes me step-by-step, I’d have become lost we’re heading in the same direction across “hypnogogic state” between waking and casual moment rises up as a tangled, long- about my crossed eyes, thick glasses. In between two blades of grass. “How fast can several blocks of ice and badly shoveled sleep that fascinated Edgar Allan Poe. Even promised stage of life in which I am wan­ motion I am a means of sport, to be tripped, you type?” she asks. sidewalks. Since we’re walking side by in this temple of American progress, the dering “on ways I do not know.” jostled; names are applied to my back with So here we are, a half-blind, unemployed side, I keep the conversation going: “ I feel faces of the blind excite superstition. masking tape. I am the young Charles “creative writing teacher,” who cannot fill like a man in a Russian film—you know, Then in a flash I am transformed from Bovary, newly arrived with a forlorn and out the fine print forms in the unemploy­ one of those high-speed, black-and-white Basho, the Zen wanderer, into Stan Laurel, absurd hat he can never hide. ment office, and an overburdened casework­ documentary scenes where the people walk the angel of the North American orphanage. er, who hands me someone else’s employ­ unbelievably fast.” She laughs agreeably. In a taxi riding down Broadway, I hear A friend calls to say she’ll meet me in half My days of school taught me to wish for ment card as I get up to leave. I spot the mis­ “Yeah, I’ve seen that,” she says, “people in the driver mumbling and I lean forward to an hour. She drives a red Chrysler. I walk perfect eyes, to walk as though I could real­ take and point it out. She’s embarrassed. huge fur coats.” catch his words. He’s talking to me—do I down to the street and approach the car. I ly see, to emerge regularly from my dilapi­ “It’s the quartz lenses in my glasses,” I tell mind if he asks me a question? He has reach for the door on the passenger’s side dated province and ride a bicycle as if, eyes her, “they’re excellent for proofreading.” This is Ithaca, on the coldest day in a cen­ noticed my white cane. He wants to know if and give it a tug, but it’s locked. I rap on the closed and moving fast, I might be impervi­ Squinting in the incandescent light, I feel tury. It’s the last day for me to pay my over­ I can see anything. His tone is a somber window, but my friend doesn’t seem to ous to disgrace. the hot wire in my eyes that comes from due cable television bill. It’s now 20 whisper: he’s talking like a man who will hear. I rap again, tug on door, rap and tug. muscle spasms and tension. When this hap­ degrees below zero. I’ve been unemployed soon make a confession. I wonder if he Then I walk around to her side of the car. So much of what I see is just barely pens, the light becomes a veil of arrows. for several months. I’m being held together , wants to know if I can count money. I tell When I lean down to her window, I see at glimpsed: quick flash of the pickerel in the Perhaps because I’m feeling the “friendless” by “Star Trek: The Next Generation”—a him I can see a little bit. By his accent I last the face of a genuinely terrified Chinese tall grass. sensation of the unemployment office, the TV show in which people wearing designer guess he’s from the Caribbean. Haiti? woman. I motion to her to roll down her quickening pain leads to memories of high pajamas regularly defy the laws of physics. First he tells me how his aunt lost her window. She won’t. I try to explain my mis­ One day, a boy I thought to be a friend school where I’d have to go to the nurse’s I don’t think I can live through the early sight—he snaps his Angers, that’s how fast take in sign language—pointing to my eyes, stole my glasses in the middle of a lunch office and lie in a dark comer in a dolorous evening without the voice of Counselor it was. Does she have friends, people to telling her loudly that I’ve mistaken her car hour recess. My panic brought me alive like vertigo. With my eyes closed, I saw the Troy, an empathic woman who knows help her? How are her spirits? These are my for that of a friend. I begin backing away a tree full of starlings. To this day, I picture hydrogen atmosphere bursting with sun what’s happening in the hearts of inter- questions. He doesn’t care about these from her into the street like an ungainly kid that boy clutching my glasses at a safe dis­ spots. galactic strangers. I choose not to tell any of issues. It turns out that we’re talking about on roller skates. tance and watching me drift about. Blinded All my life, I’ve had to lie down in the this to my sidewalk companion who has lost more than his aunt—we’re navigating the I never know when I’ll be transformed instantly and put on display, I was a sea middle of the day. Once, while working as a her Chevrolet. She’s from Tennessee. I tell realm of sudden blindness, the land of dark from the man of empty mountains and bam­ lion, measureless and unwieldy. More than college dean, I lay down on a conference her how to find the car. As we’re about to spells and sad fortunes, the world of boo grass into this strange, rock-gathering thirty years have passed, but I’m still horri­ table in my office. A secretary walked in and part, she says, “My husband just broke his voodoo. fied by how it felt to belong so thoroughly orphan who goes about with a half-smile. found me stretched across the table like ankle. He’s such a cry-baby. I told him it’s Now the driver tells me about his aunt: to other people, to be, in effect, their pos­ W.C. Fields asleep in a pool hall. “ I’m just only a broken ankle. I have to find the car P v > “A beautiful girl, nice hair, nice teeth, very session. preparing for my class on ancient Finnish now and drive him to the hospital.” On the fine! Let me tell you she was a beauty. But poetry,” I told her. ‘Today we’re studying next street, I step aside for two elderly she goes with the voodoo man, even though Audre Lorde once wrote: “The quality of out-of-body-travel.” women. One says to the other, “Poor man! the voodoo man has a wife, she goes with, light by which we scrutinize our lives has How do I put this on a job form? Some­ And he’s so young!” The other says, “I saw him. She cooks for him and looks after him. direct bearing upon the product which we I live in the “Customs House” between times I need to recline and endure the wild, a blind boy just the other day. He was all by Everyone tell her not to have anything to do live, and upon the changes which we hope the land of the blind and that of sight. There iridescent, moon-glow, motile bacteria that himself at the K-Mart.” with this man, but she don’t listen...she to bring about through those lives.” are moments when I see better than others; skitter across my retinas. Please hold my spends all her time with the voodoo man. conditions of light are peremptory and calls. Last night I heard a woman on the radio One day, when the voodoo man’s wife is Sometimes light and the art of scrutiny loaded with impact. The whims of archi­ talking about her experiences with gone, she goes to his house and tells him are in opposition. There’s a poem, a vil- tects have enormous power over my experi­ menopause— she had to put her head in the that she’s going to clean up. She opens the lanelle by Elizabeth Bishop, which has a ence of vision: a post-modern shopping door to the voodoo man's closet. She could refrain—“The art of losing isn’t hard to mall with its cantilevered floors and mir­ Scott Wrrder In the great Prado museum in Madrid, I see Planet o f the Blind, page 15 page 10 The BQQKEHESS April 1995 Balkanizing the Yugoslav War

continued from page 1 before the fall of Yugoslavia and the whole the former Yugoslavia has never been the cials urging them to be vigilant against the Macedonian fiasco. It would be impossible war it is often portrayed to be: a settling of “dangerous increase in anti-Yugoslav propa­ lack of those essential elements of life which for a Greek leader to appeal to the Balkan pre-communist, deep-rooted historical griev­ ganda from internal and external enemies.” make possible a real society of human character of his country today. Greece has ances. The fact that both Croatian and Ser­ During the period that he was in control of beings... .When a miserable Greek village, such joined the rest of Europe in disassociating bian leaders have played that myth out in the the Belgrade party, a nationalist campaign as the one I am speaking of...embellishes its itself from its Balkan neighbors, reverting to media, especially in carefully orchestrated began and you saw protests by Serbs from meagre, stultified life by the adoption of a tele­ old claims of superiority and to exclusive use television programs, convinced a lot of for­ the province of Kosovo claiming to be vic­ phone, radio, automobile, tractor, etc., the of the name Macedonia on ancient historical eign observers that what they were witness­ tims of ethnic Albanian genocide. This anti- meaning of the word communal becomes so grounds. ing was a revival of the old Balkan problem, Albanian rhetoric was stepped up when fantastically distorted that one begins to won­ Before the Yugoslav war began, the term of the “Balkanization” that the region is sup­ Milosevic became head of the Serbian der what is meant by the phrase ‘human soci­ Balkan had hardly been used in the West posed to suffer from like some mysterious party’s Central Committee. The propaganda ety.’ There is nothing human about these spo­ except to refer to a locus of events that pre­ irremediable disease. Gagnon, who is writing against the Albanians was part of a broader radic agglomerations of beings; they are ceded World War I, the conflicts of 1912-13, a book on the sources of the conflict, sees strategy to portray Serbia as the victim of beneath any known level of life which this and to the bullets in Sarajevo that precipitat­ them in the domestic politics of the former Tito’s Yugoslavia. But with only 39 percent globe has known. ed Europe into that catastrophic war. John Yugoslavia, beginning in the 1960s and con­ of the population, and with anti-communists Gunther probably both reflected and shaped tinuing after the death of Tito, when actual elected to power in Slovenia, it was difficult The writer is Henry Miller, in his Colossus American thinking on the subject in the reforms and demands for a radical restructur­ to see how Milosevic could win a multi-party of Maroussi. His rhetoric simply echoes, 1940s, if thinking is the right word for it, in ing of the Yugoslavian economy and political election. He had to create a state with a Ser­ with a few notable exceptions like Rebecca his popular book Inside Europe: bureaucracy threatened the Communist Party bian majority. That meant that some of his West, that of the average classically-trained elite, particularly in Serbia: supporters in Croatia and Bosnia would have traveler in the Balkans. By the time Miller It is an intolerable affront to human and to be brought within the borders of the new was writing, in the 1940s, Greece was seen political nature that these wretched and VPG: Already, in the 1960s, the reformers state. By careful manipulation of the media, as a special case among the Balkan nations, unhappy little countries in the Balkan penin­ were labeled “historical enemies of Serbia” especially TV but also the popular press, but the notion of a primitive, subhuman race sular can, and do, have quarrels that cause by conservatives in the Party. A coalition of Milosevic revived wartime hatred of Croatia occupying lands once inhabited by more world wars. Some hundred and fifty thou­ conservatives, including disaffected war vet­ and portrayed, first the Albanians as ethnical­ noble beings, including the Turks of the sand young Americans died because of an erans and members of the central bureaucra­ ly inferior, and later the Muslims. Ottoman Empire, is remarkably persistent. event in 1914 in a mud-caked primitive vil­ cy, began to invoke the massacre of Serbs by GHW: How influential was Germany’s When did we start using the term Balkans lage, Sarayevo. Loathsome and almost the Croatian Ustasa leadership during World recognition of Croatia in the outbreak of the in a negative sense? I remember being sur­ obscene snarls in Balkan politics, hardly War II as a reason to fear Croatia’s reformist war? prised in 1981 when, during an election cam­ intelligible to a W estern reader, are still vital leaders. Eventually, Tito was coerced by the VPG: The Germans were well aware of paign marked by anti-US rhetoric, the future to the peace of Europe, and perhaps to the conservative lobby to purge the reformists in Croatian President Franjo Tudjman’s inten­ Prime Minister of Greece, Andreas Papan- world. Croatia and Serbia, but the seeds of a new tion to carve up Bosnia. Warren Zimmerman, dreou, used the slogan “We are Balkan” as a sort of conflict had been sown. the former US ambassador to Yugoslavia, in means of attracting support for a more inde­ So frozen was the pre-war image of the GHW: How was the conflict new? a recent article in Foreign Affairs, claimed pendent stance in Greek foreign policy. Balkans with their “obscene snarls” in the VPG: By casting the threat posed by that there was evidence to suggest that the Greece had always argued for its special sta­ mind of the US administration and peace­ reform in terms of ethnic nationalism, the invasion of Bosnia was planned at least a tus as the cradle of Western civilization keeping organizations, that in 1993, the conservatives shifted the focus of political year in advance. In fact, what is interesting is among the Balkan nations, and had reaped Carnegie Endowment, instead of calling for debate away from the cross-cultural reformist that both the Serbian and the Croatian leaders the dubious benefits of Western European a new investigation into the war in the former project, and toward the alleged threats from understood the necessity of dividing Bosnia. intervention in its War of Independence and Yugoslavia, simply reprinted its 1914 report, Croatian nationalism. Then they could argue Croatian atrocities in Bosnia were on a small­ subsequent political affairs. In 1944, at a with an introduction by George Kennan, that radical reform had brought about the er scale and have received less publicity, but meeting to which none of the active partici­ under the title The Other Balkan Wars: A emergence of nationalism and counterrevolu- the tactics were similar. Tudjman told Zim­ pants were invited, Churchill proposed to 1913 Carnegie Endowment Enquiry in Ret­ tibn. Defining enemies of socialism in ethnic merman: “We have to divide Bosnia—these Stalin that the Russians take the lead in rospect with Reflections on the Present Con­ national terms, they managed to divide the Muslim fundamentalists will involve us in a Romania so that Britain could “play the flict by George F. Kennan. In his introduc­ country’s reformist movement and temporar­ cycle of violence.” hand” in Greece. A final deal was worked out tion, Kennan echoes the rhetoric of Gunther: ily defeat it. The other thing the conserva­ GHW: Is there any truth in the assertion on the basis of percentages, where Greece tives achieved was to involve the Yugoslav that Muslim fundamentalists were active in was put at 90 percent British control, 10 per­ The importance of this report for the world army in the official role of ensuring national Bosnia? cent Russian, with Romania, and eventually of 1993 lies primarily in the light it casts on order against external and internal enemies. VPG: The myth of Muslim fundamental­ Yugoslavia and Bulgaria having the reverse. the excruciating situation prevailing today in By 1974, 12 percent of the federal Central ism in Bosnia is one that Serbs and Croats And if that meant imposing a king no one the some Balkan world with which it dealt, Committee were army officers, as against 2 have both played on. A more secularized wanted on Greece and mowing down the [italics mine] percent in 1969. Muslim population than that of Bosnia is partisans who had resisted the Germans as GHW: What effect did Tito’s death have hard to imagine, but there were Muslims, allies of the British, then so be it. Forty years According to V.P. Gagnon, a Social Sci­ on the conflict? including the president of Bosnia, Alija later, a Socialist Greek leader was appealing ence Research Council-MacArthur Founda­ VPG: After Tito’s death the debate over Izetbegovic, who believed that it was possi­ to Greeks to be “Balkan” again. tion fellow in the Peace Studies Program at reform blew up again, but this time the ble to maintain a strong Muslim identity and There was, perhaps, a chance that Greece, Cornell—back in Ithaca recently after five reformist proposals were much more radical still be an integrated citizen of a multi-ethnic as a member of the European Community months in Zagreb—one of the reasons why and the audience was much wider, with Serbs state. His book, Being Bosnian the Muslim and a country with strong cultural ties to the European Community, the United States, very much in the forefront. In the early ’80s Way, was in no way a fundamentalist state­ Yugoslavia, might have played a decisive and the UN have been so unsuccessful in the Serbian party was among the most liberal ment, but it didn’t prevent him from being role in the newly-emerging Balkan nations, dealing with the political and humanitarian in the country. There were calls for private charged in 1983 with “crimes against but generations of national chauvinism, disaster that confronts them in the former enterprise to become “the pillar of the econo­ Yugoslavia.” In another of his books, Islam encouraged from without and lapped up Yugoslavia is precisely this insistence on my,” and for a multi-party system. The between East and West, Izetbegovic looks at from within, combined with a swing to the historical ethnic rivalries as the underlying response from the conservatives was to raise the model of the US as an ideal of a modem right in Greek politics, made that impossible. motive for the current crisis. I spoke to the issue of Serbian nationalism. state where the president is expected to be a During the 1980s, Greece did, in fact, “Chip” Gagnon, before he departed to spend Slobodan Milosevic emerged as a leader of practicing Christian, but the society tolerates strengthen its economic ties with its neigh­ six months in Belgrade, about what he sees the conservative Belgrade party organization religious pluralism. bors, signing trade agreements with Bulgar­ as the myths and realities of the war. in 1984. One of the first things he did was to GHW: To what extent has the war polar­ ia, Yugoslavia, and Romania. That was It is Gagnon’s firm belief that the war in send out warnings to all Belgrade party offi­ ized religious and ethnic allegiances?

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whose mosque had been burnt and whose houses had been ravaged and desecrated by the Croats, accepted the invitation. GHW: One of your purposes, in visiting Ithaca, is a humanitarian one. You sent us an appeal by the children of Bihac, one that seems to have touched many Ithacans, including the pupils of the Beverly Martin school. How did the appeal reach you and how do you propose to get the funds you col­ lect here into the besieged city? VPG: I received the appeal on E-mail from a group calling itself “The Citizens of the Bihac Region,” based in Zagreb. The children of Bihac appealed to the children of the world to save them from starvation, and there has been an amazing response here. There are a number of ways the group can get money and food into the town. They all involve bribery and some danger, but I checked the group out and they seem to be well organized. The situation is so desperate that any attempt to get through the blockade is worth a try.

