February 1988

THE

NE.W YOIUtER

W

hen Harold Ross started The New Yorker 63 years ago this month, he could not have imagined that the magazine would win, as Time remarked, "an honored place in the country's cultural mantel."

Ross just wanted a magazine that would keep New Yorkers apprised of "what is going on in the ... smart gathering places" and would "tell the truth and the whole truth without fear and favor" in precise and polished English.

The New Yorker does all that and more. While its writingsshort stories, criticisms, essays, travelogues-have made it a powerful voice in the world of literature and journalism, its cartoons have made it a barometer of chic American humor.

Among the many traditions that the magazine has clung to since its inception is editorial independence.

When media baron Samuel Newhouse bought The New Yorker three years ago, its "The Talk of the Town" column sent him a notso-subtle message: Hands off.

"We reassert our editorial independence," declared the column. "The ownership of The New Yorker may change hands but the idea of The New Yorker has never been owned by anyone and never will be ... .It cannot be bought or sold."

Perhaps the magazine's exclusiveness is best exemplified by its illustrations and its typical cartoon characters.

New York's National Academy of Design held an exhibition of The New Yorker covers on the magazine's 60th anniversary in 1985. Late last year "The Art of The New Yorker: A 60-Year Retrospective" completed its two-year tour through major American cities.

A part of The New Yorker's charm stems from its blend of consistency and tradition with the idiosyncratic-for example, to quote Time, "its whimsical insistence on printing its foppish inaugural cover [above, by Rea Irvin] every February."

'~,-----~-_//"

. Mar. 12, 1984

February 1988

SPAN 2 Bearing the Cross

by Nissim Ezekiel

5

Galena Rediscovered

9 Words of Wisdom

12

No One Was Ever Turned Away

by William A. Nolen

17 On the Lighter Side

18 Calcutta Book Fair' A Dedication to Books

20 Space-- Visions and Viewpoints View From the High Road

by Joseph Allen

Earth Viewpoints Space Visions As Art Views Earth

29 The Pains and Pleasures of Transcreation

35

Stranger Than True

36 An Indian Precedent

38

Focus On ...

40 Making It Differently

by John M. Broder

44 Alfred Hitchcock-The

Master of Mystery

by Ombica Gupta

48 Lost Gonzos Found in Delhi

Publisher Editor

James A. McGinley Warren W. McCurdy

Managing Editor

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Krishan Gabrani

Senior Editor

Aruna Dasgupta

Copy Editors

A. Venkata Narayana Snigdha Majmudar

Editorial Assistants

Rocque Fernandes Rashmi Goel

Photo Editor

Avinash Pasricha

Art Director

Nand Katyal

Associate Art Director

Kanti Roy

Assistant Art Director

Bimanesh Roy Choudhury

Chief of Production

Awtar S. Marwaha

Circulation Manager

Y.P. Pandhi

Photographic Service

USIS Photographic Services Unit

Photographs: Front cover-National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). 5-8-James Quick. 12-13--0.G. Mason, NYU School of Medicine Library Archives. 15-0.G. Mason, courtesy Bellevue Hospital Collection. 16--© NYU Medical Center. 21-23-NASA. 24-26--Artwork

by Robert McCall, copyright Bantam Books Inc., courtesy National Commission on Space. 27 top-courtesy National Air & Space Museum; bottom-Barry Fitzgerald. 28 top and bottom left-Barry Fitzgerald; bottom right--eourtesy National Air & Space Museum. 29--eourtesy of the author. 31- Tapan Das, courtesy of The Telegraph. 32-Ruchir Joshi.

33--eourtesy of the author. 34 top-Sisir Studio, courtesy of the author.

37-Sakuntala Narasimhan. 39 top left-Avinash Pasricha. 41--eourtesy of Allen-Bradley, a Rockwell International Company. 43--eourtesy Shape Inc. 48-A vinash Pasricha. Inside back cover-Gregory Heisler. Back cover-Jack Mitchell.

Published by the United States Information Service, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001, on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government. Printed at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana.

Use of SPAN articles in other publications is encouraged, except when copyrighted. For permission write to the Editor. Price of magazine. one year's subscription (12 issues) Rs. 25; single copy~ Rs. 4.

For change of address send an old address from a recent SPAN envelope along with new address to Circulalion Manager, SPAN magazine, 24 KaSlurba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001. See change <>faddress form on page 48b.

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. Space

"•.•.. ..d V'~

Front cover: Peninsular India is visible in this photograph taken during Gemini 1I's space odyssey in 1967.

It was shot with a wide-angle lens from an altitude of 740 kilometers, See story on pages 20-28.

Back cover: The Lar Lubovitch Dance Company won rave reviews for its recent performance in New Y Qrk of Concerto Six Twenty- Two, choreographed by Lubovitch to a concerto by Mozart.

As readers saw in last month's issue, the 1003 am complex campaign to choose a new President of the United States is beginni03 to warm up, with party caucuses in Iowa February 8, followed by the campaign's first primary election in New Hampshire on the 16th. Then, over the next four weeks, the camidates vyi03 to be their parties' standard-bearers, now a baker's dozen, will be winnowed down substantially and several front-runners may at last emerge. That quadrenni~l process, while altogether serious in intent, is somethi03 of a spectacle that Americans get caught up in and enjoy while it is happeni03, but, when the votes are cast and the new President is inaugurated, they are happy enough to turn back to the world they are more involved with day to day, the world of local politics.

It is at this level that voters elect school board members, pass on bond issues to finance local projects, or challe03e a zoni03.action that would allow buildi03 a canmercial structure in a residential area.

Lo03 before independence, and before a workable federal goverrrnent was formed, America's goverrrnental system consisted only of town meeti03s am colonial legislatures; the system is still very much one that flows from the bottom up. In addition to the President and C003ress, there are governments for the 50 states, 3,042 counties, 18,856 municipalities, 16,822 townships, 15,260 school districts and 26,140 other special districts--80,120 distinct goverrrnents, each with elected or appointed officials and each with a high degree of autonomy in setti03 its own bylaws and agenda. These local units, staffed by ordinary citizens, often worki03 part-time and without pay, are the heart of our democratic process, affecti03 almost every aspect of the citizen's daily life.

Individuals are encouraged to participate to influence political decisions and most meeti03s are open to, the public.

Heari03s on local issues are scheduled and announced well in advance so the voice of the voter can be heard.

Residents of the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., line up to vote in the 1964 election for President and numerous local candidates and referendum issues.

In the American system, many actions can be ini ti ated by concerned ci ti zens acti 03 together--laws can be proposed, officials recalled and statutes put to a general vote. Twenty-one states, am 11 others at the local level only, allow petitioners to initiate a new law and, if enough citizens endorse it, have it voted on in the next election; 39 states, plus eight others at the local level, permit referenda--such as a bond issue to raise fums for education or a movement to cha03e the tax code--to be included on the next ballot if there are enough signatures on petitions.

An example was when California voters passed a controversial referendum to reduce drastically the percentage of property taxes that the legislature was permitted to collect each year. The campaign was so successful that, to this day, it is a rare California ballot that does not have at least one referemum for citizens to consider.

From the early days of colonial life, almost every town or village, however snall, had its OVID newspaper, or shared one with other nearby canmuni ties.

That tradition continues today, augmented by local news programs on radio and television.

These media pla1 the role of a lightni03 rod, bri03i03 all sorts of issues into focus, and motivati03 townsfolk to work in concert.

They also give the people a voice when the bureaucracy or elected officials appear to forget for whom they are' worki03. Many newspapers and radio and TV stations have an "action line" to which individuals can complain--about the snall but vexi03 problems of everyday life, such as potholes in the road, burned out street lights or rude bureaucrats.

The columnist or commentator, as a sort of town ombudsnan, can then put the spotlight of the media on the matter to influence remedies and improvements.

A query from a journalist to a storekeeper who has sold a customer damaged goods, for example, can have a catalytic effect on the store's policy to stand behind its merchandise- ~n the future. To a degree that foreign observers rarely appreciate, the source of stability that keeps the-American ship of state on an even keel is the solid ballast df its ordinary citizenry at the grass-roots level. As Thomas Jefferson once put it, "Our liberty can never be safe except in the. hands of the people."

This is David J. Garrow's third book* on Martin Luther King, Jr.; and it won its author the 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. Reviewers have described it as dazzling, definitive, indispensable, comprehensive and exciting. It is all these and more. The scholarship involved may be noted even before one's reading of the text begins, by discovering that the Notes, Bibliography and Index alone add up to 170 pages. We learn from the blurb that more than 700 interviews were conducted with King's associates, colleagues and opponents.

In addition, the author has used King's personal papers, the archives of several individuals and institutions as well as "tens of thousands of pages of newly released FBI documents."

And it all comes alive in a narrative that is disciplined, purposeful, clear. The vast material collected does not weigh down the flow of events. Though there is considerable detail, Garrow succeeds in always being loyal to the principle of relevance and significance. This is an achievement to which tribute must be paid, whatever the reader's view of the subject. As the title and the three quotations from King's writings used as epigraphs suggest, this biography emphasizes the Christian context and motivation of King as a leader of the black movement for civil rights.

The story of that movement in relation to the Montgomery Bus Boycott, 1955-56, forms the first chapter of Bearing the Cross.

King's involvement was slow and reluctant. As pastor of a church, he was only asked at first to allow a meeting there for organizational purposes, and then if he would support the cause. He had refused an offer a few weeks earlier to be president of the local NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) chapter.

Though unwilling to work directly for the cause of racial equality, King took his first step in the direction along which he was to move for the rest of his life. He agreed to be president of the new association in Montgomery for the conduct of the proposed boycott and he delivered his first major public speech soon afterward. The points he stressed in that speech are noteworthythat the blacks are first and foremost American citizens, that they would fight for their rights without violence, that they ought to

"Bearing the Cross, Marlin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, A Personal Portrait, by David J. Garrow, William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 800 pp., $22.95, is available at the American Center libraries in Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi.

"keep God in the forefront" and be Christian in all their actions.

King spoke of love as crucial in the Christian faith. At the same time he wanted the use of not only the tools of persuasion but also of coercion!

That formula remained a part of his strategy throughout his career as a black leader.

The Montgomery speech was a great success, and King was launched in the eyes of the general public without his own volition. Yet, at that stage, he was not even wholeheartedly against segregation: "We merely wanted them to fill the bus from the rear and the whites fill the bus from . the front." He did not mention Mahatma Gandhi, though later his influence was acknowledged .. King had lived in Montgomery for 15 months, and was only 26 years old.

His assassination at the end of the book is so briefly described that it seems a nonevent. Yet, because of its sensitive human touches, it is effective. "Abernathy knelt beside him, asking his old friend if he could hear him. Kyles looked down and thought he could see the color of King's complexion change right before his eyes. He turned away and sobbed." A saga-of sustained effort, spiritual maturity; suffering for a cause and personal weaknesses relentlessly exposed-ends with the sound of sobbing.

Less than a page is devoted to the Epilogue in which several voices are raised against the universal tendency to mythologize, idolize and romanticize the hero. Even the Acknowledgments, though, in which 395 names are mentioned, give the book a heroic air. No comparison is intended, of course, between the life lived and the research on it transformed into a biographical masterpiece.

I must add that it is not the prose style that makes Bearing the Cross a masterpiece. The prose is essentially conventional and functional. It remains always on a middle level, dropping lower only in specific situations by repeated use of the same word or phrase. The greatness of the book is in its splendid flow of facts and ideas, what one reviewer defines appropriately as "scholarly reconstruction and interpretation."

A recurring theme is of King's affairs with women. They are described by the author in one breath as "certain cqmpelling needs" and in the next as "compulsive sexual athleticism." The worst biographical moment in the book occurs when King explains his conduct in terms of his often being "away from home 25 to 27 days a month."

By the time we arrive at the book's last chapter, The Poor People's Campaign and Memphis, 1967-68, King's personal

portrait is as complete as it could possibly be. Virtually everything he had to say on every subject of interest to him had already been said. His critics have also made their case against him. He mentions again, as he has done so many times before, his "transforming experience" at the kitchen table of his Montgomery parsonage, when "God had , promised never to leave him alone."

Attacked in Reader's Digest for his "exaggerated appraisal of his contribution to racial progress, and for the Communist influence on him in his anti-Vietnam activism," his response was "stern but accurate." Yet, when King later addressed a convention in Chicago, the audience was so bored that hundreds "walked out or turned to other concerns." He soon returned to his frequent mood of depression, claiming that the Lord wanted him only to be a preacher, "not to do all this stuff."

Though committed, it is clear, to his active role in various black causes as well as the Vietnam issue, King never quite overcame his sense of inadequacy and failure. This contradiction does not lower his stature in the author's eyes or ours. King spoke persistently of the need to relocate power, of the uninspiring value structure in a capitalist society, of new tactics in the battles for justice and for raising nonviolent protests to a new, more mature level. Now he added to his goal such specifics as "a guaranteed annual income and the elimination of slums."

Whatever King said or did, he could not solve the problem of splits within the black movement. His political and spiritual differences with its other leaders remained. All the same, when the subject was raised of rampant sexuality at certain meetings of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, King was among those who merely laughed. His psychological defense was focused on the "Schizophrenia ... within all of us." Whether this adds up to the self-criticism the author of Bearing the Cross attributes to King is doubtful.

On the other hand, King gave all his Nobel Peace Prize money to the causes with which he was associated. There is enough evidence also to prove that he talked as an equal with everyone, and found time for all who approached him, however busy he was.

Though he often said that he had few friends, it is apparent that his need to discuss his personal problems was excessive. None of those who were close to him could meet its demands. He sometimes drank heavily as his arguments and confessions continued into the night till the early morning hours.

During his crowded schedule for over ten years as a black Christian leader, King sometimes slept for only three or four hours each night. Like Mahatma Gandhi, whose profound influence on him was unquestionable, King was intensely upset when peaceful protests turned violent. Unlike Gandhi, he did not altogether repudiate violence as a conceivable instrument in the struggle for justice. "Maybe we just have to admit," King once said to a colleague, "that the day of violence is here, and maybe we have to

just give up and let violence take its course. The nation won't listen to our voice- maybe it'll heed the voice of violence. " Riots, however, did not cease to depress him and make him pessimistic. He believed that "riots were not revolutionary."

On one occasion he contemplated a Gandhian type of fast as a spiritual move to change the views of those who treated his nonviolence as dead. It was unfortunately true, as a newspaper editorial pointed out, that in the Memphis March of the Poor People's Campaign, King "took off at high speed when violence occurred, instead of trying to use his persuasive prestige to stop it."

Of the numerous realities that emerge from Bearing the Cross the disheartening ones concern the failure ofliberal America in the face of the Civil Rights Movement, the ambivalent attitude of government and the obstinacy of most white churches in refusing to admit black worshipers. Separate essays could be written on each of these to highlight the formidable difficulties encountered

by King. To these may be added the infighting among the blacks, some of it so radical and self-regarding that it spoiled their case.

King's preoccupation was with maintaining the pace and intensity of the black struggle. In the chapter on Birmingham and the March on Washington in 1963, he is quoted as admitting that "the Negro in the South can now be nonviolent as a strategy but he can't include loving the white man." The author sums up King's stance objectively: "Only through confrontation could the nation be shown the true essence of segregation and racism."

How King handled this conviction in practice reveals, more fully than any of his speeches, his real greatness as a leader. He refused, for example, to compromise his sensible and well-reasoned credo and rejected that of the Black Muslims. King felt that he ought to do everything in his power to retain and increase the support of whites who were in favor of desegregation. His book Strength to Love is a collection of sermons that vindicate its title. His famous speech to the Washington March participants is described by Garrow as "the rhetorical achievement of a lifetime."

It is more than rhetoric. It is a genuine expression of King's faith in his American Dream, "that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed-we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are crea ted equal." That kind of rhetoric is within the spirit of truth, not of strong persuasion alone. The same may be said of his declaration that he looked forward to a transformation of "the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."

It is this dream of a symphony that motivated Martin Luther King, Jr. D About the Author: Nissim Ezekiel, the noted Bombay-based poet, writer and critic, has published several books, including The Unfinished Man, Hymns in Darkness and Three Plays. Among the anthologies he has edited is A Martin Luther King Reader.

Galena Rediscovered

by PATRICK REYNOLDS

Neglect had made Galena look like a town that time forgot. But in the past three decades, the residents' concern and conscious attempts at historic preservation have made it a town visitors c d ever forget.

he basement of Charles Primrose's 1850s Italianate mansion in Galena, Illinois, is filled with .19th-century bricks-thousands of them stacked neatly in row upon row. Like any collector, Primrose cannot keep his hands off them as he admires their shade and texture, or points out a flaw resulting from an overheated kiln or laments a worn edge caused by some forgotten tuck-pointer's blade.

Primrose spent a full month salvaging the bricks from the ruins of three Victorian-era buildings destroyed by fire on a nearby college campus. He then had to chisel the mortar off each brick and clean them in muriatic acid, all 22,000 of them. He will use them to restore the exterior of his own home and to build an adjoining coach house in the style of the period.

In Galena, such devotion to historic preservation abounds. People call it the town that time forgot, but no one who saw it today could ever forget it. Tucked away in the northwest corner of Illinois, it was a prosperous lead-mining center and riverboat port (the Galena River leads directly to the Mississippi) in the mid-19th century.

But then the river silted up, and the Illinois Central Railroad passed it by, choosing instead nearby Dubuque, Iowa, as its western terminus. The financial panics of 1857 and 1893 ended Galena's prosperity.

As a result, the town never modernized; when a business closed or a residence was abandoned, often the building was simply boarded up and left as it was. That long period of neglect lasted until the 1960s, when the residents of nearby Chicago, charmed by the town's period architecture and picturesque setting, began purchasing and restoring homes and businesses. At about the same time, Galenians decided to capitalize on their town's undeniable allure and build an economy partly based on tourism. In 1965, the town passed an ordinance that limited and regulated alterations made to historic buildings, and its 19th-century Main Street was slated for About the Author: Patrick Reynolds lives in Chicago and writes frequently about Jlistoric preservation and restoration.

an extensive and much-needed restoration.

"A real turning point for Main Street," says Mayor Frank Einsweiler, a key figure in the rejuvenation of Galena, was the battle to save the Coatsworth Building, a four-sto~y brick commercial structure on Main Street. Einsweiler, whose roots in Galena go back to the I840s, has been mayor for 14 years. Before that, he was chairman of the planning commission for 25 years.

