SPAN: May 1975

SPAN A LEITER FROM THE PUBLISHER "The difference between literature and journalism," according to Oscar Wilde, "is that journalistl! is unreadable and literature is not read." Well, we at SPAN have been striving to bring you "readable" journalism. Similarly, we hope , this issue's Special Section brings you literature you can read.

We call it "New Directions in American Writing," and we focus on some of the exciting developments now taking place in American literature-the rise of such "schools," for instance, as "the fiction of the new sensibility," represented here by Kurt Vonnegut (page 13), Donald Barthelme (page 16), and Thomas pynchon (page 22). To many readers, familiar only with the traditional narrative, the work of these writers opens up a whole new world, compounded of fantasy, surrealism and a high degree of intellectualism.

If Oscar Wilde were alive today, he would have to think up a new epigram, because the lines between literature and journalism are becoming blurred-so blurred, in fact, that the two merge in the New Journalism. This literary phenomenon is explained on page 26 by Tom Wolfe, who is generally regarded as one of its founding fathers. And we have a superb example of the New Journalism in Norman Mailer's A Fire on the Moon (excerpts from which appear on page 30), his account of th0 historic Apollo 11 moon flight.

Also in the category of the New Journalism is Mailer's much-talked-of "novel biography" of actress Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn is reviewed (page 32) by critic Amita Malik in her usual incisive manner. A sample sentence: "The man [Mailer] may be a bastard, but he's a knowledgeable bastard."

To match this issue's big literary names, we have some distinguished names from the world of art. There is American painter Robert Rauschenberg and his interpretation of ,the Apollo 11 blast-off. There is Indian artist Krishen Khanna whose painting we use to illustrate Pynchon's story.

There are illustratio.ns by !he well-k wn }~d'a artist Mickey Patel and hIS Amencan counterparts Jacqui Morgan and John Heinly. And there is the cover painting by SPAN's own art director, Nand Katyal (photo at right). Normally involved in working out the integration of pictures and text for the magazine, Katyal seldom has time to do illustrations. But he is a practicing painter whose work has appeared in both individual and group shows and can be seen at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi as well as in private collections.

Explaining his cover interpretation of the story by Joseph Epstein (page 8), Katyal says: "The article talks about three main directions of American fiction. The front face, with goggles reflecting the outside world, symbolizes the New Journalism, which is based on real-life events. With the writer of 'the new sensibility,' on the other hand, inspiration arises from within himself-his intellect has its own suns, its own satellites. The traditional narrative is depicted- as the classic Greek hero, crowned with laurel and at peace with the world."

And speaking of classics makes me want to leave you with this final word: If this issue of SPAN becomes a classic (as some numbers have in the past), we like to think it will not meet G.K. Chesterton's definition of a classic as a work "one can praise without having read."

-A.E.H.

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Jet American writing today in a painting which is explained in the Letter from the Publisher at left. A Special Section on American Writing appears on pages 8·37.

Back cover: The Derby Queen and a marching band are part of the pageantry at America's famous horse race, the Kentucky Derby, held every May in Louisville, Kentucky, since 1875. For more photos of Derby festivities, see page 49.

Managing Editor: Carmen KagaJ. Assistant Managing Editor: S.R. Madhu. Editorial Staff: Mohammed Reyazuddin, Avinash Pasricha, Nirmal Sharma, Krishan Gabrani, Murari Saha, Rocque Fernandes. Art Director: Nand Katyal. Art Staff: Gopi Gaiwani, B. Roy Choudhury. Kanti Roy. Suhas Nimbalkar. Chief of Production: Awtar S. Marwaha. Photographic Services: USIS Photo Lab. Publishedby the United States Information Service. 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi-I 10001, on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the United States Government. Printed by Arun Mehta at Vakil & Sons Private Ltd., Vakils House. Sprott Road, 18 Ballard Estate, Bombay-4oo038.

PhotographS:Inside front cover- NASA. 2-R.N. Khanna. 3- C.S. Gopal. 8- painting by Nand Katyal. 15, 19-Jill Krementz. 21-Avinash Pasricha. 24-25-detail from "The Game" by Krishen Khanna, collection of Mr. and Mrs. Adi Dubash, Bombay. Photo by Krishen Khanna.

31-Creative Photographers, courtesy Atlantic-Little Brown. 32 left-R.N. Khanna; right-eourtesy 20th Century Fox. 36--0ffice of War Information; Pix Inc.; Carl Van Vechten, New York; Pix Inc.; Wide World; Culver Pictures;' Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.; U.S. Library of Congress; Hy Peskin, Life magazine © Time Inc.; Phillippe Halsman; Brown Brothers. 37- Pinney & Bucher; National Archives; Deal Press; Pix Inc.; Simon and Schuster; Mathew Brady, courtesy National Archives. 41-Avinash Pasricha; tD. Beri; courtesy Allied Chemical. 44-Grant Heilman; I.D. Beri; Avinash Pasricha. 47-:'Avinash Pasricha. Inside back cover and back cover-Edward Simonck" courtesy Adventure Road.

Use of SPAN articles in other publications is encouraged, except when copyrighted. For permission write to the Editor. Subscription: One year, 18 rupees; single copy, 2 rupees 50 paise. For chang~ of address, send old address from a recent SPAN envelope along with new address to A.K. Mitra, Circulation Manager, SPAN magazine. 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New DeUli-IIO001.

NEWS& VIEWS u.s. AIDS

INDIAN FOREST RESEARCH The U.S. Government recently awarded a grant of about Rs. 8 lakhs to four projects at India?s Forest Research Institute and Colleges in Dehra Dun. The projects: improving tree breeding, studying unconventional plant materials, developing new sources for construction materials, grading pulp and paper.

Researchers at the Dehra Dun institute will direct the projects in co-operation with scientists in the U.S. Dr. S. Kedharnath will direct the tree-breeding program. Dr. M.C. Tewari will head the study of unconventional plant materials-such as pine needles, grasses, hay and coconut husk fiber-as possible sources for the manufacture of wood boards for low-cost rural houses. Another team of scientists will stl,Jdy whether small, low-grade timber can make low-cost construction support for buildings and bridges. Dr. S.K. Purkayastha will direct a neW grading technique for eucalyptus trees used in paper and pulp manufacture.

'THE ARABS ARE COMING'?

LET THEM COME! Some weeks ago, the London Economist calculated that members of OPEC [Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries] were piling up reserves at the rate of $115,000 a second- enough to buy the Bank of America in six days, IBM in 143 days, and all the companies listed on the world's major stock exchanges in about 15 years. ' Such forecasts, and news of some big Arab "buys"-a bank in Detroit, an automobile firm in Germany, a palace in Britain-have spurred appeals for curbs on foreign investments in America. Some U.S. Congressmen are said to be planning a bilI that will ensure that no foreign interest acquires more than a five per cent equity ownership in an American firm.

However, a U.S. Government study has recommended that the U.S. should continue to welcome investments from abroad, including those from Arab countries. Two officials from the Treasury and the State Department told a Senate committee recently about the results of the study.

Jack Bennett, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Monetary Affairs, discounted talk of any massive Arab investments in America. He said that of the $60,000 million that OPEC countries accumulated during 1974, long-term private investments in America attracted less than $1,000 million. He would be surprised if this figure rose to $5,000 million this year. Said Bennett: "It is crucial that we recognize that foreign investment in the U.S. is contributing to the dynamism of the American economy."

Bennett recalled President Ford's statement last October when he signed the Foreign Investment Study Actiof 1974. The President said: "My Administration will oppose any new restriction on foreign investment in the United States except where absolutely necessary on national security grounds or to protect an essential national interest."

And Charles Robinson, Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, said the U.S. policy of "encouraging unrestricted capital flows is soundly based on economic theory and has, in fact, served us and the world well."

However, Robinson recommended better monitoring of foreign investment; streamlining of authority to deal with abuses by foreign investors; and prior consultation with foreign governments intending to invest in American firms.

This year the Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere-better known as CARE-celebrates its 25th anniversary in India. Over this quarter century CARE's assistance to the people of India has totaled Rs. 3,440 million ..

Today CARE is helping 15 million people in 13 Indian states (those states that have requested its services). The CARE program in India is the largest in the world.

CARE was created in 1945 to mobilize massive relief to war-torn Europe by centralizing the activities of 22 other organizations. Today it operates in 36 countries and is the world's largest nonsectarian, nongovernmental, nonprofit international voluntary relief and development organization. It derives much of its income from donations-large - and small-by individual Americans and Canadians. In addition, the U.S. Government donates farm products and absorbs the cost of their distribution.

How has India been utilizing CARE? "Our largest and most significant contribution," says Allan Turnbull, CARE director for India, "has been food distribution, although in recent years we have diversified into nutrition-related

A schoolgirl in Gujarat drinks CARE milk.

O-?:/170, )b activities and agricultural development programs."

The food distribution program concentrateS on supplementary nutritionon getting more nutritious food to needy and vulnerable groups such as schoolchildren, pre-school children, and lactating mothers. CARE's Mid-Day Meal Program, begun in 1961, provides

meals to more than 11 million Indian schoolchildren. In its food pl'ograms for preschoolers' and pregnant and lactating mothers, CARE's nutritional assistance reaches over three million people.

Saluting CARE for its good work, the Indian Express said in an editorial: "CARE has every right to be proud of the humanitarian role which it has played in India during the last 25 years.

Not only has it provided aid to the most vulnerable sections of the population, its Food for Work programs in rural areas have resulted in the creation of permanent assets in the form of minor irrigation schemes; development of watersheds; Improvement of pasture, forestation and soil conservation."

Looking at the future, Allan Turnbull notes that CARE will continue to contribute to India's development efforts. CARE will be in India only as long as India wants it, he says. But its happiest day will be when it is not needed any more. The ultimate goal of the Cooperative for American Relief Everywhere is a world where such relief is needed nowhere. In short, CARE's goal is to make itself obsolete.

SAVE THE GIR LION, SAYS DILLON RIPLEY Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, eminent American biologist and con- could be possibly reintroduced-especially the Asian subspecies servationist and -secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, now still resident in Iran. Would it not be possible to visited India recently to deliver the Dorab Tata Memorial develop an approach toward the eventual understanding of Lectures for 1975. This series of annual lectures was insti- interdependent resources through the preservation and care of tuted in 1959 to mark the centenary of Dorab Tata, a founder endangered species? .. of the Tata enterprises and a noted philanthropist. Dr. Ripley "I can think of an example in India where fortunately there spoke in Bombay and New Delhi on "The Paradox of the Human Condition", giving a scientific and philosophical are many people with great awareness of the problems of The Asian lion is virtually extinct. It once exposition of man's .environmental and ecological problems, conservation.

Presiding over the lectures---and introducing Dr. Ripley at ranged widely from the gates of the Bosporus and the coasts both-was Dr. Jamshed Bhabha, a director of Tata Indus- of the Mediterranean Sea across into India. Today the last relic tries and a member of the Tata trust.

A few excerpts from of the population resides in northern Gujarat in the Gir Forest.

A mere remnant of 170-odd individuals, now greatly comthe second lecture follow: pressed by human population pressure, erosion of the forests "I would say that on the one hand the careless technology and domestic grazing, are making their last stand. Would it in the more developed countries, that may be viewed as reck- not be possible to take a few lions, in the name of international less by the less developed countries, is matched by the careless resource economics, and transplant them to another country's population increase of the less developed countries. It is habitat where favorable conditions still exist? ... no one's divine right to overlook ecological principles ....

"As a biologist I believe firmly that the Asian lion could be "Endangered species of animals and plants are disappearing saved by transplanting a few and growing them in an environat an accelerating rate: Perhaps a million of our planet's ment different from their present surroundings so as to create evolved forms of life will become extinct before the century a buffer population against what is now the inevitable extincis out ..... tion of the remaining animals in the Gir Forest. This would "There are many species which transcend national boundaries, be an interesting experiment in international economy, the as, for example, the cheetah in Africa, which wanders widely sort of concept which planners will have to adopt on a from the eastern coast up tlirough the north into the Sahel larger scale with increasing economic, political and ecological region. :The cheetah has already vanished from India, but it pressures . . .. Why not try?"

SPAI caught on wrong foot' Dear Sir : Your enthusiastic piece on the Chris Evert-Jimmy Connors romance ["Americans Are Talking About," November 1974 SPAN] was overtaken by events: their. wedding is off. Chris and Jim were smart: their romance hit more headlines and won more fans than their tennis prowess. I can imagine the two of them winking at each other for having "conned" the world with their expensive presents and public endearments. What a pity'that SPAN editors should have been caught on the wrong foot on one of those rare occasions when they descended from the heights of behaviorism and pluralism to talk about two people in love!

MOHAN

PRADHAN Ludhiana

Row big Is Amerlea' Dear Sir: I found the theme of "Indians in America" covered by September 1974 SPAN most interesting. Let me narrate my own experience of an Indian in America.

On landing at the Washington Airport, we felt tiny by the side of an oversized driver of. a limousine. As we made toward it, he bawled: "No one board till the driver tells you to." First he brusquely collected the fare, then bustled us in. (We had assumed that he would collect the fare after we had got in.) My perturbed gaze met that of a leonine European elder who had been on my flight. Our mutual abasement sealed a pact, confirming our cultural superiority; mine leading back to the hoary antiquity of Mohenjo Daro and his to Athens and Jerusalem.

We crouched further back into the upholstery and sat silently staring at our driver's red neck, nursing our cultural shock. Soon he began to chatter. We hardly paid any attention to what he said. But once in Washington our Brobdingnagian driver hovered over us like Gabriel, hiring taxis for us, telling us what to pay the taxi driver, and finally pumped our hands vigorously as we left.

His "So long, Mac" accompanied by a

friendly smile ripped through the cloud main enquiry counter at a New York' of gloom, and Washington, D.C., was bus station instruct his companion in bathed in pure sunlight.

Gujarati. That an Indian sits selling Then there was that very young police- American newspapers to thousands of man, who suddenly paused to whistle itinerant Americans as they buzz past his softly while directing me to a train in New counter, looking for Greyhound and other York. I always managed to get on one buses that would take them to the regoing in the opposite direction. A quick motest nook and corner of the U.S., backward glance revealed a luscious . symbolizes for me the acme of Indian blonde disappearing round a corner with adaptability and American openness.

I cannot recall the title of that old film a fetching wiggle. I was greeted with a in which Gary Cooper during a visit to conspiratorial wink from the cop as I Europe is asked: "How big is America?" turned to him. Being an ardent admirer "Six feet three," replies that familiar of the London Bobby, I at once made an resonant voice. odious comparison between this callow specimen of Yankee constabulary and the J. BIRJE-PATIL Professor of English impassive Bobby. But I was completely Baroda University disarmed when the Yankee cop clattered down the platform with me to make sure that I boarded the right train.

Trivial in themselves, these two incidents humanized America for me. Although parts of America resembled a Dear Sir: The articles on "Can Human utopia manque of Godard's Alphaville Behavior Be Controlled?" [August 1974 variety, in many other ways America SPAN] raise many issues. B.F. Skinner's proved to be homelier than one had theories are fascinating and have stood imagined. What provides the greatest the test of time.

But any idea carried single spur to the assimilation of immitoo far becomes fantastic and impractigrants to American society is the essential cable.

One must agree with Willard homeliness of many of its highly inGaylin when he asks: Who will decide on dustrialized cities including New York.

And by New York I do not mean merely the nature of the final behavior to be achieved? Who will do the "controlHarlem or Brooklyn, but those hundreds of little hamburger joints and delicatessens ling" ?

Nevertheless, one must concede that you find in every part of the city. therapy based on Skinner's theory has Some Indians with American Ph.Ds been effective in treating neurotic states. are believed to be working as bus drivers in California. For them the dream of The AUIndia Institute of Mental Health, affluence and academic success has ob- Bangalore, and the Government Mental Hospital, Madras, will bear this out. In viously gone sour. But such examples are fortunately few in comparison with the the latter, patients in the age range of 25 many who have reaped rich rewards and to 40 suffering from phobia, anxiety and whose initiative, courage and resilience obsessive states have benefited considerably from such therapy during the last have not only propelled them to the top year.

Economically, too, this is a more of their professions, but have woven feasible method than long-term psycholittle sagas of personal triumph. therapy, and therefore specially suited¡ Those who migrate to America in to India.

The articles on human b.esearch of short cuts to happiness forget havior were followed in the same issue that American society is highly competiby one on yoga in New York-and that tive and only those who are truly gifted seems significant.

Applied operant conare likely to succeed. How well some ditioning is analogous to the methods enterprising Indians have managed to of relaxation advocated by yogic schools assimilate into the mainstream of American life, was brought home to me very viv- in the East.

M. SARADA MENON idly once, when I heard the owner of the Professor of Mental Diseases newspaper and candy store opposite the Madras Medical College, Madras

Can SkinDerism cure mental diseases'

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T'~'L AL- ~ /'74

Man has long dreamed of harnessing the heat of the sun, an inexhaustible source of pollutionfree energy. Today America's Project Independence, aimed at making the U.S. self-sufficient in energy, is intens.fying its research to translate this age-old dream into present-day reality.

The sun for energy and power?

Well, astronauts use it to make electricity for spacecraft by means of photoelectric cells. In the Middle East, Latin America and the Orient, millions of rooftop sun heaters heat water for cooking and bathing. On the Greek isle of Patmos in the Mediterranean, a solar still turns out some 40,000 liters of fresh water a day, eliminating tb need to transport it from the mainland.

And, of course, the sun has provided practically all the energy and power throughout human history. Its heat drives the earth's winds, and our familiar fuels-wood, coal, petroleum and natural gas-are truly "fossil'sunlight" because they have captured

incandescent gas 1.4 million kilometers in diameter, with a surface temperature of 5,500 degrees centigrade. It radiates enormous amounts of heat energy in all directions. Even at the surface of the earth-I50 million kilometers away-the sun provides every year the energy equivalent of burning 120,000,000 million tons of coal-25 times the world's coal reserves.

Moreover, the sun's energy-unlike that from terrestrial sources-is clean and nonpolluting. And unlike the fossil fuels, which have accumulated over the past hundreds of millions of years and which now face exhaustion in a few decades (in the case of oil and gas) or a few centuries (in the case of coal), the

in hydrocarbon form a fraction of the solar energy that has

energy radiated from the sun is essentially inexhaustible.

poured down on the planet in past ages. The same photosynthetic process that made our fuels also produces our crop~ of food and fiber.

As a source of energy, the sun has a staggering list of virtues.

First of all, solar power is abundant. The sun itself is a ball of

And, finally, this energy from the sun-unlike

most other

fuels-is absolutely free to anyone who wants to use it.

If the sun is really such a handsome energy source, why has it not played a much greater role in meeting the energy and power needs of both developed and developing countries?

Within 50 years, the sun could provide America with 35 per cent of the heating and cooling for its homes and office buildings, 30 per cent of its gaseous fuel and 10 per cent of its liquid fuel.

A veteran engineer with long experience in the field gives the answer: "The sunlight may be free, but certainly not the power, as anyone knows who has tried to capture these 'free' kilowatts."

The determining factor is economics, pure and simple. Sunlight, the winds and ocean currents are low-grade energy sources, compared with 'conventional fuels and atomic energy. . Today, however, there is a new surge of interest in the sun as a source of power, spurred by awareness of the energy crisis that has burst upon the world. Conventional fuels are dwindling in supply and rising in cost much more rapidly than had been envisaged. Recently, for the first time in its history, the United States began consuming more energy than it produces, with imports of oil making up the difference. The other major nations (except the Soviet Union and China) had lost their self-sufficiency in energy resources long before. As a result, scientists and engineers the world over are now engaged in an intensive scrutiny of the possibilities of alternative sources of energy, including the sun.

In 1971, two Americans, Tom Stonier and R.J. Borrmann, urged at the annual meeting of the International Solar Energy Society that the United Nations launch a decade of development of solar energy during the 1970s. In 1972, the United Nations Economic and Social Council and the Government of France sponsored a conference in Paris, attended by 600 scientists from all over-the world, on the theme "The Sun in the Service of Mankind." The U.S. has signed agreements with both Japan and the Soviet Union to share information on sources of energy.

But can the sun actually provide a substantial portion of the energy and power required by a~ advanced industrial nation such as the United States? In 1972 a joint panel of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) took a hard look at that question and answered with a decisive "yes." Relying on a variety of economic, social and technical considerations, the committee forecast that government-sponsored development programs, if successful, could lead to these innovations: • The introduction of solar heating for homes and commercial buildings on a broad scale in five years.

• The use of sunpower to cool homes by means of an absorptionrefrigeration cycle, in 5 to 10 years.

• Production of synthetic fuels from organic materi.als in five to eight years, using techniques as diverse as fermentation, chemical reduction, the photosynthetic manufacture of hydrogen gas from algae and pyrolysis (decomposing organic compounds by subjecting them to very high temperatures).

• Tet:restrial "farming" of solar radiation over hundreds of square kilometers in the southwestern deserts of America, in 10 to 15 years, using either vast arrays of solar cells for direct photovoltaic productions of electricity, or equally vast arrays of reo flectors and pipes to concentrate and trap the sun's energy in a fluid which can then be used· tC' manufacture high-temperature steam for driving conventional wrbogenerators.