* * *

Most commentators on the war in the for­ mer Yugoslavia seem to agree with Gagnon that these are desperate days. Bihac is the latest focus of concern, but Sarajevo has now been under siege for longer than any city in modem European history, longer than Leningrad in World War II. Could anything have been done to stop the atrocities and end the war earlier? The contrast with the Gulf War is striking. Had there been oil in Bosnia, its fate would certainly have been different; but, beyond the lack of economic incentives, lies the old problem of Balkanizing the (reprinted from Sarajevo: A Portrait o f the Siege, Warner Books, 1994) Balkans. How much longer are we going to believe that the Balkans is some marginal On Christmas Eve 1992, in Sarajevo, a man gathers firewood, hacking at a tree stump in a area of Europe, peopled by ethnically and cemetery. Birds, suddenly bereft of a place to land or nest, abandoned the city. religiously divided people who have only co-existed by force, and are really better off VPG: It’s important to keep in mind that VPG: I think the strength of the Serbian had to persuade local Serbs and Croats, who separated? Ask the Bosnian students study­ this conflict has never been one of Serbs ver­ forces has probably been overestimated. bore no grudge against their neighbors, to ing at Cornell. They will tell you that they sus Croats or Christians against Muslims. Many Serbs have fled from the Bosnian areas drive them out of their houses by any con­ grew up in Sarajevo and Bihac, towns where Serbs in Croat or Muslim areas of Bosnia where they once lived and so there is very lit­ ceivable means, including rape and murder. multiculturalism was taken for granted and were as much a target of Serbian aggression tle local support. Bosnian Serbs and Croatians were threatened where being Muslim had as little to do with as anyone else. There were many people in GHW: What do you see as the main stum­ with violence against their families or them­ fundamentalism as being Jewish in the Unit­ all these areas who opposed the war and were bling block to a plan for ending the war? selves if they refused. The trouble is that ed States. It is probably true that the possi­ coerced into acts of aggression against their VPG: The real problem, as I see it, is that homogeneity was something the Bosnians bility of a peaceful transition from a commu­ neighbors. The voting in the last elections in the outside world continues to accept the were quite unused to. They had formed nist state run by a charismatic leader to a Serbia indicated approximately a third of the terms of the war as the Serbian and Croatian strong alliances across the bounds of religion multi-party democracy could not have been population in support of Milosevic’s nation­ nationalists portray it: i.e., as an ethnic con­ and ethnicity, while preserving their particu­ achieved in Yugoslavia without incident. alist party, a third in the middle, and the flict. What they are doing is dealing with war lar cultural observances. There was too much at stake and the memo­ remainder opposed. criminals as if they were heads of state. Bosn­ Imagine defining yourself always in terms ries of World War II were still too fresh. But GHW: How much opposition can be ian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic’s policy of “we” and “they,” but in a positive sense. ethnic and religious differences and old bat­ voiced in the media? doesn’t represent the Serbs as a whole, or The Muslims cook their food this way, we do tle scars can be exploited by anyone with VPG: The control of the media is perhaps even the Bosnian Serbs. The Serbs in the it that way. And then being forced into a life control of the media and a desire for power. the single most powerful weapon the ruling “Republika Srpska” have no choice but to fall of complete cultural homogeneity. Tone We should be aware, as the war drags on and parties have. The free flow of information is in with his policies. The same is true of the Bringa, the Norwegian anthropologist who enmities seem intractable, that the Balkans clearly what they fear most. There is still a Croats in Herzegovina-Bosnia. The whole made a 1992 film for the BBC called “We are have been re-Balkanized not by their “natur­ certain amount of freedom of the press. The ethnic cleansing policy is reinforced by the All Neighbors”—which documented the al” divisions, but by a combination of rath- independent Serbian weekly Vreme, for outside world’s acceptance of the extremist deliberate undermining of neighborly rela­ less local leadership that rubbed salt into old example, is quite open in its criticism of the leaders as the representatives of their respec­ tionships between Croats and Muslims in a wounds and by an uninformed, elitist inter­ Serbian government, but it is expensive and tive ethnic groups instead of political parties. village near Sarajevo— told me, when she national response. read mostly by intellectuals. The popular So far it has been a success. The policy of visited Cornell last year, that she was aston­ press and television stations jn both Serbia bloodying the civilian population’s hands is ished to find that a number of the Croats had Gail Holst-Warhaft is a visiting scholar and Croatia are controlled by the government extremely effective. Force a Serb to kill his been across the mountains to visit their Mus­ at Cornell University's Society for the and are the source of most people’s informa­ Muslim neighbor, and you soon create hatred lim former neighbors and invite them back. Humanities and is the organizer of a region­ tion about the war. Officially, there is free­ across ethnic or religious lines. The key to the Even more astonishing, some of the Muslims al Balkan workshop association. dom of the press, but as soon as criticism of future still lies, not in Bosnia itself, but in the government becomes too strong it is Belgrade. silenced. The Council of Europe has recently GHW: There is a great deal of talk these ornell present protested the heavy tax leveled against a days about multiculturalism in the US and to 1inema satirical weekly paper published in Belgrade. what extent we can create a viable multicul­ GHW: What do you pick up from talking tural society. Are there any lessons to be to people in the streets of Zagreb or Bel­ learned about multiculturalism from the ithaca Premieres grade? Bosnian war? and Lucian Pintille s VPG: It is interesting to talk to people in VPG: The greatest fear of the Serbian and Martin Scorsese Zagreb and hear the wide spread of opinions Croatian leadership is a return to a genuinely Francis Ford Coppola about the war and the extent to which they multicutural society. Serbia’s policy of “eth­ Present ._ - rr k Unforgettable Summer have accepted the government’s propaganda nic cleansing” is more notorious and has had with Kristin Scott-Thomas about their neighbors. Our pediatrician, for more terrible effects than Croatia’s, but both f f example, when he heard we were moving to Tudjman and Milosevic have initiated delib­ Belgrade, immediately started saying, erate policies aimed at achieving ethnic and “You’d better be careful, the Serbs are the religious homogeneity in what was, and had ones who are destroying our cities.” But the been for hundreds of years, a completely CUBA teacher at my daughter’s nursery school said, mixed area of the country. The aim of the A wild, cinematic celebration of Set in 1925 Romania, the film tells “It’s not the Serbs, it’s the leaders’ fault.” homogenization is control, and the key to the Communist kitsch, filmed just after the powerful story of a young And it was Serbians and Croats who had future of the former Yugoslavia lies in the the Cuban missile crisis, that woman trying to escape the actually fought in the front lines who were degree to which the current leadership in Ser­ portrays a Cuba raped by capital­ murderous impact of politics. among the most vocal in opposing the war. bia and Croatia can maintain areas of ist pigs and saved by the revolu­ GHW: Why do you think the cities of unmixed ethnicity. In order to achieve their tionary spirit of its peasants. 4/22 @ 7:15 WSH Sarajevo and Bihac are still holding out— ends, the leaders could not operate without 4/25 @ 7:30 WSH why haven’t they been taken? the complicity of the local population, They 4/1 4 & 4/1 8 @ 7pm W SH p a g e 12 April 1995 Wow in paperback! They Saw the Gorgon