"The Coats worth Building had become such an eyesore that people were giving me hell about it all the time, insisting it should be torn down," he recalls. That almost happened: In the late 1960s Einsweiler and others had to file a lawsuit to stop the city council from demolishing the longneglected building. The state then purchased it, and it was eventually restored.

"The building is at the very center of Main Street," says Einsweiler, who is in his 80s.

"Why, if you talked about tearing it down today, people would tar and feather you."

Other milestones in the restoration of the town occurred when two more important Galena landmarks were rescued-the historic Desoto House on Main Street and a 1905 Romanesque public-school building atop Quality Hill, so named be"cause the posh residences were originally built there.

Since it opened in 1855, the Desoto House Hotel has been host to seven American Presidents, including Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, who lived in Galena. The hotel had been allowed to deteriorate until a group of private investors purchased it in 1982 and four years and $8 million later opened it as a truly fine hotel. In the process, some compromises had to be made. The interior, for example, could hardly be called a restoration, although it is tasteful and manages to achieve a period ambience. The masonry exterior, on the other hand, looks good enough to pass inspection by the most finicky purist.

The public-school building had been in danger of demolition ever since the school board put it up for sale in the late 1970s.

Fortunately, a third-generation Galenian purchased it and converted the building into luxury condominiums.

Again, com-

promises had to be made, but the exterior of the landmark building was lovingly and authentically restored. "If you arrive in town from the east, the public school is the first building you see," Mayor Einsweiler explains. "Losing it would have been a serious blow." Charles Primrose is another admirer. "Of all the things that have happened around here lately," he says, "it is one of'the best."

Primrose is like a number of other preservationists in Galena in that his current restoration is not his first. He purchased an 1861 Victorian mansion more than a decade ago, when the exterior was badly in need of tuck-pointing, the elaborate wood soffit was screaming for paint and the front porch was falling off. Once the work was completed, he and his family moved into the mansion, appointing it with antiques that they sought out and purchased locally.

They lived on two floors and rented out the six middle-floor rooms to guests.

Primrose's current project is the Smith house, which, he says matter-of-factly, "is in such bad need of repair that it's hard to find something solid enough to attach your initial efforts to." Extensive research in local photo collections, including a large one belonging to town resident Alfred Mueller, has shown how the building looked before it was remodeled at the turn of the century. Primrose plans to replace worn lintels and steps with limestone from a local source, and on the inside he will restore the original six-over-six windows, reconstruct sliding pocket doors that once separated the downstairs parlors and recreate molds for the decorative plaster that graced the ceilings. And then there is the tuck-pointing, brick replacement and construction of the period coach house, none of which would be possible without those 22,000 bricks stored in his basement.

Like Primrose, Kyle Husfloen, editor of the Antique Trader Weekly, is a man stricken with preservation fever. He is currently on his third house; his first, an 1828 stone cottage known as the Bertrand house, is among the half a dozen oldest houses in town and is now a highlight of the fall tour of historic Galena each year.

Above: Charles Primrose proudly displays some of the 22,000 old bricks he salvagedfrom the ruins of three Victorian-era buildings destroyed by fire.

Primrose chiseled and cleaned each brick and now plans to reuse them. Left and below: Galena is tucked away in the northwest corner of Illinois, about 300 kilometers west of Chicago and 25 kilometers east of the Mississippi River.

In the 1960s, the Galenians decided to capitalize on their town's undeniable allure and build an economy partly based on tourism.

Husfloen uncovered an original stone fireplace that had been hidden by wallboard in the 1950s, replaced the original six-over-six windows and re-created the interior woodwork in an authentic style.

To bring out "the early American primitive feeling" of the house, he added such decorative touches as period mantelpieces, tin wall sconces and tin chandeliers. And no sooner was tha t jo b finished than he was on to his next, an 1845 row house built by Galena housewright James Spare that was considerably larger than the stone cottage.

"I'm a collector," he explains, "and I really needed the space."

Husfloen was not in the Spare house long, however. "1 had always been interested in this old 1850s mansion, one of the first built on Quality Hill," he reminisces.

"So when it came on the market, 1 made an offer and got it. Then 1 listed my house and sold it the next day."

Private home owners are not the only preservationists in Galena. Commercial property owners, guest house operators who have taken over many of the larger Galena mansions that are too big for single-family residences, and the state of Illinois have also made important contributions to the town. The state, for example, currently manages the 1860 Italianate brick structure that was given to General Ulysses Grant upon his return from the American Civil War. (The Grant family gave the house to Galena in 1904.)

Nearby, the state is now restoring a Greek Revival mansion that was the home of another prominent Galenian, Congressman Elihu Washburne (1816-87), an ardent supporter of Grant and minister to France during his presidency.

Site superintendent Thomas Campbell is working on a plan to link the Washburne and Grant homes in a restored neighborhood that will re-create the atmosphere of the .time when the two men walked the streets together.

"Everyone thinks that Galena is a town that time forgot," says Campbell. "The fact is that we have lost a lot, but we are lucky too. It just happens that we had a lot to start with."

0

WORDS OF WISDOM February in the United States is known as Presidents' Month for the birthdays of two of the most popular Presidents falling therein. It used

to be that there was a holiday on Washington's birthday, but recently it is being called Presidents Day or Washington-Lincoln Day to honor

them both and with the holiday falling between the two birthdays. Both men inculcate virtues that Americans still seek in their leaders.

George Washington First President of the United States (1789-97). Commander-inChief of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War (177583). Presided over the Federal Constitutional Convention (1787).

Military career began in French and Indian War (1755-63).

Member of the Virginia House of Burgesses (1759-74), and opponent of British colonial policies. Delegate to the Continental Congress (1774-75). Assumed command of the Continental Army (July 3, 1775). Defeated British Commander CornwalIis at Yorktown, Virginia (October 19,1781). As President, he established a stable government, struggled to maintain United States neutrality and sought to prevent the growth of political parties. His 1796 FarewelI Address cautioned the nation against partisan politics, factionalism and permanent European alliances. Washington is remembered for his resourceful military and political leadership, honesty and remarkable sense of duty.

While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious not to violate the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to Him only in this case they are answerable.

-(To

Benedict Arnold, September 14, 1775)

When we assumed the soldier we did not lay aside the citizen.

-(Address

to New York Legislature, June 26, 1775)

Experience teaches us that it is much easier to prevent an enemy from posting themselves than it is to dislodge them after they have got possession.

-(To

President of Congress, January Il, 1776)

I am wearied almost to death with the retrograde motion of things, and I solemnlyprotest, that a pecuniary reward of20,000 pounds a year would not induce me to undergo what I do; and after all, perhaps, to lose my character, as it is impossible, under such a variety of distressing circumstances, to conduct matters agreeably to public expectation, or even to the expectation of those who employ me, as they will not make proper allowances for the difficulties their own errors have occasioned ....God grant you all health and happiness. Nothing in this world would contribute so much to mine, as to be once more fixed among you in the peaceable enjoyment of my own "vine and fig-tree."

-(To John Augustine Washington, November 19, 1776)

My temper leads me to peace and harmony with all men; and it is peculiarly my wish to avoid any personal feuds or dissensions with those, who are embarked in the same great national interest with myself, as every difference of this kind must in its consequences be very injurious.

-(To

Horatio Gates, February 24, 1778)

A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment to friends; and that the most liberal professions of goodwill are very far from being the surest marks of it.

-(To

John Sullivan, December 15, 1779)

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

-(To

Robert Howe, August 17, 1779)

The best way to preserve the confidence of the people durably is to promote their true interest.

-(To

Joseph Reed, July 4, 1780)

It is my most ardent desire, not only to soften the inevitable calamities of war, but even to introduce on every occasion as great a share of tenderness and humanity, as can possibly be exercised in a state of hostility.

-(To

General James Robertson, May 4, 1782)

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.

-(To

Bushrod Washington, January 15, 1783)

It remains only for the States to be wise, and to establish their independence on the basis of an inviolable, efficacious union, and a firm confederation, which may prevent their being made the sport of European policy.

-(To

General Nathanael Greene, March 31, 1783)

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind banished from the Earth, and the sons and daughters of this world employed in more pleasing and innocent amusements, than in preparing implements and exercising them for the destruction of mankind.

-(To

David Humphreys, July 25, 1785)

Perfection falls not to the share of mortals.

-(To

John Jay, August 1, 1786)

The life of a Husbandman of all others is the most delectable. It is honorable. It is amusing, and, with judicious management, it is profitable.

-(To

Alexander Spotswood, February 13, 1788)

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

-{To James Madison, March 2,1788) When a people shall have become incapable of governing themselves, and fit for a master, it is oflittle consequence from what quarter he comes.

-{To the Marquis de Lafayette, April 28, 1788) The more r am acquainted with agricultural affairs the better I am pleased with them. Insomuch that I can nowhere find so great satisfaction, as in those innocent and useful pursuits. In indulging these feelings, I am led to reflect how much more delightful to an undebauched mind is the task of making improvements on the Earth, than all the vain glory which can be acquired from ravaging it, by the most uninterrupted career of conquests.

-{To Arthur Young, December 4, 1788) The power of making war often prevents it, and in our case would give efficacy to our desire of peace.

-{1788) My movements to the chair of government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit, who is going to the place of his execution; so unwilling am r, in the evening of a life nearly consumed in public cares, to quit a peaceful abode for an ocean of difficulties, without that competency of political skill, abilities, and inclination, which are necessary to manage the helm.

-{To Henry Knox, April 1, 1789) Thus supported by a firm trust in the Great Arbiter of the Universe, aided by the collected wisdom of the Union, and imploring the divine benediction on our joint exertions in the service of our country, I readily engage with you in the arduous but pleasing task of attempting to make a nation happy.

-{Reply to the Senate, May 18, 1789) In executing the duties of my present important station, I can promise nothing but purity of intentions, and, in carrying these into effect, fidelity and diligence.

-{Message to Congress, July 9, 1789) The administration

of justice is the firmest pillar of government.

-{To Edmund Randolph, September 27, 1789)

A free people ought not only to be armed, but disciplined; to which end a uniform and well-digested plan is requisite .... To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

-{First Annual Message to Congress, January 8, 1790) The aggregate happiness of society, which is best promoted by the practice of a virtuous policy, is, or ought to be, the end of all government.

-{To Count de Moustier, November 1, 1790) It is the peculiar boast of our country, that her happiness is alone dependent on the collective wisdom and virtue of her citizens, and rests not on the exertions of any individual.

-{Address to Representatives of South Carolina, May 3, 1791) To every description of citizens, indeed, let praise be given. But let them persevere in their affectionate vigilance over that precious depository of American happiness, the Constitution of the United States.

-{Sixth Annual Message to Congress, November 19, 1794) Republicanism is not the phantom of a deluded imagination: on the contrary ... under no form of government, will laws be better supported, liberty and property better secured, or happiness be more effectually dispensed to mankind.

-{To Edmund Pendleton, January 22, 1795) The Constitution

is the guide which I never will abandon.

-{Speech to Boston Selectmen, July 28, 1795)

Nothing short of self-respect and that justice which is essential to a national character ought to involve us in war; for sure I am, if this country is preserved in tranquillity 20 years longer, it may bid defiance, in a just cause, to any power whatever; such, in that time, will be its population, wealth, and resources.

-{To Gouverneur .Morris, December 22, 1795) I have always given it as my decided opinion that no nation had a right to intermeddle in the internal concerns of another; that everyone had a right to form and 'J,dopt whatever government they liked best to live under themselves; and that, if this country could, consistently with its engagements, maintain a strict neutrality and thereby preserve peace, it was bound to do so by motives of policy, interest, and every other consideration.

-{To James Monroe, August 25, 1796)

Abraham Lincoln Sixteenth President during the Civil War (1861-65).

Partner legisla tor (1834-41). a leading

spokesman

of the United States (1861-65). Led Union between the northern and southern states

in an Illinois Congressman

law office (1832) and a state from Illinois (1847 -49). Became

of the new Republican

Party

(late

1850s).

As President-elect, was faced with secession crisis (March 1861).

Called for volunteers to fight the insurrection (April 1861). Issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing all American slaves (January 1863). Delivered the Gettysburg 1863). Re-elected President (1864). Felled

Address (November by assassin's bullet

(April 14, 1865; he died the next day). Lincoln is remembered for his honesty, for his great humanity in ending the institution of slavery in the United States and for his wit and eloquence sampled

below:

Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of the Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country, and never to tolerate their violation by others .... When I so pressingly urge a strict observance of the laws, let me not be understood as saying there are no bad laws, or that grievances may not arise for the redress of which no legal provisions have been made. r mean to say no such thing. But I do mean to say that although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue

in force, for the sake of the example they should be religiously observed.

-{Speech at Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1837) The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them, when they are invaded.

-{Speech at Springfield, Illinois, January (837) Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her.

-{Speech in Springfield, nlinois, December 20, 1839) We feel...that all legal distinction between individuals or the same community, founded in any such circumstances as color, origin, and the like [is] hostile to the genius of our institutions, and incompatible with the true history of American liberty.

-{Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio, May 31, 1842) In law it is good policy never to plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you cannot.

-{To U.F. Linder, February 20, 1848) Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it by being a slave himself.

-{July 1, (854) Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it the practices and policy which harmonize with it. Let North and South-let all Americans-let all lovers of liberty everywhere join in the great

and good work. If we do this, we shall not only save the Union, but we shall have so saved it as to make and keep it forever worthy of the saving.

We shall have so saved it that the succeeding millions of free, happy people, the world over, shall rise up and call us blessed to the latest generations.

-{Speech at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854) No client ever had money enough to bribe my conscience or to stop its utterance against wrong, and oppression. My conscience is my own-my creator's-not man's. I shall never sink the rights of mankind to the malice-wrong or avarice of another's wishes, though those wishes come to me in relation of client and attorney.

-{Springfield, Illinois, c. 1856) The Declaration of Independence's authors meant it to be-as, thank God, it is now proving itself-a stumbling block to all those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should reappear in this fair land and commence their vocation, they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack .... I think the authors of that notable instrument intended to include all men, but they did not intend to declare all men equal in all respects.

They did not mean to say all were equal in color, size, intellect, moral developments, or social capacity. They defined with tolerable distinctness in what respects they did consider all men created equal--equal with "certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This they said, and this they meant.

-{Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 27, 1857) Let us discard all this quibbling about this man or the other man, this race and that race, and the other race being inferior and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position--discarding our standard that we have left us! Let us discard all these things and unite as one people throughout this land until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equaL.! leave you hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt thatall men are created equal.

-{Speech in Chicago, Illinois, July 10, 1858) All I ask for the Negro is that if you do not like him, let him alone. If God gave him but little, that little let him enjoy.

-{Speech at Springfield, Illinois, July 17, 1858) You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of ~ti~. .

-{Attributed to a speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 2, 1858) The people are the rightful masters of both congresses and courts-not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it.

-{Notes for speeches in Ohio, September 16, 17, 1859) To correct the evils, great and small, which spring from want of sympathy and from positive enmity among strangers, as nations or as individuals, is one of the highest functions of civilization.

-{Address at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, September 30, 1859)

expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.

-{First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861) A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. "One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the Earth abideth forever." It is of the first importance to duly consider and estimate this ever-enduring part. That portion of the Earth's surface which is owned and inhabited by the people of the United States is well adapted to be the home of one national family, and it is not well adapted for two or more.

-{Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862) Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.

It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger cannot consecrate-we cannot hallowsense, we cannot dedicate-we this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who s'truggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedomand that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

-{Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863) The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some tb do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name-liberty.

And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names-liberty and tyranny.

-{Address at Baltimore, Maryland, April 18, 1864) It has long been a grave question whether any government, not too strong for the liberties of its people, can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great emergencies.

-{November 10, 1864)

I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only his own condition, but to assist in ameliorating mankind ... .! am for those means which will give the greatest good to the greatest number. ...The workingmen are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the more numerous.

-{Speech at Cincinnati, Ohio, February 12, 1861)

The great advantage of citizens being creditors as well as debtors, with relation to the public debt, is obvious. Men readily perceive that they cannot be much oppressed by a debt which they owe to themselves.

-{Fourth Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1864)

A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing 'easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism .... Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? ...Truth and ...justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of the American people .... While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years. Perpetuity is implied, if not

As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upo~ myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I cannot properly offer an answer.

-{Address at Washington, D.C., Aprilll, 1865)

Everything I say, you know, goes into print. If I make a mistake it doesn't merely affect me, or you, but the country. I, therefore, ought at least try not to make mistakes.

-{To a crowd gathered before the White House, April 10, 1865)

I believe in the Providence longest cannon.

of the most men, the largest purse, and the

N

ewYork City's Bellevue Hospital, the oldest hospital in the United States, turned 250 in 1986. It started as a six-bed ward for the poor, part of an almshouse on lower Broadway, back in 1736, when New York had a population of about 9,000. As the city grew, Bellevue grew. By 1810 the population of New York was 96,373 and the city fathers were looking for a place to build a real hospital. They purchased a part of what was then Kip's Bay Farm. The gentleman who originally owned the adjoining land in 1772 had called it Belle View. By 1793 the name had changed to Belle Vue, and in 1825, when the hospital was well established, it was called Bellevue, the name it has had ever since.

By 1870 Bellevue could hold 1,200 beds and was one of the biggest hospitals in the world. The rich supply of patients had prompted the city fathers to establish Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1861, so that students could benefit from the wide clinical experience the hospital afforded. It was never the tidiest hospital in the world-how could it be, when its policy was always to accept those patients who could with some justice be called the dregs of humanity?

Between 1827 and 1847, mortality rates at Bellevue averaged 20 percent, with a high in one year of 33 percent. When William Stewart Halsted-who devised the residency training program that is still the basis for surgical training everywhere in the worldwas an attending surgeon at Bellevue (1883-87), he often operated in a tent set up behind the hospital, because he considered the hospital too filthy for his patients. In 1888, Halsted moved to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he had a long and distinguished career. In the United States, he is still considered the father of modern surgery.

In 1897, the medical-school part of Bellevue was destroyed by fire. Between 1906 and 1939, the hospitalwas rebuilt a bit at a time, since it was not feasible to shut down a section completely while its replacement was being added.