The NSF-NASA panel proposed a massive l5-year researchand·development effort at a cost of$3,500 million to help America do a better job of harnessing solar energy. With adequate invest· ment, in 50 years, the committee predicted, the sun could provide 35 per cent of the heating and cooling of the nation's homes

and office buildings, 30 per cent of America's gaseous fuel, 10 per cent of its liquid fuel and 20 per cent of its over-all electrical needs.

Though support of such magnitude is not yet forthcoming from either the Federal Government or private industry, sunpower is generating more interest than ever before. For example, under America's "Project Independence" [see "Energy for the Future," March 1975 SPAN] U.S. Government funding for solar energy research climbed from around $3 million in 1972 to about $50 million in 1975. (Project Independence is designed to make the U.S. self-sufficient in energy.) The Solar Research and Development Act, which was recently enacted, authorizes another $75 million in the year 1976 for solar energy research.

The Solar Heating and Cooling Demonstration Act provides an additional $60 million over five years for developing and demonstrating solar heating and cooling technology.

And the field is expected to get an even larger infusion of research funds from the $10,000 million which the U.S. Government made available in 1974 for the fi.ve-year energy resource development program. To be sure, most of this new program will probably be focused on new techniques for converting coal into gas or liquid fuel and for a new generation of,nuclear reactors~the breeder reactor, which manufactures more fuel than it consumes, and later, the fusion reactor, which would generate power from the deuterium in seawater. But the more exotic sources of energy such as' geothermal steam and sunlight would get a significant share of attention as well.

Meanwhile, there has been a steady, low-key quest by private enthusiasts and university researchers, often funded by utility companies, to find ways of using the sun for heating and cooling buildings. This effort has already produced hundreds of houses in the United States that are heated in part by solar energy.

Typical of these experiments is a solar heating system that George Lof has operated in his Denver, Colorado, home f(»f 15 years. The system provides about 25 per cent of his winter heat requirement. A professor of civil engineering at Colorado State University, Lof has erected a solar heat collector on his roof, and inside his house has installed two gravel-filled cylinders, extending from basement to roof, to store the heat. The collector consists of two rows of inclined panels-thin panes of glass over a blackened base. Air is heated to as high as 95 degrees centigrade and then is pumped through the regular heating ducts of the home as well as into the storage cylinders.

At the University of Delaware, Professor K.W. Boer has placed into operation "Solar One," probably the most ambitious effort in America at exploiting sol!!r energy for homes. Solar One is an experimental four-bedroom house with 72 square meters of sunshine-collecting surface on its south-facing roof and wall.

It uses air flow to transfer heat from the solar panels to a storage tank of eight cubic meters, which contains a eutectic salt that becomes molten at 48 degrees centigrade. This -material, it's hoped, will be a much more efficient storage medium than the rocks or water used in earlier experiments. Cooling will be provided by the reverse of this process, through the use of a second container of eutectic salt, which can be "frozen" by the cool night air, and used as an air conditioner during summer.

But the most important innovation in Solar One is the use

of cadmium sulphide solar cells in the roof panels above the heat-collecting surface. When fully installed, these cells are expected to convert sunlight to direct current at seven per cent efficiency and to produce an average of 20 kilowatt-hours a day for immediate consumption or for storage. The sunpower flows into a set of nine 12-volt automobile batteries connected in series to deliver IIO-volt current and having a total storage capacity of nine kilowatt-hours. The goal of the Solar One experiment is to obtain up to 80 per cent of its heating, cooling and electricity needs from the sun.

Meanwhile, the first large-scale demonstrations in America of solar heating and cooling for office buildings are also under way. The Massachusetts Audubon Society, an organization dedicated to the preservation of the environment, has announced plans to build a three-story addition to its headquarters near Boston, which will use solar energy to provide 60 per cent of its heating and cooling needs. The project is scheduled for completion in 1976. A university research team, also plans to install solar heating systems in three new Los Angeles buildings.

A number of business organizations are seeking to perfect a practical heating/cooling system based on solar power, and the first large-scale breakthrough in solar energy use is expected here.

The NSF-NASA panel forecasts the growth of a brand new "solar-climate-control" industry in the next several years, hitting sales of $750 million a year by 1985. There is little possibility of a total swing to solar heating and cooling-that is still not economically feasible. Solar energy systems will probably remain supplementary to conventional heating and cooling systems in houses and commercial buildings for some time to come.

A sweeping-extrapolation of the rooftop collector is the idea of the "solar heat farm," hectares on hectares of collecting surfaces, to gather the sun's rays for the generation of electricity on TIMETABLE LEADING TO LARGE-SCALE TERRESTRIAL APPLICATIONS OF SOLAR CELLS

1975

Data-collectionnetwork established to measure sun's intensity throughout U.S.

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1982

Solar-cell systems from 10kw to I Mw installed in homes, schools, etc.

1976

Solar arrays-rows of solar cells-tested. Central-station costs determined.

1985 Medium-power

10-Mw systems built for 'communities and large industrial 1977 Lower-power systems plants. designed. Technology for $5/watt (peak) cells attained. 1986 Pilot-line completed to manufacture SO.30/watt 1979 Low-power system (peak) solar-cell arrays. installed. Technology shownfor $0.50/watt(peak)cells.

1990 Giant solar-cell systems (l00 Mw or more) line completed to manufacture arrays ,provide power to towns and utilities. using SO.50/watt(peak) cells.

1981 Pilot

a major scale. One proposal, by Dr. and Mrs. Aden Meinel of the University of Arizona, envisions a solar power plant which would deploy some 65 square kilometers of collectors to develop temperatures of 200 degrees centigrade for producing steam to turn turbines. The plant would produce 1,000 megawatts of electric power at an installation cost comparing favorably, the Meinels contend, with the cost of a new coal-fired or nuclear power plant ' of the same size. The Meinels and other researchers in this area contend that a substantial infusion of government funding would now produce remarkable results.

The winds, which are essentially a solar phenomenon, are also getting new attention as a possible source of power. In wind installations, the collection and generation of power is relatively straightforward and inexpensive, but storage of the power is difficult and costly. Typically, large aggregations of lead/acid storage batteries are used, but though they are reliable, their efficiency is very low. Thus, the prime emphasis in windpower research is focused on the development of improved storage techniques. One imaginative idea for windpower use that solves the storage problem has been proposed by Dr. Wendell Hewson of Oregon State University. He suggests using giant windmills to run equipment that pumps river water back up and over hydroelectric dams so that it can be used again to generate power.

Other visionaries see the ocean as a capacious new source of solar energy. They would exploit the difference in ocean thermal gradients between the temperatures of the surface and the deep waters of the sea to produce electrical power. One method of extracting energy from the gradients is to draw the warm surface water down through a hollow shaft into a heatexchanger system using a fluid like ammonia or the refrigerant freon. The freon would absorb heat from the indrawn water and this heat would drive turbines to make electricity.

Still more futuristic is a scheme suggested by Dr. Peter Glaser, vice president of Arthur D. Little, Incorporated, a Boston-based research and consulting firm. He would place a huge solar satellite into a synchronous earth orbit 36,000 kilometers above the equator so that it would be stationary relative to points on the earth's surface. With a surface area of 32 square kilometers devoted to solar cells and a one-kilometer-diameter transmitting antenna, the system could use microwaves to beam 10,000 megawatts of electricity to the earth. But given its weight of more than 22,000 tons, there is now no conceivable way of getting the power satellite on station with present space transportation systems, or even with the reusable space shuttle NASA is developing. And the cost of the solar cells would have to be slashed to one-half of one per cent of their present costfrom $200,000 per kilowatt to about $1,000.

The pivotal problem of cost is the one researchers must solve if large-scale production of solar energy is to materialize. But small-scale systems for heating, cooling and powering houses involve less formidable economic difficulties and could be in widespread usage before too long. Their appearance will be welcomed by the environment-minded, for they represent a "gentle," nonpolluting, self-sufficient way to obtain energy for the family household. Perhaps this is a romantic viewpoint, 110t firmly grounded in economics/but it seems to be a prime stimulus for the current enthusiasm for research, pursuing man's ancient dream of extracting abundant power from the dazzling sun.

0 ,

About the Author: Henry T. Simmons, a former writer for Newsweek magazine, specializes in science and engineering subjects. His article "Energy for the Future" appeared in the March 1975 issue of SPAN.

A!~-2.\\ Where is American fiction going? It is branching out in several directions, says the author, but three of these forms are the most significant. First is the traditional narrative, the novel as we know it today. Second is the intellectualized 'fiction of the new sensibility.'

And third is the New Journalism, a highly subjective, imaginative treatment of real events.

How quickly the topography of contemporary American writing changes! Ten, even five, years ago the American literary landscape was distinguished by an extraordinarily hardy outgrowth of new novels written by Jewish, black, and other minority group writers. This efflorescence involved a flowering, in effect, of a literary pluralism to match America's political pluralism. Where once such writers-the

sons and daughters of immigrants from Eastern Europe or from America's own rural South-seemed no more than rivulets upon the American scene, they now seemed to comprise its mainstream. Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud -these have been among the peak names in American literature, and while all are still alive and continuing to produce new

work, they no longer seem as novelists anywhere near so dominant as they once did. The key phrase in that sentence is "as novelists," for if one is to understand something of the nature of the changes in American writing in recent years, then one must first grasp what is happening to American fiction.

The first fact worth remarking upon is the 'unhappy one that, in the main, the

publication of fiction in America, though by no means greatly curtailed or otherwise altered, does not seem to cause anything like the stir it once did. Of the abovenamed novelists, for example, only the first, Saul Bellow, seems to have held his own over the years as a novelist of the front rank. Ralph ElJison hasn't produced a novel in more than a decade, though one is in the works. Meanwhile, he has written superbly as an essayist. James Baldwin has produced novels, but his essays and his autobiographical writings have excited greater interest. Philip Roth, though stil1 purportedly a novelist, has devoted his main energies in recent years to the art of debunking and to writing political satire, sexual travesties, and comic investigations of American myths. Bernard Malamud, a devoted and serious artist, has not turned away from fiction at all, yet he is now beginning to seem less a successful novelist than a superior writer of short stories-a comment, incidental1y, that applies to John Cheever and in some respects to John Updike as well. The short story in America seems to hav!,.become a genre of radically shifting fortunes: Sometimes it is altogether neglected; at other times, it is one of the most fruitful of genres for American writers. Currently, it seems to be the latter, primarily because of Cheever and Updike, but also because of the numbers of younger writers adopting the genre.

The situation of Norman Mailer deserves a paragraph to itself. Mailer came on the American scene as a young writer with The Naked and the Dead (1948), a novel about a company of American infantrymen fighting in the Pacific Theater in World War II, and a work of wide canvas written in the naturalistic mode.

Mailer was stil1 in his 20s, and his novel was an immediate success, both critical1y and commercially, the sort of book that in America launches a writer in the most solid way. Mailer then went on to write three other novels, each in a different style and each burrowing off in the direction of vastly different purposes. A restless writer and a furiously ambitious one, Mailer was clearly in the process of sounding his own intellectual and artistic depths. Not content with repeating his early success, he put himself to a number of tests, including, for example, the writing of a novel, The American Dream (1965), under the pressure of monthly magazine deaqlines-the same way, as Mailer (a man not noted for his modesty) was quick to point out, in

which Dostoevsky, Dickens, and Henry seems at a stalemate. Although there has James wrote some of their novels. Mailer been no scarcity of new black writerswrote one further novel before the decade novelists, polemicists, essayists-many. of was out, but he has achieved what real them of considerable talent, the sad fact, acclaim he has enjoyed-and if America is that there have been almost no specific can be said to have a main literary celebri- works by black writers over the past decade ty, certainly, at the moment, it is Norman surpassing the power of the late Richard Mailer-through a number of powerful Wright, the subtlety and craft of Ralph works of journalism. Writing about politi- ElJison, or the reasoned and elegant anger cal conventions, about protest movements, of James Baldwin. None of this is to sugabout astronauts, about the new American gest that the strains upon the work of feminism, about (most recently) the movie black writers haven't been estimable. They actress Marilyn Monroe [see review on have been encouraged all round not to pages 32-35] and about (inevitably, and stint upon their resentment, to feature perhaps foremost) himself, Mailer has their own specifical1y black social and achieved a renown in American life sur- cultural experiences, and even in some passing even that of Ernest Hemingway. instances to consider themselves writing Yet the great novel that. he has been outside the mainstream of traditional promising his public for nearly a decade, literature. It is not surprising that much the book that, as he put it, would cause recent black writing hasn't the universal "a revolution in the consciousness of our appeal that other ethnic or minority group writing has been able to claim. time," still remains to be written.

Why doesn't this major Norman Mailer While on the subject of American novel get written? Perhaps the answer is pluralism, it would be a mistake not to too intimately involved with Mailer's own mention the entrance upon the American literary autobiography, yet it is nonethe- literary scene of yet another minority less an intriguing theoretical question. group-though demographically it is Once upon a time, and not so long ago as scarcely that. The group in question is that, there used to be something-a quest, women. There is in America at the moment a goal, a literary yearning-known as "The a new feminism, most general1y cal1ed Great American Novel." What was implied "Women's Liberation," whose leaders inin the term "The Great American Novel" sistently demand change in female roles. was a book that would contain within its It would be good to be able to report that pages all the rhythm and beat of American the new feminism has been the thrust life, its dramas and conflicts, its tone and behind the emergence of large numbers of contour, the novel that would do for women into serious literary work in America what War and Peace did for America, but to do so would be inaccurate.

Russia, or Balzac's Human Comedy did What does turn out to be true, however, is for France-capture the spirit, and hence that the great number of women now the essence, of an entire nation. Philip doing distinguished literary work in AmerRoth, himself once a candidate for writing ica tend to prove the new feminists' point such an American book, has entitled his about the equality of intel1ectual gifts latest novel, an extended satire on the shared by men and women.

To be sure,' there have always been American game of baseball, The Great American Novel (1973), in partial mockery women writers in the United States, and of the very idea that so ambitious a novel often extraordinary artists among them.

Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore, to can any longer be written.

Large questions of this order have in cite but two shimmering names, have recent years tended to supplant literary long and justly been considered classic pluralism as the chief phenomena of the practitioners of American poetry. In conAmerican literary scene. While the number temporary prose, Mary McCarthy, novelof Jewish writers, for example, can by no ist and critic, and Hannah Arendt, phimeans be said to have diminished, the losopher, have been serious figures for Jewish novel, the book taking the Jewish decades. In history and biography, Barbara immigrant experience in America or the Tuchman has enjoyed wide celebrity. experience of American Jews of the second Eudora Welty and the late Flannery or third generation, no longer seems as O'Connor, both Southerners and both novelists and short-story writers of a high vital as it once did.

More prominently, if only because more order, have been considered successors in frequently talked about, black writing fiction to the tradition of William Faulk-

'The new younger writers are not always easy to read; often indeed they can be very difficult, and their work assumes a college-educated, urbanized, and intellectually sophisticated audience.'

nero Yet, though the list could be easily extended, the fact remains that the success of a woman in literature was once considered, if not exceptional, then somewhat out of the ordinary. Today it is considered so no longer, and this in itself is a very happy harbinger indeed for American literature in the years to come.

Yet looking beyond individual works, what appears to be happening is that in American writing-and in large stretches of European writing into the bargain-the art of narration itself seems to have come under suspicion, and the suspicion it is under is that it, narrative, is no longer capable of comprehending experience in the last quarter of the 20th century.

Richard Gilman, an American critic of some prominence, has said of narration that it is "precisely that element of fiction which coerces and degrades it into a mere alternative to life, like life, only better of course, a dream (or a serviceable nightmare), a way out, a recompense, a blueprint, a lesson." Lionel Trilling, doubtless the most highly regarded American literary critic writing today, is not prepared to go so far as Gilman, but nonetheless has remarked: "We cannot fail to see how uneasy the novel is with the narrative mode, which once made its vital principle, and how its practitioners seek by one device or another to evade or obscure or palliate the act of telling." " ... to evade or obscure or palliate the act of telling"-those words are very much worth keeping in mind as one reads much¡ American fiction these days. Consider, for example, the beginning of a recent story entitled "The Traditional Story Returns" by a young American writer named Jonathan Baumbach: Too many times you read a story nowadays and it's not a story at all, not in the traditional sense. A traditional story has I?lot, character, and theme, to name three things it traditionally has.

The following story, which contains a soupcon of mood in addition to the three major considerations named above, is intended as a modest "rearguard" action in the servi~ of a declining tradition.

The plot is this: a woman of good family (we

won't say just how good the family is) marries a man of means. They live together in uneventful happiness for seven years until their love runs out ....

"The Traditional Story Returns" is not, as it turns out, much of a story, but it does give a rough idea of the lengths to which some American writers will go to avoid conventional narrative, and some notion of the degree of self-consciousness that, among younger writers, has begun to pervade American fiction. For those who prefer their fiction gimmicky, rather than ironic as in the case of Baumbach's story, the same issue of the journal in which the latter appears (Tri Quarterly 26, Winter 1973) also carries a story entitled "2" that comes complete with instructions for assembling.

The story, when assembled, is in the shape of a diam<md, with 10 separate triangles comprising its structure. The author tells us that there are three different ways to read his story: reading each triangle separately, reading around the center, and finally a combination of vertical and horizontal readings. Has the act of telling ever been so tortuous?

While one may not think highly of such literary antics, one still has to see in them a sign of health. For what such fiction represents, when viewed in opposition to those who continue to write traditional fiction, is a debate about the nature of reality. The question at issue is: How can a serious prose writer best convey experience-experience as it really is and as it really feels? And what method is best for understanding and communicating this experience to his readers? The issue, clearly, is very far from being settled. In fact, it rages within much of the work of the writers of this new fiction, or fiction of "the new sensibility," as it has sometimes been called. In Donald Barthelme's novel Snow White (1967), for example, the following passage appears: "Try to be a man about whom nothing is known," our father said, when we were young.

Our father said several other interesting things, but we have forgotten what they were ...â&#x20AC;˘

The father in this quotation is Henry James, the great theorist and innovator of the modern novel, who actually said, in an essay offering advice to the aspiring novelist: "Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost." But what Barthelme, an extremely talented young American writer, is in effect saying is that the advice of Henry James, the old Master, no longer seems to apply. The fictionists of the new sensibility do indeed have their influences, the writers of an early generation whom they admire, and among them would be the Russian-American Vladimir Nabokov, the Argentine writer Jorge Borges, and the American novelist of a slightly younger generation John Barth, a writer who combines the qualities of a fantasist, an extremely erudite professor (which he is), and a novelist of elaborate fictional structures.

The new younger writers, it needs to be emphasized, are not always easy to read; often indeed they can be very difficult, and their work assumes, at a minimum, a college-educated, urbanized, and intellectually sophisticated audience. As a result, and unlike other generations of 20thcentury novelists, they do not have the" wide readership that such writers as Hemingway, John Steinbeck, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and John Dos Passos enjoyed in their youth. Because a nut is tough to crack is no guarantee that the meat within will be sweet, or so American readers appear to believe.

Yet much of the new fiction is extraordinarily interesting. Although here being gathered under a single rubric, it needs to be said that its practitioners are an enormously varied lot. If one were to make a list of the best known among them, it would include Robert Coover, Donald Barthelme, Judith Rascoe, Thomas Pynchon, Joy Williams, Thomas McGuane, and (in some aspects of their work) Joyce Carol Oates and Thomas Berger. Tbe list could be further extended without great difficulty.

While some of these writers are chiefly comic in their methods, others are deadly serious; while some are prophetic, still others are altogether contemporary. But

"I'll be honest. If you like Faulkner and Hemingway, you probably wouldn't like me."

what these novelists have in common is a spirit of irreverence toward former styles and methods of apprehending experience.

Gerald Graff, an AmeriGan critic, has best put what these writers are about: "This new sensibility manifests itself in a variety of ways: in the refusal to take art 'seriously' in the old sense, the use of art itself as a vehicle for exploding its traditional pretensions and for showing the vulnerability and tenuousness of art and language; in the rejection of the dominant academic tradition of analytic and interpretive criticism, which by reducing art to a set of intellectual abstractions tends to neutralize or domesticate its potentially

liberating energies; in a generally less soberly rationalistic mode of consciousness, one that is more' congenial to myth, tribal ritual, and visionary experience, grounded in a 'protean,' fluid, and undifferentiated concept of the self which is opposed to the ,repressed, 'uptight' Western ego."

Accurate though this description is, it does not convey the level of talent that is often involved in the enterprise of this new fiction, which can be astonishingly high.

Thomas Pynchon's recent (1973) novel, Gravity's Rainbow [a selection from which appears on pages 22-25], is a case in point.

The novel is nothing jf not a tour de force.

It has been described, fairly, as "a picaresque, apocalyptic, absurdist novel that creates a complex mythology to describe our present predicament." The predicament in question is 20th-century man's tendency to fall under, and become ignobly subservient to, the creations of his own intelligence: his technology, his bureaucracies, his military weapons and organizations. Yet important, indeed central, though Pynchon's theme is, his 760-page novel is propelled by an astounding array of literary legerdemain-of great comic touches, among them, mimicry, parody, and set pieces of high-spirited absurdity.