continued from page 7 objective traces can be detected.” squats the lung In reading these journals and memoirs, we shot through, some of the selections in Art From the Ashes.) are regularly challenged to keep our eyes on 3. We read in search of what is not here, the the page and absorb the full measure of the at the edge of fields the winged hour words unwritten, or words written and lost, nightmare, a challenge that Lawrence Langer plucks the grain of snow by writers whom we will never know) whose has devoted his adult life to meeting, but from its own eye of stone. Lav an Boland contributions to the literature of Europe which most readers—and I include myself— would have transformed it. (Ponder these will find beyond their powers. It is hard not to Streamers of light infect me, "These poems are about Ireland, about the body, small recoveries: the last poems of Miklds avert the eyes or shift focus and seek respite Flaws in the crown flicker. about growing older... .The time o f violence.. .is that demanding state o f process where things are Radndti were found in his pocket when he or consolation in something else. The fiction, revealed about womanhood and identity which was exhumed from a mass grave, twenty drama, and poetry in this anthology challenge The following poem was found in Miklds lead on to an investigation.. .o f the poignant and dangerous mischances between expression and months after his murder. Some poems of us in a different way: to not read them as ordi­ Radndti’s address book when his body was experience." — fin™ Abraham Sutzkever, the greatest of the Yid- nary literature and to keep our instinct for exhumed: dish-language holocaust poets, turned up in a being entertained at arm’s length, which, of W • W • NORTON Vilna cellar, forty-nine years after he had hid­ course, we can’t do. There is some stunningly Rolling from Bulgaria the brutal cannonade M ay den them there.) Each written word is haunt­ vivid writing in this anthology by—to name a slams at the ranges, to hesitate and fade; 80 pages ed by a thousand unwritten ones or written few—Aharon Appelfeld, Tadeusz Borowski, men and beasts and carts and thoughts are S9 paper ones forever lost in their pockets, cellars, and Charlotte Delbo, Primo Levi, Jakov Lind, jammed into one, NEW YORK LONDON chimneys, and I imagine this anthology as a Pierre Gascar, and poets Abraham Sutzkever, neighing the road rears up, the maned sky three-volume set, the third volume consisting Dan Pagis, Paul Celan, Miklds Radndti, and will run. of blank pages and being of indeterminate Nelly Sachs. To read any of it with the full And you're the only constant in the length. Indeed, is there not a fourth blank vol­ range of our responses engaged, is to feel changing and the mess; AIternati'v e P r e s s ancJ ume, the size of an entire library, no, the size doubly afflicted: by the situations themselves you shine on eternal beneath my H/wd to FiNd hfoRMATioN i of a city, the silent testimonies of those whom and by our own guilty frisson of aesthetic consciousness; 9 Primo Levi calls the true witnesses, those enjoyment. The very act of reading brings us mute as an angel wondering at the who touched bottom, “saw the Gorgon,” and to the outskirts of survivor’s guilt; our own catastrophe, are “the complete witnesses”? enjoyment feels shameful to us. or the beetle of burial from his hole in a » (As I write this, another small miracle of And yet it is beyond question that the Holo­ dead tree. i recovery has been announced: the shipment caust produced a body of significant writing ■ of lost material from the original YIVO by writers who would have been, under nor­ Perhaps the emblem for this collection is (Institute for Jewish Research) archives in mal circumstances, European writers of this poem by Israeli poet Dan Pagis, “Written Vilna to YIVO’s New York offices by the major stature. Art From the Ashes is testa­ in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car”: Lithuanian government. Some 110 crates of ment to both the imagination and the night­ A ProJect of CRESP Yiddish language materials previously mare; and to stand for the whole, these frag­ here in this carload thought lost—diaries, journals, letters, manu­ ments will have to suffice. iam eve scripts—were found in a Vilna/Vilnius with abel my son A UnIque C oIIeciIon of Oven 6 ,0 0 0 church a few years ago, and a portion of them From Abraham Sutzkever: if-you see my other son books, 6 0 0 Audio Tapes, I $0 are now in New York for sorting, catalogu­ cain son of man Vidros, md TOO ptsiodicAls ing, and microfilming.) Soon it will happen! tell him that i Art From the Ashes plunges us quickly into The black hoops ANAbElTAyloRHAll * CorneII UNlvERsliy the horror of Jewish life under Nazi occupa­ Grow tighter and tighter around my neck! * * * (607)25 56486 tion, first in the ghettos, then in the camps, Impersonally, like a stone in a brook,

M O N fW 9JO -4:OOp« * WED 9:70- 9:00p« with the writing of first-hand witnesses, I shall remain lying under hooves, Some years ago I accompanied a friend, a S M I 2:00-4:00p« • SUN 7:10- 10:»0p« including Jankiel Wiemik, Jacques Furmans- Redeemed from the world. photographer, to an exhibition of Roman ki, Charlotte Delbo, Abraham Lewin, Primo But deep inside me— Vishniac’s photographs of the Jewish com­ Levi, and others. Escaping from Treblinka Three ants still stray: munities of Eastern Europe in the late 1930s. during the uprising in 1943, Jankiel Wiemik One, Standing before one memorable picture of a PIANOS make his way to Warsaw, where he wrote of Under the laurel of my childhood— rain-drenched Jewish Quarter in Kracow, his experiences and was among those who Will return to magicland. Poland, I remarked, “How bleak and terrible • Rebuilt made the existence of the death camps The second, that life was.” “Yes,” she replied, “but look at • Reconstructed known. To dip into any portion of his raw tes­ Under the armor of my dream— the masterful framing, the elegant composi­ • Bought timony, which is unmediated anywhere by Will return to dreamland. tion, the photographer’s use of natural light.” • Sold the distancing rhythms and flourishes of form The third, She was right in her way as I was in mine, • M oved or style, is to be filled with horror. The one who carries my word— and we were faced for a moment with the • Tuned • Rented Others, like Delbo and Levi, wrote of the Will have no path, paradox that the art of catastrophe always psychological consequences of having lived For the land of believing words confronts us with, never more powerfully with the horror, as Delbo, imagining herself Is covered with plague. than in Art From the Ashes: that beauty in an eerie third person, observes, “She came In the valley of shadows, it will watch, is, as Rainer Maria Rilke put it, “the begin­ back home, but not back to life. Life flowed Alone and solitary, ning of terror we’re still just able to bear” over her the way a stream’s water flows over Over my bones. (Leishman/Spender translation). Lawrence the stones it polishes, it wore her away, day Langer’s books are far from the last words on by day. Her gaze faded, her voice lost its From Paul Celan: the Holocaust and art, but they are serious, color, her hair grew gray.” We are reminded dedicated undertakings and splendid, Ithaca Piano Rebuilders of those who survived only to take their own In the comer of time compact introductions to both the terror that (607) 272-6547 lives afterwards: Tadeusz Borowski, Jean the alder revealed we are just able to bear and that which we 310 4th St„ Ithaca (Off H ancock St. 2 blocks from Rt. 13) Amery, Primo Levi, Paul Celan. As Amery, swears to itself in stillness, cannot. who was tortured, writes, “Whoever was tor­ Com plete rebuilding services. tured stays tortured. Torture is ineradicably N o Job too big or too small. Call us. on the back of the earth, breadth of a Mark Shechner is a writer who lives in burned into him, even when no clinically handspan, Buffalo.