By the 1950s, Bellevue stretched from 25th to 30th streets on First A venue, with the nurses' residence and" school at the south end and the morgue and pathology building and the psychiatric wards at the other. The various wings of the main hospital were all more or less attached to each other, with the A and B buildings (the medical wards) at the south end and the Land M buildings (the surgical wards built in 1913) at the north end. Wards C through K were aligned in sequence and housed neurology, pediatrics, orthopedics, genitourinary-all the subspecialties one would expect to find in a major hospital. from Tufts medical school in Medford, In 1953, when-fresh Massachusetts-I began my residency at Bellevue, three medical schools were closely affiliated with the hospital: Columbia, Cornell and New York University (NYU). There was also a postgrad-

No One Was EverTurned Now a renowned center of modern medicine, the 252-year-old Bellevue Hospital in New York City was once the "hospital of last resort." Despite a perennial lack of funds and equipment, reminisces a doctor who did his residency there in the 1950s, "we saw to it that our patients got the best personal care."

ft

Away

Bellevue's official photo ra' ' arranged this ward and p~er In the 1890s, O.G. Mason to disguise the hospital's ~:;r;~;tr::t.With theatricalflair, perhaps

uate division for those doctors who had been out in practice and wanted to return for specialty training.

Each division had approximately 125 medical beds and 100 surgical beds, and the subspecialty divisions were distributed in more or less random fashion, though NYU, Cornell and Columbia controlled the lion's share of these divisions. Cornell, which was the division to which I had applied and been accepted (each medical school was responsible for recruiting its own house staff), had a genitourinary division and neurological and neurosurgery divisions. NYU controlled pediatrics and orthopedics.

Columbia ran the tubercular wards. Between 1908 and 1938 some TB patients had their beds on a boat; the first boat had once been part of the fleet of Staten Island ferries, and it was tied to a dock in the East River,just behind the F and G wards. For that era it was an eminently sensible arrangement. The basic treatment for TB until World War II was fresh air and rest, and that was much easier to find on a boat on the East River than in the main hospital itself. With the advent of the antibiotic treatment of TB, the boat was taken out of use and all TB patients were returned to the main hospital.

If, when I first moved into Bellevue, they had told me that the hospital as it stood had originally been built in 1736 and had been minimally improved since that time, I would have believed them. It looked that decrepit partly because what was then the main hospital building had certain oddities of construction, added over the course of 30 years.

The administration section, for example, which was more or less in the middle of the front of the main building, was about four steps lower than the adjacent wing. The house-staff quarters, which were on the upper floors of the administrative building, connected, of course, with the wings on either side. But, depending on what floor one's room was on, one might have to walk up or down three or four steps to get to the next wing. Nothing terribly difficult; just a bit strange.

The surgical wards, which were to be my home base over the next seven years, were still very much like the wards one sees in photographs of Victorian hospitals. They were wide open, just rows of beds on either side and two rows of beds head to head in the center, with about 40 beds to each ward. There was a little green metallic stand near each bed, where patients could keep soap, a toothbrush and other personal items.

Privacy was nonexistent. The head nurse could sit at her desk at the front of the ward and see all the patients at a glance-a very useful arrangement, particularly on the evening and night shifts, when there might be only one nurse to a ward. The wards in the L and M buildings looked out on the East River, so at least the view was decent. If a patient needed privacy, say for a physical examination, screens were moved into place around the bed. This was also done when it was decided that a patient was about to die.

Privacy was afforded to the dying not only because it seemed the proper thing to do, but also because over the years the house staff had discovered that ifpatients happened to view the final moments of someone who had recently undergone surgery, one-or even several-of our preoperative patients might decide they preferred to live with their problems and sign out AOR (Assuming Own Responsibility), absolving the medical staff of legal responsibility.

We didn't want these patients to leave until they had had their operations.

Every resident, in 1953, was expected to consider Bellevue home for the duration of his or her employment. We were each assigned

a room that contained a bed, a chair, a desk and, most important, a telephone. The ho.use-staff dining room was open for three free meals a day, plus an extra meal between II p.m. and I a.m. On 'some divisions a resident might be on call only every third night, but in my surgical division the call schedule was every other night and every other weekend, plus, of course, 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m. until noon on Saturdays. Along with three or four meals a day, our room, and our uniforms, we were paid $65 a month. Even in 1953, $65 a month was not a princely sum.

In that year, unlike the situation now, there were far more residencies available nationwide than there were medical-school graduates to fill them. Many American hospitals offered more money, less demanding schedules, and good training and supervision as well. Why, then, did I and so many others choose Bellevue?

To put it succinctly: For the challenge. Bellevue then was, even by the usual big-city hospital standards, horrendous. Like most residents, I didn't know much about city politics, but I knew from my preliminary visit for an interview that Bellevue had to be grossly underfunded.

Nobody walked, not the nurses, not the aides, certainly not the doctors; everyone sort of half-trotted. One could tell at a glance that there was too much for everyone to do and too little time to do it.

Even the chief resident of the division-who, one would expect, might get more sleep than the underlings-looked like the wrath of God, with bags under his eyes and a white uniform going to gray as he sat drinking a cup of coffee in the little kitchen just off the patient ward. He treated me nicely, expressed the hope that I would elect to intern there, but made it clear that I should only make the commitment if I was prepared to work myself to the bone. My surgical division accepted only six residents a year, but there was enough work for 12. They wanted no one unwilling to give his all for Bellevue. (At that time women were still rare in medicine, and extremely rare in surgery. All that has, of course, now changed.)

The second obvious challenge was the patients. In these open wards the general policy was to put the sickest patients at the front of the ward, nearest the nurse's desk, so they would get the closest supervision. I looked into the division's three surgical wards, and it was immediately obvious that at Bellevue a sick patient was one who would be considered critical, if not hopeless, in most American hospitals. All the patients near the nurse's station, and extending for some distance back, had tubes running in or out of most orifices, and all had the appearance of the chronically ill and malnourished, recently felled by an acute illness. Among Bellevue patients, malnutrition was endemic, and it was the rare patient who didn't have two or three diseases to complicate whatever major catastrophe had precipitated his or her admission.

The clincher was the fact that in those days Bellevue was truly a house-staff hospital. The word of the chief resident, in his fifth or sixth year of training, was law. Officially we had a director-a professor of surgery from Cornell-who visited the hospital for about two hours on Thursday when we held our surgical conference. During my last three years at Bellevue, he also made rounds between 6 and 7 p.m. on most Monday nights.

The absence of a full-time director (to say nothing of the fulltime staff doctors that most American teaching hospitals now have) guaranteed that residents could take as much personal responsibility for patient care as they were capable of handling.

Woe unto the resident who overestimated his capability; the wrath of the chief resident, who was ultimately responsible to the

These vintage, meticulously staged shots of Bellevue in the 1890s by O.G. Mason show doctors conducting an operation in the surgical amphitheater watched by studentsji"om New York City's medical schools (top) and an arm-to-arm transfusion in progress (above).

director, could be devastating.

But within those boundaries, opportunities to provide medical care were limitless. Few great hospitals in America offered as much opportunity and challenge to the eager, young, recently graduated medical student.

There can be no question that in 1953, in New York City, Bellevue was the hospital of last resort. State medical insurance schemes like Medicare and Medicaid did not exist until 1965.

Bellevue and other city hospitals were the places where the poor and the elderly came to get their care.

At any other city hospital, if the beds were full and an ambulance showed up with a desperately ill patient, the resident could write "No beds" on the admission slip and send the patient on to Bellevue. At Bellevue we were not allowed to write "No beds." When a patient arrived, if he needed hospital care, he stayed. We either stole a bed from another ward or built one out of spare parts that were tucked away in closets. No one was ever turned away from Bellevue.

All through my stay, Bellevue was a bit behind the times, to put it kindly. In 1955 New York had a record-breaking heat wave. No part of Bellevue was air-conditioned.

So when the operating rooms (ORs) got above a certain temperature, we had to cancel all but emergency and cancer surgery. We residents hated that because it meant "our" operations-hemorrhoids, varicose veins and hernias-were eliminated. (The ORs were air-conditioned in 1957.) There was also a severe water shortage in New York that summer. All over Bellevue there were pipes that leaked and faucets that constantly dripped. Did anyone fix these, to save water? Of

Bellevue's present building (at left, shadowed by a neighboring tower) was constructed in the 1970s. Atfar right stretch the buildings of Bellevue's affiliate, the New York University Medical Center.

course not. It was easier just to take the pitchers of water off the tables in the doctors' dining room.

During my stint at the hospital, we had some elevators that had never been known to work properly. Instead of fixing the buzzers, for example, signs that said "Push down for up" hung on the callboard for seven years. We residents rarely waited for an elevator unless we were going up more than four flights. We never took a down elevator.

In a hospital with 2,500 beds, most of them filled most of the time, there was no page system. Every resident made certain that the head nurse or the clerk on the ward to which he was assigned knew where he was at all times.

Meanwhile, X-rays were constantly being lost; or, if they proved to be interesting, stolen by the X-ray residents for their future teaching files. At Bellevue, finding X-rays, or the chart from a patient's previous admission, was a feat to challenge the skills of the most astute private investigator. The resident who had a knack for this was almost guaranteed to be reappointed the next year.

There was never enough equipment in the wards. As a surgical resident I learned to keep a pair of bandage scissors tied by a rope to my belt. This was a trick I had picked up when, as a medical student, I had spent two months on the surgical wards at Boston City Hospital, an institution, by the way, every bit as challenging as Bellevue.

The syringes we used for drawing blood were not plastic and disposable, as they have been for the last several years; they were made of glass and were supposed to be sterilized after each use. But at Bellevue there were never enough syringes to use a different one on each patient; and even among the syringes we had, roughly half worked poorly or not at all. As a consequence, when a resident found a syringe that worked well, he might use it on a dozen or more patients in a single morning, and if it was still working well, he would hide it away to use the next day. Sometimes "hiding it away" meant simply sticking it in his pocket until time to draw blood the next morning. One good syringe might serve for a week.

Such behavior, today, would bring the wrath of the director down on the resident's head-it was a terrible breach of sterile techniq ue-but in 1953 we learned to make whatever accommodations were necessary to get the job done. If we learned nothing else at Bellevue, we learned expediency.

There were never enough dressings, tape, rubber gloves and ointments for all the patients who needed them. We did the best we could with what we had. We compensated for the lack of

equipment by working harder. We took pride in seeing to it that, despite all the physical and mechanical handicaps Bellevue presented, no patient went without proper care. Maybe we couldn't match the elaborate equipment that Presbyterian and New York Hospitals had to offer, but, by God, we residents, nurses and aides saw to it that our patients got the best personal care available anywhere in the country.

There was an esprit de corps at Bellevue that I have not seen matched since I last walked out of there on June 30, 1960. I love that damned hospital; and so, I believe, does virtually every resident who has ever been part of it.

Strangely-or perhaps it isn't so strange-in the 27 years since I left Bellevue, my formal training completed, I have never been back. I have revisited New York dozens of times, but never felt I belonged any longer at Bellevue. It is a place to work and study and train, and when you belong to Bellevue it owns you, body and soul. But once the umbilical cord is severed, someone else takes your place. Residency training eventually ends (when you are going through it, it often seems the end will never arrive), but Bellevue goes on forever. Two hundred and fifty-two years so far, and still going strong.

In 1966, Cornell and Columbia agreed to break connections with Bellevue; it is now all NYU. The new, completely up-to-date Bellevue opened in I973-outpatient first, then (1975) inpatient, finally (1985) the psychiatric division. There were 2,500 beds in 1953; now, as in most American hospitals, there are fewer-I,200 in all. And, I have been told, everything is up to date, first class, the best available in the country. Bellevue has been designated as a trauma center, and limb-replant center, a heart station, and a head and spinal-cord injury center-a veritable medical Mecca. Linda Klein, who works on the Bellevue History Project, tells me that because of its facilities, experience and superb staff, Bellevue is the hospital to which the President of the United States would be brought if he should need urgent hospital care during D. visit to New York City. You can't get any better than that.

At the same time, just so it doesn't ever forget its origins, the corridors of Bellevue are still filled with the "wretched refuse" of the city. The poor and neglected of earlier times are replaced by their present-day counterparts.

From drug addicts to AIDS victims, Bellevue embraces them all. Someone has to.

0 About the Author: Dr. William A. Nolen is chief of surgery at the Litchfield Clinic in Litchfield. Minnesota, and the author of eight books.

FIR~T'T~ up 1HE.HILL iHEN IT~~~I~

D.O~EJ'OU~ RET~E ELL WE

ARE?

ON

THE LIGHTER SIDE

Reprinted

with

~r~.ission from The Saturday Evening Post Society.

a divISion of BFL and MS. Inc.

©

1987.

Early clock-watchers.

Carloon

~~

by Gary Larson.

"Nobody here made a hysterical call to the exterminator.

Go home and mind your own business." .

Reprinted

with permission

from The Saturday Evening Post Society

a division

©

of BFL and MS, Inc.

1986.

'

ADedieation to Books The author, a New York publisher, visited the 1987 Calcutta Book Fair and was moved by the Calcuttans' love for books and enthusiasm for reading. He found it "a little humbling to see that for many people some of the books we produce are the very basic necessity of life."

When a friend, one of Sweden's outstanding book publishers, heard that I was going to visit Calcutta and be presentat the 1987 Book Fair, and that this would be my very first time in any part ofIndia, he said to me, "Prepare yourself. You are going to find yourselfin one of the most exciting intellectual and cultural centers of the world."

That is definitely not the image that Calcutta brings to mind for the typical American, so I admit that I was skeptical.

Actually, I was more than skeptical.

Although I have lived in New York almost my entire life, and I think everyone should be permitted a certain amount of hometown patriotism, I am not so provincial that I think the cultural sun rises and sets on New York City. I realize there are other foci of culture, but among them, I admit, Calcutta did not come to mind.

A city which supports a substantial book fair must have a population with some minimum interest in the printed word-but "one of the most exciting intellectual and cultural centers of the world?" That seemed to be more poetic license than factual description.

Well, I have now been to Calcutta, and to the Calcutta Book Fair, and I have to confess that my Swedish friend may have even understated a little bit.

I was warned, but I was not really "prepared."

Not prepared even for the vibrancy of the city itself. One feels the tempo of Calcutta life-indeed the many tempos crowding on each other-from the very first moment. We like to think that New York has that lively character. I wonder if Calcutta does not have it equally.

That vibrancy, of course, does not all reveal itself only in cultural and intellectual activities. It is evident in every conceivable aspect of human life-much of it, under those economic circumstances, concerned with the effort for simple survival.

Coming from the American publishing world as I do, what made the strongest and most dramatic impression on me was all

the activity involved with books and book publishing. The Book Fair is the most overt, the most tpeatrical, the most attention-grabbing, but the literary and bibliophilic activity in Calcutta is far more pervasive than the Fair alone.

The writers, the publishers, the booksellers, all have an obvious enthusiasm and elan for what each is doing. And it is not simply a matter of commerce. There is a dedication to the book and what the book means (or can mean) to the culture of society, that some of us American visitors, with some envy, wish existed more widely in our own country.

Having been trained in printing, and having entered book publishing many years ago via the door of book manufacturing, . I was particularly interested in the¡ facilities for printing and binding books. I saw some completely modern installations in India, but the prevailing level oftechnology in Calcutta certainly does not make the lot of the publisher easy. Whereas we in the United States (and others in those countries who have invented for themselves the descriptive adjective "advanced") think in terms of typesetting via computer, remembering only vaguely that we once used metal slugs from a linotype machine or film from a photosetter, many of the books I saw in Calcutta were laboriously typeset by hand, letter by letter.

While we expect books to be printed on presses producing 64 pages (or 128 pages, or 256 pages) at a time, at speeds of 20,000 or 25,000 sheets per hour, printed on both sides and folded, I saw many books being printed in .Calcutta two pages and four pages at a time, on belt-driven or footdriven presses, at speeds of 1,000 or 1,500 sheets per hour, and printed on one side only. Binding was even more painstaking.

Of course, more advanced tethnologyoffset presses, folding machines-produces the greater bulk of total Indian bookoutput, but the economic viability, and the pervasiveness of handicraft in an industry wherein several posthandicraft stages are no longer even dimly remembered in our country, certainly makes an impression. And it makes the accomplishments of the Indian publisher even more admirable.

The Calcutta Book Fair, which provided the immediate spur to my visit to India, turned out to be everything the United

States Information Service promised me it would be. It is different from many of the book fairs around the world, which are intended to impinge upon the public only incidentally, being organized as a meeting place for publishers and booksellers to conduct their business. As a matter of fact, at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the most famous of them all, during those very limited hours when the public is admitted, publishers guard their stands for fear of books being stolen, and even put away their publicity material so it will not be wasted; the public is considered a nuisance.

The Calcutta Book Fair, which is intended to give the general population an opportunity to browse through books, to study them and, if they wish, to buy books from exhibiting booksellers and publishers, is different from such professional fairs, but it is not unique. Other book fairs, like the one in Mexico City that I attended recently, have a similar motivation. What distinguishes the Calcutta Book Fair, to this observer at least, what distinguishes Calcutta itself-is its intensity.

Every other book fair of which I am aware is held in solid, permanent buildings, either expressly constructed for such exhibitions, or temporarily converted (as the college buildings are in Mexico City) to the use of the fair. The Calcutta Book Fair buildings are all temporary structures, erected on a large vacant area of parkland for the 12 days of the Fair and promptly dismantled when it is over.

The Fair is held in what is normally an open public field. Erecting the buildings for the Fair-1987 saw 277 pavilions of vatious sizes, shapes, architectural styles and degrees of sophistication, hastily but carefully constructed in three days, complete with electricity and telephones-is done with the urgent concentration which sets the tone that is maintained throughout. There are no sidewalks, of course, except for wooden walkways (over a drainage ditch in one area), but the buildings, many of them framed in bamboo covered with fabric or thin wooden sheathing, seem sturdy and permanent.