The clownishness of men caught in traps' of their own making is featured, _ yet, through the comedy, the tragedy of the modern man's predicament is demonstrated all the more boldly. Gravity's Rainbow is a virtuoso performance.

Obviously, so intellectually strenuous a book is not everyone's cup of tea. Nor is it, or the fiction of the new sensibility generally, within the province of all younger American writers, no matter how consider. able their talents. To produce fiction of this kind involves gifts not alone of talent but of temperament-an ability, above all, to establish an esthetic distance from one's subject that is greater than usual. The result is that many younger American writers, unable to write the newer fiction, yet for one reason or another uninterested in writing the older narrative fiction, have turned their talents to other fields.

Ranking high 'among these fields has been autobiography. There has been a tendency, by now a definite trend, among writers of middle years-mid-30s to late 40s, say-to write their autobiography at mid-life. A handful of works of considerable power have come of it, illustrating the English writer Saki's remark that: "The young have aspirations that never come to pass, the old have reminiscences of what never happened. It's only the middle-aged who are really aware of their limitations."

Among these books have been Willie Morris's North Toward Home (1967) and Yazoo (1971), Frank Conroy's Stop-Time

The rise of the New Journalism coincides, in a way that is far from coincidental, with the decline of confidence in 'objective' reporting, with loss of interest in conventional fiction.

(1967), Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes (1971), Norman Podhoretz's Making It (1968), and the poet ~eter Davison's recent Half Remembered: A Personal History.

Some of these are extraordinary works.

But the nagging question persists: Would these same writers 20, even 10, years ago have used these same materials in a novel instead of in autobiography? The question does not admit of an easy answer. Willie Morris, for example, has gone on to write a novel, The Last of the Southern Girls (1973), a traditional narrative fiction that is nowhere near as good as his autobiographical works. Conroy, Exley, and Podhoretz have written nothing since their autobiographical books. The problem with autobiographical writing, from the standpoint of literary output, is that, once having written one in mid-life, one has to wait to live another 20 years or so to produce another volume.

The autobiographical element also makes itself felt in the New Journalism [Tom Wolfe discusses this in detail beginning on page 26]. While this journalism comes in a wide variety of forms and styles, what, inevitably, one feels behind any particular piece of New Journalism and what distinguishes it from the old, or conventional, journalism, is the voice of its author-and the more clearly that voice rings through, the greater the affront to the older journalism, which derived its ~uthor-. ity from its "objectivity."

The New Journalism in America has been both confident of its quality and ambitious in its literary aims. As Wolfe, who is simultaneously its chronicler and its ablest practitioner, points out, the New Journalism is intended as the logical successor to the great 19th-century novels, and indeed to the novel generally. Seymour Krim, another spokesman for the New Journalism, has said that he believes the novel is in effect obsolete, arguing that fiction itself need only be utilized as a way around libel laws. Wolfe has put the case only a touch more softly. "There are certain areas of life," he writes, "that journalism still cannot move into easily, parti-

cularly for reasons of invasion of privacy, and it is in this margin that the novel will be able to grow in the future."

The rise of the New Journalism coincides, in a way that is very far from coincidental, with the decline of confidence in "objective" reporting as well as with the loss of interest in much conventional fiction. In fact, many among the most notable of the New Journalists were themselves former novelists, or novelists manques. Gay Talese, one of the best known of the New Journalists, wrote novels that no one seemed much interested in reading; the same is true of David Halberstam, a New Journalist who recently wrote a book about America's involvement in Vietnam The Best and the Brightest (1972), that has been a thunderous commercial success; and for some years it was announced that Tom Wolfe himself had a novel in preparation, though none has ever appeared under his name. But perhaps the real thrus.t behind the rise of the New Journalism is history itself. More than a decade ago, the novelist Philip Roth wrote that events in the real world had become so bizarre as to render the fictional imagination impotent. Things that went on in the world needed no fictional embroidering and often would not even be believable if described in a novel. Certainly, such is true about. much that Wolfe has written about what he has called "the status life" in New York City. And there has been a good deal of other material seized upon by the New Journalism-reports about crime, or war, or politics, or sports-that it is hard to imagine could be improved upon by being strained through the fictional imagination; material that is, as it were, more powerful reported directly and as fact.

And yet, when all this is granted, it is difficult to see an end either to fiction as a major genre in American literature, or to the novel in its traditional narrative mode.

For while it is true that fiction of high quality in the latter category seems at the moment in short supply, it wants only a few serious works of narrative fiction to end all discussions about "the death of the

novel." Again, although the fiction of the new sensibility may be extremely useful for depicting tendencies underlying life in mass societies, and for pointing up social madnesses and impasses and the pathology of modern language, yet such fiction still falls far short of narrative fiction when it comes to dealing with moral conflict both between men and within each man's heart. It is precisely such conflict that has always been at the heart of traditional fiction as it remains at the heart of life itself. The great characters of fiction-the Kareninas, the Raskolnikovs, the Goriots, the Blooms, the Bovarys, the Ahabs-these particulars out of whom arise thoughts about 'the universality of human nature, giving fiction its great generalizing power, a power that journalism cannot hope to approach, all this remains most powerfully arrayed in the narrative novel. At full length in the novels of Saul Bellow, and at briefer compass in the short stories of John Cheever, the continuing power of narrative fiction is once again shown to be alive in America and very well indeed.

While there has been a natural competition among the practitioners of the three' chief forms of American prose-the New Journalism, the traditional narrative, and the fiction of the new sensibility-with each holding his own to be the superior conveyance of the truth of experience at the present time, the real point is that there is now a new pluralism of genres in contemporary American writing, a pluralism of prose to match the pluralistic origins of American writers and of the national population. The hope is that each of the three forms of prose writing will keep the others at their sharpest, causing the practitioners of each to strain to be at their best, all the while squeezing out the mediocre.

The most prestigious genre will be, as indeed it ought to be, that in which the 0 best American writing is done.

About the Author: Joseph Epstei,n. who teaches at Northwestern University near Chicago, is a frequent contributor of articles to Commentary and other leading American magazines.

lDNG WALK TO FOR A short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. They had grown up next door to each other, on the fringe of a city, near fields and woods and orchards, within sight of a lovely bell tower that belonged to a school for the blind.

Now they were 20, had not seen each other for nearly a year.

There had always been playful, comfortable warmth between them, but never any talk of love.

His name was Newt. Her name he said. He was a shy person, was Catharine. Tn the early aftereven with Catharine. He covered noon, Newt knocked on Cathhis shyness by speaking absently, arine's front door. , as though /what really concerned , Catharine came to the door. him were far away-as though She was carrying a fat, glossy he were a secret agent pausing magazine she had been reading. briefly on a mission between The magazine was devoted en- ,beautiful, distant, and sinister tirely to brides. "Newt!" she said. points. This manner of speaking She was surprised to see him. had always been Newt's style, "Could you come for a walk?" even in matters that concerned

Copyright Š by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. From the book, Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence. Used by permission of the publisher.

him desperately.

"A walk?" said Catharine.

"One foot in front of the other," said Newt, "through leaves, over bridges-" "I had no idea you were in town," she said.

"Just this minute got in," he said.

"Still in the Army, I see," she said.

"Seven more months to go,"he said. He was a private first class in the Artillery. His uniform was rumpled. His shoes were dusty.

He needed a shave. He held out his hand for the magazine. "Let's see the pretty book," he said. ' She gave it to him. "I'm getting married, Newt," she said.

"I know," he said. "Let's go for a walk."

"I'm awfully busy, Newt," she said. "The wedding is only a week away."

"If we go for a walk," he said, . "it will make you rosy. It will make you a rosy bride." He turned the pages of the magazine.

"A rosy bride like her-like herlike her," he said, showing her rosy brides.

Catharine turned rosy, thinking about rosy brides.

"That will be my present to Henry Stewart Chasens," said Newt. "By taking you for a walk, I'll be giving him a rosy bride."

"You know his name?" said Catharine.

"Mother wrote," he said.

"From Pittsburgh?"

"Yes," she said. "You'd like' him."

"Maybe," he said.

"Can-=-can you come to the wedding, Newt?" she said, "That I doubt," he said.

"Your furlough isn't for long enough?" she said.

"Furlough?" said Newt. He was studying a two-page ad for flat silver. "I'm not on furlough," he said.

"Oh?" she said.

"I'm what they callA.W.O.L.," said Newt.

"Qh, Newt! You're not!" she said.

"Sure I am," he said, still looking at the magazine. . "Why, Newt?" she said.

"I had to find out what your silver pattern is," he said. He read names of silver patterns from the magazine. "Albemarle?

Heather?" he said. "Legend?

Rambler Rose?" He' looked up, smiled. "I plan to give you and your husband a spoon," he said.

"Newt, Newt-tell me really," she said.

"I want to go for a walk," he said.

She wrung her hands in sisterly anguish. "Oh, Newt-you're fooling me about being A.W.O.L.," she said.

Newt imitated a police siren softly, raised his eyebrows.

"Where-where from?" she said.

"Fort Bragg," he said.

"North Carolina?" she said.

"That's right," he said. "Near Fayetteville-where Scarlett O'Hara went to school."

"How did you get here, Newt?" she said .

He raised his thumb, jerked it in a hitchhike gesture. "Two days," he said.

"Does your mothe: know?" she said.

"I didn't come to see my mother," he told her.

"Who did you come to see?" she said.

"You," he said.

"Why me?" she said.

"Because I love you," he said.

"Now can we take a walk?" he said. "One root in front of the other-through leaves, over bridges-"

* * * * *

They were taking, the walk now, were in a woods with a brown-leaf floor.

Catharine was angry and rattled, close to tears. "Newt," she said, "this is absolutely crazy."

"How so?" said Newt.

"What a crazy time to tell me you love me," she said. "You never talked that way before."

She stopped walking.

"Let's keep walking," he said.

"No," she said. "So far, no farther. I shouldn't have come out with you at all," she said.

"You did," he said.

"To get you out of the house," she said. "If somebody walked

in and heard you talking to me that way, a week before the wedding-" "What would they think?" he said.

"They'd think you were crazy," she said.

"Why?" he said.

Catharine took a deep breath, made a speech. "Let me say that I'm deeply honored by this crazy thing you've done," she said.

"I can't- believe you're really A.W.O.L., but maybe you are.

I can't believe you really love, me, but maybe you do. But-" "I do," said Newt. "~ell, I'm deeply honored," said Catharine, "and I'm very fond of you as a friend, Newt, extremely fond-but it's just too late." She took a step away from him. "You've never even kissed me," she said, and she protected herself with her hands. "I don't mean you should do it now. I just mean this is all so unexpected.

I haven't got the remotest idea of how to respond."

"Just walk some more," he said. "Have a nice time."

Tiley started walking again.

"How did you expect me to react?" she said.

"How would I know what to expect?'" he said. "I've never done anything like this before."

"Did yOLlthink T would throw myself into your arms?" she said.

"Maybe," he said. fI "I'm sorry to disappoint you," she said. ,"I'm not disappointed," he said. "I wasn't counting on it.

This is very nice, just walking."

Catharine stopped again. "You know what happens next?" she said.

"Nope," he said.

"We shake hands," she said.

"We shake hands and part friends," she said. "That's what happens next."

Newt nodded. "All right," he said. "Remember me from time to time. Remember how much I loved you."

Involuntarily, Catharine burst into tears. She turned her back to Newt, looked into the infinite colonnade of the woods.

"What does that mean?,' ~

said Newt.

"Rage!" said Catharine. She clenched her hands. "You have no right-" "I had to find out," he said.

"If I'd loved you," she said, "I would have let you know before now."

"You would?" he said.

"Yes," she said. She faced him, looked up at him, her face Iquite red. "You would have known," she said.

"How?" he said.

"You. would have seen it," she said. "Women aren't very' clever at hiding it."

Newt looked closely at Catharine's face now. To her consternation, she realized that what she had said was true, that a woman couldn't hide love.

Newt was seeing love now.

And he did what he had to do. He kissed her.

* * * * *

said Newt. "Is Henry Stewart Chasens a hero?"

"He might be, if he got the chance," said Catharine. She noted uneasily that they had begun to walk again. The farewell had been forgotten.

"You really love him?" he said.

"Certainly I love him!" she said hotly. "I wouldn't marry him if I didn't love him!"

"What's good about him?" said Newt.

"Honestly!" she cried, stopping again. "Do you have any idea how offensive you're b~ing?

Many, many, many things are good about Henry! Yes;" she said, "and many, many, many things are probably bad too. But that isn't any of your business.

I love Henry, and I don't have to argue his merits with you!"

"Sorry," said Newt.

"Honestly!" said Catharine.

Newt kissed her again. He kissed her again because she wanted him to.

"You're hell to get along with!" she said when Newt let her go.

"I am?" said Newt. * * * * * "You shoulct"ri't have done They were now in a large orchard. that," she said.

"How did we get so far from "You didn't like it?" he said.

"What did you expect," she .home, Newt?" said Catharine.

"One-foot in front of the other said-"wild, abandoned passion?"

"I keep telling you," he said, -through leaves, over bridges," "I never know what's going to said Newt. happen next."

"They add up-the steps," she said.

"We say good-by," she said.

Bells rang in the tower of the He frowned slightly. "All right," he said. school for the blind nearby.

"School for the blind," said She made another speech.

"I'm not sorry we kissed," she Newt.

"School for the blind," said said. "That was sweet. We should have kissed, we've been so close. Catharine. She shook her head I'll always remember you, Newt, in drowsy wonder. "I've got to and good luck." go back now," she said."Say good-by," said Newt.

"You too," he said.

"Thank you, Newt," she said.

"Every time I do,",said Cath"Thirty days," he said. arine, "I seem to get kissed."

"What?" she said.

Newt sat down on the close;'Thirty days in the stockade," cropped grass under an apple he said-"that's what one kiss tree. "Sit down," he said. will cost me."

"No," ~he said..

"I-I'm sorry," she said, "but "I won't touch you," he said.

I didn't ask you to go A.W.O.L." "I don't believe you," she said.

"I know," he said.'

She sat down under another "You certainly don't deserve tree, 20 feet away from him. any hero's reward for doing She closed her eyes. something as foolish as that," "Dream of Henry Stewart she said.

Chasens," he said.

"Must be nice to be a hero," , "What?" she said.

"Dream of your wonderful husband-to-be," he said.

"All right, I will," she said.

She closed her eyes tighter, caught glimpses of her husbandto-be.

Newt yawned.

The bees were humming in the trees, and Catharine almost fell asleep. When she opened her eyes she saw that Newt really was .asleep.

He began to snore softly.

Catharine let Newt sleep for an hour, and while he slept she adored him with all her heart.

The shadows of the apple trees grew to the east. The bells in the tower of the scnool for the blind rang again. ÂŤ Chick-a-dee-dee-dee," went a chickadee.

Somewhere far away an automobile starter nagged and failed, nagged and failed, fell stiLl. Catharine came out from under her tree, knelt by Newt.

"Newt?" she said.

"H'm?" he said. He opened his eyes.

"Late," she said.

"Hello, Catharine," he said.

"Hello, Newt," she said.

"I love you," he said.

"I know," she said.

"Too late," he said.

"Too late," she said.

He stood, stretched groaningly. "A very nice walk," he said.

"I thought so," she said.

"Part company here?" he said.

"Where will you go?" she said.

"Hitch into town, turn myself in," he said.

"Good luck," she said.

"You, too," he said. "Marry me, Catharine?"

"No," she said.

He smiled, stared at her hard for a moment, then walked away quickly.

Catharine watched him grow smaller in the long perspective of shadows and trees, knew that if he stopped and turned now, if he called to her, she would run to him. She would have no choice.

Newt did stop. He did turn.

He did call. "Catharine," he called.

She ran to him, put her arms around him, could not speak. 0

About the Author: Kurt Vonnegut is an American writer of enormous versatility, championed by the young for his generally irreverent views on human foibles and contemporary life. (See "A Talk With Kurt Vonnegut," July 1974 SPAN.) Among his more famous novels are Cat's Cradle, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and Slaughterhouse Five. The short story printed on these pages is more restrained than most of his work, which almost always combines gentle humor with a sharp satirical bite.

END

AT

OF MEC

AGE

CAL

.A short story by Donald Barthelrne r went to the grocery store to buy some soap. I stood for a long time before the soaps in their attractive boxes, RUB and FAB and TUB and suchlike, I couldn't decide so I closed my eyes and reached out blindly and when T opened my eyes I found her hand in mine.

Her name was Mrs. Davis, she said, and TUB was best for important cleaning experiences, in her opinion. So we went to lunch at a Mexican restaurant which as it happened she owned, she took me into the kitchen and showed me her stacks of handsome beige tortillas and the steam tables which were shiny-brite.

I told her I wasn't very good with women and she said it didn't matter, few men were, and that nothing mattered, now that Jake was gone, but I would do as an interim project and sit down and have a Carta Blanca. So I sat down and had a cool Carta Blanca, God was standing in the basement reading the meters >- to see how much grace had been used up in the month of June. ~ Grace is electricity science has found, it is not like electricity, ~ it is electricity and God was down in the basement reading the z meters in His blue jump suit with the flashlight stuck in the :I: ~ back pocket. ~ "The mechanical age.is drawing to a close," I said to her.

13 "Or has already done so," she replied. ~ "It was a good age," I said. "I was comfortable in it, relatively. ~ Probably T will not enjoy the age to come quite so much. I don't 3 like its look." ..• "One must be fair. We don't, know yet what kind of an age

the next one will be. Although I feel in my bones that it will be an age inimical to personal well-being and comfort, and that is what I like, personal well-being and comfort."

"Do you suppose there is something to be done?" I asked her.

"Huddle and cling," said Mrs. Davis. "We can huddle and cling. It will pall, of course, everything palls, in time ... " Then we went back to my house to huddle and cling, most women are two different colors when they remove their clothes especially in summer but Mrs. Davis was all one color, an ocher.

She seemed to like huddling and clinging, she stayed for many days. From time to time she checked the restaurant keeping everything shiny-brite and distributing sums of money to the staff, returning with tortillas in sacks, cases of Carta Blanca, buckets of guacamole, but r paid her for it because I didn't want to feel obligated.

There was a song I sang her, a song of great expectations.

«Ralph is coming," I sang, «Ralph is striding in his suit of lights over moons and mountains, over parking lots andfountains, toward your silky side. Ralph is coming, he has a coat of many colors and all major credit cards and he is striding to meet you and culminate your foggy dreams in an explosion of blood and soil, at the end of the mechanical age. Ralph is coming preceded by 50 running men with spears and 50 dancing ladies who are throwing leaf spinach out of little baskets, in his path. Ralph is perfect," I sang, «but he is also full of interesting tragic flaws, and he can drink 50 running men under the table without breaking his stride and he

can have congress with 50 dancing ladies without breaking his stride, even his socks are ironed, so natty is Ralph, but he is also right down in the mud with the rest of us, he markets the mud at high prices for specialized industrial uses and he is striding, striding, striding, toward your waiting heart. .of course you may not like him, some people are awfully picky ... Ralph is coming," I sang to her, "he is striding over dappled plains and run-mad rivers and he will change your life for the better, probably, you will be fainting with glee at the simple touch of his grave gentle immense hand although I am aware that some people can't stand prosperity, Ralph is coming, I hear his hoofsteps on the drumhead of history, he is striding as he has been all his life toward you, you, you."

"Yes," Mrs. Davis said, when I had finished singing, "that is what I deserve, all right. But probably I will not get it. And in the meantime, there is you."

* * * * * God then rained for 40 days and 40 nights, when the water tore away the front of the house we got into the boat, Mrs. Davis liked the way I maneuvered the boat off the trailer and out of the garage, she was provoked into a memoir of Jake.

"Jake was a straight-ahead kind of man," she said, "he was simple-minded and that helped him to be the kind of man that he was." She was staring into her Scotch-and-f1oodwater rather moodily I thought, debris bouncing on the waves all around us but s1}~paid no attention. "That is the type of man I like," she said, "a strong and simple-minded man. The case-study method was not Jake's method, he went right through the middle of the line and never failed to gain yardage, no matter what the game was. He had a lust for life, and life had a lust for him.

I was inconsolable when Jake passed away." Mrs. Davis was drinking the Scotch for her nerveless and possibly heartless also but that is another question, gutless she was not, she had a gut and a very pretty one ocher in color but that was another matter. God was standing up to His neck in the raging waters with a smile of incredible beauty on His visage, He seemed to be enjoying His creation, the disaster, the waters all around us were raging louder now, raging like a mighty tractor-trailer tailgating you on the highway.

Then Mrs. Davis sang to me, a song of great expectations.

"Maude is waiting for you," Mrs. Davis sang to me, "Maude is waiting for you in all her seriousness and splendor, under her gilded onion dome, in that city which I cannot name lit this time, Maude waits. Maude is what you lack, the profoundest of your lacks. Your every yearn since the first yearn has been a yearn for Maude, only you did not know it until I, your dear friend, pointed it out. She is going to heal your scrappy and generally unsatisfactory /(fe with the balm of her Maudeness, luckiest of dogs, she waits only for you. Let me give you just one instance of Maude's inhuman sagacity. Maude named the tools. It was Maude who thought of calling the rattail file a rattail file. It was Maude who christened the needle-nose pliers. Maude named the rasp.