o m jr n v e

If you enjoy the Please send a gift subscription of The Bookpress to the stimulating collection of following addresses. Enclosed is $12 for each subscription (Visa / MC / Discover, check, or money order accepted.) reviews, interviews, and essays that The Bookpress Name:______brings to you eight times a Address: ______year, then why not make a gift of The Bookpress to a friend out of town, or to Phone: ones who are leaving town? Name: _ For only $72, the next eight Address: issues will be delivered April 27-29 & May 4-6 at 8 p.m. TtdkcLs: $6 and $8 April 30 at 2 p.m. ? v directly to their door. Ticket Center: 254-ARTS Proscenium Theatre A perfect gift for those Phone: f______who love reading, thinking, Department ol Theatre Arts Please make checks payable to The Bookpress, and good discussion. CORNELL Center lor Theatre Arts DeWitt Building.,215 N. Cayuga St., Ithaca, NY 14850 430 College Avenue L J April 1995 page 13 War on Drugs, Inc. Cafe De'

referred to as the “cocaine coup.” Luis Arce ber of police on the streets increased along Sunday Ben Kohl Gomez, who was Garcia Meza’s Minister of with arrests for drug use. By October 1994, the Interior, and is currently serving 30 years over one million Americans were in prison, 11-2 THE COCA BOOM IN BOLIVIA in a US penitentiary, effectively consolidat­ with another 400,000 in jail and awaiting “Cocaine is not a Bolivian problem,” ed cocaine production and distribution net­ trial. The majority are poor blacks and Lati­ = W affles Adrian Martina explained. “I’ve never even works, reportedly collecting $200 million a nos arrested for drug-related offenses. Inter­ seen it. Cocaine is an American problem. year for government and military officials. nationally, the US has increased its military = Fritters Our problem here comes from those who The Garcia Meza regime institutionalized presence throughout Latin America and the treat us like criminals because we grow coca, government involvement in the drug trade by Caribbean. The “war on drugs” inspired the = Crepes which we have done for thousands of years.” providing protection, including military sup­ invasion of Panama and the arrest of Gener­ Martina and his family, one of 40,000 peas­ port, for the large drug cartels. This led to al Manuel Noriega, actions which won good ~ Omelettes ant families living in the tropical Chapare, increased production of cocaine, thereby television ratings, but did little to affect the eke out a living by producing a mix of agri­ raising the demand for coca leaf. price or availability of cocaine. cultural and commodity crops centered on Demographic pressures due to land etc... coca. In 1984, he and his wife Rosmeri, parcelization also pushed highland and val­ THE BOLIVIAN RESPONSE along with about 45 other families, migrated ley peasants, two-thirds of Bolivia’s popula­ In Bolivia, the US-orchestrated attack has from the densely populated Cochabamba tion in 1980, toward the tropics, where land targeted coca growers as well as the produc­ Dewitt Mall, Ithaca valley to the Chapare, where each family was was to be had for the clearing. Through road tion of cocaine paste, cocaine base, and the 273- 3473“ permitted to colonize a 50-acre plot of land. construction and other development efforts, final product, cocaine hydrochloride. The Over the last ten years, they have planted the Bolivian government had been promot­ lion’s share of government resources direct­ coca, oranges, lemons, tangerines, bananas, ing migration to the sparsely populated low­ ed against coca leaf supply aim to increase plantains, and yucca. But it was coca that pro­ land areas since the 1960s. But the prospect the risks associated with leaf production by vided the neccessary cash to ensure survival. of gaining title to 50 acres of rainforest, intimidating agricultural workers, disrupting Bolivia produces one-third of the world’s without adequate technical or material assis­ marketing and transporting, and attacking coca leaf, approximately 10 percent of which tance and little access to markets, was not peasant producers. goes for traditional domestic uses, and the sufficient inducement for highland peasants, Martina recounts that the Leopards, as the remainder for the production of cocaine, despite the hardships in their communities of drug police are called, searched his house which eventually finds its way to consumers origin. Only when the demand for coca start­ one night, taking all the cash the family had in the cities of the US and Europe. The Cha­ ed to expand geometrically, did the govern­ on hand as well as the shotgun they used for pare produced almost 126,000 metric tons of ment’s offer to the migrants become attrac­ hunting. ‘They emptied the house and left us coca leaf in 1990, over 85 percent of nation­ tive. with nothing.” A friend staying with the al production. The value of the coca leaf Finally, a series of droughts and floods, family was beaten unconscious for resisting (paid for in national currency), at $143 mil­ associated with El Nino cycles, exacerbated when the Leopards took his wristwatch. lion, amounts to 92 percent of agricultural a critical situation in the valleys and the Alti­ The Leopards, who fail to recognize the income in the Chapare, providing a liveli­ plano, and peasants began to migrate to the difference between peasants involved in the Life Before Birth hood for thousands of peasant families. Chapare in desperation. The combination of legal cultivation and transportation of an and The peasants in the Chapare grow coca on natural disaster and reports of increased agricultural commodity and drug traffickers holdings of 20-50 acres, on average less than earnings by coca producers succeeded in transforming an agricultural product into an A Time To Be Born Peter W. Nathanielsz, M.D., Ph.D. accomplishing what government coloniza­ illegal drug, are part of a systematic attack 2.5 acres planted with coca. In the words of Discover the Fascinating wonders o f our Martina, “coca provides us our daily bread. tion schemes had failed to do: create an agri­ on peasants, carried out in a climate of total prenatal origins, and the challenges It’s like our mother and father, we’d starve cultural workforce necessary to meet the impunity. The US-created and -financed of Independent life. without it.” More than half of the 40,000 drug traffickers’ seemingly insatiable antinarcotics police in Bolivia, the Mobile Promethean Press 1SBM: 0-916859-55-X families growing coca arrived in the zone demand for coca. Rural Patrol Unit (UMOPAR) which is Available from a bookstore near you. after the beginning of the boom in 1981. Other economic processes of the mid- administered by the Special Antinarcotics While they earn less than $800 a year, 1980s further impelled the boom. By 1982, a Forces (FELCN), is guilty of murder, torture their income is twice that of other Bolivian crisis brought on by declining tin production and consistent maltreatment of the popula­ peasants. and increases in debt service led to hyperin­ tion in the coca-growing areas. The boom in coca production in the Cha­ flation in Bolivia. In 1985, the collapse of the Efforts by the government to use econom­ PHOENI pare grew out of interrelated economic, London Tin Market left the state mines ic incentives to reduce dependence on coca political, environmental and social condi­ bankrupt. Between 1985 and 1990, govern­ have been a colossal, well-documented fail­ tions in widely diverse places: the streets of ment measures reduced the workforce by ure. These projects include payments to US cities, Medellin, Colombia, the Bolivian 90 percent, and 5,000 of the 27,000 miners farmers to eradicate coca, the construction Altiplano, the International Tin Market in fired from the mines eventually settled in the of a milk-processing plant in the Chapare, London, and World Bank offices in Wash­ Chapare. provision of roads and electric service to ington, DC, as well as the Chapare itself. Hyperinflation ended in 1985, when the rural areas, and alternative agriculture and Among the central events, were the growth World Bank imposed a structural adjustment technical assistance. But coca production BOOKS in the demand for cocaine in the US, and the program, a key component of which includ­ continues to increase because, despite the increasing sophistication of drug dealers in ed a law that legalized the laundering of risks, it offers the best economic returns. 50,000 Volumes Colombia, who, in the 1970s, began shipping funds from the cocaine industry. The law Coca in many ways is the perfect vehicle for 1608 Dryden Rd. cocaine, largely produced from Bolivian allowed for the anonymous deposit of funds development in the region, easy to grow and Between Ithaca and coca, along with marijuana. Attracted to the in US dollars into the Bolivian Central Bank, transport, resistant to pests and, best of all, it Dryden On Rt. 13 greater profits offered by cocaine sales, the and prohibited the government from inquir­ has a market. OPEN Columbian dealers built a distribution net­ ing as to the source of the funds. Since 1985, Coca has proven as resistant to govern­ Daily 10-6 work based on the experience they had an estimated $300 to $600 million a year ment policies as to natural pests. Control Sunday 1 - 5 gained in the marijuana trade. have legally entered the banking system and policies have not succeeded in reducing In Bolivia, the important early push came propped up the economy. either the supply of coca leaf being produced 607-347-4767 in July 1980, when General Garcia Meza The boom in coca in Bolivia and the con­ or the amount of cocaine reaching the mar- formed the most brutal military dictatorship current cocaine crisis in the US provoked in the country’s history, what has been responses on both fronts. In the US, the num­ see War on Drugs, Inc., page 14

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JACQUES DERRIDA War on Drugs, Inc.