People come to the Fair, art astonishing one million of them, purposefully, intensely. They are there to buy books-only after careful study, comparison and ultimate selection-but to buy books. When I

Visitors at the 1987 Calcutta Book Fair mill around in the U.S. Information ServiCe pavilion (left) and discerning bookworms take a moment off to watch what our cameraman is up to (right).

enter a bookstore in New York, I am relaxed. If nothing strikes my fancy today, I will be back tomorrow, or next week or next month, or I will browse leisurely in another nearby store; there are plenty of opportunities, both in space and time, so I feel no urgency. The Calcutta Book Fair visitors have a different perspective. As they walk through the gates, one can sense the purposefulness of their mission.

Impressive though the Calcutta Book Fair is today to anyone who visits it, it must have taken a tremendous act of courageand faith in the profound intellectual interest among Calcutta's citizens-for the Publishers and Booksellers Guild to undertake such a gargantuan task when it sponsored the first Fair in 1976. It was particularly daring for an organization then only one year old. In that first year, a little over 100,000 people attended. That was an impressive number, yet the visitors in the two most recent years have been ten times that number. The rate of sale of books has grown even faster.

It is very much to the credit of the local organization that it has persevered to see the Fair grow. It has become so firmly established that it has engaged the active interest of publishers all over India producing books in Bengali, Hindi and English. It was surprising (to me) to see how many titles originating in India were in English.

There were an impressive number of exhibitors from outside India, primarily publishers of college-level texts and professional books in English. Among the foreign governmental or semigovernmental exhibitors were the Russians, the Chinese, the British and the Americans. I was pleased to see that the United States Information Service responded to the occasion seriously by providing what seemed to me to be clearly th~ most impressive and tastefully designed building, with a wonderfully broad variety of titles covering many fields and many points of view.

No endeavor of the magnitude of the

Calcutta Book Fair can be the work of one individual, but everyone connected with the book trade in Calcutta seems eager to give the major credit for the Fair's successindeed, for the very fact that there is a fair-to B.K. Ohur, who is the director of the Calcutta Book Fair, and its spark plug from its very inception.

Calcutta has an impressive number of bookstores-seemingly hundreds concentrated in one area of the city-but they differ rather significantly from the kind of bookstore an American or European is accustomed to seeing. The bookstore in Calcutta is typically a book counter, to which the reader may come, announce what title he wants and have the proprietor go back into the stacks behind the counter to get it. There is no opportunity for browsing or for impulse buying. The customer must know what title he wants before he gets to the store. This lack of facility for browsing was seen as a serious handicap by Ohur, among others, and the Book Fair seemed a way to correct it.

The Calcutta Book Fair supplies ample opportunity for browsing, and it does so with a title assortment covering a variety of subjects, interests and even languages, beyond the possibility of any retail establishment to offer. One has only to glimpse the intent expressions on the faces of the browsers in every exhibit stall to see how much this opportunity is treasured.

Many of us in the so-called developed countries, who are professionally involved in trade book publishing (publishing books for the general public, rather than for schools or for the professions), tend to tell ourselves that our books are "luxuries" rather than "necessities." We expect to find a market only where subsistence levels of income have been exceeded sufficiently to permit some disposable income to be available for the purchase of books.

I am still convinced that is a basically sound notion, but one would be hard put to find evidence to support it watching the

throngs pouring through the entrance gates at the Calcutta Book Fair. All segments of the population are represented. One cannot judge the educational or cultural level of people by their appearance, but there is no doubt that the less-advantaged economic strata of the Indian population, with very little "disposable income" to throw around, are very heavily represented.

Many, perhaps most, of the books bought were useful trade and professional titles, or instructional books for children, but many were clearly nonessential works of poetry or belles lettres.

It is said that many of the people who come to the Fair save money all year so they can take full advantage of the fantastic range of titles offered in this extraordinary collection of publishers' and booksellers' pavilions. And anyone who watches the great deliberation with which choices are made at the displays of more expensive books-technical, engineering, professional, reference--ean appreciate, watching those buyers in simple attire carefully turning the pages of the books with calloused¡ hands, that for many this is perhaps the most important buying decision of the year.

And the wonderful thing about the Calcutta Book Fair, judging from observation at the many points at which the people meet the books, is the opportunity it offers to look at books, to pick them up, to fondle them, to sample them, to examine carefully the words, the pictures, the paper, the binding. Even the book that is not bought has given the careful examiner full value for his trouble. And with limited funds sharply circumscribing seemingly unlimited desire, many books are fondled before one is chosen.

The Calcutta Book Fair can only give those of us involved in publishing in any country a feeling of emotional pride in our profession. No doubt we produce our share of useless trash, perhaps some of it even harmful, but the testimony of the million Calcutta pilgrims to the Book Fair shrine assures us that, on balance, the book is a source of enlightenment, of joy, of solace.

And it is in some peculiar respects a little humbling to see that for many people some of the books we produce are the very basic necessity of life.

0 About the Author: Leonard Shatzkin, a New York-based publishing consultant, has worked as an executive with Viking Press, Doubleday and McGraw-Hili.

He writes regularly on book publishing for American magazines.

Visions and Viewpoints In this nine-page package, an astronaut travels down memory lane, cameras zoom in on our planet from "up there," an artist envisions intrepid spacefarers of the 21st century and some prize-winning multimedia works of art depict imagined views of Earth from space.

ViewFrom

around? In either case, it is certain that history is shaped by transportation.

I remember that my first history book had chapters entitled "Along the Banks of the Rivers," "Along the Caravan Routes" and "Along the Shores of the Seas"-all transporAs a youngster I lived in a fairly remote part tation themes. The textbook ended with the of western Indiana. The gravel road in front of prediction that mankind would someday masour house ran 200 meters to the west and ter the poles and the stratosphere. Well, it has been a while since I started studying history. ended at the Morris & Jack GreenhousesSince then I have had the extraordinary strawberries, lettuce and tomatoes in season, flowersyear-round. But if you turned left out privilege of flying aboard the space shuttle. of our driveway, the gravel road changed into The experience is exceptionally difficult to put blacktop and followed the valley into town, into words. In spite of the shuttle's airplanewhere it joined the real roads-ones with like appearance, being aboard as it circles the Earth is nothing like being aboard a hyperofficialstate numbers-heading everywhere.

I fidgeted with impatience until I was old sonic airplane in lofty flight. It is more like being aboard a ship; in fact, the word enough to drive, waiting to turn left.

And I dreamed about the river that ran "spaceship" is exactly right for describing this behind our house. What was to prevent a remarkable machine.

There is none of the typical airplane noiseband of young explorers from launching it boat and sailing down to the Wabash, over to no steady drone of jet engines, no constant vibration of fuselage, floors and seats. There the Maumee River, and right into Lake Erieor, better yet, the Erie Canal? My friends and I is, instead, the reassuring and gentle hum of had read about the canal and we loved hearing pumps, fans and electronics, and the low hiss accounts of life on its boats and barges. Once of nitrogen or oxygen being fed into the cabin on the canal there would be no stopping us as to replenish escaped gases.

Nor does the shuttle move along its path we pressed on to the Hudson River and then like an airplane, which of course must always the Atlantic Ocean and finally the World.

I never made that voyage. But I never lost travel with its nose pointing forward. In orbit my fascination with travel either., I have al- there is no air to dictate aerodynamics, so the ways admired the wonderfully ingenious shuttle coasts around the Earth pointed in mechanisms that humans have devised to get every direction imaginable: sideways, backus there and back. It strikes me that our travel wards, or upside down, as often as not. The machines are the most tangible evidence we crew manipulates the orbiter with an autohumans can point to in proving our unique- matic pilot coupled to gyroscopes, as well as ness. It is difficult to discern a cause-and- 44 rockets located in the nose and tail. Six of effect relationship between cultures and the thrusters are small enough to fit in your inventions of mobility: Do the capabilities hand, and each has 11 kilograms of thrust. and nerve of a people determine their trans- These "verniers" are used for most of the porta~ion methods, or is it the other way flight and, despite their size, hold the 100-ton ship precisely in the desired position, an invisible anchor in the sea of space.

About the Author: Joseph Allen was the mission specialist for the space shuttle orbiter Discovery in 1984.

When crew members must change the

the High Road

shuttle's pointing direction rapidly or move it from one orbit to another, they call on the 38 primary thrusters, each of which can deliver 400 kilograms of thrust. A tongue of flame shoots out several meters when one of them fires. And if the thruster is on the nose just outside the windows, you hear a sound like a cannon going off. A primary thruster on the tail, some 18 meters away from the crew compartment, sounds more like the "whump" .of a mortar shell being launched. The orbiter shakes noticeably with each salvo and moves accordingly. Performing a series of maneuvers using the primary thrusters must surely be like being aboard a 19th-century fighting ship.

And then there is the perpetual floating, which feels like nothing on Earth. I have read that Columbus's crewmen were worried that he would have them sail right off the edge of the world. Our spaceships do just that. A shuttle flies to the edge of the Earth and some 480 kilometers beyond, then falls around the planet in an endless orbit. But the sense you get is not of falling. Instead, everything within the ship--checklists, pencils, cameras, socks, toothbrushes and mid afternoon snacks of cookies and juice-floats. "Zero G" we call it, but that's just space jargon for floating.

In zero gravity, you can squeeze orange juice from its container and watch the juice coalesce into a shimmering, quivering sphere that hovers before your eyes. Puff gently on the edge of the sphere and miniature waves roll around on its surface. A sharper puff breaks the sphere into two smaller globes that separate in slow, quaking motion.

This absence of up and down has intriguing technical consequences that go far beyond containerless fruit juice. For example, substances that have vastly different weights or densities on Earth and that therefore separate under the force of gravity become compatible in the weightlessness of space. Helium can be evenly mixed with mercury, feathers with lead. In the wonderful workroom of zero G, a blacksmith could mix air bubbles with molten metal to whip up a meringue with the strength of steel but the lightness of balsa wood.

Even sleeping is different in zero G, since it makes no sense to "lie down." In fact, youjust close your eyes and sleep, letting your limbs float in whatever bizarre positions your relaxed muscles give them. Unfortunately, currents from the air-conditioning system sooner or later push the contented sleeper into areas where others are trying to sleep--or work.

On shuttle missions that require round-theclock work schedules, we avoid such interruptions by using small sleeping compartments that resemble the bunks of a Pullman car. On

other missions we use simple "sleep sacks" equipped with tethers at both ends, which can be tied to small hooks in the crew compartment. Going to sleep consists only offastening the ends of the sack wall-to-wall or f1oor-toceiling, zipping yourself in, and closing your eyes. You float within your hollow hammock, which in turn floats within the spaceship.

You sleep, but not necessarily without interruption. Suddenly, you are awakened by inexplicable gyrations. Slowly you realize that your subconscious has been instructing the muscles of your arms and legs to turn over, and your limbs are thrashing about, trying awkwardly to accomplish the assignment.

Your conscious mind now tells you that turning over has no purpose in a floating environment. You smile at this Earthling's reflex, go back to sleep.

Finally, there is the view of the Earth itself-far grander than any ever seen from an airplane window-filling the shuttle's windows. You orbit in your space gondola and watch the oceans and islands and green hills of the continents pass by at eight kilometers per second. In fact, it's hard to reconcile the spaceship's breathtaking speed with the inescapable fact that you are floating within it.

You don't sit before the window to view the passing scene; you float and look out on the scene, certainly not down on it. Are you speeding past oceans and continents, or are you just hovering and watching them move beside your window? The answer doesn't come naturally to an Earth-trained mind.

What I find even more difficult than putting this experience into words is trying to catch the essence of Americans' traveling out to the space frontier. This is particularly hard now, in the midst of the soul-searching and backward-looking debates following the tragic loss of the Challenger and its crew. But we all must think about these journeys from Earth, occasionally even while sitting on the bank, gathering up the courage to plunge back in.

Some people argue that we have already reconnoitered the solar system with unmanned spaceships and we now know pretty much what's out there. Our advanced robot scouts show Mars and the outer reaches of our solar system to be barren and inhospitable. So why go? The argument at first seems reasonable. Had we applied the same reasoning to deciding whether to explore Alaska or the Antarctic, we probably would be very smug today because we saved money and lives by not sending explorers to such hostile regions.

What about the economic return from these wastelands? Perhaps we were just lucky with Alaska. But while the Antarctic has not yet

Relaxed Moments. Astronauts Richard H. Truly and Guion S. Blufordfold their arms and stretch outfor a rest session during their 1983 flight aboard space shuille Challenger.

provided a substantial return on our investment, will it still be considered a worthless wasteland two generations from now? I wouldn't bet a penny on it, much less America's future.

We've heard "Let's not go" before. Confronted with the idea of building a canal linking Lake Erie with the Hudson River,

Thomas Jefferson mused, " ... a canal 350 miles long through a wilderness. It is a little short of madness to think of it at this day!"

But the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, and over the decades it added immeasurably to America's prosperity. It also created a mystique and a sense of direction that captured the imagination of youngsters for over a century and at least as far away as Indiana.

Think of the young imaginations that the exploration of space will have captured a mere 100 years from now. The real risk lies in endlessly arguing, worrying, and just sitting on the bank.

0

Earth Viewpoints The view of our own planet from space is as fascinating and awe-inspiring as the discoveries of what lies beyond Earth. Each spacecraft has returned home with exciting images revealing new perspectives on and appreciation of our fragile habitat.

Cape View. Taken in 1982from the space shuttle Columbia, the photograph (above) shows both the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts off Florida, including Cape Canaveral (top), the site of the Kennedy Space Center. In the foreground are the shuttle's vertical tail and its orbital maneuvering systems pods.

Cloud Tapestry. Some cellulartype clouds (above, center) over the Atlantic Ocean caught the eye of a crew member of the space shuttle Challenger during its 1984 flight.

Disappearing Lake. This view of Lake Chad (top, right), taken

by Challenger in 1984, shows the reduction in size of the oncegiant body of water in Chad and Nigeria. When Astronaut Frank Borman photographed the lake from his Gemini spaceship in 1965, the water had an expanse of

some 18,000 square kilometers.

As a result of very little rainfall since, it had been reduced to about 2,500 square kilometers in 1984. Ancient dunes once covered by the lake's waters are now visible with the pansnatural depressions-showing up in the interdune basins.

Portrait From Space. The United States in color, as constructedfrom photographs taken by the first Earth Resources Technology Satellite. The mosaic of 595 images was assembled for use in land-mapping, hydrology, farming andforestry studies.

Eye of the Hurricane. Taken by Challenger in 1984, this vertical view shows the eye of Hurricane Kamysi in the Indian Ocean. The astronauts said that they could actually see waves in the ocean through the storm's eye. The eye's location was to the east of the northern tip, off Madagascar ..

The Bahamas. This Challenger photo reveals the dramatic contrast between the islands, clouds, shallow water and deep water.

Islands of the Bahamas seen are New Providence (upper left) and Eleuthera (right). The Northeast Channel is at the upper edge and Exuma Sound is at lower left with the open Atlantic along the right edge. The wind, from the south, causes a long cloud to develop downwindfrom Eleuthera Point.

Space Visions The U.S. National Commission on Space has outlined a bold new program for the "exploration and development of the space frontier" in the 21st century. The plans call for a network of outposts in space and a reliable transportation system. Here, as on the preceding two pages, artist Robert McCall gives his impressions of the commission's blueprint for tomorrow.

Man on Mars. Imaginary astronauts (above) engage in a variety of exploratory activities on the Red Planet. At left, a rover vehicle traverses the rocky terrain, while in the distance at right a spacecraft departs from the Martian base.

Artificial Biospheres. In a lunar greenhouse, technicians of tomorrow monitor the progress of plants being grown to feed inhabitants of a settlement on the moon. Connecting tunnels join this unit to others in the background. Developing and learning how to build and maintain such biospheresenclosed ecological systems-is crucial both to the exploration and settlement of the near solar system.

As Art Views Earth More than 600 artists from all over the United States sent in entries depicting their imagined views of what Earth looks like from space for a recent competition, "Earth Views," organized by the U.s.

National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Eighty-nine of the works-in a variety of media, art styles, shapes and sizes-were later displayed at the museum. A few are shown here.

Winter's River: View From Above. Stitchery, by Jeanette Turner Bowker, Blacksburg, Virginia.

Lily: Wisconsin Landscape.

Fabric, by Jean Stamsta, Hartland, Wisconsin.

As Art Views Earth

Third From the Sun (top).

Watercolor, by Greg Mort, Ashton, Maryland.

Winter Landscape: Plains Region. Ceramic, by Carolyn Olbum, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Desert From Above II: Dunes of the Namib. Porcelain, by Martha Gittelman, Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania.

The Pains and Pleasures of Trans ere ation The author, who has just completed translating the works of some Bengali women poets and writers into English, discusses the various stages of her work and the dilemmaof choosing between "fidelity to the original line" and "fidelity to the shape of the poem as a whole."

Several months ago, after I had given a talk on my translation project, "An Anthology of BengaliWomen Poets and Writers," at the invitation of the august Bangiya Sahitya Parishad in Calcutta, a skeptical professor asked me, "Why do you want to translate from a language you hardly know? What makes you think you can do it?" In the small conference room just off the main stacks of the Parishad's 200,OOO-volume library, I could feel the audience-mostly elderly gentlemen, professors, scholars and lovers of Bengali literature-shift uncomfortably. It wasn't just the sweltering heat that had suddenly caused discomfiture in the room. It was the discomfiture that the question had provoked in me, a discomfiture everyone, even the questioner, could feel. How, indeed, could I come before the members of this 95-year-old literary institution, claiming to attempt the translation of contemporary writing from a language whose script I could read-slowly, syllable by syllable-but whose meaning eluded me in four words out of five? A language in which I could carry on simple conversations, but whose grammatical subtleties would still require months to master?

I had come to India under the auspices of the Indo-U.S. Subcommission on EducatiOn and Culture, on a fellowship designated for scholars, professionals and creative artists with little or no prior experience in India. The purpose of these Indo-American fellowships is to open new channels of communication between academic and professional groups in the two countries, and to encourage a wider range of research and creative activity than now exists. My slight knowledge of one of India's languages was thus an advantage. It was helpful to indicate in the application some acquaintance with the culture, but a specialist's expertise would have disqualified me. My project was to study and translate, in collaboration with native-speaking colleagues, the work of Bengali women poets and writers, and to edit an anthology of this work for eventual publication in the United States and, I hoped, in India too. I also intended to present substantial introductory material, in an essay-cum-interview with each writer included in the anthology. I had already drawn up and distributed a set of interview questions for this purpose to most of the potential contributors. Responses were coming in, written out in English or in Bengali (to be translated later); and I had also started interviewing the writers myself in English, or in mixed English and Bengali with a translator

'W

present. The fact that I had to rely on translators and meet with writers personally compelled me to interact with the Bengali literary community in the way my fellowship was designed to foster. The writers I met were enthusiastic about the project. A few had had their work appear in English outside India.