Think of it. What else could a rasp be but a rasp? Maude in her wisdom went right to the point, and called it "rasp." It was Maude who named the maul. Similarly the sledge, the wedge, the ballpeen hammer, the adz, the shim, the hone, the strop. The handsaw, {he hacksaw, the bucksaw, ar:d the fretsaw were named by Maude,

peering into each saw and intuiting at once its specialness. The scratch awl, the scuffle hoe, the prick punch and the countersinkI could go on and on. The tools came to Maude, tool by tool in a long respectful line, she gave them their names. The vise. The gimlet. The cold chisel. The reamer, the router, the gouge. The plumb bob. How could she have thought up the rough justice of these wonderful cognomens? Looking languidly at a pair of tin snips, and then deciding to call them "tin snips"-what a burst of glory! And I haven't even cited the bush hook, the grass snath, or the plumber's snake, or the C-clamp, or the nippers, or the scythe. What a tall achievement, naming the tools! And this is just one of Maude's contributions to our worldly estate, there are others. What delights will come crowding," Mrs. Davis sang to me, "delight upon delight, when the epithalamium is ground out by the hundred organ grinders who are Maude's constant attendants, on that good-quality day of her own choosing, which you have desperately desired all your lean life, only you weren't aware of it until I, your dear friend, pointed it out. And Maude is young but not too young," Mrs. Davis sang to me, "she is not too old either, she is just right and she is waiting for you with her tawny limbs and horse sense, when you receive Maude's nod your future and your past will begin."

There was a pause, or pall.

"Is that true," I asked, "that song?"

"It is a metaphor," said Mrs. Davis, "it has metaphorical truth."

"And the end of the mechanical age," I said, "is that a metaphor?"

"The end of the mechanical age," said Mrs. Davis, "is in my judgment an actuality straining to become a metaphor. One must wish it luck, I suppose. One must cheer it on. Intellectual rigor demands that we give these damned metaphors every chance, even if they are inimical to personal well-being and comfort. We have a duty to understand everything, whether we like it or not-a duty I would scant if I could." At that moment the water jumped into the boat and sank us. fI

* * * * * At the wedding Mrs. Davis spoke to me kindly.

"Tom," she said, "you are not Ralph, but you are all that is around at the moment. I have taken in the whole horizon with a single sweep of my practiced eye, no giant figure looms there and that is why I have decided to marry you, temporarily, with Jake gone and an age ending. It will be a marriage of convenience all right, and when Ralph comes, or Maude nods, then our¡ arrangement will automatically self-destruct, like the tinted bubble that it is. You were very kind and considerate, when we were drying out, in the tree, and I appreciated that.

That counted for something. Of course kindness and consideration are not what the great songs, the Ralph-song and the Maude-song, promise. They are merely flaky substitutes for the terminal experience. I realize that and want you to realize it. I want to be straight with you. That is one of the most admirable things about me, that I am always straight with people, from the sweet beginning to the bitter end. Now I will return to the big house where my handmaidens will proceed with the robing of the bride."

It was cool in the meadow by the river, the meadow Mrs.

Davis had selected for the travesty, I walked over to the tree under which my friend Blackie was standing, he was the best man, in a sense.

"This disgusts me," Blackie said, "this hollow pretense and empty sham and I had to come all the way from Chicago."

God came to the wedding and stood behind a tree with just part of His effulgence showing, I wondered whether He was planning to bless this makeshift construct with His grace, or not. It's hard to imagine what He was thinking of in the beginning when He planned everything that was ever going to happen, planned everything exquisitely right down to the tiniest detail such as what I was thinking at this very moment, my thought about His thought, planned the end of the mechanical age and detailed the new age to follow, and then the bride emerged from the house with her train all ocher in color and very lovely.

"And do you, Anne," the minister said, "promise to make whatever mutually satisfactory accommodations necessary to reduce tensions and arrive at whatever previously agreed-upon goals both parties have harmoniously set in the appropriate planning sessions?"

"I do," said Mrs. Davis.

"And do you, Thomas, promise to explore all differences thoroughly with patience and inner honesty ignoring no fruitful avenues of discussion and seeking at all times to achieve. rapprochement while eschewing advantage in conflict situations?"

"Yes," I said.

"Well, now .J.,eare married," said Mrs. Davis, "I think I will retain my present name if you don't mind, I have always been Mrs. Davis and your name is a shade graceless, no offense, dear."

"OK," I said.

Then we received the congratulations arrd good wishes of the guests, who were mostly employees of the Mexican restaurant, Raul was there and Consuelo, Pedro, and Pepe came crowding around with outstretched hands and Blackie came crowding around with outstretched hands. God was standing behind the caterer's tables looking at the enchiladas and chalupas and chile con queso and chicken mole as if He had never seen such things before but that was hard to believe.

I started to speak to Him as all of the world's great religions with a few exceptions urge, from the heart, I started to say "Lord, Little Father of the Poor and all that, I was just wondering now that an age, the mechanical age, is ending and a new age beginning or so they say, I was just wondering if You could give me a hint, sort of, not a Sign, I'm not asking for a Sign, but just the barest hint as to whether what we have been told about Your nature and our nature is, forgive me and I know how You feel about doubt or rather what we have been told You feel about it, but if You could just let drop the slightest indication as to whether What we have been told is authentic or just a bunch of apocryphal heterodoxy-" But He had gone away with an insanely beautiful smile on His lighted countenance, gone away to read the meters and get a line on the efficacy of grace in that area, I surmised I couldn't blame Him, my question had not been so very elegantly put, had I been able to express it mathematically He would have been more interested, maybe, but I have never been able to express anything mathematically.

After the marriage Mrs. Davis explained marriage to me.

Marriage, she said, an institution deeply enmeshed with the mechanical age.

Pairings smiled upon by law were but reifications of the laws of mechanics, inspired by unions of a technical nature, such as nut with bolt, wood with woodscrew, aircraft with Plane-Mate.

Permanence or impermanence of the bond a function of (1) materials and (2) technique.

Growth of literacy a factor, she said.

Growth of illiteracy also. .

The center will not hold if it has been spot-welded by an operator whose deepest concern is not with the weld but with his lottery ticket.

God interested only in grace-keeping things humming.

Blackouts, brownouts, temporary dimmings of household illumination all portents not of Divine displeasure but of Divine indifference to executive development programs at middlemanagement levels.

He likes to get out into the field Himself, she said. With His flashlight. He is doing the best He can.

We two, she and I, no exception to general ebb/flow of world juice and its concomitant psychological effects, she said.

Bitter with the sweet, she said.

* * * * *

After the explanation came the divorce.

"Will you be wanting to contest the divorce?" I asked Mrs. Davis.

"I think not," she said calmly, "although I suppose one of us should, for the fun of the thing. An uncontested divorce always seems to me contrary to the spirit of divorce."

"That is true," I said, "I have had the same feeling myself, not infrequently."

After the divorce the child was born. We named him A.F. of L. Davis and sent him to that part of the Soviet Union where people live to be 110 years old. He is living there still, probably, growing in wisdom and beauty. Then we shook hands, Mrs. Davis and I, and she set out Ralphward, and I, Maudeward, the glow of hope not yet extinguished, the fear of pall not yet triumphant, standby generators ensuring the flow of grace to all of God's creatures at the end of the mechanical age.

D About the Author: Donald Barthelme is a young writer who in such works as Snow White and Unnatural Practices, Unspeakable Acts and other books has carried on a one-man invasion upon modern forms of intellection-and especially on what he believes to be the utter futility of trying to make sense of the world at large. Very often. Barthelme's point of attack is language itse~r.He writes out of a keen comic sense that is, as the best comedy almost always is, at bottom completely serious.

The short story reprinted on these pages, "At the End of the Mechanical Age," is vintage Barthelme in that it captures people in transition from one era to another-hoisted high by the petard of their own linguistic and intellectual conceptions.

The Art of Thomas Pynchon

by L.E. Sissman 'A picaresque, apocalyptic, absurdist novel,' says a distinguished Amerjcan critic describing 'Gravity's Rainbow,' the most ambitious book of one of the most important new writers in the U.S. today. This is a novel about 'the whole modern tendency of man to subordinate himself to the whims of the products of his intelligence, to the self-aggrandizing dictates of machines.'

Thoughts on finishing Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Gravity's Rainbow: (1) Whew!

(2) That was very long. It was like eating all of a 36-pound wheel of Vermont Cheddar cheese. In fact, it took me 36 hours, which may (but probably doesn't) have some significance.

(3) But it was not dull reading. Anything but. It held me tight through all those permutations.

(4) What was it about? To explain that, I'd have to write a review nearly as long as the book. Oh, very well, then, I'll condense.

Gravity's Rainbow is a picaresque, apocalyptic, absurdist novel that creates a complex mythology to describe our present predicament. It is supposedly about a brief period in the decline of the West-fall, 1944,through fall, 1945. It is actually about our entire century, from the roots of the First World War through the final calamity, which keeps on threatening right up to press time. Beyond that, it is about the whole modern tendency of man to subordinate himself to the whims of the products of his intelligence, to the self-aggrandizing dictates of machines. It is also about the paranoia this subordination instills in men -a paranoia of which they are absolved as their persecution dreams come true and, ironically, destroy them.

If I have suggested an icily intellectual book by these adumbrations, I'm sorry.

Gravity's Rainbow attempts to conceal its author's ultimately guiding intellect beneath a long series of marvelous, polyglot sideshows that entertain before they edify.

The broad clownishness of modern men at

war, in love, in painful, oblique communication with their peers is Pynchon's superficial text, beneath which a darker message lurks, and the funning alone is sufficient to carry the reader along through the book.

Pynchon is a gifted mimic; from the very beginning he engages us with his absolute pitch in his renditions of the English and American vulgate, both in speech and in song. We commence in London late in 1944,when the slow, early V-I buzzbombs, whose sound announced their coming (and which could be tipped off course and exploded in open country by an R.A.F. Tempest flying alongside), were supplanted by the faster, deadlier V-2s, which, since they traveled more rapidly than sound, gave no warning of their presence until the explosion. We are introduced to a motley cast of characters in a special intelligence unit dedicated to the detection and extinction of the German rocket sites. Among the leading players (and players they are, for this is an exercise governed by a paranoid kind of -games theory) are Roger Mexico, a statistician, whose analytical calm is shaken not only by his affair with the beautiful Jessica Swanlake, whose accessibility to him is for the duration only, but by the unnerving fact that the pattern of bomb bursts on the map of London conforms precisely to the pattern of sexual conquests of the American Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop, another leading player. A further card of high value in Pynchon's tarot deck is Edward Pointsman, a Pavlovian psychologist and sadomasochist (his name, the English word for "switchman," indicates that it is he who will pull the levers that

govern the direction of the other characters, including both Mexico and Slothrop).

Another is the obsessed German rocket commander Weissmann, who has adopted the nom de guerre of Captain Blicero. His whiteness-as implied by his name-':"-is balanced by the blackness of his former servant in German South-West Africa, now, as Oberst Enzian, himself in charge of a black German rocket group known as the Schwarzkommando. Around these principal figures swirls a vast dramatis personae involving hundreds of English, German, American, and Russian spies, agents, dupes and counterdupes, scientists and counterscientists, roues and naturals.

Their revels (celebrating life, celebrating self, celebrating greed) are subject alwayt to the review and repeal oftbe higher, more sinister powers that move on, untroubled, above them-the uItramundane powers of the destructive machines these characters ultimately serve, machines governed, though perhaps less than absolutely, by the highest powers: the multinational cartels that dictate machine design and war plans alike.

This only begins to suggest the intricacy of Pynchon's plot. It is an overarching labyrinth-overarching like the rocket trajectory that is gravity's rainbow but meticulously designed to carry forward and, at length, to carry out its author's aims. It sees the American Slothrop posted from London to the Riviera and then to Germany, in pursuit of the mad Captain Blicero and the destination of a secret rocket he has fired-a specially equipped V-2 bearing the unrevealing numeral 00000

and aimed, for once, almost due north. In the course of his travels, Slothrop becomes a rocket figure himself; he becomes Rocketman, a character in an American comic / book, but without such a character's superlJal powers-floundering through the wastes of summer, 1945, with cadres of enemies (perhaps including his own employers) close upon his trail.

Slothrop's simultaneous pursuit and flight is in itself a parody (and an updating) of the Grail legend, as the terrible ruins he passes through recall the stricken city of "The Waste Land," as the rocket, in its megalomaniac amplification of human (and phallic) power, echoes the last linesof Rilke's "When Catching What You Throw Yourself": "Out of your hands,j A meteor hurtles' on its course through space.... " All these heritages and homages may be appreciated intellectually, in the abstract, for themselves. But it is the splendid concreteness of Pynchon's eye and voice that propel and compel us through the book. The eye is that of Hieronymus Bosch-an elevated eye encompassing, with fatal accuracy, human aberration and disorder. The voice is that, at one moment, of a poet and prophet, and, at the next, of a machine-serving scientist,

One other thing: Pynchon's talent is far greater than mere mimicry, though he is master of that. He is almost a mathematician of prose, who calculates the least and the greatest stress each word and line, each pun and ambiguity, can bear, and applies his knowledge accordingly and virtually without lapses, though he takes many scary, bracing linguistic risks. Thus his remarkably supple diction can first treat of a painful and delicate love scene and then roar, without pause, into the sounds and echoes of a drugged and drunken orgy.

Pynchon, for his aloofness and wisdom, his sardonic knowingness of all the world, has been called a cold, lapidary writer. I do not find him to be one. Though his characters are not developed along conventional lines, they do, in their recalcitrant human oddity, live, and they do eventually touch the reader more than he at first thinks they will. Perhaps that is because the whole book moves, with slow deliberation, from the generalized past to the particular present. What begins in the far-off London of 1944 moves closer and closer to us, implicates us more and more in its events. At the end, in a long, diminuendo, beautifully modulated passage entitled "The Counterforce," he reminds me of the final lines of Philip Larkin's "The Whitsun Weddings" ("We slowed again,/And as the tightened brakes took hold, there'swelled/A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower/Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain"); Pynchon brings the past and the present and maybe the near future literally down upon our heads in, appropriately, Los Angeles.

Gravity's Rainbow is one of the bestrealized paradigms of our century I have yet read.

0

using the certainties of a Robert Bosch-a German magnate of electricity and power -to carry his vision into the technical present. (Yes, "magnate," no pun intended; if Pynchon were writing this, he would intend one, as in his outrageous, Hobbesian Boston law firm-Salitieri, Poore, Nash" De Brutus & Short.)

Aside from plot, from statement, the heart and life of this book reside in its luminous, comical, frightening set pieces: Slothrop's pursuit of a lost mouth organ down a Roseland Ballroom toilet and into the sewers; Pointsman's eerily calculated S-and-M punishment for the ancient commandant of his research station,. in the .â&#x20AC;˘b ~ course of which the old Brigadier, chasAbout the Author: One of America's most retised by a factitious Queen of the Night, spected literary critics, atones for the butchery he caused at PasL.E. Sissman, now in schendaele; the voyage of the pleasure ship his mid-40s, is a poet (or Narrenschiff) Anubis (q.v.), peopled and author in his own by a cast of degenerate aristocrats who right.

He is best recall George Grosz and The Berlin Stories known for the wideas well as the fall of Rome; Mexico's highranging column he level tantrum on learning of the long-planwrites for the Atlantic ned loss of his lover, Jessica Swanlake, Monthly magazine and for his book reviews during which he demolishes a London con- in the New Yorker. As this deft analysis of ference of senior civil and military ser- Gravity's Rainbow proves, Sissman has the vants; and so many more that I can only ability to capture in a few paragraphs the complexity of a book-and to explicate it as well. refer you to the book.

GM 's RAINBOW Excerpts from the novel by Thomas Pynchon ,A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but house aisles ... velvet black surfaces contain the movement: the smell is of old wood, of remote wings empty all this time just there is nothing to compare it to now.

It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theater. reopened to accommodate the rush of souls, of cold plaster where There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him all the rats have died, only their ghosts, still as cave-painting, fixed, lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above stubborn and luminous in the walls ... the evacuees are taken in that would let the light of day through. But it's night. He's afraid lots, by elevator-a moving wood scaffold open on all sides, of the way the glass will fall-soon-it will be a spectacle: the fall hoisted by old tarry ropes and cast-iron pulleys whose spokes are of a crystal palace. But coming down in total blackout, without shaped like Ss. At each brown floor, passengers move on and off ... thousands of these hushed rooms without light. ... one glint of light, only great invisible crashing.

Some wait alone, some share their invisible rooms with others.

Inside the carriage, which is built on several levels, he sits in velveteen darkness, with nothing to smoke, feeling metal nearer Invisible, yes, what do the furnishings matter, at this stage of things? Underfoot crunches the oldest of city dirt, last crystallizaand farther rub and connect, steam escaping in puffs, a vibration in the carriage's frame, a poising, an uneasiness, all the others tions of all the city had denied, threatened, lied to its children. pressed in around, feeble ones, second sheep, all out of luck and Each has been hearing a voice, one he thought was talking only â&#x20AC;˘ time: drunks, old veterans still in shock from. ordnance 20 years to him, say, ."You didn't really believe you'd be saved. Come, we obsolete, hustlers in city clothes, derelicts, exhausted women with all know who we are by now. No one was ever going to take the more children than it seems could belong¡ to anyone, stacked trouble to save you, old fell6w.... " There is no way out. Lie and wait, lie still and be quiet. Screamabout among the rest of the things to be carried out to salvation.

Only the nearer faces are visible at all, and at that only as half- ing holds across the sky. When it comes, will it come in darkness, silvered images in a viewfinder, green-stained VIP faces remember- or will it bring its own light? Will the light come before or after?

But it is already light. How long has it been light? All this while, ed behind bulletproof windows speeding through the city....

They have begun to move. They pass in line, out of the main light has come percolating in, along with the cold morning air station, out of downtown, and begin pushing into older and more flowing now across his nipples: It has begun to reveal an assortdesolate parts of the city. Is this the/way out? Faces turn to the ment of drunken wastrels, some in uniform and some not, clutchwindows, but no one dares ask, not out loud. Rain comes down. ing empty or near-empty bottles, here. draped over a chair, there No, this is not a disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting huddled into a cold fireplace, or sprawled on various divans, uninto-they go in under archways, secret entr~nces of rotted con- Hoovered rugs and chaise lounges down the different levels of crete that only looked like loops of an underpass ... certain the enormous room, snoring and wheezing at many rhythms, in trestles of blackened wood have moved slowly by overhead, and . self-renewing chorus, as London light, winter and elastic light: the smells begun of coal from days far to the past, smells of grows between the faces of the mullioned windows, grows among naphtha winters, of Sundays when no traffic came through, of the strata of last night's smoke still hung, fading, from the waxed the coral-like and mysteriously vital growth, around the blind beams of the ceiling. All these horizontal here, these comrades curves and out the lonely spurs, a sour smell of rolling-stock in arms, look just as rosy as a bunch of Dutch peasants dreaming absence, of maturing rust, developing through those emptying of their certain resurrection in the next few minutes.

His name is Capt. Geoffrey ("Pirate") Prentice. He is wrapped days brilliant and deep, especially at dawn, with blue shadows to seal its passage, to try to bring events to Absolute Zero ... and it in a thick blanket, a tartan of orange, rust, and scarlet. His skull is poorer the deeper they go ... ruinous secret cities of poor, feels made of metal. places whose names he has never heard ... the walls break down, Just above him, 12 feet overhead, Teddy Bloat is about to fall the roofs get fewer and so do the chances for light. The road, out of the minstrels' gallery, having chosen to collapse just at which ought to be opening out into a broader highway, instead the spot where somebody in a grandiose fit weeks before, had has been getting narrower, more broken, cornering tighter and kicked out two of the ebony balusters. Now, in his stupor, Bloat tighter until all at once, much too soon, they are under the final has been inching through the opening, head, arms, and torso, arch: brakes grab and spring terribly. It is a judgment from which until all that's keeping him up there is an empty champagne split in his hip pocket, that's got hooked somehowthere is no appeal.

By now Pirate has managed to sit up on his narrow bachelor The caravan has halted. It is the end of the line. All the evacuees are ordered out. They move slowly, but without resistance. bed, and blink about. How awful. How bloody awful â&#x20AC;˘.. above Those marshaling them wear cockades the color of lead, and do him, he hears cloth rip. The Special Operations Executive has not speak. It is some vast, very old and dark hotel, an iron exten- trained him to fast responses. He leaps off of the cot and kicks it rolling on its casters in Bloat's direction. Bloat, plummeting, hits sion of the track and switchery by which they have come here ....

Globular lights, painted a dark green, hang from under the fancy square amidships with a great strum of bedsprings. One of the iwn eaves, unlit for centuries ... the crowd moves without mur- legs collapses. "Good morning," notes Pirate. Bloat smiles briefly murs or coughing down corridors straight and functional as ware- and goes back to sleep, snuggling well into Pirate's blanket.