continued from page 13 to the country. being harm reduction strategies adopted in At the same time, Bolivia’s dependence on such countries as Sweden and Holland? ket. In the last ten years, real street prices the good will of the US and the international One answer is that diverse interests bene­ have fallen by a factor of four while produc­ banking community offers an explanation fit from both drug trafficking and efforts to tion has increased by a similar magnitude. for why the government has allowed the US control that traffic. In addition to the traf­ Control programs have, however, seriolts- to formulate Bolivian policy. The task fickers themselves, with access to a $30 bil- ly affected Bolivian peasants, the poorest remains, however, to explain why US policy lion-a-year market, other beneficiaries and least powerful group in coca/cocaine would focus on a guaranteed-to-fail strategy include the bankers and financial institutions production. Frequent and systematic rob­ as a key part of the drug war. which provide capital-related services to the bery of peasants by the police prevent peas­ drug industry. Finally, there are those who ants from accumulating even small amounts THE US RESPONSE benefit from the billions spent every year by THE of capital to invest in developing other pro­ The current US “war on drugs” purports to the US for cocaine-related programs: $12.7 ductive activities that might eventually offer contain cocaine consumption through reduc­ billion in 1993. Over two-thirds of these GIFT OF an alternative to coca. Outlawing the leaf tion of both supply and demand. Supply con­ expenditures go to law-enforcement agen­ and criminalizing producers also serves to trol strategies concentrate on three basic cies in the US. Prison construction, which DEATH block peasants from participating in shaping activities: 1) domestic law enforcement enjoyed a boost under Reagan, continues to alternative development programs. aimed at distribution channels; 2) interdic­ grow. The military, searching for a new role TRANSLATED BY DAVID WILLS The war against coca producers has had tion of cocaine by US Customs and the Coast in the world order, has also benefited, one unforeseen outcome. Growers, who Guard; and 3) source-country control to though to a lesser degree. Clearly, those who While continuing to explore questions have seen their incomes fall due to police eradicate production of coca leaf as well as derive such lucrative benefits from current introduced in Given Time: I. repression, have increasingly become cocaine paste and cocaine hydrochloride. US drug policies have little reason to help Counterfeit Money, Derrida extends his analysis to form his most sustained and involved in the initial stages of transforma­ Demand reduction includes education and shape a different agenda. provocative consideration o f religion to tion of coca leaf to paste. Most feel that they public awareness campaigns, treatment and Generally, those who pay the highest date. have no choice: returning to their communi­ rehabilitation, and the imprisonment of drug price for drug control are African-Ameri­ —Mark Taylor, Williams College ties of origin is impossible, and, despite a users. In 1993, more than $10 billion of the cans, Latinos, and the poor. While drug use modest economic recovery, no other area of $13 billion appropriated to reduce cocaine is spread relatively evenly throughout the Questioning the possibility, or impos­ the Bolivian economy absorbs enough labor. use was destined either to control supply or entire US population, the arrest and impris­ sibility, of giving and the economic and anthropological nature of gifts, Derrida The internal logic driving the Bolivian to fund the repressive components of onment rates for blacks and Latinos are sig­ turns to the notion of responsibility and response can be understood by assessing the demand reduction. nificantly higher than for whites. The Sen­ the ultimate gifts of life and death. costs and benefits arising from the Recent government-sponsored studies by tencing Project reports that “almost one in coca/cocaine industry and attempts to con­ both the Government Accounting Office and four (23 percent) black men in the age group MAY 128 PAGES $ 18.95 CLOTH trol it. While less than 10 percent of the total RAND attack the efficacy of this policy 20-29 years of age is either in prison, jail, on revenue from the street sale of cocaine made focus. One RAND report concludes that probation or parole on any given day. In a from Bolivian coca remains in Bolivia, the domestic enforcement, interdiction, and striking contrast, the figure for white males influx of $600 million a year channeled source-country control all fail to achieve was only 6.2 percent.” Secondary effects through the Central Bank does serve to sta­ “break-even savings,” the point at which a from drug use continue to scar the poor bilize the national currency. In addition, for­ dollar invested results in a dollar reduction of neighborhoods of US cities, subjected to the eign aid, much of it conditioned on meeting total social costs. According to the RAND violence that accompanies both drug use and coca eradication quotas, also provides sub­ model, investments in source-country con­ control. stantial revenue: the US appropriated $77.5 trol, such as the programs being promoted in The US “war on drugs” is, in essence, a million for military and police aid and Bolivia, offer the worst payoffs, generating two-front war. One front is located in the another $90.8 million for loans, food aid, only $0.15 in benefits per dollar invested. inner cities of the US, where young African- and development aid in 1992. The UN and Treatment and education programs, on the American and Latino consumers of cocaine European Economic Community con­ other hand, would reduce social costs by are targeted. The second front is directed tributed roughly another $85 million for almost $7.50 for each dollar spent—a return against Bolivian peasants who produce coca coca-related development aid during the 50 times greater than programs aiming to leaf. In both places, the state has chosen to same year. This support, more than twice control coca production in Bolivia. implement policies that harm the poorest pre-1985 levels, comprises a significant con­ A second RAND report models the eco­ sectors of society, while attempting to guar­ d e s i g n tribution to a nation with a total federal bud­ nomics of cocaine production and concludes antee the privileges of wealth and political ■ get of less than $700 million a year. that “cocaine-supply attack strategies that power. In Bolivia, this involves criminaliz­ I Explorations In Design Studies One of the greatest costs associated with seize and destroy 70 percent or less of pro­ ing peasants to keep them out of the devel­ S Edited by the growth of the cocaine trade has been the duction, without limiting the total level of opment process. In the US, it involves the ongoing corruption of Bolivian government, production (on a global basis), will have lit­ diversion of funds, which could be used to Q Richard Buchanan police, and military forces. Members of tle impact on the market.” They base their develop vocational and educational opportu­ O and Victor Margolin every political administration since Garcia argument on the price differential between nities for the poor, to hiring police and build­ Meza’s cocaine coup have been linked to cocaine in Bolivia, $3.30-$4.50 per gram, ing more prisons. v e r i n g drug traffickers. According to reliable esti­ and in US cities, $135 per gram. The share of Despite the obvious failure of the “war on mates, military and government officials the coca leaf, at $500 for a kilogram of prod­ drugs,” the US continues its support, anx­ Discovering Design reflects the growing garner about $200 million a year between uct with a final value of $135,000, accounts ious to be seen by the public as “doing recognition that the design of the cocaine-related payoffs and direct involve­ for less than 0.4 percent. Even a 1000 percent something” about drugs as social costs con­ everyday world deserves attention not ment in drug trafficking. increase in the price of the coca leaf would tinue to rise. The US incurs $40 billion a only as a professional practice but as a subject of social, cultural, and philo­ Given the economic importance of have a negligible impact on the street price. year in total economic costs due to cocaine sophic investigation. The editors bring cocaine in Bolivia, it is not surprising that Furthermore, the authors estimate that a 50 use, which does not include the destruction together eleven essays by scholars across the government has been unwilling to wage percent decrease in worldwide cocaine pro­ wrought on black and Latino communities. various fields. an effective war against it. A war on peas­ duction would only roll back quantity and In Bolivia, peasants hold increasingly 288 pages $14.95 paper ants offers a way out, fulfilling the condi­ prices to roughly 1982 levels. They argue aggressive protests against repression and tions of the US and other donors by appear­ that, given the magnitude of the profits to be begin to talk of armed resistance to a state The University of Chicago Press ing to be serious about drug trafficking, made on US sales of about $30 billion a year, unwilling to represent their interests. Mean­ while still maintaining drug-related benefits there is little reason to believe repressive while, drug cartels launder money through policies will control drug use. Prohibition European, Caribbean, and US banks, and US against alcohol failed to control distribution, industries export ether, a necessary com­ even though the profits were several orders pound for the final purification of cocaine La Belle et la Bete of magnitude less than with cocaine. Finally, hydrochloride, to Bolivia. Oliver North, "A new form of musical theatre... This work should not be missed." the RAND study concludes that the most who became an American hero turning coke important impact of drug control policies is to guns for “freedom fighters” in Nicaragua, Edward Rothstein, The New York Times to increase profits to drug traffickers, even as almost wins a US Senate seat. A United police repression and the violence which Nations Development Program project in An Opera for ensemble and film accompanies the drug trade increases deal­ Santa Cruz proposes to build a factory to performed by ers’ risks. Cocaine that sells in Miami for produce sulfuric acid, a key compound for $14 per gram wholesale jumps to $135 per the transformation of coca to cocaine. gram when retailed on the streets. Such large At home, Adrian and Rosmeri Martina