Nevertheless, it was frustrating at times not to be able to read Bengali well enough to make the anthology selections myself, but to have to depend on my native-speaking collaborators. to evaluate material and make recommendations. In fact, I needed them, and other Bengali literary people, even to inform me as to who the best current women poets and writers were, and how to contact them. There were no literary or publishing directories. And except for Rabindranath Tagore and the novelist Bibhuti Bushan Bandopadhyay, upon whose works Satyajit Ray had based his Apu Trilogy films, Bengali literature was almost as unknown to me before I arrived in Calcutta as it is to the majority of the reading public in Western countries.

The comparative obscurity of this language may be the result partially of its being a regional tongue of a vast, multilingual nation, and the official language of only one small country, Bangladesh. Yet, according to the 1986 World Almanac, Bengali is the seventh greatest language in the world in terms of

Marriage Vessel

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by Pratima Ray

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~~

~

Her youth spills over as the sun's rays strike her cheeks And are reflected back.

Her marriage mark's vermilion smeared from her brow back to the crown of her head.

The mango-leaf veil pulled down to her nose, As if she's some silenced empress.

numbers of native speakers. Of the top ten languages (Mandarin Chinese, English, Hindi, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Bengali, Portuguese, Malay-Indonesian and Japanese),only Bengali and Malay-Indonesian are not regarded as "world languages." They are also the languages whose literature has been least translated, at least into English.

One reason for Bengali literature's underrepresentation in English is that, although it may be a comparatively easy language to learn, Bengali is very difficult to study. Only a handful of universities in the United States and England, those with large South Asian studies programs, offer courses in Bengali, but usually only at the basic level. Advanced studies must be undertaken more or less independently. Writers and poets who undertake literary translation usually work with more readily accessible languages-ones they have learned at home or studied in school-or they collaborate with a native speaker of a language they don't know. The native speaker prepares a literal trot of the work, from which the translator creates an English "version."

With a few notable exceptions (William Radice's Selected Poems of Tagore, Carole Salomon's translations of the songs of Lalon Fakir among them), most translations from Bengali to English have not been undertaken by native English speakers but by Bengalis for Indian consumption.

But this predominant practice of Englisheducated Bengalis translating their own literature into English can have disadvantages. In the same way that there are few native English speakers sufficiently fluent in Bengali to effect translations on their own, there are few native speakers of Bengali sufficiently fluent both with their own language's literary usages and traditions, and with literary and colloquial English. As Bengali scholar and translator Amiya Chakravarty said in an address at the PEN (International Association of Poets, Playwrights, Editors, Essayists and Novelists) American Center's Conference on Literary Translation in 1970,"A far deeper sharing [ofthe original writing in translation] can only come to those moments when a language leaps into life...when the translator is a genius and is also a master of his own language. Few of us can claim this. We do not have an Arthur Waley a Donald Keene ...an Edward Fitzgerald [lndian] poets who know their language well and who can point out where the translation does not seem to get to the original, are needed...by a translator who speaks and writes in flawless English."

Professor Chakravarty clearly signaled the need for a more collaborative approach, the

only possible way for a writer with limited prior opportunities to study the language. In my own case, I had studied Bengali for several months in 1973 from a small teach-yourself book I had happened upon, and with the help of an informal tutor, the wife of an engineering student from Calcutta. And in 1986, in the few months before my departure for India" I reviewed the script and basic grammar with a research associate who had a PhD in Bengali from the University of Pennsylvania. Since arriving in Calcutta, I have been fortunate in encountering a number of Bengali literary people, many of them writers themselves, to work with me on both prose and poetry translations.

The collaborative process is much the same for each genre, but I have so far been more closely involved with poetry, if only because poetry is more elusive, more difficult to render successfully in the target language-English. I prefer to have each translator focus on the work of one poet at a time, so that we may both familiarize ourselves with her sensibility.

After selecting a group of poems, the nativespeaking collaborator produces a first version in English. This is not exactly a prose trot, but more like a preliminary sketch. Its object is to convey accurately the sense of the original Bengali, even if the phrasing may be clumsy in English. In Nabaneeta Dev Sen's "Purnima" (The Full Moon), my cotranslator, Sunil B. Ray, has rendered the Bengali chad shudhu shabdamay h'lo as "The moon ...the only one full of sounds" (line five); this creates a repetition, nonexistent in the Bengali, with the first part of the English line, "The moon absorbed all sounds ...." In line eight of the same poem, "like a self-contemplative sannyasi" is faithful to the Bengali atmadroshta ...sannyasir moto, but it is not yet a workable English poetic phrasing. These first versions are the essential raw materials from which the finished poems in English will be fashioned (see example on page 31). .The next phase is to sit down with the cotranslator and go through the Bengali poem word for word. I copy out by hand the precise literal word order, noting such subtleties as idiomatic phrases, multiple entendres or wordplay, and level of diction-the formality or familiarity of verb conjugations, pronouns, and other forms of address. It is also necessary to indicate the level of diction of nouns and adjectives-whether they are standard or colloquial Bengali (more or less analogous to common English words of Anglo-Saxon origin), or of "high" Sanskritic derivation, similar to words of Latin or Greek origin in English. Common words like chad (moon)

and rat (night) have Sanskritic synonyms (chandra, ratri) which often appear in the same poem for variety and rhetorical effect.

Sometimes these differences can be effectively rendered in English, sometimes not. In line five of "The Full Moon," sararatri sararat are the Sanskritic and colloquial Bengali forms, respectively, of the phrase "all night"; but I found no English variation sufficiently workable to reflect the Bengali. The repetition of "all night" lent more or less the same degree of "eloquence" to the English poem as exists in the Bengali, so I was at first content with it.

Later, though, the poet herself suggested "all night, all night long," but I found this a bit awkward. Then I thought to invert the phrase to "all night long, all night," to replicate the colloquial shortening of sararatri to sararat, and to preserve the eloquence I imagined I perceived in the original.

Word order in Bengali is very often quite different from that of English, and to render it literally in translation would sound absurd.

The first line of "The Full Moon," Dekhechhi gangay ami byartha ek chad dube jete, would be "Have-seen in-the-Ganges I failed one moon sinking to-go." Like German, Bengali tends to withhold participles until the end of the clause, making syntactically complex sentences within poems even more complicated for the translator. One of the most tricky passages so far has been in Anuradha Mahapatra's fantastical" Anabhipreta" (Undesired). From the latter part of line three to the middle of line six, the literal wording would be: "A short ways off that planet's/boy coming falling, in-his-direction trees-andplants, travel-stories, hell and invitationletter/going-in-that-way with he thinks himself even-more old trees/even-more old day's death-hours' words." Even my experienced cotranslator, poet and journalist, Jyotirmoy Datta, was amused by the challenge of these lines.

In the Bengali, many prepositions are created by inflecting nouns (ganga to gangay for "in-the-Ganges," dur to dure for "in-thedistance"), definite articles such as '!the" are simply understood, and although the language has suffixes to indicate plural nouns, these are not always used. Bengali readers are used to perceiving from the context whether a noun is singular or plural, definite or indefinite; the non-Bengali translator is not so accustomed. One can assume in these lines, for example, that there is probably only one Hell (narak), and that gachhpala (treesand-plants, vegetation) is, as in English, a singular noun denoting an aggregate; but bhramangalpa (travel-story/ies) and

~ A poem being translated goes through several versions, as the translator, the nativespeaking collaborator and the poet discuss nuances, rhythm, language and grammar at each stage, changing a word here or a phrase there to achieve a satisfactory rendering. The final English version of "Purnima" is given at right. The earlier versions are given below.

~'$1m~<u~~~Wt~~1 ~~'e'Bf~~~~

I have seen a failed moon sink into the Ganges.

Although the pleasure boat rang'with the happy cries of lovers, stars' last gasp, murmur of dawning light devouring all sounds, only the moon was resonant.

~-~~~~~~ ~~,~~~~Of

~~$[~Wt~'l~~1 ~~'6lI~I~~$!Wf

~9R1~~~~~

~~~~~~ ~'jf~~~~~~~1

All night long, all night, in the shifting palace of the sky the dreamwalking white moon listened to time's music; then at dawn, darkless, dreamless, clean, suddenly self-realized, ascetic, past all desire, the unconcerned full moon went down empty-handed into the water.

Published in Prothom Protyoy (First Confidence). Calcutta: M. C. Sarkar and Sons, 1959. Copyright Š by Nabaneela Dev Sen.

I have seen a frustrated moon sink in the river.

The pleasure boat resounding with impassioned cries of lovers, The stars in the agony of death, The murmur of dawning lightThe moon absorbed all sounds to be the only one full of sounds.

All through the night in the hectic palace of the sky.

The somnambulant white moon listened to the music of Time.

And then suddenly tiring of it all like a self-contemplative sannyasi, As the day dawned bright and clear and dreamless, The full moon went down, unconcerned Into the depths of the river.

and empty-handed,

I have seen a failed moon sink into the Ganges.

Although the pleasure boat rang with the cries of lovers, Stars' last gasp, murmur of dawning light Devouring all sounds, only the moon made noise.

All night, all night in the shifting palace of the sky The sleepwalking white moon listened to time's music; Then at dawn, darkless, dreamless, clean, Suddenly seeing itself ascetic, past all desire, The unconcerned full moon went down empty-handed into the water.

nimantranchithi (invitation-letter/s)

could be singular or plural.

As for the ordering of clauses in such a convoluted sentence, and the order of words within the clauses, Jyotirmoy Datta asserted that even Bengali readers conversant with the quirks of contemporary poetry would find this poem difficult. Moreover, the uniquely stark and oblique visionary quality of much of Anuradha Mahapatra's work prevents readers from assuming anything in context, taking anything for granted or second-guessing how the items and characters in the poems will act, or what their relationships to each other will become. We finally worked out these lines as: "A short ways off, he shoves the treescape,/ travel stories, Hell, and an invitation letter/ toward the boy who has fallen from another planet,/thinking himself of yet older trees/and

I have seen a failed moon sink into the Ganges.

Although the pleasure boat rang with the cries of lovers, Stars' last gasp, murmur of dawning light Devouring all sounds, only the moon made noise.

All night; all night in the shifting palace of the sky The sleepwalking white moon listened to time's music, Then in the darkless dreamless clean dawn, Suddenly self-seeing, ascetic, past all desire, The unconcerned full moon went down empty-handed into the water.

I have seen a failed moon sink into the Ganges.

Although the pleasure boat rang with the cries of lovers, Stars' last gasp, murmur of dawning light Devouring all sounds, only the moon made noise.

All night, all night in the shifting palace of the sky The dreamwalking white moon listened to time's music; Then at dawn, darkless, dreamless, clean, Suddenly seeing itself ascetic, past all desire, The unconcerned full moon went down empty-handed . into the water.

the death-hour utterances of yet-older days."

Such grammatical sense in English, however, may not represent the fragmented view of the human condition the poet Seems to wish to convey, in syntax as well as in imagery, in the original Bengali.

My native-speaking collaborators also supply cultural information built into the poems' language through proverbial expressions, allusions to Indian history or mythology and references to customs and traditions the poet would expect Bengali readers to be familiar with, Paramita Banerjee, my cotranslator of Pratima Ray's "Ghat" (Marriage Vessel), explained to me that the ghat is a small pot placed between the bride and groom during the Hindu wedding ceremony. It is inscribed with a totemic human figure (both a guardian and a fertility emblem), and filled with

mango tree leaves that droop down over the pot's rim. The human figure is painted with the same vermilion paste with which the groom marks the parting of his bride's hair toward the end of the ceremony-a gesture roughly analogous to putting the wedding ring on the bride's finger in Western weddings. Paramita Banerjee indicated that I might want to provide a short explanatory' footnote for the poem; she even showed me photos of her own wedding so that I could see the ghat's size and placement. Without this information, the Western reader might not understand the metaphor upon which the poem is constructed-the analogy between ghat and bride.

Fortunately, though this particular item may not be familiar to non-Indian readers, the notion of woman as vessel is common in the

Western literary tradition. Pratima Ray's poem seems to embody a similar implicitly ironic stance toward this notion as has existed in much work by Western women writers since the feminist movement. I elected to translate ghat as "marriage vessel" and shidur as "marriage mark's vermilion" so that explanations of their functions were contained in the English poem, as they are, in effect, in the Bengali. In this way, I could avoid the pedantry of excessive footnoting.

There are other challenges as well with words that have no ready parallels in the new language. Such words-local names of flora and fauna, articles of clothing, utensils, food preparations-denote items particular to Bengali culture. Any abstract concept such a word may also embody will be understood by English readers only if they are aware of the object itself. The first line of "Undesired" contains the word achchhanna, which Jyotirmoy Datta described to me as a kind of covered earthen pot. Achchhanna is also a popular metaphor for someone sunken in thought or obsessed with some idea or feeling.

This double entendre exists in the poem, he said, in that only the deeply thoughtful person is capable (in the poet's worldview) of the simplicityand directness of common everyday objects; only an achchhanna would realize the extent of man's misanthropy. To render such subtleties in English, though, I had to employ a wholephrase ("the old covered pot is sunken deep in this knowledge"), which I hope gives some sense of the overtones of meaning contained in three words in the Bengali.

There are other instances >where I cannot find a few words or a phrase in English to convey the Bengali meaning. With species of flora and fauna which have no English names, I usually transliterate and underline the Bengali name, and add a generic word to indicate its kind (jam becomes jam-tree). For most species, this is enough, because mention of plants or animals serves to anchor the poem's setting and give it a distinctive local atmosphere. Western readers will thus have some feelingfor the Bengali ambience, though they won't of course have the same associations evoked as will the reader in Calcutta. Bengali poets are also fond of using names of months of the Bengali calendar to call up the proper seasonal mood, much as Japanese writers of haiku do. But since these months and the seasons they evoke are not familiar to readers in the West, I usually translate them with the name of the English season most closely approximating that of the Bengali month named. I resort to footnotes only when a species named carries symbolic significance

~~ a.

accurate versions of any given line would work best as poetry in her own lan1It;pl ~ ~ ~~, \!I~Q/111t;pl ~ on, ~ ~ ~ ~ guage. In my own case, the . ~~. ~9fM ~ om, ~t<lD 15lt~ ~ 'i5TI:"! ~ ~ small reading knowledge of ~~~mr~~mm,\!I~~~~ ~ \!I~ ~ ~ ~ ~9fMt, ~<f-;m, ~ '8 ~~ Bengali I have is a distinct \!Imtiml~~~~~~~ asset. I am able to go ~'8 ~ fifc;rn ~ ~Q/1; i!i~ ~~ ~9f ~ through the original poem, ~~~~~~~~'8~ looking up any words about ~9ftI~~,~~~~on\!l~ which I am not certain in the ~ ~'lJ '<ffirGi ~ ~ 9f1fu ~o1l ~ ~"C~ Bengali-English dictionary; ~~~~~~'iflli,.~9ft1 if I am unsatisfied with EnUndesired glish meanings I already have, I can locate alternatives that might, according Man doesn't know he's undesired by man, to my sensibility, work betbut the old covered pot is sunken deep ter. These meanings I must in this knowledge.

Today, what"s written on the forehead again check with my can't be changed, yet straddling the branch collaborators. of a distant half-submerged tree, he wishes to eat, A good example is the in the drought-stricken field, the meal he desires. word shabdamay in the A short ways off, he shoves the treescape, poem "The Full Moon." My travel stories, Hell, and an invitation letter toward the boy who has fallen from another planet, cotranslator had, as menthinking himself of yet older trees tioned earlier, rendered it as and the death-hour utterances of yet-older days. "full of sounds," but when Then, in his breast pocket, dragonflies we sat down to produce the would flutter, and under the cold foot's shadow literal word-for-word verthejam-tree's fruit and yet colder feet.

The boy is face down in the grass, sion, we agreed to replace beetles won't sense how he fell asleep this somewhat awkward in the middle of the field. phrase with "sonorous" or I understand how the old tree perhaps "resonant." When I pushes from water towards deeper water, showed this possibility to even older smells, cold feet. poet Nabaneeta Dev Sen, she expressed a preference for "sonorous," but I wasn't satisfied with the rhythm of not otherwise apparent to the English reader. the line in English with such a final word. In The next step in the process is to combine the Samsad Bengali-English dictionary, elements from my collaborator's translation shabdamay was defined as "full of sound; with the word-for-word literal version and the noisy; wordy." From the adjective "noisy" I relevant cultural information, to create an derived the rather free translation "made English version that is as faithful as possible to noise." It seemed sufficiently faithful to the the original in meaning and tone, and also original meaning and tone, and it also yielded successful as a poem in the target language. At a better rhythm to the line in English. But this point I work alone, as a poet; the raw Nabaneeta Dev Sen was not content with this materials, however, are not my own experi- version. "Shabdamay is an adjective," she ences, ideas and imagery, but those of the said. "You've used a verb and a noun instead, Bengali poet as glimpsed through the sensibil- when my meaning of the word is 'sonorous.''' ity of the Bengali translator. Having im- I finally urged her to accept "resonant" as a mersed myself as best I can in the life of the synonym, and the line was left as such. originalpoem, I try to write as the poem might Nevertheless, this word, and another, have been, had the poet herself been writing in swapnachari ("somnambulant" in Ray's first English in the first place. This is, I believe, in English version) in line six, led to a heated essence what Professor P. Lal of Writers' discussion in the question-and~answer period Workshop in Calcutta means by his term after my talk at the Bangiya Sahitya Parishad. "transcreation. " Whereas Samsad gave the English for swapnaIt is vital at this point that the native chari as "(1) a. somnambulant. (2) n. a English-speaking cotranslator be a poet her- somnambulist," several members of the audiself-responsible to the original poem, but ence contended that the word actually denotes sensitive to which of the various possible a person who lives in a dreamworld, or a state

of living in such a dreamworld. I conceded that my first choi~e, "sleepwalking,"-a more concrete, tangible synonym for the rather abstract "somnambulant"----differed significantly from "dreamdwelling" or "dreamdweller," the alternatives that occurred to me then. Yet the poet herself had had no objection to "sleepwalking."

I finally settled later on a compromise-"dreamwalking"because it incorporated the sense of sleepwalking from the dictionary entry, and also paralleled more accurately the word swapnahin (literally, "dreamless") in the following line. I wanted here to maintain fidelity to one of the cardinal rules of translation: If a word or portion of a word occurs more than once in a poem (here, swapna-, dream-), the translator should render it every time with the same English equivalent.

There are times, though, when an exact matching of words or of parts of speech from th~ original to the target language would lack sense or grace. In "Undesired," the first line translated literally reads, "man that man's undesired, this-one man knows not, knows [the]achchhanna old earthen-pot." "Man's" is not the contraction of "man is," but the possessive form; "that" is a conjunction; and "undesired" is an adjective. If the English here were true to the parts of speech of the Bengali, it would neither be grammatically correct nor graceful. Awkwardness of this sort is one drawback of overly literal translation.

The translator's first duty, I have come to believe, along with as much faithfulness as possible to the original text, is fidelity to what makes sense and sounds good in the new language.

When my tentative final version of a poem is finished, I show it once again to my cotranslator, and to the poet herself if she happens to be as fluent in English as Nabaneeta Dev Sen is. If there are any remaining inaccuracies, they are cleared up here. At this point, the translation is essentially complete.

Many other differences between the two languages have become apparent to me in the course of this project. One obvious dissimilarity, of course, is the Bengali script, derived from the Devanagari of Sanskrit and with several peculiarities of its own. Though not difficult to learn, its strangeness can be daunting at first, one reason the language (and most other Indian languages, for that matter) has few students among non-Bengalis.

One characteristic of the script is its lack of an uppercase; there is no capitalization.

Proper nouns must simply be recognized as such, but this can lead to ambiguity at times, even for the Bengali cotranslator. In Mallika

mt~~

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~

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To Be Worthy

by Vijaya Mukhopadhyay

I have removed all my trinkets.

I have lifted off my veil, my gold tiara and hair ornaments.

Here, take my golden ribbon, silken braid and pearl hairpin.

And here at your feet, I put my mistakes on one side.

And my ego on the other.

Now I stand unadorned.

Put your hand on my head in blessing, And your indelible index finger flat on the parting of my hair.

Touch me now, Mother, and sayBe worthy of this earth.

Then I'll go into exile.

I'll wait with bowed head Until the day I am worthy of this noble birth.

Translated by Sunil B. Ray and Carolyne with the author.

Published

in Bhenge Jay

Cracks Open).

Copyright

Š

Anollttl

Calcutta: Ananda

Wright

Sac/an! (The Endless Almond Publishers

Private Limited.

1977.

by Vijaya Mukhopadhyay.

Sengupta's "Home," Paramita Banerjee had rendered the phrase, nadi drishadbati aja baichhe sekhane, as "the invisible river flows there stil!." Drishadbati, she said, was one way of saying "invisible." But when the poet saw this version, she wondered how a fellow Bengali would not recognize the reference to the Drishadbati River! Banerjee had, of course, known of the river, but in such a short poem she supposed that a qualitative, figurative (invisibility), rather than a literal, geographical (place name) meaning was intended.

Another significant difference is that, in comparison with English, Bengali is a very

dense, concise language. Connecting verbs like "is" and "are" are not used, the inflection of nouns eliminates the need for many articles and prepositions required in English, and compound verbs reduce to two words what would take a whole clause to say in translation. One inevitable result is that a "narrow" short-lined poem in Bengali becomes a "fat" long-lined English poem; and a moderately long-lined Bengali poem turns into a sprawling Whitmanesque affair, in which each line runs over into a second and sometimes a third line in English. Since I translate line by line, retaining the integrity of the original-breaking lines and stanzas where they break in Bengali, inverting or transposing lines only where necessary to make sense or be grammatically correct, and indenting lines where the poet herself has indented-I am faced with a difficult choice, between fidelity to the originalline as a unit and fidelity to the shape of the poem as a whole.

With Anuradha Mahapatra's poetry I found myself opting for fidelity to shape, for English lines that were not much longer on the page than the original Bengali ones. This was easy in Mahapatra's case. Her poems are mainly square "blocks" of lines, of one or two stanzas at most, with few indented lines.

But I had to sacrifice absolute integrity of the line as a unit; although I kept most of the poems' original line breaks, each Bengali line tended to divide into at least two in English.

The trick was to find a breaking point at approximately mid-line (of each translated line) that was both faithful in spirit to the poet's own sense of lining, and that also enhanced the clarification of meaning according to English syntax. Though the wordier English lines were, nevertheless, still longer than the originals, the greater number of lines required helped to maintain in the translation the rectangular shape of the original poem.

Thus the ten-line Bengali "Anabhipreta" became the 20-line "Undesired"; the complex three-line passage quoted earlier took five lines in English.

With most of the other poems, I chose to be faithful to the original line, either because the poet herself expressed such a preference, or because the poem's form-meter, rhyme scheme, or stanzaic pattern-seemed to demand it. This option, naturally, resulted in "fat" English translations with long lines that spilled over onto second lines. In order to show that these second halves were continuations of the same original Bengali line, I would indent them ten spaces. But when I came upon an indentation occurring in the original, I had to devise a way to signal the difference be-

~ ~~"1t~<!l~'em ~~ <!lfi'rnrn~

~

India had no horses then. They came Kicking up the dust of the Caucasus, Bearing on their backs the carriers of fireMen from a terrible, handsome warrior clan.

~

~~<!l~~~ <!l~~,~~~~

Handsome men, but no such women came.

I'm the daughter of Indus, soil, water and grass.

If they desire me, let anything transpire.

I'm a trampled star. Even warriors are men.

~~<!l~,~~