Bloat is one of the cotenants of the place, a maisonette erected last century, not far from the Chelsea Embankment, by Corydon Throsp, an acquaintance of the Rossettis' who wore hair smocks and liked to cultivate pharmaceutical plants up on the roof (a tradition young Osbie Feel has lately revived), a few of them hardy enough to survive fogs and frosts, but most returning, as fragments of peculiar alkaloids, to rooftop earth, along with manure from a trio of prize Wessex Saddleback sows quartered there by Throsp's successor, and dead leaves off many decorative trees transplanted to the roof by later tenants, and the odd unstomachable meal thrown or vomited there by this or that sensitive epicurean-all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil in which anything could grow, not the least being bananas. Pirate, driven to despair by the wartime banana shortage, decided to build a glass hothouse on the roof, and persuade a friend who flew the Rio-to-Ascension-to-Fort-Lamy run to pinch him a sapling banana tree or two, in exchange for a German camera, should Pirate happen across one on his next mission by parachute.

Pirate has become famous for his Banana Breakfasts. Messmates throng here from all over England, even some who are allergic or outright hostile to bananas, just to watch-for the politics of bacteria, the soil's stringing of rings and chains in nets only God can tell the meshes of, have seen the fruit thrive often to lengths of a foot and a half, yes, amazing but true.

Pirate in the lavatory stands urinating without a thought in his head. Then he threads himself into a wool robe he wears inside out so as to keep his cigarette pocket hidden, not that this works too well, and circling the warm bodies of friends makes his way to French windows, slides outside into the cold, groans as it hits the fillings in his teeth, climbs a spiral ladder ringing to the FQofgarden and stands for a bit, watching the river. The sun is still below the horizon. The da.y feels like rain, but for now the air is uncommonly clear. The great power station, and the gasworks beyond, stand precisely: crystals grown in morning's beaker, stacks, vents, towers, plumbing, gnarled emissions of steam and smoke ...â&#x20AC;˘ "Hhahh," Pirate in a voiceless roar watching his breath slip away over the parapets, "hhaahhh!" Rooftops dance in the morning. His giant bananas cluster, radiant yellow, humid green.

His companions below dream drooling of a Banana Breakfast.

This well-scrubbed day ought to be no worse than anyWill it? Far to the east, down in the pink sky, something has just sparked, very brightly. A new star, nothing less noticeable.

He leans on the parapet to watch. The bdlliant point has already become a short vertical white line. It must be somewhere oat over the North Sea at least that far ... ice fields below and a cold smear of sun .

What is it? Nothing like this ever happens. But Pirate knows it, after all. He has seen it in a film, just in the last fortnight ... it's a vapor trail. Already a finger's width higher 'now. But not from an airplane. Airplanes are not launched vertically. This is the new, and still Most Secret, German rocket bomb.

"Incoming mail." Did he whisper that, or only think it? He tightens the ragged belt of his robe. Well, the range ofthese things is supposed to be over 200 miles. You can't see a vapor trail 200 miles, now, can you.

Oh. Oh, yes: around the curve of the Earth, farther east, the sun over there, just risen over jn Holland, is striking the rocket's exhaust, drops and crystals, making them blaze clear across the sea. . . â&#x20AC;˘ .

The white line, abruptly, has stopped its climb. That would be

fuel cutoff, end of burning, what's their word ... Brennschluss.

We don't have one. Or else it's classified. The bottom of the line, the original star, has already begun to vanish in red daybreak.

But the rocket will be here before Pirate sees the sun rise.

The trail, smudged, slightly torn in two or three directions, hangs in the sky. Already the rocket, gone pure ballistic, has risen higher. But invisible now.

Oughtn't he to be doing something ... get on to the operations room at Stanmore, they must have it on the Channel radarsno: no time, really. Less than five minutes Hague to here (the time it takes to walk down to the teashop on the corner ... for light from the sun to reach the planet of love ... no time at all).

Run out in the street? Warn the others?

Pick bananas. He trudges through black compost in the hothouse. He feels he's about to defecate. The missile, 60 miles high, must be coming up on the peak of its trajectory by now ... beginning its fall ... now ....

Trusswork is pierced by daylight, milky panes beam beneficently down. How could there be a winter-even this one-gray enough to age this iron that can sing in the wind, or cloud these windows that open into another season, however falsely preserved?

Pirate looks at his watch. Nothing registers. The pores of his face are prickling. Emptying his mind-a Commando trick-he steps into the wet heat of his bananery, sets about picking the ripest and the best, holdIng up the skirt of his robe to drop them in. Allowing himself to count only bananas, moving barelegged among the pendulous bunches, among these yellow chandeliers, this tropical twilight. ...

Out into the winter again. The contrail is gone entirely from the sky. Pirate's sweat lies on his skin almost as cold as ice.

He takes some time lighting a cigarette. He won't hear the thing come in. It travels faster than the speed of sound. The first news you get of it is the blast. Then, if you're still around, you hear the sound of it coming in.

What if it should hit exactly-ahh, no-for a split¡ second you'd have to feel the very point, with the terrible mass above, strike the top of the skull. ...

Pirate hunches his shoulders, bearing his bananas down the corkscrew ladder.

* * * * *

Teddy Bloat's on his lunch hour, but lunch today'll be, ack, a soggy banana sandwich in wax paper, which he's packing inside his stylish kangaroohide musette bag and threaded around the odd necessities-midget spy-camera, jar of mustache wax, tin of licorice, menthol and capsicum Meloids for a Mellow Voice, gold-rim prescription sunglasses General MacArthur style, twin silver hairbrushes each in the shape of the flaming SHAEF sword, which Mother had Garrard's make up for him and which he considers exquisite.

His objective this dripping winter noon is a gray stone town house, neither large nor historic enough to figure in any guidebook, set back just out of sight of Grosvenor Square, somewhat off the official war-routes and corridors about the capital. When the typewriters happen to pause (8:20 and other mythical hours), and there are no flights of American bombers in the sky, and the motor traffic's not too heavy in Oxford Street, you can hear winter birds cheeping outside, busy at the feeders the girls have put up. , Flagstones are slippery with mist. It is the dark, hard, tobaccostarved, headachy. sour-stomach middle of the day, a million bureaucrats are diligently plotting death and some of them even know it, many about now are already into the second or third dint or highball glass, which produces a certain desperate aura

here. But Bloat, going in the sandbagged entrance (provisional pyramids erected to gratify curious gods' offspring indeed), can't feel a bit of it: he's too busy running through plausible excuses should he happen to get caught, not that he will, you know ....

Girl at the main desk, gumpopping, good-natured bespectacled ATS, waves him on upstairs. Damp woolen aides on the way to staff meetings, W.c.s, an hour or two of earnest drinking, nod, not really seeing him, he's a well-known face, what's 'is name's mate, Oxford chums aren't they, that lieutenant works down the hall at ACHTUNG ....

The old house has been subdivided by the slummakers of war.

ACHTUNG is Allied Clearing House, Technical Units, Northern Germany. It's a stale-smoke paper warren, at the moment nearly deserted, its black typewriters tall as grave markers. The floor is filthy lino, there are no windows: the electric light is yellow, cheap: merciless. Bloat looks into the office assigned to his old Jesus College friend, Lt. Oliver ("Tantivy") Mucker-Maffick. No one's about. Tantivy and the Yank are both at lunch. Good. Out wiv the old camera then, on with the gooseneck lamp, now aim the reflector just so....

There must be cubicles like this all over the ETO [European Theater of Operations]: only the three dingy scuffed-cream fiberboard walls and no ceiling of its own. Tantivy shares it with an American colleague, Lt. Tyrone Siothrop. Their desks are at right angles, so there's no eye contact but by squeaking around some 90 degrees. Tantivy's desk is neat, Siothrop's is a godawful mess.

It hasn't been cleaned down to the original wood surface since 1942.Things have fallen roughly into layers, over a base of bureaucratic sme,gma that sifts steadily to the bottom, made up of millions of tiny red and brown curls of rubber eraser, pencil shavings, dried tea or coffee stains, traces of sugar and Household Milk, much cigarette ash, very fine black debris picked and flung from typewriter ribbons, decomposing library paste, broken aspirins ground to powder. Then, comes a scatter of paperclips, Zippo flints, rubber bands, staples, cigarette butts and crumpled packs, stray matches, pins, nubs of pens, stubs of pencils of all colors including the hard-to-get heliotrope and raw umber, wooden coffee spoons, Thayer's Slippery Elm Throat Lozenges sent by Siothrop's mother, Nalline, all the way from Massachusetts, bits of tape, string, chalk ... above that a layer offorgotten memoranda, empty buff ration books, phone numbers, unanswered letters, tattered sheets of carbon paper, the scribbled ukulele chords to a dozen songs including "Johnny Doughboy Found a Rose in Ireland" ("He does have some rather snappy arrangements," Tantivy reports, "he's a sort of American George Formby, if you can imagine such a thing," but Bloat's decided he'd rather not), an empty Kreml hair tonic bottle, lost pieces to different jigsaw puzzles showing parts of the amber left eye of a Weimaraner, the green velvet folds of a gown, slate-blue veining in a distant cloud, the orange nimbus of an explosion (perhaps a sunset), rivets in the skin of a Flying Fortress, the pink inner thigh of a pouting pin-up girl ... a few old Weekly Intelligence Summaries from G-2, a busted corkscrewing ukulele string, boxes of gummed paper stars in many colors, pieces of a flashlight, top to a Nugget shoe polish can in which Siothrop now and then studies his blurry brass reflection, any number of reference books out of the ACHTUNG library back down the hall-a dictionary of technical German, an F.O. [Foreign Office] Special Handbook or Town Plan-and usually, unless it's been pinched or thrown away, a News of the World somewhere too-Slothrop's a faithful reader.

Tacked to the wall next to' Siothrop's desk is a map of London, which Bloat is now busy photographing with his tiny camera. The musette bag is open, and the cubicle begins to fill with the smell of

ripe bananas. Should he light a fag to cover this? Air doesn't exactly stir in here, they'll know someone's been in. It takes him four exposures, click zippety click, my how very efficient at this he's become-anyone nips in one simply drops camera into bag where banana-sandwich cushions fall, telltale sound and harmful G-loads alike.

Too bad whoever's funding this little caper won't spring for color film. Bloat wonders if it mightn't make a difference, though he knows of no one he can ask. The stars pasted up on Siothrop's map cover the available spectrum, beginning with silver (labeled "Darlene") sharing a constellation with Gladys, green, and Katharine, gold,_and as the eye strays Alice, Delores, Shirley, a couple of Sallys-mostly red and blue through here-a cluster near Tower Hill, a violet density about Covent Garden, a nebular streaming on into Mayfair, Soho, and out to Wembley and up to Hampstead Heath-in every direction goes this glossy, multicolored, here and there peeling firmament, Carolines, Marias, Annes, Susans, Elizabeths.

But perhaps the colors are only random, uncoded. Perhaps the girls are not even real. From Tantivy, over weeks of casual questions (we know he's your schoolmate but it's too risky bringing him in), Bloat's only able to report that Slothrop began work on this map last autumn, about the time he started going out to look at rocket-bomb disasters for ACHTUNG-having evidently the time, in his travels among places of death, to devote to girl-chasing. If there's a reason for putting up the paper stars every few days the man hasn't explained it-it doesn't seem to be for publicity, Tantivy's the only one who even glances at the map and that's more in the spirit of an amiable anthropologist-"Some sort of harmless Yank hobby," he tells his friend Bloat. "Perhaps it's to keep track of them all. He does lead rather a complicated social life," thereupon going into the story of Lorraine and Judy, Charles the homosexual constable and the piano in the pantechnicon, or the bizarre masquerade 'involving Gloria and her nubile mother, a quid wager on the Blackpool-Preston North End game, a naughty version of "Silent Night," and a providential fog. But

none of these yarns, for the purposes of those Bloat reports to, are really very illuminating ....

Well. He's done now. Bag zipped, lamp off and moved back in place. Perhaps there's time to catch Tantivy over at the Snipe and Shaft, time for a comradely pint. He moves back down the beaverboard maze, in the weak yellow light, against a tide of incoming girls in galoshes, aloof Bloat unsmiling, no time for slap-and-tickle here you see, he still has his day's delivery to make. . . .

0 About the Author: Thomas Pynchon, an American novelist now in his late 30s, has written three novels: V., which won the Faulkner Prize as the best first novel of 1963; The Crying of Lot 49; and Gravity's Rainbow. Since pynchon is a writer who deliberately shies away fro 111 publicity of any kind-even photographs of him are not available-very little is known about him beyond the fact that in 1958 he graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, with a bachelor's degree in physics. He writes out of a strong intellectual and creative vision-as these excerpts from Gravity's Rainbow reveal (see L.E. Sissman's review on page 20).

THE 'NEWJO ISM' or ..

Why they aren't wrItIng tlie great American .novel anymore The New Journalism burst upon the American scene a decade ago like a skyrocket. Tom Wolfe, then a very young, irreverent and enormously imaginative writer, is generally regarded as its founder-:-though he himself says he has no idea who coined the term the ÂŤNew Journalism." He says he first heard it used in 1965-and doesn't like the term.

It's hard to describe exactly what the New Journalism is, though Wolfe gives it a good try. At its best, it has produced such books as Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Truman Cgpote's In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night-all accounts of actual, as opposed tofictional, events, all highly stylized as the events were recordl!d by the authors. The following essay by Wolfe is taken from the introduction to the book, The New Journalism, which Wolfe coauthored with E. W. Johnson.

T

ruman Capote's In Cold Blood, the story of the life and death of two drifters who blew the heads off a wealthy farm family in Kansas, ran as a serial in the New Yorker in the autumn of 1965 and came out in book form in February of 1966. It was a sensation-and a terrible jolt to all who expected the accursed New Journalism or Parajournalism to spin itself out like a fad. Here, after all, was not some obscure journalist, some free-lance writer, but a novelist of long standing whose career had been in the doldrums and who suddenly, with this one stroke, with this turn to the damnable new form of journalism, not only resuscitated his reputation but elevated it higher than ever before ... and became a

celebrity of the most amazing magnitude in the bargain. People of all sorts read In Cold Blood, people at every level of taste.

Everybody was absorbed in it. Capote himself didn't call it journalism; far from it; he said he had invented a new literary genre, "the nonfiction novel." Nevertheless, his success gave the New Journalism, as it would soon be called,.an overwhelming momentum.

And then, early in 1968, another novelist turned to nonfiction, and with a success that in its own way was as spectacular as Capote's two years before. This was Norman Mailer writing a memoir about an antiwar demonstration he had become involved in, "The Steps of the Pentagon."

The memoir, or autobiography, is an old genre of nonfiction, of course, but this piece was written soon enough after the event to have a journalistic impact. It took up an entire issue of Harper's Magazine and came out a few months later under the title of The Armies of the Night. Unlike Capote's book, Mailer's was not a popular success; but within the literary community and among intellectuals generally it couldn't have been a more tremendous succes d'estime. At the time Mailer's reputation had been deteriorating in the wake of two inept novels called An American Dream (1965) and Why Are We In Vietnam? (1967). He was being categorized somewhat condescendingly as a journalist, because his nonfiction, chiefly in Esquire, was obviously his better work.

The Armies of the Night changed all that in a flash. Like Capote, Mailer had a dread of the tag that had been put on him"journalist" -and had subtitled his book "The Novel as History; History as the Novel." But the lesson was one that no-

body in the literary world could miss.

Here was another novelist who had turned to some form of accursed journalism, no matter what name you gave it, and had not only revived his reputation but raised it to a point higher than it had ever been in his life. â&#x20AC;˘ By 1969 no one in the literary world could simply dismiss this new journalism as an inferior genre. The situation was somewhat similar to the situation of the novel in England in the 1850s. It was yet to be canonized, sanctified and given a theology, but writers themselves could already feel the new Power flowing.

The similarity between the early days of the novel and the early days of the New Journalism is not merely coincidental. In both cases we are watching the same prO'cess. We are watching a group of writers coming along, working in a genre regarded as Lower Class (the novel before the 1850s, slick-magazine journalism before the I960s), who discover the joys of detailed realism and its strange powers. Many of them seem to be in love with realism for its own sake; and never mind the "sacred callings" of literature. They seem to be saying: "Hey! Come here! This is the way people are living now-just the way I'm going to show you! It may astound you, disgust you, delight you or arouse your contempt or make you laugh. ... Nevertheless, this is what it's like! It's all right here! You won't be bored! Take a look!"

As I hardly have to tell you, that is not exactly the way serious novelists regard the task of the novel today. In this decade, the '70s, The Novel will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of its canonization as the spiritual genre. Novelists today keep

using words like "myth," "fable" and "magic." That state of mind known as "the sacred office of the novelist" had originated in Europe in the 1870s and didn't take hold in the American literary world until after World War II. But it soon made up for lost time. What kind of novel should a sacred officer write? In 1948 Lionel Trilling presented the theory that the novel of social realism (which had flourished in America throughout the 1930s) was finished because the freight train of history had passed it by. 'Fhe argument was that such novels were a product of the rise of the bourgeoisie in the 19th century at the height of capitalism. But now bourgeois society was breaking up, fragmenting. A novelist could no longer portray a part of that society and hope to capture the Zeitgeist; all he would be left with was one of the broken pieces.

The only hope was a new kind of novel (his candidate was the novel of ideas). This theory caught on among young novelists with an astonishing grip. Whole careers were altered. All those writers hanging out in the literary pubs in New York rushed off to write every kind of novel you could imagine, so long as it wasn't the so-called "big novel" of manners and society. The next thing one knew, they were into novels of ideas, Freudian novels, surrealistic novels ("black comedy"), Kafkaesque novels and, more recently, the catatonic novel or novel ofimOlobility, the sort that begins: "In order to get started, he went to live alone on an island and shot himself." (Opening line of a Robert Coover short story.)

As a result, by the '60s, about the time I came to New York, the most serious, ambitious and, presumably, talented novelists had abandoned the richest terrain of the novel: namely, society, the social tableau, manners and morals, the whole business of "the way we live now," in Trollope's phrase. There is no novelist who will be remembered as the novelist who captured the '60s in America, or even in New York, in the sense that Thackeray was the chronicler of London in the 1840s and Balzac was the chronicler of Paris and all of France after the fall of the Empire. Balzac prided himself on being "the secretary of French society." Most serious American novelists would rather cut their wrists than be known as "the secretary of American society," and not merely because of ideological considerations. With fable, myth and the sacred office to think about-who wants such a menial role?

That was marvelous for journalistsI can tell you that. The '60s was one of

the most extraordinary decades in American history in terms of manners and morals. Manners and morals were the history of the '60s. A hundred years from now when historians write about the 1960s in America (always assuming, to paraphrase Celine, that the Chinese will still give a damn about American history), they won't write about it as the decade of the war in Vietnam or of space exploration or of political assassinations ... but as the decade when manners and morals, styles of living, attitudes toward the world changed the country more crucially than any political events.

Novelists seemed to shy away from the life of the great cities altogether. The thought of tackling such a subject seemed to terrify them, confuse them, make them doubt their own powers. And besides, it would have meant tackling social realism as well.

So the novelist had been kind enough to leave behind for our boys quite a nice little body of material: the whole of American society, in effect. It only remained to be seen if magazine writers could master the techniques, in nonfiction, that had given the novel of social realism such power. And here we come to a fine piece of irony. In abandoning social realism novelists also abandoned certain vital matters of technique. As a result, by 1969 it was obvious that these magazine writers-the 3.lery lumpenproles themselves!-had also gained a technical edge on novelists. It was marvelous. For journalists to take away from the novelists!

If you follow the progress Qf the New Journalism closely through the 1960s, you see an interesting thing happening.

You see journalists learning the techniques of realism-particularly of the sort found in Fielding, Smollett, Balzac, Dickens and Gogol-from scratch. By trial and error, by "instinct" rather 'than theory, journalists began to discover the devices that gave the realistic novel its unique power, variously known as its "immediacy," its "concrete reality," its "emotional involvement," its "gripping" or "absorbing" quality.

This extraordinary power was derived mainly from just four devices, they discovered. The basic one was scene-by-scene construction, telling the story by moving from scene to scene and resorting as little as possible to sheer historical narrative.

Hence the sometimes extraordinary feats of reporting that the new journalists undertook: so that they could actually witness the scenes in other people's lives as they took place-and record the dialogue in full, which was device No.2. Magazine

writers, like the early novelists, learned by trial and error something that has since been demonstrated in academic studies: namely, that realistic dialogue involves the reader more completely than any other single device. It also establishe~ and defines character more quickly and effectively than any other single device. (Dickens has a way of fixing a character in your mind so that you have the feeling he has described every inch of his appearanceonly to go back and discover that he actually took care of the physical description in two or three sentences; the rest he has accomplished with dialogue.) Journalists were working on dialogue of the fullest, most completely revealing sort in the very moment when novelists were cutting back, using dialogue in more and more cryptic, fey and curiously abstract ways.

The third device was the so-called "third-person point of view," the technique of presenting every scene to the reader through the eyes of a particular character, giving the reader the feeling of being inside the character's mind and experiencing the emotional reality of the scene as he experiences it. Journalists had often used the first-person point of view-"I was there"-just as autobiographers, memoirists and novelists had. This is very limiting for the journalist, however, since he can bring the reader inside.,;;.,themind of only one character-himsylf-a point of view that often proves irrelevant to the story and irritating to the reader. Yet how could a journalist, writing nonfiction, accurately penetrate the thoughts of another person?

The answer proved to be marvelously simple: Interview him about his thoughts and emotions, along with everything else.