PHILIP GLASS profits can be viewed as a premium to cover squat down by a flickering kerosene lamp the risk faced by traffickers. for a supper of a fried egg and plantains with and the Philip Glass Ensemble and singers Given the failure of the policies behind the rice and yucca, one ear always open for the with Janice Petty, John Kuether, repressive models that have been promoted sound of a Toyota jeep filled with Leopards Ana Maria Martinez and Gregory Purnhagen both domestically and internationally, why slowing outside their house. has there been so little interest in identifying Based on the film by Jean Cocteau new strategies to address these problems? If Ben Kohl, a doctoral student in City and treatment and education are economically Regional Planning at Cornell University, and socially more efficient than jails and spent six years in Bolivia as a researcher Thursday, April 20 8:00 pm repression, why are they not considered and consultant for rural development viable policy options? Why has there been so projects. He would like to thank Linda Ithaca Performing Arts Center at the State Theatre little interest in emulating successful policies Farthing and Bill Goldsmith for their assis­ For Ticket information, call 2 7 7 - 5 2 3 3 or the State Theatre box office at 2 7 3 -2 7 8 1 pursued in other countries, the most notable tance in preparing this manuscript. April 1995 page 15 The Cockroach CLASSIFIEDS WRITING WORKSHOPS continued from page 3 called spiracles. Behind a pile of abandoned dren in Jamaica. They are actually smarter in furniture and stacks of soggy newspapers colder weather; studies have shown roaches EMMA’S WRITING CENTER “Ben,” Bates said, turning toward the door there emanated a thin, piping sound, almost negotiating a maze faster at 43 degrees F. FOR WOMEN and opening it, “this fellow here wants to musical, that lowered itself into a bubbly than at 73 degrees F. They are capable of offers ongoing, small-group workshops for write a feature on cockroaches.” Ben Miller, rattle as we neared its source. surviving extreme changes in temperature. women at a ! levels of writing experience. publisher, emerged, his face creased with “How come we couldn’t do this during I turn in early and sleep fitfully. In a Individualized editorial and consulting services concentration, favoring his right leg, beneath the day?” Bates asked. dream I am driving a Ryder truck back are also available. which he was attempting to dribble an old “They only come out at night, to feed,” I North in a thunderstorm when I suddenly For more information, contact leather basketball, and in which attempt he whispered. Something large shifted its see to my horror that the windshield wipers Irene Zahava, was greatly unsuccessful, his mind being weight behind the futon. But before we are huge antennae. Like Jonah, I have been (607) 273-4675 suddenly preoccupied. could take a final step forward, our attention punished for fleeing my destiny, deep in the “Know ye in the course of your travels,” was arrested by an enormous noise across belly of Periplanta americana\ CLASSIFIED RATES he queried me, “any stories of a white pal­ the street. From a sewer grating thousands metto bug?” of roaches emerged, filled the road’s center THE CHASE: THE THIRD DAY Classified ad rates are $10.00 for the first As the basketball rolled past my feet I and headed east, forcing us to retreat in their When I awoke the next morning, some­ ten words and $.75 for each additional word. noticed a great scar across it which had Send text with exact capitalization, path. Roaches are sensitive to changes in thing was scratching at my door. Arming punctuation, boldface, and /totes indicated to: warped it permanently, preventing its barometric pressure, and their mass exodus myself with a sharp quill pen, I peered The Bookpress, The DeWitt Building bounce from being true, as if it had been bro­ from the sewer was a sure sign that heavy through the blinds. It was Bates. 215 N. Cayuga St, Ithaca, NY 14850. ken over an object impossible to crush. rain was on its way. We ran as far as Pitt ‘Trouble at the Heraldl" I asked. Please indude check or m oney order. “Dude, let us depart!” cried Bates. Street, climbed a fence and watched them “Aye, dude.” pass. Halfway up the block, they abruptly As we hurried up King Street, Bates THE CHASE: THE FIRST DAY turned left and poured into the yard of the informed me that Ben had secretly hired a Although there are not truly albino roach­ Blacklock House, looking for a way in. crew of sinister Orkin men, who had been es, most roaches molt several times before On our way back to the Herald, the rain hiding below-decks for weeks, trying to they’re fully grown, the American cock­ began. scare the white roach into the open. Evident­ IS AVAILABLE AT THE FOLLOWING roach as many as thirteen times in its first ly they’d succeeded; there was a horrid LOCATIONS IN ITHACA & BEYOND: year; and when they shed their old skin, they THE CHASE: THE SECOND DAY stench of chemicals in the air as we rounded emerge an albino or white color. Usually ABC Caft Greenstar Coop “Really, man, I’m sick. (Cough, cough.)” the comer onto John Street. Orkin men were Aladdin’s Hickey’s Music they will darken within several hours. A Bates was calling me from his plush beach leaping from the masthead. Two shadows Alphabet Soup Irving’s Deli cockroach appearing constantly white would house. “I just can’t make it out tonight to do moved in the chaos beyond. Autumn Leaves Ithaca Bakery have to be constantly growing, shedding its Cafi Decadence Ithaca College the roach thing, dude. Check it out, though, Of one, we could clearly identify it as our City Health Club LaForza skin before it had time to turn brown. Was it I’ll go with you, uh, tomorrow, yeah.” In the esteemed publisher, Ben Miller; throwing Center Ithaca Ludgate Farms possible? Did such a thing exist? Did it roam Cinemapolis The Mad Cafe background I thought I heard someone say his hardware to the retreating Orkin men, Mano’s Diner the pine floors of Charleston, scrabble over Collegetown Bagels that happy hour at Wet Willie’s was almost yelling “The ads, boys! Save the ads, why Cornell Cinema Mayers its stucco walls, negotiate its flooded streets over. “Uh, gotta go take some medicine, don’t ye?!” and then, “Lo! He turns! He Cornell University New Alexandrian (all cockroaches can swim for short periods Country Couple Northeast Bagels dude. See you tomorrow.” turns!” Of the other, and but for a brief Courtside Fitness Phoenix Books of time) and scar the boot-heels of the I decided to spend the evening at home, moment only, Bates and I thought we caught DeWitt Mall Rebop Records unwary? reading. If a cockroach wants to find you, it a glimpse of a great, blank forehead the Fall Creek Cinema State Street Diner Gino’s Pizza Stella’ s Cafe “Let me tell you, man, I’m scared.” Bates will; some can fit through a crevice one-half color of bond paper, plowing through old juggled various zoom lenses and loaded his a millimeter wide; some are so big (the pizza boxes and back issues of the Herald; Coming Community College (Coming) camera as we walked down the dark western Gil’s Book Loft (Binghamton) Blaberus giganteus) they have to live in then all collapsed, and the great shroud of Jeff's Books (Rochester) end of Bull Street on garbage night. “What caves and empty garages. Cockroaches may unedited copy rolled on as it rolled five Seymour Public Library (Auburn) was that sound?” carry inside or on their bodies the pathogens thousand years ago. The Downstairs Attic (Spencer) The FSA Bookstore (Fredonia) Much as whales propel water and mist for gastroenteritis, leprosy, typhoid, urinary through their spouts, a cockroach known as .tract infections, diarrhea, and the bubonic J e ff Schwaner is a writer who lives in Gromphadorhina spp. can whistle or hiss by plague. They have been known to chew the Charleston, South Carolina, and, occasion­ blowing air through small holes in its body eyelashes and fingernails off sleeping chil­ ally, Cape Cod. N A T U R A L N FOODS Planet of the Blind and a large selection of alternative health books

continued from page 9 priests who have come here to retire. and the “abled”. love everyone because On the planet of the blind the emperor is there are no nicknames or profane endear­ freezer, she felt her body betraying her, etc. unemployed, happily attracted to spices and ments or ugly medieval games. It was the unfairness—her body was doing the names of locations. On the planet of the blind the sky is this to her too soon, she was old already, in On the planet of the blind the furniture is always between moonshine and morning her early forties. “Me too!” I said, “Me too!” always soft and never the central fact of star, it’s all intra-cerebellum with aurora I’m already a very old man! open space. borealis and coral reefs. On the planet of the blind the solemnest On the planet of the blind the drunks industry is keeping the winds of will fresh have returned from their holy Zodiac, ready G reenStar as a Norwegian summer. for leisurely bathing. ('cooperative market) This is the planet of the blind, the “Star On the planet of the blind there are no On the planet of the blind the Guide Dogs Trek" episode written by the blind, or, lived games that involve jumping through hoops. are the Pharaohs. 701 West Buffalo Street by them in the susurrus of cricket wings On the planet of the blind self-contempt is On the planet of the blind God is edible, 607-273-9392 twinkling in inner space. a museum. NEW HOURS: M-Sat 9-9, Sun 10-7 On the planet of the blind the “straight” r v i On the planet of the blind no one needs to ^ OI’i:N IQ [VLHYONi: ^ be cured. Blindness is another form of music, like the solo clarinet in the mind of Bartok. Spring is here! On the planet of the blind people talk ^Friends o f the o o k p re ss about what they do not see, like Wallace So are Sweet Peas! Stevens who freely chased tigers in red M. H. Abrams George Gibian David Macklin 'Experience the Unusual... weather. Diane Ackerman Jody Gladding Scott McMillin On the planet of the blind mistaken iden­ Martin & Leslie Bernal Jerry Gross Myra Malkin Come to Ithaca’s tities are not the stuff of farce, instead, Jonathan Bishop Maij Haydon Edward Murray Partners Market. unvexed, the mistaken discover new and E. Wayles Browne Neil & Louise Hertz Margaret Nash Annuals friendly adjacent arms to touch. Patti & Jules Burgevin Eva & Roald Hoffmann Benjamin Nichols 'Perennials On the planet of the blind you can hear R. F. Cisne Phyllis Janowitz Nancy S c Andrew Ramage Cut flowers the stars on the windless nights of June. Maria S c Gerald Coles George S c Audrey Kahin Mary Ann Rishel Calligraphy They are better than Carl Sagan thought. William Cross Alfred Kahn Carl Sagan Jonathan Culler Peter Katzenstein Nick Salvatore Beethoven got it nearly right in his last Ruth Darling Isaac Kramnick Jane Parry Sleeper string quartet. Robert J. Doherty Eva Kufiiei^Augsberger Cushing Strout On the planet of the blind the pine tree Dora Donovan Sandra and Walter Lafeber Ann Sullivan shadow is the only cocaine. Ann Druyan R. Carolyn Lange Deborah Tall On the planet of the blind the heavens Joyce Elbrecht Deborah Lemon Ree Thayer p jir is o m e uo\nbs release their syllables. Kenneth Evett Laura M. Linke Alison Van Dyke On the planet of the blind the sighted are Lydia Fakundiny Alison Lurie Gail & Zellman Warhaft 387-6384 beloved visitors; their fears of blindness are LeMoyne Farrell Dan McCall Paul West assuaged with fragrant reeds. Bryna and Harvey Fireside James McConkey Winthrop Wetherbee Jtpxanne Dragovich Sheldon Flory Maureen McCoy Marian White On the planet of the blind everyone is free Trumansburp to touch faces, paintings, gardens—even the Mrs. William D. Fowler Terry McKieman Carol Ann Wilburn page 16 April 1995 What It Was Like