~~~~~~, ~~~,<ll~~~ ~~~~,~~

<mo'!i ~ <!l~ ~~

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Seeing that the coppery sky on dark skin Looks so bright, the riders of horses put fire Tn the womb; the warrior god Kartik was sired.

Not only brave warriors, the blood mingling in My womb. They are my husband, children, brothers From a dry land, become the offspring of rivers.

~~~~<!lm ~ 5W§ W'I1 ~~~I~<f' I

tween it and my own indentations of second halves of lines. I resorted to an older convention of English verse typography, one that has never existed in Bengali with its lack of an uppercase: I capitalized the first letter of the first word of every line that in translation began where the original Bengali line began.

The first words of my indented lines I left uncapitalized. The only capitalized first words of indented lines were of those indented originally in the Bengali. In Vijaya Mukhopadhyay's "To Be Worthy," for example, there is only one line indented in Bengali, which I have reproduced as "Be worthy of this earth" (line nine). All the other indentations in this poem belong to the translation. It is somewhat ironic, I think, that these attempts to retain the original line integrity of formal Bengali poems have frequently resulted in translations that look everything but formal-with the long Whitmanesque lines that epitomize free verse in English.

Although contemporary Bengali poets have been influenced by Western poetry's tendencies toward free verse, many of them try their hands occasionally at rhyme and meter, and present additional challenges to the translator. Whereas rhyme is not difficult to spot, metrical patterns were at first impossible for me to recognize, until cotranslator Jyotirmoy Datta and poet Mallika Sengupta explained their mysteries to me. There are, it seems, two principal meters employed by contemporary poets: matrabritta and akkharbritta-both based, as is syllabic verse in French and Spanish, on the counting of phonetic units. M atrabritta counts every letter, with each written vowel and each component of a compound consonant as a discrete

particle. Akkharbritta counts each phoneme, roughly each syllable. as a unit. The greeting "namaskar," for example, would be divided in matrabritta into six elements: na, ma (both consonants with the "implied" short "a" vowel), sand k of the combined consonant ska each counting as one, the long a, and ra with its implied but not pronounced short a. In akkharbritta, the same word divides into four units: na, ma, ska (the combined consonant and its following long a vowel counting as one), and ra.

Each line of verse is divided into groups of units, in patterns such as 7-7, 8-6-4, 6-5-2: much like the metrical foot in English, but based on the number of phonetic particles in each word within the unit. The length Of each of these units is determined by natural groupings of words and breath pauses between them. The first line of Mallika Sengupta's "The Carriers of Fire," a sonnet written in akkharbritta, with each line divided into units of 8-6, would scan as follows: bharate chhilo na ashwajesechhilo ora ("India had no horses then. They came"). The division comes at the point of a natural pause, an implied semicolon or period really, which in contemporary Bengali poetry does not need to be formally punctuated.

The methods of translation I have described here are not ideal, but given the nature and scope of the project, my growing but still incomplete knowledge of the language, and the stated aims of the fellowship under which I worked, they were, J feel, the best r could have developed within my allotted time in India.

And the rewards of such a "people-intensive" approach were incalculable. Had I been able to sit in a library' in the United States, with

only the original texts, a good Bengali-English dictionary and several years oflanguage study behind me already, I would not have interacted with the literary, artistic and professional community of Calcutta. I could not ¡have entered into the cultural life of the city, nor made the friends and associates I have among the writers, translators and other literary people I met and worked with during my stay-people who helped me to see their city and their culture "from the inside," as it were.

The life lived in the milieu in which (and about which) the poetry and prose I was translating had been written added a depth and dimension to my understanding that I hope is reflected in the completed work.

Other translators would undoubtedly have used other methods, made other choices-a different body of material perhaps, or different authors, different pieces by those authors.

And their finished translations could, of course, differ considerably from those I and my cotranslators have completed, and still be as faithful, if not more so, to Bengali. A "perfect" translation is no more possible than a perfect original poem. Robert Frost's famous statement about poetry being "what gets lost in translation" is oft-quoted in this context, but one corollary observation remains.

If, in order to avoid such loss, the world's great literary works had not been translated, the literature of every language would be immeasurably impoverished. My own project has not been so grandiose, but I hope that it may serve as an introduction of sorts to one aspect of a literature not yet well-represented in English translation. And until more nativespeaking Bengali poets, masters of both academic and colloquial English, undertake such translation, or more native English-speaking poets have the opportunity and incentive-as I have had-to acquire sufficient fluency in Bengali, collaborative translation will remain the most workable methbd to make this literature accessible to a greater number of the world's readers.

0

Carolyne Wright has written five books of poetry. including Stealing the Children and Premonitions of an Uneasy Guest. She has taught creative writing at Syracuse University, New York, and other universities. Her poems, translations, reviews and essays have appeared in several American magazines and anthologies.

STRANGER THAN TRUE E

me t tell you a story. A true story. The court records are all there if anyone wants to check. It's three years ago. I'm silting in my office, staring out the window, when I get a call from a lawyer I hardly know. Tax lawyer. Some kid is in trouble and would I be interested in helping him out? He's charged with manslaughter, a felony, and driving under the influence of alcohol [DUI]. I tell him sure, have the kid call me.

So the kid calls and makes an appointment to see me. He's a nice kid, fresh out of college, and he's come here to spend some time with his older sister, who's in medical school. One day she tells him they're invited to a cookout with some friends of hers. She's going directly from class and he's going to take her car and meet her there. It's way out in the country, but he gets there before she does, introduces himself around, and pops a beer. She shows up after a while and he pops another beer. Then he eats a hamburger and drinks a third beer. At some point his sister says, "Well, it's about time to go," and they head for the car.

And, the kid tells me, sitting there in my office, the next thing he remembers, he's waking up in a hospital room, hurting like hell, bandages and casts all over him, and somebody is telling him he's charged with manslaughter and OUI because he wrecked his sister's car, killed her in the process, and blew 14 on the Breathalyzer. I ask him what the hell he means by "the next thing he remembers," and he looks me straight in the eye and says he can't remember anything from the time they leave the cookout until he wakes up in the hospital. He tells me the doctors say he has postretrograde amnesia. I say of course I believe him, but I'm worried about finding a judge who'll believe him.

I agree to represent him and send somebody for a copy of the wreck report. It says there are four witnesses: a couple in a car going the other way who passed the kid and his sister just before their car ran off the road, the guy whose front yard they landed in, and the trooper who investigated. I call the guy whose yard they ended up in. He isn't home. I leave word. Then I call the couple.

The wife agrees to come in the next day with her husband. While I'm talking to her, the first guy calls. I call him back, introduce myself, tell him I'm representing the kid and need to talk to him about the accident. He hems and haws and I figure he's one of those people who think it's against the law to talk to defense lawyers. I say the O.A. [district attorney] will tell him it's O.K. to talk to me, but he doesn't have to talk to me. 1 give him the name and number of the O.A. and he says he'll call me back.

Then I go out and hunt up the trooper. He tells me the whole story. The kid and his sister are coming into town on Smith Level Road, after the speed limit on it turns from 90 to 70 kilometers per

hour. The Thomes-the couple-are heading out of town. They say this sports car passes them, going the other way, right after that bad turnjust s.outh of the new subdivision. They say it's going like a striped-ass ape, at least 105 or 110. Mrs. Thorne turns around to look and Mr. Thorne watches in the rearview mirror.

They both see the same thing: halfway into the curve, the car runs off the road on the right, whips back onto the road, spins, runs off on the left, and disappears. They turn around in the first driveway they come to and start back, both terrified of what they're going to find. By this time, Trooper Johnson says, the guy whose front yard the car has ended up in has pulled the kid and his sister out of the' wreck and started cardiopulmonary resuscitation on the girl.

Turns out he's an emergency medical technician. Holloway, that's his name. Johnson tells me that Holloway says he's sitting in his front room, watching television, when he hears a hell of a crash in his yard. He runs outside and finds the car flipped over, and so he pulls the kid out from the driver's side, the girl from the other side.

She dies in his arms.

And that, says Trooper Johnson, is that. The kid's blood/alcohol content was 14, he was going way too fast, and the girl is dead. He had to charge him. It's a shame, he seems a nice kid, it was his own sister, but what the hell can he do, right?

The next day the Thomes come in, and they confirm everything Johnson said. By now things are looking not so good for my client, and I'm thinking it's about time to have a little chat with the O.A. But Holloway still hasn't called me back, so I call him. Not home.

Leave word. No call. I wait a couple of days and call again. Finally I get him on the phone. He's very agitated, and won't talk to me except to say that he doesn't have to talk to me.

I know T better look for a deal, so T go to the D.A. He's very sympathetic. But. There's only so far you can get on sympathy. A young woman is dead, promising career cut short, all because somebody has too much to drink and drives. The kid has to pay.

Not, the O.A. says, with jail time. But he's got to plead guilty to two misdemeanors: death by vehicle and driving under the influence. That means probation, a big fine. Several thousand dollars.

Still, it's hard for me to criticize the D.A. After all, he's probably going to have the MADD [Mothers Against Drunk Driving-see SPAN September 1986] mothers all over him because of reducing the felony to a misdemeanor.

On the day of the trial, I get to court a few minutes early. There are the Thomes and Trooper Johnson, and someone 1 assume is Holloway. Sure enough, when this guy sees me, he comes over and introduces himself and starts right in: "I just want you to know how serious all this drinking and driving really is," he says. "If

Raj Marphatiaflanked by his mother Chandrakala Marphatia (right) and his American "mother," Marilyn Copeland, who looked after him when he .first went to the United States in 1977.

Out of 13 candidates in the field for the new presidency, Marphatia made it to a final short list of two contenders after three rounds of balloting, and emerged winner at the end of a 17-hour meeting.

The election proceedings began in midJanuary 1987, when the candidates announced their intent, after which "pool work" committees reviewed and evaluated the candidates' recent work. The Review then held a forum where the candidates fielded questions and responded to comments from HLR editors.

On election day, the editorial board had the marathon meeting to discuss the committees' reports on the candidates, who were meanwhile kept busy cooking meals for the 82 editors deciding their fate.

Announcing Marphatia's victory, outgoing President Adam Cohen said that the election of a minority candidate was "a significant good thing," adding, however, that his ethnic background was not a factor.

Talking about his priorities and plans for the journal, Marphatia said, "Women and minorities are traditionally underrepresented on the Review and one of our priorities is to work on recruitment. We also want to try and convince people that the Review is not a completely banal, competitive place; you can learn a lot in a friendly, nonintense atmosphere."

He added that he intended to continue the "decentralization" process started by Cohen. His platform, in fact, stressed "de-emphasizing the hierarchy, and making the Review a more egalitarian place."

The HLR masthead, which appears in only one issue a year, has traditionally listed the president, treasurer and executive editors above the general body of "officers."

Cohen changed that practice by listing all the H LR staff alphabetically under the title of Editorial Board. Marphatia intends to follow in Cohen's footsteps and his lowkey style as president.

*** Marphatia's parents did not know that their son was in the running for the office of

HLR president, but news of his election was not altogether a surprise, for, as his father puts it, "Raj had started showing leadership qualities quite early." He was president of the student government at Bombay International School, and stood first in the Secondary School Certificate Examination.

Marphatia had more than academic excellence to his credit. He represented the school for a national quiz contest on radio for two consecutive years, was the doubles champion in badminton, completed a rock-climbing course and wrote articles for children's magazines.

After a year at Sydenham College, Bombay, Marphatia went to the United States in 1977 as a Rotary Exchange student. "He was 17 at that time," recalls his mother, "and we were worried about how he would manage." But for Raj Marphatia that year at Jefferson, Iowa, turned out to be one of his most rewarding and pleasant experiences. He decided to continue his education in the United States.

Graduating from Harvard College, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1981, he went on to get a master's degree in accounting at Northeastern University (Beta Gamma Sigma) in Boston, Massachusetts.

Later he worked for three years as a tax specialist with the city's Peat, Marwick and Mitchell Company, a leading American accounting firm.

During this period he took the Certified Public Accountant examination and won the Elijah Watt Sells award and the bronze medal from the state of Massachusetts. Out of 73,140 candidates that year, Marphatia figured in the top 100. In his letter of congratulations, the chairman of the firm he worked for said, prophetically, "No doubt this will be only one of your many honors during your career."

Even though his career was going well, Marphatia decided to study at Harvard Law School. He will qualify for the JD (Juris Doctor) this year and plans to be a practicing lawyer.

At a banquet held at the Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston to mark the 100th anniversary of the Harvard Law Review in April last year, Marphatia, as president-elect, had to address a distinguished, 1,000strong gathering that included U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan,

former secretaries of transport and defense, the solicitor general and the attorney general. He won them all over with his first sentence: "Let me begin by making a remark that Henry VIII made to each of his six wives, and that Elizabeth Taylor made to each of her six husbands: I'll be brief.. .."

In a more serious vein, he went on to urge "a return to honesty, sincerity, dedication and compassion." If that sounded like an oft-repeated cliche, Marphatia had in fact preceded preaching with practice by working with nonprofit groups like the Community Tax Aid which assists lowincome individuals with their tax problems.

For that matter, even as a teenager at school in Bombay, Marphatia was founder-president of the school's social service club, Alert. He has been brought up to believe that "in life, academic achievement is good, but not good enough."

Today Marphatia's typical day stretches to midnight. Analyzing court cases, keeping track of developments in the legal world, checking footnote citations (called spading or bluebooking)-doing this can keep a second-year law student working on HLR busy for about 400 hours during a school year. Marphatia, as president, has of course to spend even more time "smoothening out the potential kinks in the machine."

HLR's reputation makes working on it a tough job requiring dedication, a commitment to perfection and the ability to work tirelessly.

All this does interfere with his course work but, Marphatia asserts, "What one learns in producing the journal is an invaluable experience" and a much coveted opportunity.

He points out that working on the HLR means losing money, for one could be earning at a job during those hours-but he would rather earn this experience right now.

Surprised at the fact that although Indians in the United States have distinguished themselves in business and in science, very few have chosen to go into law, Marphatia' points out that a legal background is a springboard for jobs in government and in politics. "America is an inviting country," he adds, "and there is a lot of opportunity for those who want to get to the top and are willing to work for it."

0 About the Author: Sakuntala Narasimhan is a Bombay-based free-lance writer. A former assistant editor with The Times of India, she won the Media Foundation's Outstanding Woman Journalist of the Year award in 1984.

J

A Geographical Landmark Last month America's National Geographic Society (NGS), one of the most venerated organizations of its kind in the world, celebrated its 100th birthday by giving a centennial gift to the nation-$20 million to help teach young people about planet Earth. The Society promised an additional $20 million if outside contributions can match that amount for the Society's crusade against geographic illiteracy-the goal of its founding charter.

Making the announcement, NGS President Gilbert M. Grosvenor said, "There is no more fitting way to begin our second

R

century than by providing a permanent base of support for our geography activities."

Grosvenor is the great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone and the Society's second president.

The NGS was founded in 1888 by 33 prominent Americans in Washington, DC., and dedicated to "the increase and diffusion of geographic knowledge." Today the Society is one of the world's largest nonprofit scientific and educational institutions. It has 2,300 employees, 10.5 million duespaying members in more than 60 countries, including India, and annual revenues of almost $330 million. Its official monthly journal, National Geographic, mailed free to its members, enjoys a readership of more than 30 million.

The Society's books and educational materials can be found in thousands of libraries and schools around the world, and it su pports scientific research and exploration just about everywhere. According to the National Geographic masthead, "Since 1890 the Society has supported more than 3,100 explorations and research projects, adding immeasurably to man's knowledge of Earth, sea and sky."

ecently nine Indo-U.S. joint projects involving an outlay of $2.7 million were approved to help small and medium-size Indian companies develop market-oriented technologies within the country. The approval was given at the third joint meeting of the Indian and American councils of the Program for Advancement of Commercial Technology (PACT) held in Bangalore in the last week of December.

The development projects focus on such areas as a new drug for the treatment of glaucoma; the improvement of bagasse newsprint manufacture; advanced permanent magnet alternators and controls; elimination of certain kinds of cotton pests; packaging for high-grade button mushrooms; and development of a

F