This was what Gay Talese did in order to write Honor Thy Father. In M, John Sack had gone a step further and used both third-person point of view and the interior monologue to a limited extent.

The fourth device has always been the least understood. This is the recording of everyday gestures, habits, manners, customs, styles of furniture, clothing, decoration, styles of traveling, eating, keeping house, modes of behaving toward children, servants, superiors, inferiors, peers, plus the various looks, glances, poses, styles of walking and other symbolic details that might exist within a scene. Symbolic of what? Symbolic, generally, of people's status life, using that term in the broad sense of the entire pattern of behavior and possessions through which people express their position in the world or what they think it is or what

they hope it to be. The recording of such details is not mere embroidery in prose.

It lies as close to the center of the power of realism as any other device in literature.

It is the very essence of the "absorbing" power of Balzac, for example. Balzac barely used point of view at all in the refined sense that Henry James used it later on. And yet the reader comes away feeling that he has been even more completely "inside" Balzac's characters than James's. Why? Here is the sort of thing Balzac does over and over. Before introducing you to Monsieur and Madame

Marneffe personally (in Cousine Bette) he brings you into their drawing room and conducts a social autopsy: "The furniture covered in faded cotton velvet, the plaster statuettes masquerading as Florentine bronzes, the clumsily carved painted chandelier with its candle rings of molded glass, the carpet, a bargain whose low price was explained too late by the quantity of cotton in it, which was now visible to the naked eye-everything in the room, to the very curtains (which would have taught you that the handsome appearance of wool damask lasts for only three years)"

-everything in the room begins to absorb one into the lives of a pair of down-at-theheel social climbers, Monsieur and Madame Marneffe. Balzac piles up these details so relentlessly and at the same time so meticulously-there is scarcely a detail in the later Balzac that does not illuminate some point of status-that he triggers the reader's memories of his own status life, his own ambitions, insecurities, delights, disasters, plus the thousand and one small humiliations and the status coups of everyday life, and triggers them over and over until he creates an atmosphere as rich

as the Joycean use of point of view.

I am fascinated by the fact that experimenters in the physiology of the brain, . still the great terra incognita of the sciences, seem to be heading toward the theory that the human mind or psyche does not have a discrete, internal existence.

It is not a possession locked inside your skull. During every moment of consciousness it is linked directly to external clues as to your status in a social and not merely a physical sense and cannot develop or survive without them. If this turns out to be so, it could explain how novelists such as Balzac, Gogol, Dickens and Dostoevsky were able to be so "involving" without using point of view with the sophistication of Flaubert or James or Joyce.

I have never heard a journalist talk about the recording of status life in any way that showed he even thought of it as a separate device. It is simply something that journalists in the new form have gravitated toward. That rather elementary and joyous ambition to show the reader real life-"Come here! Look! This is the way people live these days! These are the things they do!"-leads to it naturally.

In any case, the result is the same. While so many novelists abandon the task altogether-and at the same time give up twothirds of the power of dialogue-journalists continue to experiment with all the devices of realism, revving them up, trying to use them in a bigger way, with the full passion of innocents and discoverers. / Their innocence has kept them free.

Even novelists who try the new form suddenly relax and treat themselves ~ \;( to forbidden sweets. If they want to indulge a craving for Victorian rhetoric or for a >~ Humphrey Clinkerism such as, "At this point the attentive reader may wonder how >- our hero could possibly ... "-they go a:l ahead and do it, as Mailer does in The Armies of the Night with considerable charm. In this new journalism there are no sacerdotal rules; not yet in any case. ... If the journalist wants to shift from third-person point of view to first-person point of view in the same scene, or in and out of different characters' points of view, or even from the narrator's omniscient voice to someone else's stream of consciousness-as occurs in The Electric KoolAid Acid Test-he does it. For the blessed Visigoths there is still only the outlaw's rule regarding technique: take, use, improvise. The result is a form that is not merely like a novel. It consumes devices that happen to have originated with the novel and mixes them with every other device known to prose. And all the while, quite beyond matters of technique, it enjoys an advantage so obvious, so builtin, one almost forgets what a power it -l

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has: the simple fact that the reader knows all this actually happened. The disclaimers have been erased. The screen is gone. The writer is one step closer to the absolute involvement of the reader that Henry James and James Joyce dreamed of and never achieved.

Novelists have made a disastrous miscalculation over the past 20 years about the nature of realism. Their view of the matter is pretty well summed up by the editor of the Partisan Review, William Phillips: "In fact, realism is just another formal device, not a permanent method for dealing with experience." I suspect that precisely the opposite is true. If our friends the cognitive psychologists ever reach the point of knowing for sure, I think they will tell us something on this order: The introduction of realism into literature by people like Richardson, Fielding and Smollett was like the introduction of electricity into machine technology. It was not just another device. It raised the state of the art to a new magnitude. The effect of realism on the emotions was something that had never been conceived of before.

No one was ever moved to tears by reading about the unhappy fates of heroes and heroines in Homer, Sophocles, Moliere, Racine, Sydney, Spenser or Shakespeare.

But even the impeccable Lord Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review, had criedactually blubbered, boohooed, snuffled and sighed-over the death of Dickens's Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop.

One doesn't have to admire Dickens or any of the other writers who first demonstrated this power in order to appreciate the point. For writers to give up this unique power in the quest for a more sophisticated kind of fiction-it is as if an engineer were to set out to develop a more sophisticated machine technology by first of all discarding the principle of electricity.

In any case, joumalists now enjoy a tremendous technical advantage. They have all the juice. This is not to say they have made maximum use of it. The work done in journalism over the past 10 years easily outdazzh~s the work done in fiction, but that is saying very little. All that one can say is that the material and the techniques are now available, and the time is right.

The status crisis that first hit literature's middle class, the essayists or "men of letters," has now hit the novelists themselves. Some have turned directly to nonfiction. Some, such as Gore Vidal, Herbert Gold, William Styron and Ronald Sukenick, have tried forms that land on a curious ground in between, part fiction and part nonfiction. Still others have begun to pay homage to the power of the New Journalism by putting real people, with their real names, into fictional situa-

tions .... They're all sweating bullets ....

Actually I wouldn't say the novel is dead.

It's the kind of comment that doesn't mean much in any case. It is only the prevailing fashions among novelists that are washed up. I think there is a tremendous future for a sort of novel that will be called the journalistic novel or perhaps documentary novel, novels of intense social realism based upon the same painstaking reporting that goes into the New Journalism. I see no reason why novelists who look down on Arthur Hailey's work couldn't do the same sort of reporting and research he does-and write it better, if they're able. There are certain areas of life that journalism still cannot move into easily, particularly for reasons of invasion of privacy, and it is in this margin that the novel will be able to grow in the future.

When we talk about the "rise" or "death" of literary genres, we are talking about status, mainly. The novel no longer has the supreme status it enjoyed for 90 years (1875-1965), but neither has the New Journalism won it for itself. The status of the New Journalism is not secure by any means. In some quarters the contempt for it is boundless . . . even breathtaking .... W~th any luck at all the new genre will never be sanctified, never be exalted, never given a theology. I probably shouldn't even go around talking it up the way I have in this piece. All I meant to say when I started out was that the New Journalism can no longer be ignored in an artistic sense. The rest I take back The hell with it ....

Let Chaos reign louder music, more wine: ... The hell with the standings ....

The top rung is up for grabs. All the old traditions are exhausted, and no new one is yet established. All bets are off! the odds are canceled! it's anybody's ball game! ... the horses are all drugged! the track is glass! ... and out of such glorious chaos may come, from the most unexpected source, in the most unexpected form, some nice new fat Star Streamer Rockets that will light up the sky.

D

~-lo4Is About the Author:

Tom

Wolfe-not to be confused with the epic American novelist of the '30s, Thomas Wolfe -is both the chief chronicler of the New Journalism and one of its ablest practitioners.

His own New Journalism, whether he is writing about youth cults or life among the very rich, is distinguished by an uncanny ability to enter into the spirit of whatever event, milieu or person he is describing. As one critic has said: "Tom Wolfe is incapable of ever being dull."

A ON THEMOON The New Journalism has drawn a number of distinguished American novelists to its fold-one of the most important of these being Norman Mailer. In this excerpt from 'A Fire on the Moon'-Mailer's book about the Apollo 11 trip that landed the first men on the moon-he uses the techniques of fiction to report the famous news event.

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On the night before the launch of Apollo 11, through all that several hundred square miles of town and water and flat swampy waste of wilderness, through cultivated tropical gardens, and back roads by rivers lined with palms, through all the evening din of crickets, cicadas, beetles, bees, mosquitoes, grasshoppers and wasps some portion of a million people began to foregather on all the beaches and available islands and causeways and bridges and promontories which would give clear view of the flight from 6 miles and 10 miles and 15 miles away. Tomorrow most of them would need field glasses to follow the flight up from the pad, and out of sight over the sea down a chain of Caribbean isles, but they would have a view-they knew tonight that if the skies were clear they would have their view because they were encamped only where the line of sight was clear and unimpeded out to Launch Pad 39 in the distance on the horizon. There one could certainly see Apollo 11 on her Saturn Y, see her for 7, 9, 11 miles away, she was lit up. A play of giant arc lights, as voluminous in candlepower as the lights for an old-fashioned Hollywood premiere, was directed on the spaceship from every side. On highway U.S. 1 in Titusville, 11 miles from Cape Kennedy across Merritt Island and the Banana and IndIan rivers, all that clear shot across the evening waters, at a range of 20,000 yards, 200 football fields away, by an encampment of tourists down on economy flights for a week in cheap hot summer Florida and now slung out in the back seats of rented cars, on U.S. 1 in Titusville, in an encampment of every variety of camper, the view was clear of the spaceship across flat land and waters, and she looked like a shrine with the lights upon her. In the distance she glowed for all the world like some white stone Madonna in the mountains, welcoming footsore travelers at dusk .... What a vehicle was the spaceship! A planet-traveler massive as a destroyer, delicate as a silver arrow. At the moment~ it lifted off from the earth it would be burning as much oxygen as is consumed by half a billion people taking their breath-that was twice, no, more than twice the population of America.

* * * * *

The mob cheered when the astronauts came through the door. Since guards and directors and technicians were periodically looking down the hall, or signaling, or making an abrupt move, the Press had been on the alert for the astronauts a dozen times.

Now, finally, they really came, and people throughout the crowd had experiences. "Fenomenal, fenomenal, fenomenal!" an Italian girl with a camera kept murmuring, and a worker yelled, "Go get 'em" as if the target were at last revealed-the moon like every other foreign body was an enemy, an intimate competitor. Armstrong, plastic helmet on, carrying his lifeWhile Norman Mailer set down his version of Apollo II's blast-off in A Fire on the Moon, the eminent American artist Robert Rauschenberg captured the drama in his painting, "Horn" (left).

In this potpourri of impressions of Cape Canaveral life, Rauschenberg portrays a white egret standing on reflections in a spacesuit visor.

support system connected by a hose to his white spacesuit, white and luminous as Saturn V out on the pad, stopped just long enough to give a wave, his face within the space helmet as lashless in appearance as a newborn cat in a caul. He had never looked better. He ~tepped into the van and the others, waving, stepped into the van.

* * * * *

Apollo leaped into ignition, and two horns of orange fire burst like genies from the base of the rocket. Aquarius never had to worry again about whether the experience would be appropriate to his measure. Because of the distance, no one at the Press Site was to hear the sound of the motors until 15 seconds after they had started. Since the rocket was restrained on its pad for nine seconds in order for the motors to multiply up to full thrust, the result was that the rocket began to rise and continued to rise for a full six seconds before its motors could be heard.

Therefore the lift-off itself seemed to partake more of a miracle than a mechanical phenomenon, as if all of huge Saturn itself had begun to levitate, and was then pursued by flames.

No, it was more dramatic than that. For the flames were enormous. No one could be prepared for that. Flames flew in cataract against the cusp of the flame shield, and then sluiced along the paved ground down two opposite channels in the concrete, two underground rivers of flame which poured into the air on either side a hundred feet away, then flew a hundred feet further. Two mighty torches of flame like the wings of a yellow bird of fire flew over a field, covered a field with brilliant yellow bloomings of flame, and in the midst of it, white as a ghost, white as the white of Melville's Moby Dick, white as the shrine of the Madonna in half the churches of the world, this slim angelic mysterious ship of stages rose without sound out of its incarnation of flame and began to ascend slowly into the sky, slow as Melville's Leviathan might swim, slowly as we might swim upward in a dream looking for the air. And still no sound.

Then it came, like a crackling of wood twigs over the ridge, came with the sharp and furious bark of a million drops of oil crackling suddenly into combustion, a cacophony of barks louder and louder as Saturn-Apollo 15 seconds ahead of its sound cleared the lift tower to a cheer which could have been a cry of anguish from that near-audience watching, then came the ear-splitting bark of a thousand machine guns firing at once, and Aquarius shook through his feet at the fury of this combat assault, and heard the thunderous murmur of Niagaras of flame roaring conceivably louder than the loudest thunders he had ever heard and the earth began to shake and would not stop, it quivered through his feet standing on the wood of the bleachers, an apocalyptic fury of sound equal to some conception of the sound of your death in the roar of a drowning hour, a nightmare of sound, and he heard himself saying, "Qh, my God! oh, my God! oh, my God! oh, my God! oh, my God! oh, my God!" but not his voice, almost like the Italian girl saying 'jenomenal," and the sound of the rocket beat with the true blood of fear in

his ears, hot in all the intimacy of a forming of heat, as if one's ear were in the caldron of a vast burning of air, heavens of oxygen being born and consumed in this ascension of the rocket, and a poor moment of vertigo at the thought that man now had something with which to speak to God-the fire was white as a torch and long as the rocket itself, a tail of fire, a face, yes now the rocket looked like a thin and pointed witch's hat, and the flames from its base were the blazing eyes of the witch.

Forked like saw teeth was the base of the flame which quivered through the lens of the binoculars. Upwards. As the rocket keened over and went up and out to sea, one could no longer watch its stage, only the flame from its base. Now it seemed to rise like a ball of fire, like a new sun mounting the sky, a flame elevating itself.

Many thousands of feet up it went through haze and the fire featured the haze in a long trailing caress, intimate as the wake which follows the path of a fingerling in inches of water.

Trailings of cloud parted like lips. Then a heavier cloud was punched through with sudden cruelty. Then two long spumes of wake, like two large fish following our first fish-one's heart took little falls at the changes. "Ahhh," the crowd went, "Ahhh," as at the most beautiful of fireworks, for the sky was alive now, one instant a pond and at the next a womb of new turns: "Ahhh," went the crowd, "Ahhh!"

Now, through the public address system, came the sound of Armstrong talking to Launch Control. He was quieter than anyone else. "In-board [motor] cut-off," he said with calm in his voice.

Far in the distance, almost out of sight, like an all-but-transparent fish suddenly breaking into head and tail, the first stage fell off from the rest, fell off and was now like a man, like a sky diver suddenly small. A new burst of motors started up, some far-off glimpse of new-born fires which looked pale as streams of water, pale were the flames in the far distance. Then the abandoned empty stage of the booster began to fall away, a relay runner, baton just passed, who slips back, slips back. Then it began to tumble, but with the slow tender dignity of a thin slice of soap slicing and wavering, dipping and gliding on its way to the floor of the tub. Then mighty Saturn of the first stage, empty, fuel-voided, burned out, gave a puff, a whiff and was lost to sight behind a cloud. And the rocket with Apollo 11 and the last two stages of Saturn V was finally out of sight and on its way.

0 About the Author: Norman Mailer, who has had enormous impact on

American writing ever since his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, was published in 1948, became a leading practitioner of the New Journalism in 1968 when he published Miami and the Siege of Chicago and The Armies of the Night. The latter won the National Book Award and was co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Among his novels are Barbary Shore, The Deer Park, and The American Dream. His latest book, Marilyna biography of Marilyn Monroe which uses many of the techniques of fiction and has been called a "novel biography" -is reviewed overleaf.

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Amita Malik, a distinguished and outspoken Indian critic, reviews Norman Mailer's most recent book-a biography of Marilyn Monroe written in the style of the Ne\y Journalism which uses many of the narrative techniques formerly reserved for fiction. Describing Mailer as 'a man of highly sensitive perception, a satirist of subtle, witty judgment,' she adds: 'His prose, even when tongue-in-cheek, is that of the superb old pro.'

To tell you the truth, I got stuck on the cover of the book. With that photograph of the cliche Monroe: the eternal dumb blonde, seductive bedroom eyes, lips-sexily . parted and mouth wetly poised for a kiss, beauty spot in the right place and the hair of that exact degree of blondeness which is the tinter's delight. I suspect the cover photo was Norman Mailer's choice. That he also started off with the cliche Monroe image, tried to see it through and then, being basically an honest man, a good reporter and a brilliant writer, he finally decided to play it both ways. This dichotomous approach spills right across the book.

Delving deeper into the pictures-and one simply cannot get away from themone sees everybody's Marily,n. And I do

not mean Every Man's Love Affair with America as Mailer calls her in his opening sentence. In fact, I suddenly start seeing Norman Mailer's Love Affair with Marilyn: No man with so many complexes, so many inhibitions and so many apologies about what he is writing about, an admittedly complex woman, could be less than in love with her. His clever-clever intellectual superiority breaks down to such an extent at every step, that even the most meek of women's libbers could grind him to mash. Why, the wretched man name-drops like a sick puppy in love.

"One of the frustrations of his life," says Mailer endearingly of himself in the very first chapter, "was that he had never met her, especially since a few people he knew had been near to her." But there is more

to come: "Once in Brooklyn, long before anyone had heard of Marilyn Monroe, he had lived in the same brownstone house in which Arthur Miller was working on Death of a Salesman-and this at just the time he was himself writing The Naked and the Dead. In later years, when Miller was married to Monroe, the playwright and the movie star lived in a farmhouse in Connecticut not five miles away from the younger author who, not yet aware of what his final relation to Marilyn Monroe would be, waited for the call to visit, which of course never came. The secret ambition, after all, had been to steal Marilyn; in all his vanity he thought no one was as well suited to bring out the best in her as himself, a conceit that 50 million other men may also have held."

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The final blow comes when 'Malier' actually plays at acrostics with the name of Marilyn Monroe and himself: "For a man with a cabalistic turn of mind, it was fair and engraved coincidence that the letters in Marilyn Monroe (if the 'a' were -used twice and the '0' but once) would spell his own name, leaving only the 'y' for excess."

No man ever quite rises above a schoolboy crush, does he, when it comes to Marilyn Monroe? Even if he dismisses her with a characteristically male chauvinist assertion: "Sex was, yes, ice cream to her. 'Take me,' said her smile [see what I mean about the cover?]. 'I'm happy.

I'm an angel of sex, you bet.' " The· pictures really did not need the world's foremost photographers (as the credit subtitle of the book needlessly rubs in) to capture such a photogenic creature as Marilyn. It must have been very difficult not to photograph ,her well. Why, even Norman Mailer could have photographed her well, and it would have been much less complicated than writing what he calls "a nov61biograpRY/' There she is, on the inner cover, draped in a black housedress which merges' smoothly into the powerful black background. To' go with the mostly speculative chapter on her childhood, the Cinderella period when she even imagined that Clark Gable was her father, we get, for good measure, the universal Marilyn, anybody's baby (which indeed she was). Then a sudden spring into girlhood, this time in color, blue jeans with panties peeping not-too-shyly at the waist, and what we in India call a knotted choU, as top. She is, for the record, still a brunette. A coincidence, perhaps, that Mailer helpfully informs us that " ... Della Monroe Grainger, Marilyn's grandmother ... came West when adolescent, later traveled to India after her second husband Grainger had been sent there by the oil company for which he worked." The Indian connection, alas, ends there.

But to return to the photos. Next she is sporty and. clean. "All the cleanliness of all the clean American backyards," as Mailer says somewhere, in her shaggy bottle-green pullover with very nonhot' pants, leaning against a snowy mountain.

If anyone wonders if she loved life,· well just go on from page 105 onward.

These might well be posed photos, but who the hell cares? She is just lovely, gay, young and beautiful: On the beach in hooded toweling shorty coat; draped in

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towel, hair tousled, champagne glass . in hand. Now smiling, now stiCking out her tongue. In a shaggy sweater again, with a Mountie standing guard, and a correspondingly guarded look. Much more relaxed near a fighter plane, fighter pilots for backdrop. Most enchanting of all (page 124) in a glorious candid shot trying to hold down a marvelous white flared skirt that is misbehaving. The man looking on, one can see, is aching to misbehave too. He can't. Too many cameras around.

A shot straight out of Diamonds Are a Girf s Best Friend. In fish-net stockings, another of those photos Marilyn finds fun. And , next, a most extraordinary smiling longnecked swan, straight out of Swan Lake, but sitting lonely in a chair for two. Delectable, but slightly" bewildered. Which she always was.

Then we go suddenly Salvador Dali and Lorca rolled into one, a whole lot of surrealist stuff in black and white, all witchlike women attendants, a menacing hair-dresser who might scalp her any moment, and a generally sinister air which fits the Marilyn-the-Morose image. Then a sudden plunge back into a vinta:ge version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, that classic bicycle sequence, in picture hat. Next an almost Ingmar Bergman shot, spread-eagled against a tree, all

'No one has excited as much controversy, mean barbs, genuine pity, compassion, attention, cameramen, lovers, would-be lovers, the lot.'