ic effect on all the forms and spaces in that to another, trying to persuade the tourists to great Italian mural painters, such as Piero, Kenneth Evett region. Confronted with this hierarchic rela­ ride our horses. No matter their age, experi­ Giotto, Massachio, and Uccello, in order to tionship of dominant and subdominant ence, or condition, once lured to our stables, compete more effectively in the mural com­ When I heard the news that my former forms and the tensions between them, the we would heist them onto one of our world­ petitions then run by the Federal Section of student, Thomas Armstrong III, one-time need to reconcile such polarities through ly-wise nags and guide them over the rough Fine Arts. This study proved to be the deci­ director of the Whitney Museum in New formal control became an imperative that trails of the region. sive experience of my life as an artist. I dis­ York City, had accepted a new job as direc­ governed my painting, teaching, and critical My first contact with the world of Ameri­ covered the classic Mediterranean mode of tor of the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, it writing. can art came about when Thomas Hart Ben­ design in which the wild energies of the occurred to me that my life as an artist-pro­ I had the good luck to spend every sum­ ton, then at the height of his fame, came to visual arts—axial movement, contour fessor had been lived in vain. I have always mer of my childhood and youth in nearby visit a family of rich Texans who had built a rhythms, value weights, color, and texture, regarded Warhol as a trivial light-weight Estes Park, where my grandfather Wamock house next to our place on the Devils Gulch in all their contrasting movement and junc­ who parlayed his likeable irreverence, tures—are organized in a controlled way, authentic vulgarity, self-promotional skills, without loss of vitality, yielding a vision of the machinations of a clever dealer, and the serene resolution. support of whimsical aestheticians into an For a small-town provincial like me, life inflated reputation as a major artist. The at the Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs prospect of a museum dedicated to his work was a heady experience. The school was was bad enough, but that my old student supported by wealthy patrons from the should participate in such an enterprise Broadmoor suburbs who occasionally invit­ seemed to be a repudiation of all my profes­ ed us students to their parties, where we sorial wisdom, and further evidence, if any hobnobbed with the local aristocrats and were needed, that the mainstream of Ameri­ visiting artistic celebrities from the East. I can art had passed me by and that the values discovered the allure of upper-class life and, put forth in my teaching and painting were at the same time, having transformed the irrelevant to contemporary taste. ethical values of my Protestant upbringing This revelation of personal and cultural into a left-wing commitment to racial and reality set me to thinking about my career, economic justice, I could enjoy the irrespon­ and aroused in me a last-ditch impulse to sible and perverse pleasure of drinking cap­ give an account, just for the record, no mat­ italist booze and feeling morally superior to ter how indifferent or nonexistent my audi­ its'providers. ence might be, of how I came to be an artist- Beyond my radical social views, and professor at an Ivy League university in a despite my conventional approach to paint­ provincial upstate New York town, and to ing, I had a youthful enthusiasm for mod­ describe what it was like to be in that posi­ ernism in the other arts. As a teenager, I had tion as a participant in an unprecedented read Frank Lloyd. Wright’s autobiography cultural event. and was impressed when the great man After World War II, for the first time in came to the Fine Arts Center for a sympo­ our history, artists were employed on a sium and insulted everyone on the panel. nationwide scale to teach college students to There were other visitors from the big world become artists, and to train graduate stu­ of culture: Prokofiev gave a piano recital; dents to teach yet more undergraduates to John Kirkpatrick discussed the music of become artists. The result was an unheard- Charles Ives; Hanya Holm brought her mod­ of proliferation of creators who produced em dancers to town; George Biddle, whose mountains of art work so vast as to defy the Groton-Harvard friendship with Franklin conventional processes of selective win­ Roosevelt led to the creation of various fed­ nowing and preservation, though some of eral art programs, came to teach; and Henry the artists may have harbored a 19th-century Varnum Poor, another eminent visiting crit­ fantasy of ultimate aesthetic justice or even ic from the East, organized a caravan of dreamed of a museum dedicated to their teachers and students to go on a sketching work. trip to the ghost town of Aspen. As far as I know, very little attention has A strange pre-war spirit of anxiety, reck­ been paid to this phenomenon, and while it lessness, and joy in the transient pleasures of may be a peripheral matter to conventional life and love prevailed among the students. art historians, I would like to bear witness to We went in for picnics on the mesas south of that experience as one of the many artist- Kenneth Evett, Longs Peak, Colorado, watercolor. town, where we played softball, drank beer, teachers who labored in the privileged and and sang western songs around a campfire. secure classrooms of academe during the had a summer place and my father ran a liv­ road. I was invited to show my work to the We organized a masked ball, put on amateur last half of the 20th century. ery stable and dairy, while my mother took artist, who suggested that I study with theatricals, and even planned a wedding. My own way of looking at the world of care of her family, painted watercolors of Boardman Robinson at the newly opened On the day after my wife-to-be, Betty forms was determined at the outset by the the mountains, and played such pieces as Fine Arts Center in Colorado Springs. He Schluss, grad student at Colorado College, clear, hard light and vast space of the high “FUr Elise” and Bach preludes on the piano. recommended me for a scholarship. I was and Dave Kennedy, Princeton dropout plains and mountains of my birthplace in Our house was situated at the base of moun­ accepted, and signed on as an assistant to turned art student and younger brother of the northern Colorado. The streets of my home­ tains on the north rim of the idyllic Robinson, who was working on a major writer M.F.K. Fisher, sang a duet called the town were designed on a simple right-angle unspoiled bowl of Estes Park, and from our mural commission for the Justice Building “Little Match Girl” to a sellout crowd at the grid system, and either ran parallel to the front porch we had commanding views of in Washington, DC. Arts Center, we had a wedding ceremony north-south axis of the Continental Divide the surrounding landscape. This beautiful Robinson was well known in those days under sunny skies in the yard of the student in that part of the state or ran counter to it, environment encompassed our life of hard for his cartoons in the old Masses magazine, dormitory. And while relatives, fellow providing views of the prairies to the east, work, as we struggled through the Great his drawings of a tour of the Balkans with artists, and friends threw rice in our direc­ foothills to the north and south, and offering Depression. As adolescents, my older broth­ John Reed, his illustrations of the novels of tion, we set forth in our green, wire-wheeled a vision of Longs Peak and the grand pro­ er and I arose at 5 A.M., were driven four Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, and his mural for 1932 Buick convertible for a honeymoon tective range of snowy mountains to the miles in a model-T Ford to our horse pas­ Rockefeller Center. He was an impressive tour of the Colorado mountains. Two weeks west. ture, where we each lured a horse with a and confident man, full of energy and high later, World War II began in Europe. I was one of three boys brought up in a handful of oats, bridled it, hopped onto its spirits. He had no interest in the liberating Scotch Presbyterian family in which there bare back, and shagged the rest of the hors­ iconographic and spatial innovations of To be continued... were firm notions about right and wrong. es back to the bam. The grand panorama of Cubism or Surrealism, preferring to depend The moral tone of my upbringing was the Rocky Mountains lay before our eyes all on the volumetric tonal modeling and spatial Kenneth Evett, painter and emeritus matched by the unequivocal visual clarity of the way home. Our next chore was to milk devices of the Renaissance. Most of his stu­ professor of art at Cornell University, is a the patterns of my environment; I was ten cows before breakfast. After that, I dents accepted his limited approach without member o f the National Academy o f Design, marked for life by a sense of contending would mount a high-stepping buckskin question. In addition to Robinson’s teach­ New York City, from which he recently won forces in the world, an awareness of the horse and ride two miles to Estes Park vil­ ing, which was more by example than for­ an award for merit at the 170th members' presence of the mountains and their dynam­ lage, where I moved from one rented cottage mal explication, we studied books on the show.

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