Though one of the smallest and newest ethnic groups in America, Indians have done remarkably well in their adopted country-and the process continues. In the past few months, Indians gained top positions in the federal government; Sunny Mehta became president of the prestigious publishing house of Alfred Knopf in New York (see SPAN March 1987); Raj Marphatia was elected president and editor of the Harvard Law Review (see page 36); and, recently, Dr. Prithviraj Banerjee (above) received the US. National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator's Award for 1987-88 from President Ronald Reagan.

Banerjee, who is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois, has been honored for his work in parallel computer processing. He has proposed low-cost fault identification techniques for sorting out defects while a program is on-line without having to interrupt the process.

Awards and honors are not new to the 27-year-old Banerjee.

He received the IBM Graduate Fellowship in computer science, 1983-84. IBM honored him again in 1986 with its Young Faculty Development Award. And before Banerjee left for the United States in 1981, he"won the President of India Gold Medal from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, his alma mater. Earlier in 1976, he won the National Science Talent Scholarship. A year later, Banerjee was the recipient of the prestigious Jagadis Bose National Science Talent Search Scholarship, securing first rank.

He has also authored$ome 30 papers that have been published in prestigious professional journals.

process for continuous dewaxing of rice-bran oil.

PACT was established with a grant of $10 million in August 1986 to support bilateral projects between Indian and American business firms. It is funded by the U.S Agency for International Development and implemented by the Industrial Credit and Investment Corporation of India (ICICI), located in Bombay.

ICiCI can make available up to $500,000 for cofinancing the preproduction costs for companies engaged in Indo-U.S. joint ventures and interested in commercializing a new product or process involving research and development in India.

Another eight projects Involving PACT financing of some $3 million are expected to be finalized by the ICiCI by June.

As a follow-up

to our sidebar,

"The Sport in India," accompanying the article "Homing In...'' in December 1987, we have received the following letter from P.S. Subramaniam,

former sec-

retary of the Karnataka Racing Pigeons Club: Pratik Joshi has not given the full facts of this "Sport in India."

He is entirely wrong when he says the Humer birds are now extinct and that pigeon flying as a sport is restricted to Delhi,

km) for years. For the past three years, we have also been racing our birds from Dharmavaram (160 km), Kurnool (330 km) and Hyderabad

(500 km).

The timings achieved are comparable to those in England.

We also publish a magazine.

The Calcutta Racing Pigeon

The American Institute of Architects recently named 20 buildings, from among 554 entries submitted for consideration,

Association is the leader in the field in India. Their birds have

as winners

flown from Delhi to Calcutta, distance of 1,441 kilometers, a record

a in

time of 23 hours and

Agra, Bhopal, Lucknow and Hyderabad.

The sport is very

37 minutes.

They birds from Asansol

much alive in India and there are full-fledged racing pigeon

Hazaribagh (333 km), (458 km), Dehri-on-Sone

clubs in Calcutta, and Madras that

km), Mughal Sarai (661 km), Allahabad (814 km), Kanpur

contests in which birds take part.

Our club

Bangalore hold yearly hundreds

in Bangalore

The

awards

are the

selected by a jury of nine nationally related professionals.

Below are !he exterior

recognized

architects

views of three of the winning

Fuller House (bottom) in Scottsdale, Predock Architect of Albuquerque,

and

designs:

Arizona (designed by Antione New Mexico); the National

Commercial Bank (below left) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill of New York City); and the Humana Building

(below right) in Louisville,

Kentucky

(by architect

Michael

was

ings of the birds are calculated the same way as is done in

Above is the interior view of the new Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, designed

by Charles Moore and Chad Floyd of Essex, Connecticut.

The jury called it "a

nataka and a renowned

wildlife

We have been

our birds from Madras

(340 km) and from Bidar

Awards.

Graves CDfPrinceton,

of Kar-

racing

1987 Honor

(1,007 km) and Delhi. The tim-

minister

photographer.

Gaya (543

its

of

established in 1973, and our patron is MY. Ghorpade, M.P. He is a former

race their (200 km),

of

profession's highest recognition of design excellence in individual buildings

by American architects.

The winning projects were

(580

Scientists at Cornell University in New York have developed low-cost methods for keeping fish fresh and in excellent condition for up to five weeks, thus making the nutritious seafood more easily transportable from coastal areas to people living inland.

Researchers say the new techniques will be specially useful in developing countries with tropical climates where refrigeration is not widely available. Fish spoil within hours at tropical temperatures One technique calls for dipping the fish in hot water-90

America, taking into accout the sunrise and sunset timings.

The Madras Racing Pigeon Club races their birds from Trichy, Madurai and Thirunelveli, the distances

being 320, 480

and 550 kilometers, respectively.

degrees Celsius-for five seconds. The treatment eliminates most of the bacteria present on the surface of the fish, according to scientists. Then a mixture of crushed ice and salt (1.6 percent by weight) "superchills" them to several degrees below zero Celsius.

The other method involves immersing fish in either a potassium sorbate solution for five minutes, or in a chlorine dioxide solution for two minutes, before the chilling. The chemical treatments remove more than 90 percent of the bacteria.

New Jersey).

charming museum that exerts a subtile attraction to its visitors by luring them through its public spaces outside and offering the promise

of mysteries

within."

/_

-

2..

f'/

-.-->

Making It Differently Learning from the harsh lessons of the past decade, American manufacturers have begun to question all assumptions about corporate structure and have found a new belief in appropriate automation.

On the outskirts of an old New England mill town, Biddeford, Maine, in a nondescript aluminum building that once housed an indoor tennis club, a company called Shape, Inc., is building a laboratory of American competitiveness.

Biddeford, which a century ago was a thriving center of the region's now-decimated textile industry, today is the home base of Shape, a manufacturer of audio and video cassettes, computer disks, optical scanners and assembly-line automation equipment. Using a combination of modern manufacturing technology, agile management, clever marketing and participative labor policies, Shape has beaten Japanese and Taiwanese firms on price and quality in a fiercely competitive business.

In the process, the 2,800-worker company has become southern Maine's largest private employer and provided an object lesson for other American firms trying to survive in the unglamorous business of making things.

"What manufacturing is and what manufacturing does hasn't changed," said Shape cofounder Paul Gelardi, who with his brother Anthony started the company 14 years ago, making eight-track audio cartridges in an abandoned car wash. "But society has changed.

Products have changed. Technology has changed. The rate of change has changed. So it shouldn't surprise us that we have to change our methods."

Shape is a success story that experts say points the way toward what it will take to make American manufacturing prosper in a relentlessly competitive world economy.

The winning firms will be those-like Shape-eapable of incorporating new factory-floor technology for flexible, decentralized manufacturing that can produce both low-cost mass goods and specialized products for an increasingly fragmented marketplace.

There is no magic formula for achieving

or maintaining international competitiveness. But two strategies generally define the companies that are succeeding: â&#x20AC;˘ Some of these companies have undertaken ambitious programs to install automated, computer-controlled assembly lines that allow them to turn out a variety of products and respond quickly to changes in demand. â&#x20AC;˘ Others have discarded their autocratic management styles in favor of more flexible approaches that make greater use of the talents and the ideas of workers all the way down the scale.

What distinguishes the successes from the failures is a culture of innovation that encourages workers and managers to question all assumptions and to tinker constantly with every piece of the business, from assembly-line equipment to corporate structure.

Growing numbers of American firms are learning the harsh lessons of the last decade and better positioning themselves to compete on a global level. Examples' of firms that have successfully applied this philosophy can be found across America in a wide range of manufacturing enterprises. As a whole, however, American manufacturers in many industries still trail their Japanese and European competitors in modernizing their factories, production techniques and management thinking. Most U.S. companies, short on capital or short on imagination, have barely begun to tinker with their old ways of making things.

"The number of firms that have done a major change in their equipment is pretty small," said Jerry Jasinowski, executive vice-president and chief economist at the National Association of Manufacturers.

"People are going cautiously. The changes are coming a lot slower than a lot of us would have liked."

Jasinowski identified three reasons why American business is having difficulty: "Manufacturing has not been a high

enough priority in the corporate culture.

The application of advanced manufacturing equipment is very compli9ated. And it's costly to install new equipment," he says.

"A lot offirms have invested a lot of money without thinking through the processand got burned."

General Motors (GM) is a notable example. GM has spent an estimated $40,000 million on automated plants and robot technology, only to see numerous facilities fall embarrassingly short of expectations.

In one GM "factory of the future" project, a $600-million assembly plant in Hamtramck, Michigan, the robots that had been installed to paint cars painted each other instead because of a computer software foul-up. Other robots, employed to place windshields on car bodies, could not tell when to stop pushing and smashed a lot of glass. GM has canceled orders for thousands of industrial robots and is looking for cheaper, lower-tech solutions to its production problems.

Shape, on the other hand, prides itself on applying "appropriate" technology to its production methods. It once dumped a $30,000 robot in favor of a homemade $50 device that did the same job.--f1ipping over a small piece of a video cassettebetter. The robot was reassigned to another part of the assembly line.

South of downtown Milwaukee, an 80year-old plant operated by Allen-Bradley, "a manufacturer of industrial electrical equipment, demonstrates how proper planning and skilled application of manufacturing automation can result in a quantum leap in factory efficiency and competitiveness. On the eighth floor at 7:30 every morning, 26 fully automated devices come to life, ready for another workday. A mainframe computer elsewhere in the AlIen-Bradley complex has already transmitted to the computer-controlled assembly facility the orders it received overnight from distributors around the world.

The Allen-Bradley assembly line, which began as an effort to capture a new market, has become a showpiece of American industrial automation. The line, which can be operated by as few as three workers, produces contactors, the electrical relays that control the flow of power in industrial and officemachinery. It can produce 720 variations on the basic product in batches as small as one-the once-impossible dream

of assembly-line designers everywhere.

The basic black plastic shell is produced in an adjacent injection molding shop.

Pasted onto it as it enters the assembly line is a bar-coded sticker that tells the laser light-reading equipment along the line which variation of the device to produce, which lot it belongs to and to whom the finished product is to be shipped. The choreographed buzzing, whirring, blinking

Top: Larry Yost, vice-president, operations, at Allen-Bradley Industrial Controls Group, one of the new breed of American companies that are innovating and automating, holds samples of the electromechanical motor contactors that are produced in the fully automatedfacility near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Above: A contactinsertion machine installed at Allen-Bradley automatically places lower contact and pressure plates in the correct configuration on relays and contactors.

machines inspect each device at 350 points and can replace faulty parts without human intervention.

Because the $15-million automated facility turns out a new product line for AllenBradley, it did not eliminate any existing jobs. Local officials of the United Electrical Workers Union gave the project their blessing because it represents expansion for Allen-Bradley and job security for its work force. The union has helped identify and train prospective workers for the advanced line and for future high-tech assembly projects. Larry Yost, who oversaw the automation project as Allen-Bradley's vice-president for operations, said the company first identified a growing market for the contactors and then began to explore ways of making them cheaper than foreign competitors.

"We thought about buying a European or Japanese company already making them," Yost said. "We considered buying the product and putting our brand label on them. We considered building a new plant in Mexico, or nonunion northern Wisconsin. " The company rejected all these alternatives. Buying the product from another supplier would have left quality-control in outside hands. Building a plant in Mexico would have reduced hourly labor costs but required more workers, expensive training and long supply lines. A northern Wisconsin plant would have had the disadvantages of a Mexican operation but with higher labor costs. "We looked at all these choices, but still the costs were too high," Yost said. "So we took the direct labor out" with full automation.

As a result, Allen-Bradley claims it can make the devices, even one at a time, cheaper than any competitor anywhere in the world.

Allen-Bradley spent two years researching and installing its new line. It built more than 60 percent of the production machines and nearly all of the computerized controls. The company did not make the mistake of designing the product first and then figuring out how to make it. Instead, the

product was designed concurrently with the means of building it. That approach is called "design-for-assembly," and it is a key to efficient manufacturing and quality control.

While Allen-Bradley surprised even itself with the success of the automated line, the system produced one unwanted side-effeet-added stress for the operators. Advanced automation "creates a feeling of human beings isolated in this technological monster," said Peter Unterweger, a United Auto Workers researcher who studies the interplay of man and machine. "As you make these systems more highly technological, you are enlarging the responsibility of the people tha t remain. The functioning of the entire system depends on them," says Unterweger.

Allen- Bradley's Yost said the company found this to be a problem early in the project. "You've got five or six machines you are responsible for-buzzers going, lights flashing and a computer watching, and the boss can see you from the control room. It's a lot of pressure, no doubt about it." He said one worker needed job counseling and special training as a result of the pressure. But even this worker is still working in the department, and there is no shortage of applications from other parts of the factory, where the work is dirtier and more monotonous.

"Technology alone is not the answer," said John Ettlie, who heads the manufacturing research office at the University of Michigan business school. The companies that are succeeding, he said, are employing "new organizational techniques from the shop floor all the way up through management. " Flexible manufacturing means more than an automated assembly line that can respond quickly to product demand. It defines a state of mind on the part of corporate managers-a willingness to change not just the way their machines operate on the assembly line but the way their people do their jobs. Many American firms have borrowed their new operating

styles from Japan. Fireplace Manufacturers, which produces small fireplaces in Santa Ana, California, for prefabricated homes and trailers, turned to Kiyoshi Suzaki, a Japanese operations consultant.

Bill Harris, Fireplace's president, met Suzaki at a 1984 seminar on "Just in Time," a Japanese-developed inventorycontrol method that assures that parts flow smoothly to the production line as they are needed-but not so far in advance that they gather dust waiting to be used. Fireplace adopted the just-in-time system, and then hired Suzaki to go further.

"Kiyo," as Suzaki came to be known around the shop, started by rearranging the machines on the factory floor to speed up production. He then helped the company alter stamping machines so that metalcutting dies could be changed in 15 minutes, rather than the two hours it had taken before. This quicker changeover time brought faster production and meant the company could get by with much smaller inventories. These and other simple, lowcost innovations allowed Fireplace to triple production without expanding manufacturing space. The cost of storing unfinished parts was cut by 70 percent; scrap was cut in half. In less than three years, the cost of producing the company's basic 91-centimeter-wide fireplace dropped from $142 to a paltry $70.

At the same time, Harris worked to upgrade his nonunion work force, which consists mainly of non-English-speaking Latinos. The most important step, Harris said, was to begin English c1asse!>to improve communication between workers and supervisors. The company picks up half the cost of the classes, which are held during the lunch hour.

But the firm has had its problems as well.

The company recently bought a $23,000 metal-stamping machine that never worked as it was supposed to. After $20,000 in repairs and modifications, the machine's performance is still subpar. A second machine, purchased to make glass doors for the fireplaces, could not be modi-

American companies now realize that if they cannot lick foreign competitors the next best thing is to join them.

Brothers Anthony (sitting) and Paul Gelardi are the cofounders of Shape, Inc., the "laboratory of American competitiveness."

tied to operate properly. These two mistakes created quality-control problems and caused weeks of downtime on the production line, Harris said. "We have a long way to go, but the biggest thing was just starting. " If Fireplace, which has 145 employees and annual sales of about $18 million, can learn management techniques from the Japanese, so can America's industrial giants. GM, for example, borrowed the Japanese idea of "quality circles" for its joint venture with Toyota at Fremont, California, to produce the Chevrolet Nova, one of the highest-quality cars in the United States.

Quality circles, composed of workers and supervisors, meet daily to discuss production problems and seek ways to correct them. Each member of the circle is responsible for the quality of the part or process it

contributes to the assembly line.

Other companies have also recognized that if they cannot lick the foreign competition outright, the next best alternative is to join them. Like GM's, their managements have proved sufficiently nimble to undertake joint ventures with overseas firms. Thus Air Products and Chemicals of Allentown, Pennsylvania, a producer of industrial gases, co-opted competitors by forming joint ventures with the Japanese and Chinese. In effect, it shared its capital and production technology in exchange for a piece of a foreign market.

To Gleason Corporation of Rochester, New York, a manufacturer of sophisticated gear-cutting machines, flexibility has meant loosening its formerly hierarchical management style. James Gleason, prest .. dent of the company, acknowledges that his executives failed for years to listen to the workers but says they are now taking steps toward greater democracy on the factory floor. He has found that the employees who operate machines often understand them better than the engineers who design them.