Cries and ·Whispers. Then the menacing cowboys standing possessively around her in burnt sepia. Gable at last-no dream father this!-in what must have been one of his last photos, during the shooting of Misfits, gives her an insolent, undressing male glance, a throwback to Gone With the Wind. And Marilyn has a trusting schoolgirlish smile that spills over into the childlike photos of the subsequent pages.

The Lonely Lady chapter has photos to match, but Marilyn ",ins again-squatting on the floor she seems the original Barefoot Contessa in this and in the Marilynat-the-telephone shots, which are the highlight of the whole book. All the fishnet stockings photos that follow seem artificial and a throwback to the Playboy spread ..It is certainly a seductive Marilyn.

But if we must have contrived seduction, at least we can flick back to her lovely pinky-brown body in some gloriously frothy shots.

As a critic, I saw film after film where Marilyn had to go through her cliche dumb blonde act, perhaps for the entertainment of those five million men in love with her-and for Mailer. I felt that she had a consistent tongue-in-cheek quality in some of her roles which eventually gave her the last laugh. Which is why, even after the final cliche funeral shots, we go back again and again to Marilyn in the middle pages, having a perpetual lark with the photographer. She seems to have loved being photographed-as much as the photographers, in their own fashion, lapped up her fantastic photogenic qualities and interpreted them in their own fashion, from downright stupid to brilliantly illuminated. She brought out the best as well as the worst in them. The camera does not lie.

Why, one might ask, are the photographs so important that so much of this "book review" should be devoted to them?

Well, the answer is easy. It is the visual Monroe that concerns us. We shall never know., ·ll"6f' will .Mailer, what went on in her head. And wherever our lovely may have gone to from what one suspects to be alone in her' bed, she has finally eluded us. And Mailer.

In that sense, Monroe, like Garbo, remains inscrutable to the last. No one has excited as much controversy, mean barbs (Mailer included in those who hit below the belt), genuine pity, compassion, attention, cameramen, lovers, would-be" lovers, the lot. But everi at the last, in this sum-up of the photographs, the 64,000dollar question remains unanswered. Why is there not a single still from one of her films, only working shots? Was it because Mailer wanted to plumb the depths of only the private Monroe? If so, he has failed miserably like everyone else. Like Garbo, although she was too dumb to say so, Marilyn seems to have wanted to be alone. But she was not quite as successful as Garbo because she was not an odd Scandinavian, or a Garboesque cold fish. She was an American, a mixedup kid perhaps, but nevertheless exposed to an extrovert society which would not let her alone. Not even Mailer. She would no doubt have been surprised at becoming a legend too. One can almost hear that· faint, surprised, husky: "WHO, ME?".

But Marilyn scored over Garbo in one I

respect: Unlike Garbo, she could laugh.

And Mailer knows it. Which is why he is so much on the defensive throughout the book. He knows who will have the last . laugh. One only has to look at page 225 to see what a colossal laugh it is going to be.

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And so to Mailer and the written word.

He has already been accused of plagiarism, of lifting large chunks of other biographers who worked on a much lower level than his magnum opus. But he has the honesty to acknowledge it, partially. To some extent, both his derivative passages and their authors' protests are legitimate. But what one has to discover is this: In the ultimate analysis what has he made of it all? What has he made of Marilyn?

The style he adopts, a lovely marriage of the most expensive gloss in publishing and the snidest intellectualism in writing, might occasionally-indeed, frequentlyset one's teeth on edge. But he has a marvelous cover in making it into biographical fiction, the near-novel form in the guise of . documentary, what he aptly calls "a novel biography." It must have been hell to try and put flesh (but no bones) on Marilyn, whom he had never met, and watch her relationship with Arthur Miller, whose guts he obviously hates, from long distance.

As a result, he manufactures the most fantastic conceits to lift her to the heights as well as treat her tenderly, lik.e an oldeworlde romantic, with the occasional lapse into New World romantic~ the almost-boynext-door. "Napoleonic was her capture of the world," he says extravagantly atone point, and she was "one of cinema's last aristocrats," and even "a proud, inviolate artist." He has an apologia for all this, mark you: "By the logic of ttanscendence," he says, "it was exactly in the secret scheme of things that a man should be able to write about a beautiful woman, or a woman to write about a great novelistthat would be transcendence, indeed."

That would really have been something, transcendence or no transcendence: Mailer

by Marilyn Monroe. At least she would have been single-minded about him. . But then, perpetually on the defensive, Mailer digs¡-he really digs, deep, to keep up with the Monroe-Was-a-Laugh Joneses. Mercifully, at the back of his mind is also the niggling thought that she married Miller, she played against Olivier, she was the last to star with Gable and, for that matter, Mailer is writing about her.

So, once again, he decides to have the best of both worlds. He traces with almost

tender care, and rare perception, her encounter with Actors Studio. The author of Deer Park-which was not entirely fiction about Hollywood-is masterly in his ruthless analysis of Hollywood corn, Hollywood cruelty and Hollywood's Zanucks who exploited Marilyn in the most shameless movie-moghul manner. One can say this in extenuation: When her mother took her along as a baby to work-in a film studio-the rest of the lowly staff were genuinely concerned about the child.

Like the photographs, however-which avoid Marilyn's films like the plagueMailer's text cuts some neat corners not getting too involved with her films per se,

'He satirizes himself together with Monroe. If this is Marilyn-crucifixion, it is also self-crucifixion.' except where they involve the personalities he is discussing. One suspects at times that he has seen 24 of her 30 films in as quickie a fashion as he wrote the book. Which he did in three record months. No wonder.

And so, he must lift it all to the level of mystique. He calls her "karmic." He makes himself out to be a kindred spirit: "I felt some sort of existential similarities with Marilyn Monroe." "I come from Brooklyn and she had the same basic stuff out of which Brooklyn dream girls are made."

No wonder he calls her a' "Castrator Queen." We got you there, Mailer.

But then, Mailer is Mailer. A man of highly sensitive perception, a satirist of subtle witty judgment, a self-critic in the best American tradition. In the book, he satirizes himself together with Monroe. If this is Marilyn-crucifixion, it is also selfcrucifixion with a vengeance. No one but Mailer could have laughed at himself even when appearing to laugh at Monroe. He realizes that she "belonged to the lazy covens of Hollywood," and by jove h'e proves it. Bu! his analysis of her marriages is of a far more adult character, his mnning warfare with Arthur Miller notwithstanding, than his more conventional couchsessions with Marilyn through her babyhood, her orphanage days and her not-soinnocent girlhood. Marriage, after all, is home territory to Mailer. He has had quite a few wives himself. The man may be a bastard, but he is a knowledgeable bastard.

His prose, even when tongue-in-cheek, is that of the superb old pro. Mailer never

lacks for words. His allusions are those of the universal cultivated mind. His more serious theories are not easily dismissed.

Her last days come to vivid life-and this from a man who never met her, and certainly not in her last days-just in two cunningly juxtaposed flashes: "Old friends like Norman Rosten come and visit, and once she goes out with him to a gallery and buys a copy of a Rodin statue of a man and woman in embrace. The man is fierce and the woman compliant. It costs over a thousand dollars." Corn, Mailer, mushy corn, but you are leading us on. We are prepared.

Your elegy, while still trying to be clever, is among your best moments.

Especially at the funeral: "DiMaggio will . take care of the funeral, and invite no Sinatras, no Lawfords, no Kennedys. Lee Strasberg will give the eulogy."

"Now she is dead, and how do we say good-by?" you ask. Damn you, Mailer.

You anticipate our quickest thoughts, our innermost literary fears. You are always too clever by half, Mailer, and we are getting into that love-hate relationship with you which swamps your affair with Mari- . lyn too. We are of a kind. We can't let you fail, either.

"Let us not hope for heaven so quickly.

Let her be rather in one place and not scattered in pieces across the firmament; let us hope her mighty soul and the mouse of her little one are both recovering their proportions in some fair and gracious home, and she will soon return to us from retirement. It is the devil of her humor and the curse of our land that she will come back speaking Chinese. Good-by, Norma Jean. Au revoir, Marilyn. When you happen on Bobby and Jack, give the wink.

And if there's a wish, pay your visit to Mr. Dickens. For he, like many another literary man, is bound to adore you, fatherless child."

Well, Mailer, you almost had the last laugh. Almost. And when we write your epitaph, we shall concede that, through all that gloss and snideness, you did remain a literary man. Even with Marilyn.

0 About the Author: Amita Malik

is one of India's most distinguished critics-and a prominent journalist. broadcaster and telecaster. For AIR- TV she has interviewed dozens of international personalities including Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and actor Marlon Brando. A columnist for the Times of India, the Statesman and the Hindusthan Standard, Mrs. Malik is also author of the book The Year of the Vulture.

{,I-

I.,~The' heritage

of American literature A QUIZ

On the preceding pages SPAN offered a sampling of contemporary American fiction which indicates some of the' new directions it is taking. Avant-garde movements in any art, however, are always rooted in the past, and American literature, although barely three centuries old, has a rich heritage. Who were its major writers? Are they familiar figures to Indian readers? Well, test yourself in the quiz on these pages.

Here are 17 major American writersmost from the past. Seven of them are Nobel Prize winners. Can you match the author's picture, name and work? First fill in the blanks against the writers' names (below

Gertrude Stein Sinclair Lewis Jack London Ralph Waldo Emerson Harriet Beecher Stowe Pearl Buck F. Scott Fitzgerald T.S. Eliot

left) with the numbers from the corresponding pictures. Next, add the letter from the column of book titles (below right) that identifies a work written by each author.

After you have done this, put a check mark against each of the seven Nobel Prize winners on the list.

For each correctly placed photograph,. book or Nobel Prize winner, give yourself one point. Highest possible score is 41. If your tally is 35 points or more, your knowledge of American writers (and what they looked like!) is "outstanding"; 25-34 points, "excellent"; and 15-24 points, "fairly good."

(Answers on page 48.)

0 0

A. Leaves of Grass B. The Call of the Wild

D

C.

Four Saints in Three Acts

0 0 0 0 0 0

D.

The Martian Chronicles

E.

U.S.A.

F.

Uncle Tom's Cabin

G. Arrowsmith H. As I Lay Dying

I.

The Sun Also Rises

D

J.

The Great Gatsby

John Steinbeck

0

K. The Waste Land

Edgar Allan Poe

0

L.

Eugene O'Neill

D

M. The Grapes of Wrath

Ray Bradbury

D

N.

John Dos Passos William Faulkner

Ernest Hemingway Walt Whitman James Baldwin

The Good Earth The Conduct of Life

0

O. The Fire Next Time

0 D

P.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Q. Beyond the Horizon

f/

Everyone's heard about the burgeoning sales of bicycles in America-and how Indian bikemakers are getting a healthy share of the market. But what many haven't heard about is the tricycle, boom-the sudden tremendous demand for the

"adult three-wheeler," an overblown version of the familiar children's tricycle.

Last year more than 150,000 adult tricycles were sold in the United States. Compared to bike sales, "trike" sales are still very small, but experts believe the boom has just begun.

Says William B. Laighton of Columbia bicycle and tricycle company: "It looks to me as if it's going to be fantastic.

We're not even putting the threewheeler in some of our catalogues because we can't make them fast enough." (Indian manufacturers take note!)

Who's buying trikes? Mostly older, retired people whose doctors have told them they need exercise but who for many

reasons can't or won't ride the standard two-wheeled bicycle.

But there are indications that the craze for the trike is spreading to middle-aged and younger adults as well. The energy crisis, the high price of petrol and the increasing concern for the environment and for a simpler lifestyle are making Americans of all ages turn toward "new" modes of transportation.

And for those who think tricycles are dull or slow, there is a racing version that can be pedaled at more than 80 kilometers an hour!

Unlike the child's trike, which is pedaled by the front wheel, the adult tricycle operates more or less the same as the standard bicycle. Its pedals are connected to one of the rear wheels by a chain.

Most trikes can be easily dismantled and packed in a car dickey. This makes them popular with those who live in mobile homes or those who often take trips to the countryside in their cars.

Current trike prices in the U.S. range from $125 to $175.

FIRST FEMALE J>ILOT IN U.S. NAVY When pt;ople see Judy Neuffer (photo at right) board a U.S. ' Navy plane in her uniform and heavy boots, they usually think she's a nurse going on a flight mission. Not so. The petite brunette is the first female pilot assigned to a U.S. Navy Hurricane Hunter Squadron.

She routinely flies in, over, under and through the world's most destructive hurricanes . and typhoons.

A BIRTHDAY PRESENT TO AMERICA It's seldom that a book becomes a bestseller even before its publication date. But James A. Michener (right), described as the literary world's Cecil B. DeMille, achieved that honor with his latest monumental work, Centennial. He calls it his present to the U.S. on its 200th birthday.

A selection of the Book-ofthe-Month Club, Centennial was also abridged by Reader's Digest. It leaped instantly onto the bestseller list-and was in its fourth printing even before official publication.

The aim of Centennial, according to Michener, is "to create a universe" by telling the story of the evolution of the American West. The story of this big and sprawling book (909 pages) begins some three billion, six hundred years ago in what is now the Colorado prairies. (The setting will eventually become a small fictional town-first called Zendt's Farm, then Centennial-

on the South Platte River in. eastern Colorado. The later name reflects the fact that 1976 is the J OOth birthday of Colorado's statehood.) Michener uses the territory around the South Platte to describe the evolution of the American West.

He carries the reader through the formation of the Rockies, the emergence of native flora, aspen, spruce and pine; through the age of dinosaurs to the evolution of the animals and reptiles indigenous to the Westthe buffalo, horse, beaver and snake. Then man arrives on the scene in the form of the American Indian.

But Centennial is much more than a natural history guide. It is also the story of people, the kind of people who opened and settled western America, people shaped in the land's implacable image, the beautiful, the plucky and the good; the ugly, the sadistic and the violent. It is the story of the land and of the people's relation to it.

Though critics could neither make nor mar Centennial's success (it was a fait accompli even before they wrote one

UlERICANS ARE TALKING

ABOUli

word about it), they talked a lot about it when it came out.

Centennial has been lauded as "an in-depth analysis of one American community ... nothing less than the soul of America seen in microcosm;" and as "an honest picture of the West which has opened for us something of the tangled complexities of history." One reviewer said: "The almost hubristic sweep of his conception is impressive." Also impressive, said another critic, is "the massi veness of his research."

Some reviewers had mixed, feelings. Time magazine said Centennial was "an epic vision of America" but that "it may suffer from a familiar Michener mistake-erring on the side of the grandiose."

Many reviewers were not so kind. Michener was called (as he often has been in the past) a "nonwriter." One critic said: "His weakness is his art. He is history's journalist; he is not an artist. For all his recording of the Western scene, he fails to evoke in his reader any sense, any genuine feel for this most dramatic of countrysides."

Another reviewer, conceding Michener's "nobility of purpose plus rigorous authenticity," said sadly: "If only those virtues were enough to produce memorable fiction! Centennial will honorably entertain and inform readers, but let us not deceive ourselves about its proper genre. It wasn't 'written,' it was compiled."

But critics have never been kind to Michener. Only people have. They've always bought his books by the millionever since he first started writing

28 years ago at the age of 40.

Nearly all of his works (Tales of the South Pacific, which won him a Pulitzer Prize; The Source; Hawaii) have been bestsellers, making Michener one of the most "successful" writers in history. And not only in America. His books have been translated into most of the world's major languages.

Many writers would like to know the secret formula of this "nonwriter." If he has one, he isn't telling. When Newsweek magazine recently asked Michener what he thought was the secret of his success, he replied: "It's inexplicable."

MISS TEEN-AGE AMERICA /

Newest winner of the title "Miss Teen-age America" is Karen Margaret Peterson

says she is a believer in Women's Lib, but still likes traditional courtly customs, such as men opening doors and pulling up chairs for women. In other . words, she likes having her cake and eating it too.

NEW DRUG IN WAR ON CANCER American doctors are talking about a new series of drugs that have greatly improved the chances of survival for women who have undergone surgery for breast cancer. One of the drugs is a mustard derivative of a common amino acid, L-phenylalanine. Called L-PAM for short, it's been found particularly helpful for women who have not yet reached menopause. Thirty such women who underwent breast surgery and whose cancers had spread to certain lymph nodes-a danger sign-were treated with L-PAM in a two-year study. Only one of the 30 developed recurring cancer.

In the control part of the study, by contrast, II of the 37 young women who were not given the L-PAM treatment developed cancers after their surgery. In older women, L-PAM has proven helpful in a smaller but still significant proportion of test cases.

REALLY PURE PEANUT BUTTER (above), a pretty l7-year-old blonde high-school senior from Toledo, Ohio. Karen takes over the title from last year's winner, Lori Lei Katsukawa. Karen

Americans have always loved peanut butter and now they're talking about a machine that makes it right in front of their eyes. It's called a Grindmaster

(see photo below). In food markets you can watch it make your peanut butter simply by pulverizing fresh peanuts. The butter comes out the spout into a self-sealing container at the base of the grinder.

People like it because they can be sure no preservatives or other chemical additives are going into the product. It's the purest peanut butter in the world.

The Grindmaster is available for export and already has found markets in Canada and Europe. It is sold by Grindmaster of Kentucky, 745 Main Street, Louisville, Kentucky. The same company also makes coffee grinders, cashew-nut grinders, grinders for wheat, rye, cured corn, soybeans, barley oats, rice and many other dry grains.

CAN

A MEET RITHEULTURE CHALLENGE? In this balanced view of the world food situation, an eminent agricultural scientist analyzes the problems that impede food production, and suggests concrete steps toward their solution.

At- - 5" L, bt- Contrary to what may appear to be the case, there is fairly widespread agreement among informed people about the world food situation. There is agreement that until the autumn of 1975 the situation is precarious in certain parts of the world. There is broad consensus that for the next decade or so the probability is good that food p'roduction, in total, will keep a half step ahead of population growth, but that there will be times and places of critical shortage. And most experts agree that in the long, long run-into the 21st century-unless there is a check in the rate of population growth, there is no solution¡ to the world food problem. Much of the seeming disagreement comes from failure to specify the time frame, or the part of the world being considered, or the sector of society that is under review. And much depends on whether comparison is being made with the past, with some other spot in geography, or with an ideal situation.

I shall sketch out an appraisal of the world food situation in terms generally agreed upon by two of the best qualified and most experienced research organizations that have competence in this area-the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. They are remarkably close in their approach.

Nineteen-seventy-four, despite a promising start, proved to be disappointing. Cereal grain is the backbone of the world food supply, both for human beings and for animals. Cereal grain production, worldwide, in 1974 was approximately 4.5 per cent below 1973, and about 3.5 per cent below trend. In the United States the weatherman pulled all the wrong levers. In early 1974, when we needed fair skies to plant the crop, he pulled "rain." In the summer, when we needed moisture for plant growth, he pulled "dry."

In the autumn, when we needed warm weather to mature the crop he pulled "frost." Our cereal grain production in 1974 was about 206 million tons, or about 13 per cent below 1973.

In India the 1974 summer rains were a disappointment and the harvest of cereal grains was expected to be 9 or 10 per cent below the previous year. The Canadian crop and the crop in the Soviet Union were below the 1973crops. While 1974crops were generally good in the Southern Hemisphere they were not good enough to offset disappointments elsewhere.

Foodgrains are unloaded from bullock carts for storage in high-rise silos of North India, built with assistance from the U.S.

Agricultural mechanization and research help raise food production. Below: An American farmer uses direct flame to rid his field of weeds. Far left: A farmer in ~ the Punjab harvests wheat quickly and cheaply with the help of a u.s. harvester.

Left: A young agricultural scientist at Uttar Pradesh Agricultural University, Pantnagar, learns soil testing.

'Objectively measured, the world food situation is not worse than it has historically been; it is marginally better. What has happened is that the poverty and hunger of the world, previously shielded from our eyes, have now been brought dramatically before us.'

Reserves were depleted as a result of the poor world crop of 1972.They were not rebuilt from the increased production of 1973.

For the United States the disappointing crop of 1974 means adjustments in livestock production, changes in price relationships, and some alteration in diets. These changes are by no means easy. But they are modest by comparison with India and Bangladesh. America's capacity to help, which we had thought would be very great, is severely limited by the most adverse weather we have had in at least the last 25 years.

Midterm (that is for the next decade or so) the prospect is better. During the past 20 years there has been a slight upward trend in average per capita food supplies, even in the less-developed countries. Despite being poorly nourished, the average man in the developing countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America is better fed than was his father. He is not fed well enough to meet his full bodily needs, nor enough to satisfy his aspirations. And averages are notoriously deceptive. It is possible for a man to drown in a stream that averages 45 centimeters in depth. And it is possible for men to starve while the per capita supply offood is increasing.

Improvement in the average, which is a reasonable prospect, should not be allowed to obscure the problems of the many millions that fall below the average.

Objectively measured, the world food situation is not worse than it has historically been; it is marginally better. What has happened is that the poverty and hunger of the world, previously shielded from our eyes,have J.10W been brought dramatically before us. The mass media and airplane travel have made the difference.

We are now more aware of the world's hunger, more concerned about it, and more committed to do something to relieve the prob. lem. It is not that the problem is new or greater than it has hitherto been; our perception of it has changed.

The mood in the world is now pessimistic with regard to the food picture. There are half a dozen or so gloomy interpretations that, in the present climate of opinion, take on the appearance of scientific validity. I should like to review them: Adverse weather. Some people say that we are on the verge of a 20-year drought cycle, that we will see more dry weather in the subtropics, and that the earth is moving into a new ice age. These things mayor may not be true. The burden of proof is on those who allege that this is indeed the prospect.

Two of the most renowned meteorological research organizations-the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency of the United States and the World Meteorological Organization of the United Nations-maintain that it is not possible, from presently known science, either to verify or refute these allegations. Unfortunately, when it comes to predicting next summer's weather, the Farmer's Almanac [an annual publication giving weather forecasts and planting schedules for all of U.S.] is still about as good as anything! In the absence of better long-range forecasting, the average weather behavior of the past 10 years or so becomes the best prognosis.

Lack of fuel. Fuel, whether viewed with respect to supply or price, will be a problem for the next decade or more. It was a serious handicap to farm production in parts of Asia in 1974. But food and agriculture are so important that, given more time to

work things out, farm people are likely to have access to needed fuel, whether through an allocations system or in a competitive market. In the United States, agricultural production accounts for only three per cent of total fuel usage. The U.S. and other countries are likely to protect agriculture's high-priority claim on the fuel supply. Human beings are sufficiently resourceful so that they are not likely to starve themselves by a massive misallocation of fuel supplies.

Fertilizer. Fertilizer is scarce. Scarce, that is, relative to desired usage. But the U.S. produced and used more total tons of fertilizer in 1974 than ever before. And with the high prices we have had, investment in fertilizer production has leaped forward. There is good reason to believe that in three years or so the supply will have expanded so as to remove any serious limitation on agricultural production. There .are large potential supplies, worldwide, of all principal fertilizer elements: nitrogen, phosphate. potash. There are new possibilities. Slow-release fertilizer could improve efficiency in fertilizer use by 25 per cent.

Agricultural science. Some people say that the fountains of new knowledge are running dry, and that new increments of technology will be much harder to come by. But this is ajudgment colored by the pessimism of our times. No one can know. Eight years ago the U.S. President's Science Advisory Committee did a study of the world food situation, at a time when, like today, there was concern about the ability of the world to feed itself. We were then on the brink of the Green Revolution, but the report showed no awareness of that fact.

Who can tell when we will achieve a new breakthrough? A number of advances loom as possibilities: better protein content in our cereal grains, animal feed from algae, hybridization of additional species of plants and animals.

There are good practices in use on some farms that are not yet" in use on others. There are good practices, proved in the experimental plot, not yet in use on any farm. There are good ideas that have not yet been tested. There are young men and women now being educated in agricultural science who have not yet begun to produce ideas. We should not underestimate the potential of this system.

A vailability of land and water. Is it true, as alleged, that we are running out of agricultural land? Our soil scientists tell us that the United States could jncrease its cultivated land by at least 25 per cent if there were sustained incentives to do so. Great acreages in the Amazon basin could be brought into production if we could learn how to manage fragile tropical rain forest soils. Millions of acres in Africa, now unused, could be made productive if we could learn to control the tsetse fly, vector of sleeping sickness.

The good land now being tilled was brought into production by ov~rcoming considerable barriers. In Europe it was necessary to fell the forest. In California water had to be brought in. In Central Asia, distance and transportation were the problems. In many tropical countries, disease had to be conquered. There never have been good agricultural lands, unencumbered by problems, waiting to be used. Nor will there ever be. What is required is that the problems be overcome.

Water is limiting, true enough. But there are ground water sup-

plies that are largely unused, as in the north of India. We can use . our irrigation water more efficiently. We can improve tillage practices to conserve moisture. We can breed plants that are better capable of resisting drought. We can develop plants that tolerate a degree of salinity.

Use oj grain for animal feed. There is growing concern that the developed parts of the world are using a disproportionate part of the cereal grain supply for animal feed, thus lessening the supplies of food for human beings in the poorer countries. For many years there has been a trend toward more animal protein in the diet. This ... has been particularly true in the well-tQ-do countries, but is also true in the poorer countries, where they start from a much lower base and where the added increments are much smaller. Meeting this demand is a problem of affluence. The problems of affluence are more tractable than the problems of poverty.

Some advocate a reduction in the per capita consumption of meat, milk and eggs in America, through moral suasion and volun-

~

tary action. But people resist being told what to eat, or what not

to eat. Our estimate of the world's agricultural capabilities, over

KISSINGER ON U.S. AGRICULTURAL POLICY During his visit to India last October, U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger outlined American policy toward India in his speech in New Delhi's Kamani Hall. Following are passages front't4at speech in which he addressed himself to U.S. agricultural policy: "We recognize that America's agricultural productivity, advanced technology and tradition of assistance represent a major obligation. We know that we cannot speak of the global responsibility of others without practicing global responsibility ourselves. America pioneered in development assistance, particularly with respect to food; we are determined to step up our past contributions. We will increase our production at home so there will be more food available for shipment abroad. And we will help developing nations in• crease their own production, which is the only long-term solution to the problem.

"The magnitude of the world's food needs-and the redistribution of the world's wealth-imply that others must enlist in the fight against famine. The United States will work cooperatively with other exporters, with food importers and with those countries in a position to help finance increased food production in the developing countries.

"But it is an objective fact that we cannot meet man's need for food, much less ensure economic and social advance, without coming to grips with the energy crisis. Higher oil prices directly affect food prices by increasing the costs of fertilizer, of operating agricultural machinery and of transporting food to· deficit areas. This in turn contributes to the more general economic crisis of inflation and stagnation which will surely doom the ability of the economically advanced countries to fulfill their obligations to the less well endowed.

Both consumers and producers have a parallel stake in a global economy that is stable and gr9wing. The economic progress .6[30 years has brought the goal of universal wellbeing closer; today's crisis puts it in jeopardy. This is why the Unlt~d' States has emphasized global interdependence and whi~tseeks co-operative gLobal solutions." "

.

the midterm, is that it will be possible not only to maintain per capita supplies but to improve them somewhat with inc~eased supplies of animal protein.

In short, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations see no compelling reason that per capita food supplies should in the next decade diverge significantly from the well-established upward trend of the last 20 years. During the past two decades, per capita supplies of food have trended upward at an annual rate of about four-tenths of one per cent in the less-developed countries, and about one and a half per cent in the developed countries. The gap in the quality of the diet between the rich nations and the poor nations is indeed wide and widening, and this is a great problem. But in an absolute sense both are improving.

Nineteen-seventy-two and 1974 were bad crop years. We think they were an aberration, not the beginning of a new trend. We do not think the recent past is the new normal. The world food situation is so complex that a pessimistic person can select an adverse group ()f indicators, document them beyond doubt, and infer a deterioration in the total situation. An optimistic person can do the exact opposite. Neither may be aware of the bias he brings to his estimate. The great need is to force ourselves to a balanced judgment in this difficult and crucial matter.

In the long, long run the only solution to the food problem lies in restraining the rate of population growth. If recent rates of population growth are projected into the 21st century, they run off the page. If population growth continues at its present rate, we encounter a whole host of problems: environmental degradation, social conflict, and depleted resources as well as food problems.

With our agricultural technology we have won some time to cope with the population problem. It is vital that this time not be lost.

Even with respect to population growth there are grounds for hope. Some countries have made progress in checking the rate of increase in the population: Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China in recent years, as well as, earlier, nations bordering the North Atlantic.

At the November 1974 World Food Conference in Rome, some 130 nations endeavored to cope with all these matters. For the future we must: • Lift public awareness regarding food problems- s.o as to result in allocating more resources to this first of man's needs.

• Improve our intelligence regarding crops and food supplies, so we could see problems when they were on the horizon, rather than waiting until they were on the doorstep.

• Rebuild food reserves so that we are further removed from the margin of want.

• Provide for more adequate food aid, to tide people over the problems created by drought or flood.

• Open trade channels so as to improve food distribution both between and within nations.

As a former professor, I know the importance of what is called "the teachable moment." There comes a time when the mind is receptive to new ideas, new motivation. This is true of groups as well as individuals. If you are there with the message at the teachable moment you can make the difference. With respect to food needs in the world, this is the teachable moment. We must not let it pass unperceived or unused.

0 About the Author: Dr. Paarlberg is Director of Agricultural Economics, U.S. Department of Agriculture. A former university professor as well as U.S. Co-ordinator for the Food-for-Peace program under President Eisenhower, he has published many books including American Food Policy.

'In the long, long run the only solution to the food problem lies in restraining the rate of population growth.'

Bounty from the land.

Right: Ripe wheat.on a farm in North Dakota. Below: Hybrid bajra in Karnataka.

Below right: Thrashing paddy in Andhra Pradesh.

HELP FOR THE SMALL FARMER How can we end the threat of famine? What is the key to increasing agricultural productivity in developing countries? Give less aid to big projects and more aid to the millions of small farmers, says the World Bank which recently announced this change in its agricultural policy.

More than 600 million persons in the developing world, roughly one-fifth of the humari population, live in extreme poverty with incomes of $50 a year or less-landless peasants, sharecroppers, and the owners of tiny plots of a hectare or less. It is to these people-largely bypassed by the development schemes of the last two decades-that the World Bank is shifting its attention in a program of "New Projects" which the bank announced a few weeks ago.

The World Bank's program will not only help these people directly, but may also hold the key to unlocking a vast untapped production capacity that can change potential famine into potential glut. "If the world food problem is to be solved, the small farmer has to be deeply involved," says Dr. Don Plunket of the U.S. Agency for International Development (U.S. AID).

"In the past," says Dr. Plunket, "the emphasis was on labor-saving, on largescale agriculture. Now we've got to think in terms of more labor-intensive operations to increase farm employment." In the past, a typical WorId Bank project might have provided money for a big irrigation project or a huge livestock ranch. The benefits, it was felt, would "trickle down" to the little man on his one-hectare plot.

But, says Montagu Yudelman, the World Bank's Director of Agriculture and Rural Development, '" the trickle down theory' didn't work. When you have thirsty land, the water doesn't trickle down."

What is worse, since most of the land in developing countries is held by millions of one-hectare farmers, the old-style projects often ignored the most important potential for increased production.

Today, famine threatens many countries of Asia and Africa. But if the millions of small farmers in these countries were producing up to the potential of the larger farms-says Edgar Owens . of U.S. AID-the world today would be facing a glut, not a shortage, of food.

The U.S. Congress recognized this several years ago and mandated in the foreign aid law that the emphasis of U.S. AID

would be shifted to the small farmer.

This policy makes sense from several points of view. For one thing, the small farmer is potentially more efficient than the large farmer. He can lavish his labor on removing every weed, whereas the larger farms conduct mass-spraying, which is not nearly so effective. For another thing, mass projects sometimes lead to nothing if the small man at the end of the line is not included. For example, a massive irrigation project that constructs a network of large-scale primary and secondary canals is worthless if the individual farmer himself doesn't have the facilities to handle the water that's provided.

There may be drawbacks, of course, to the new emphasis. The large landowners may resent the aid-and the new political power---:given to the little man. Also, it is more expensive to make 100 loans of $1,000 each than it is, say, to make one loan of $100,000 to a single large farm.

There are compensating advantages, however. Paradoxically, the little man is often a better credit risk. The large landowners may have political clout that. permits them to default on a loan. The little man doesn't have this; as a result, he works much harder to repay.

To get the advantages without the disadvantages of aiding the little farmer, the World Bank is devising new forms of giving credit. For instance, it will emphasize group credit, such as a single loan to one farmer co-operative which divides the funds among all its members.

The bank is also investigating the idea of loans without collateral, which the small farmer often doesn't have.

It's extremely important, U.S. officials say, to give the small farmer incentives to produce more-incentives in the form of tax rates and, most of all, good prices.

"No farmer will produce just to feed somebody else/' says Dr. Plunket ofU.S. AID. "First, he has a family interest or a self-interest. He's got his own problems to take care of."

Technical aid as well as¡financial aid is being geared to the needs of the small farmer. A tractor suitable for a huge farm of several hundred hectares just

won't be of much help to the man with one hectare. Thus, U.S. AID is funding a resttarch project at the International Rice Research Institute at Los Banos, in the Philippines, to develop a small-scale machine for rice farmers. U.S. AID researchers are also working on simple harvesting and threshing maChines, suitable for small-scale farms, and on tractors that the operator can walk behind-tractors less sophisticated than the present models developed in Japan. All these new models will be designed so that rural workshops can put them together using simple blueprints.

At binational research centers, U.S. and local scientists are focusing on developing plants that will grow in highly acid soil and plants that will be tolerant to drought. This research will help everyone-small and large farmers alike. But it will be particularly critical to the small farmer who cannot afford to correct soil de~ciencies or buy the chemicals needed to compensate for such deficiencies.

At the University of Hawaii, other researchers are studying ways that will enable plants to draw their own nitrogen from the air. If the world's major food crops could do this, it would free farmers from the need to buy expensive (and increasingly scarce) nitrogen fertilizer.

Elsewhere, geneticists are building higher levels of improved protein into corn, wheat and sorghum. These are the so-called "high-lysine" varieties, which contain more lysine, the most commonly limited of the amino acids in cereal protein. High-lysine corn seed is already flowing out to farmers in developing lands. At the University of Nebraska, scientists are trying to develop similar strains of wheat seed.

Says one U.S. AID researcher: "We recognize the need of the small farmer, who can improve his diet from a better seed. Only a low level of capital is required; after all, seed is not a majorinput in the cost offoodproduction."

In short, planners in many countries are mobilizing to bring a better life to millions of small farmers. Their conviction: If the small farmer is better off, everyone will be better off.

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ANANDA COOMARASWAMY:Perhaps more than any other man, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy brought -Indian culture to the attention of the West-and to the attention of Indian scholars as well. To commemorate the centenary of Coomaraswamy's birth, the U.S. Information Service commissioned a documentary film, 'The Dance of Siva.' A few weeks ago the film had its Indian premiere in Calcutta where it was introduced by an eminent art historian. His speech is reprinted below.

Two years from now-in 1977-we shall be celebrating the centenary of Ananda Kentish Coomara'swamy, one of modern Asia's rarest of creative intellectuals. In his own lifetime, Coomaraswamy probably did more than any other man to put the traditional art and culture of India on the map of world art and culture. This he did, be it noted, not as a creative artist but purely as a sharply perceptive and deeply introspective intellectual who had cultivated an ideological commitment. Six feet high, lanky, light in weight and lean in build, Coomaraswamy had a sharp determined chin, a pair of penetrating eyes, and the conviction and courage, the patience and persistence of a fighter for a cause.

For by far the better and the most active and creative part of his life, Ananda Kentish Coomaniswamy was an American citizen, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston was the hermitage that sheltered him. It is in the fitness of things that the Government of the United States of America, to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Coomaraswamy, commissioned and released a documentary film, The Dance of Siva, on the life and work of this great savant. I am sure that this centenary will be celebrated in other ways too, in many areas of the world, , including the publication of a couple or more of his biographies.

But a really good documentary is a live, creative object which brings Coomaraswamy visually before our eyes and makes him "alive." I would therefore congratulate those who conceived the film and made it a practical proposition.

I would also congratulate them for their choice of Chidananda Dasgupta and B.D. Garga to produce and direct it.

Born of a Sinhalese father and an English mother, educated and nurtured in England in the best English social and academic tradition, disciplined in the research methods of geological

sciences in which he took a doctoral degree from a British university, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy was caught up, early in his career, in the high tide of contemporary nationalism that was sweeping all over India and certain other regions of Asia. He gave up science-the vocation which he had been led to by his earlier training. For the rest of his life he gave himself up to studying and re-establishing the religious and spiritual base of Indian cultural nationalism-as well as the high traditional art of India-and interpreting them to an increasingly wider audience.

He did this through tireless and incessant writing of notes, articles, monographs

and books; through editing and translating texts and interpreting them; and often through entering the arena of polemical exercise. His total pUblished output was more than 100 titles. And these were not just facile essays, but the results of intensive and painstaking research involving sources drawn from more than half-a-dozenlanguages-Sanskrit, Pali, Prakrit, Greek, Latin, German, French, English-and materials from literature, archaeology, science and technology, ethnology, history, religion, ethics and metaphysics. He was as much at home with early and medieval Christianity and Judaism aswith Vedism, Brahmanism, Buddhism and Jainism.

~ATRIBUTE His great regard for tradition, and for matters of the intellect and the spirit, could only be matched by his deep distrust of everything modern including modern science and technology-by his disregard for everything pertaining to the senses, the emotions and the demands of concrete existence.

Caught up by the high tide of Indian nationalism, Coomaraswamy too, like Havell and many othef.s of his times, proved himself to be a protagonist of his cause. This cause was to justify to Western minds the traditional Indian way of life-and hence to justify Indian art-and to rationalize and plead for the recognition of the spiritual, idealistic and symbolical basis of the Indian cultural heritage. All this he did with a firm faith and devotion and an intense sincerity of conviction that had hardly any parallel. He became indeed a high priest of our cultural nationalism. Up till now he is perhaps the best and most well-informed interpreter besides being the stoutest defender of our art-and this at a time when it had badly been in need of defense.

Coomaraswamy had been cut off from birth from the traditional roots and contemporary ways of life in India. He had been nurtured and educated in an alien environment and atmosphere and

obliged to live-except for a few brief sojourns in India-in England and the United States. His whole life seems to have been a nostalgic throwback indeed to the land of his forefathers, a conscious and laborious attempt to affiliate himself to the roots of the people and the culture to which, he thought, he rightly belonged. He therefore lived and died to rediscover the India of the past; but by reason of the very circumstance of his life he was obliged to effect his rediscovery through the texts of a bygone age, texts both sacerdotal and secular but produced, in the main, within the confines of hieratic religious orders, and hence doctrinal and prescriptive in nature and idealistic in character. Indeed, Coomaraswamy's India emerged, by and large, from such texts. His knowledge of these texts was vast and deep, and to this he added his almost equally vast knowledge of texts relating to early and medieval Christianity and Judaism, and thus was reared up a mind and imagination which was essentially priestly and scholastic in character, an intellectual attitude which was highly skeptical of modern science and technology, even of universal literacy.

This mind and this vast erudition he brought to bear upon his study of the question of traditional values of Indian

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art and culture, and step by step he began to formulate the principles which he thought had fed and sustained Indian art through the ages. His basic assumption, which he was inevitably and irresistibly led to,· was that Indian esthetics was based on the doctrines, prescriptions and conventions of religions that were transcendental and intellectual in character and idealistic in aim and purpose. His interpretation of terms and concepts of esthetic import were, therefore, conditioned to a large extent by the doctrines, prescriptions and conventions of these intellectual, idealistic and transcendental faiths. This basic assumption led him inevitably to an undue and sometimes irrelevant emphasis on the literary, religious, symbolical and metaphysical content of Indian art at the expense of important imaginative and esthetic considerationsproblems of artistic form and its evolution, and the human and social context of art. Indian art, it seems, was to him illustrative of Indian religions, their concepts and speculations, doctrines and conventions, symbols and imageries.

This Seems to explain the infinite care and pains he took to explain and interpret the symbols and conventions of our art and the iconography of our icons.

The "Indianness" of our art, he seems

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to have argued, lay in its literary, religious and symbolical content.

Yet, Coomaraswamy has been eminently successful in influencing attitudes and approaches in respect to the study and understanding of Indian esthetics, art criticism and art history. The fact is that until very recent years most writers on Indian art and esthetics, both Indian and Western, including myself, have more or less followed the tracks laid down by him. It is Coomaraswamy who is mainly responsible for the fact that Indian activities in creative art have very largely been frankly literary and ideological. It was he who seemed to have furnished the theory and the intellectual inspiration on which came to be based the revival of our art activities during the first three decades of this century. Even today Coomaraswamy remains the source to which one inevitably turns for an understanding of Indian art and esthetics. .

But Coomaraswamy was somewhat more than just this. The more he grew in age, the deeper he delved into the

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wisdom and spiritual values of the ancient Orient and medieval Christendom, the more did he give himself up to a life of the mind and the spirit, the more did he turn his back to the changes and challenges of modern life.

Much of these changes and challenges he chose to ignore; these were aberrations, according to him, born ofthe ignorance of what he considered to be the traditional but perennial values of life.

In fact he became the messiah of a new way of life, a new mode of thought, of a simpler but wiser pattern ofliving. Indeed, he came to plead for a life of absolute idealistic abstraction. Of this Coomaraswamy one knows but little, except the very few who chose to draw themselves close to him. A Coomaraswamy cult was thus built up-mostly in Europe and America.

But the cult could not hold him because Coomaraswamy, by the very reason of his being an intellectual and a lover of music and the plastic arts, proved himself to be much bigger than the cult he 0 came to stand for.

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About the Author: Dr. Niharranjan Ray, who is Emeritus Professor at the University Of Calcutta, is a distinguished authority on Indian and Southeast Asian history, archaeology, art and culture, and has written more than a dozen books.

In 1969, the Government OfIndia honored him with the Padma Bhushan.

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