At Gleason, production workers meet weekly with supervisors and executives in informal sessions that allow workers to air grievances and offer suggestions for greater efficiency or safety. That gives them more of a sense of control over their jobs. And supervisors no longer undergo training on new equipment and procedures and then autocratically pass orders down the line.

The company now trains workers and managers at the same time.

Gleason has made itself into a global leader in the machine-tool industry largely by making gear-cutting machines that most

of its competitors cannot duplicate. The Japanese have tried but failed to duplicate the company's technology, and today there are 2,000 Gleason machines in place in Japan. Toyota and Nissan use more than 500 of the machines each to produce precision gears for transmissions and axles. Yet even Gleason is not exempt from the pain of international competition. It has had to slash labor costs mercilessly to keep the price of its gear-cutters competitive with similar West German products. In Rochester, Gleason reduced employment from 3,300 in 1980 to fewer than 1,500 today.

As an executive at Gleason noted, industrial renewal depends both on modernizing the equipment in factories and on altering the way management and labor interact.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent trying to build the factory of the future in the United States, with slow but hopeful progress. The effort to create the worker and manager of the future lags far behind.

Jack Russell, director of the Michigan Modernization Service, a state agency that helps small manufacturers upgrade their facilities, says America must move quickly to decide its future as a manufacturing nation. The risks of failure, he contends, are enormous. "Iffailure is defined as being unable to find the social resourceS within the United States to adjust to the terms of global competition," he said, "failure means that America is simply unable to right the balance in its trade accounts-and' the consequences of that will be a continued industrial slide. In market after mar-' ket, the country will become a secondary producer. It is the responsibility now of the public sector to express a sense of urgency about the time we have to effect the modernization and rapid redeployment of our industrial assets if America is not to become essentially a nation in which its industrial core is owned and managed by others."

0 About the Author: John M. Broder is a Los Angeles Times staff writer.

ALFRED HITCHCOCK The Master of Mystery Hitchcock's genius lay not only in his having perfected a surefire formula for success but also in his masterful transition from silent film to sound, from black and white to color.

In a career spanning five decades and two countries, Alfred Hitchcock covered virtually the entire film canvas from its "silent" birth to its "sound" growth. Between 1925 and 1976, he made 54 feature films-not counting the two propaganda features (Bon Voyage and Adventure M alagache) he was obliged to make for the Free French and Resistance [underground organizations of civilian volunteers that fought the German occupation of France] during World War II-of which 24, including nine silent movies, were made in England (1925-39), the country of his birth.

The remaining 30 were made in America (1939-76), the country he later adopted, and where he breathed his last in 1980.

Most of Hitchcock's films were critically acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, and nearly all made"good money at the box office, earning him both fame and fortune in no small measure. Paul Rotha, the distinguished British film historian, acknowledged him as "the accredited pre-eminent director of the British school." James Agee, author and perhaps the most celebrated American film critic of his time, comment-

ing on his major works, noted, "In his finest films, he has always shown, always cinematically, qualities of judgment and perception which to [my] mind bring him abreast of all but the few best writers of his time."

Hitchcock won the coveted New York City film critics' award for best direction in The 39 Steps (1935). Rebecca, the first film he made in Hollywood, won an Oscar for the best picture in 1940. He won Oscar nominations for best direction five timesRebecca (1940), Lifeboat (1944), Spellbound (1945), Rear Window (1954) and Psycho (1960). The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented him the prestigious Irving Thalberg award in 1968 for consistent excellence in his works.

What made Alfred Hitchcock click?

"Self-plagiarism," admitted Hitchcock, "is the style," which he followed almost to a fault. Mixing horror with humor, suspense with shock, and occasionally murder with the macabre (Frenzy, 1972, is a good example), he created a unique cinematic formula which continues to frighten-and entertain-generations of filmgoers around the world. "If I made Cinderella," Hitchcock once mused, "the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.

I've got to keep them screaming in their seats-or no one is satisfied."

Fright was the chief commodity Hitchcock marketed all his life. But his cinematic articulation of this primal human emotion often lifted his works to the level of art, rarely attained by films of the genre. Only twice in his long career did Hitchcock stray away from his familiar territory of mystery thriller, and promptly went off the rails.

Waltzes From Vienna, a musical he made for Gaumont-British in 1933, was a disaster, both commercially and artistically. "I seemed to have gone into a creative decline in 1933," Hitchcock confessed to Francois

Truffaut, the eminent French filmmaker, "when I made Waltzes From Vienna." He burnt his fingers for the second-and last-time when he made Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), a screwball comedy [escapist fare of the 1930s that sought relief from the Depression] a la Capra with none of Frank Capra's good humored satirical touches.

Hitchcock made his debut as a director in England with The Pleasure Garden in 1925. It did not set the Thames on fire. It took him one more year, and one more inconsequential film, The Mountain Eagle (1926), to come up with what he himself described as the first true "Hitchcock film"-The Lodger (1926). Based on a novel by Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, The Lodger finally unfurled the sail on the Hitchcock success ship which merrily braved the usually choppy movie sea for the next half century. With Blackmail (1929), his first talkie, Hitchcock, unlike most of his contemporaries (including Charlie Chaplin), made the transition from the silent to the sound with consummate ease and skill. The Lodger and Blackmail were his two major works before he made a series of six films for Gaumont-British between 1934 and 1938. Called the "Hitchcock Cycle," the series-The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps, The Secret Agent (1936), Sabotage (1936), Young and Innocent (1937) and The Lady Vanishes (1938)-brought him to the attention of the Hollywood movie Mughals. On David O. Selznick's invitation, Hitchcock made his first visit to America in 1938, and signed a contract for five films with Selznick International, before returning to England to make his last British film, Jamaica Inn (1939).

Hitchcock lived and worked for the last 40 years of his life (1939-80) in America.

His American connection, however, began

long before 1939-in England. In fact, his first job in the motion-picture industry was with an American film company.

When Famous Players-Lasky, later Paramount, started its British operations in 1920, Hitchcock joined the company as a graphic artist. He rose to become the chief of its title department by the time Famous Players-Lasky wound up its British establishment in 1923. It was a brief stint, but it had a lasting impact on Hitchcock. He admitted, often with some pride, that he had his first schooling in cinematography in an American film company. His genuine admiration for the pre-eminence of American films, and the opportunity of working with the more sophisticated equipment available in Hollywood studios, must have prompted Hitchcock to switch over to the American screen, even as he rode the crest of success and fame as one of the most distinguished British film directors (Carol Reed and David Lean shared the accolade with him) of the 19-30s.

Hitchcock won an Oscar for Selznickand nearly won another for himself-on his very first appearance on the Hollywood scene. His handling of the psychological orientation of the plot in Rebecca was deft and highly cinematic, although he was never quite wholly at ease with the theme of Daphne du Maurier's Gothic novel. It was a good film, possibly the best film made that,year. But it was surely not Hitchcock's best. Although a lesser film by comparison, Foreign Correspondent (1940) showed Hitchcock more in his element. His use of the camera in creating chilling suspense while depicting the crash landing of the plane into the sea was testimony to his cinematic skill. The whole sequence, shot at one go without a cut, brought the audience to the edge of their seats. Essentially a film man, as distinct from a theater man, Hitchcock always gave the camera precedence

Left: The mansion in Psycho ( 1960), the movie thatfound the master of horrorfilms infull bloom. Below: The author, extreme left (then The Statesman's Westernfilm critic), with the wizard when Hitchcock met with a number of Bengali filmmakers during his visit to Calcutta in the mid-1950s.

over the cast in creating a dramatic effect.

And yet he always got the best out of his actors.

Beginning with Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Hitchcock had a string of indifferent films-Suspicion (1941), Saboteur (1942) and, to a lesser extent, Shadow of a Doubt (1943)-before Lifeboat reassured his audience that he was alive and well and, yes, kicking too. Lifeboat was a true Hitchcock film, and decidedly one of his major works.

Although its story had very little to offer visually-with virtually the entire action taking place in a tiny boat-the film scored largely for the powerful visual impact which Hitchcock was able to create by his masterly use of the camera. Lifeboat won him his second Oscar nomination for best direction.

Spellbound was the second film (Rebecca being the first) that Hitchcock directed for Selznick. In spite of Selznick's habitual interference in the day-to-day shooting, Hitchcock somehow managed to salvage Spellbound, making it into a fairly striking movie, and winning yet another Oscar nomination for his direction. The film made good money for Selznick, but Hitchcock had to suffer a bad press. Most critics found the treatment of the plot unconvincing and the characters loosely developed.

Selznick often loaned Hitchcock's services to other producers. Notorious (1946), which Hitchcock made for RKO, was mpre to the critics' liking. With Selznick off his back, Hitchcock had the artistic liberty to treat the story in his own way, and to develop the characters of Cary Grant, playing an American secret agent, and Ingrid Bergman, as a sensuous tramp with a fondness for alcohol and wild parties. The same critics, who had accused Hitchcock of failing to depict the romance between Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman convincingly in Spellbound, now applauded him for his splendid handling of the off-again-onagaln romance -. between Grant and Bergman in Notorious. Under Hitchcock's direction, Bergman almost excelled her deservedly famous and unforgettable performance in Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart. Notorious was the cream of the crop of Hitchcock films of the 1940s.

Hitchcock's last film for Selznick, The Paradine Case (1947), provoked even James Agee, who was generally appreciative of Hitchcock's works, to comment: Last year the British Council division of the British High Commission in India held a festival of a few of Hitchcock's British films. Taking its cue

from there, the U.S. Information Service held a festival of the master's American films in a few Indian cities.

"This was the wordiest script since the death of Edmund Burke." In shooting the film Hitchcock once again found himself deprived of his artistic freedom by an overinterfering boss. To begin with, Selznick made a mess of the casting in the film. He assigned artists who were un<;ler contract with him to fill in roles without bothering to assess if they would fit into the characters, or for that matter in the story. They didn't. What was worse, in many cases he got the characters rewritten without making necessary changes in the plot. It was like letting loose a bunch of champion runners, all wearing wrong-size shoes, on an ice-skating rink. Fortunately for Hitchcock, his Selznick nightmare was over with The Paradine Case.

In Rope (1948), Hitchcock overplayed his technical card. He literally went amuck with his camera in this film-shooting the entire film, roll by roll (nine of them), without a single cut. The whole film was shot on one set-a New York apartment on 52nd Street-and in one continuous scene, focusing on less than a dozen characters within a time frame of90 minutes on a summer evening. In trying to achieve a cinematic tour de force with Rope, Hitchcock was too ambitious.

Patrick Hamilton's play, Rope's End, on which the film was based, offered material too thin for the cinema Canvas-and much less for any cinematic wizardry. The plot was essentially theatrical, both in concept and structure. The theme was melodramatic and macabre. Two young men murder a common friend for the tnrill of it, dump the body in a chest, and invite friends and relatives of the victim to a buffet supper. The chest containing the body is used as the serving table to intensify the suspense. But in Hitchcock's film, the camera rambled on and on-largely from a stationary position-focusing on a handful of characters engaged in some of the most inane and contrived dialogue ever recorded on celluloid. (A young man asks a young lady: "What would you say to some champagne?"

Her reply: "Hello, champagne.")

So, whatever suspense was built up in the first half-hour of the film fizzled out, and unmitigated boredom set in for the remaining tortuous hour of the film. Yet, Rope was not a flop commercially, largely because its technical novelty attracted both critical attention and audience curiosity.

In contrast, Under Capricorn (1949) evoked much critical applause and less

public enthusiasm. It earned the dubious distinction of being the dullest Hitchcock piece since Waltzes From Vienna. Stage Fright (1950), his next venture, also did not contribute much to his reputation as a director. With Strangers on a Train (1951), Hitchcock finally came off his fallow patch, and never really looked back again-at least for the next ten years.

Strangers was indeed the beginning of the flowering of Hitchcock's genius, which progressively blossomed through such masterpieces as Dial M for Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955), The Trouble With Harry (1956), the second version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Wrong Man (1957), Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and finally reached its full bloom with Psycho.

The only film that did not quite make the grade during this period was I Confess (1953).

Patricia Highsmith's novel, Strangers on a Train, had a weak plot, but a highly evocative theme-the transference of guilt by mutual consent. The plot did not bother Hitchcock. As a filmmaker, he was never truly concerned with plots developed by authors to please the readership. He was

Clockwise from far left: Raymond Burr as Lars Thorwald in Rear Window; in Lifeboat ( 1944), the entire action takes place in a small boat adrift on the high seas; James Stewart, John Dall and Farley Granger in Rope (1948); in this famous scene from North by Northwest (1959), Cary Grant is terrorized by a crop dusting plane; one of the many victims being throttled in Frenzy (1972).

only too aware that his job was not to transcribe a story on to celluloid, but to recreate it on the screen for the pleasure of an entirely new clientele-the viewers-who would approach the story from a different perspective than the readers. The theme, and not the plot of Strangers, interested Hitchcock, and he knew exactly how to develop the plot for a cinematic-as opposed to a narrative-presentation.

But Raymond Chandler, who was hired

by Warner Brothers (for whom Hitchcock made the film) to write the screenplay, failed Hitchcock. One look at Chandler's treatment of the plot, and Hitchcock knew that he could not live with it anymore than he could with the original plot of Patricia Highsmith. Unperturbed, he rewrote the shooting script, and to a point where Chandler-after seeing the film-had to admit with some surprise that "Hitchcock suc-

ceeded in removing almost every trace of my writing from it." Quite true. But he also succeeded in turning what Chandler himself thought "a stupid plot" into a highly absorbing movie.

In the decade between Strangers and Psycho (1951-60), as mentioned earlier, Hitchcock created nine of his best works.

While critics might differ as to their exact order in the Hitchcock merit list, it was generally agreed that Psycho topped the honor roll. Even the few who were somewhat critical of Psycho had no hesitation in admitting that Hitchcock, "an old hand at frightening people," to quote Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, was at his frightening best in this "blood-curdler" of a movie. Sitting in the dark theater, even the strongest heart missed a beat or two while watching this "harrowing exercise in terror and suspense."

The story was Hitchcock territory, as much as Holinshed was Shakespeare's.

"Murder most foul" is committed in the eerie silence of a desolate and haunted motel which, with minor architectural change, could have easily passed for a castle in the medieval Scottish highlands.

There, in a grisly atmosphere, a vivacious

young woman is murdered by the cantankerous mother of the young man who runs the place. A private detective who comes to sniff around is murdered the same waybloody and blood-curdling.

Then comes the sister of the murdered young woman along with the victim's former lover. They are about to be dealt with in the same way, but somehow manage to escape, and detect the crime. The film indeed is a stirring, spine-chilling experience.

The Hitchcock filmmaking machine slowed down considerably in the next two decades. Between 1961 and 1980, the year Hitchcock died, he made only six films. The Birds (1963), perhaps his most ambitious film, turned out to be an exhausting and frustrating experience. It did not click.

Marnie (1964) was another disappointment, and Torn Curtain (1966) and Topaz (1969) were also among his lesser movies.

Hitchcock came back to his murder and macabre theme in Frenzy with only partial success. Was he on his comeback trail?

Family Plot (1976), his last film, did indicate that he was. This film reflects many of Hitchcock's old virtues-humor and horror in a correct blend, using the camera creatively (especially in the car "chase" scene which, to quote Katrine Ames of Newsweek magazine, "makes scenes in Bullitt and The French Connection seem mechanical"). He then concluded the story on a delightfully happy note. Family Plot was pure fun peppered with suspense and thrill and with less of the usual Hitchcock dose of rascality and wickedness injected into the plot. Family Plot was not his masterpiece, but it was memorable enough for the master to live with--even in death.

Looking at Hitchcock's works a decade later, one feels that the critical assessment of this great filmmaker by the reviewers of his time was lamentably superficial-almost naive. Epithets like "master of suspense" and the man who made "thrillers," with which Alfred Hitchcock was supposedly eulogized all his life by film buffs had, in fact, demeaned the artist and his works. Hitchcock had created more films that were both popular and profound, than any single director in the history of cinema. To dismiss him merely as a maker of "suspense thrillers," is akin to dismissing the great Chaplin as a comedian who thrived on "slapstick."

0 About the Author: Ombica Gupta is the chief, publications and graphics, in the Printed Media Services Office, US/S, New Delhi.

them after just a few hours of rehearsal, he replied, "Don't I was nervous as the curtain worry, man, just relax. Don't rose on a recent musical evening think too much, just feel the beat at Delhi's Indian Institute of and everything will fall into place Technology (lIT). After having automatically."

That's the best performed for 34 years, I was as piece of musical advice I have nervous as a newcomer. I sat on ever received and I will always cherish it. Because his simple the stage, my drum kit before me, just as I had done more than a statement contains a vital truth: thousand times before in front of In music you don't think about the beat, you feel it. discerning audiences in exclusive hotels and clubs. Yet this. night My first stint with the Lost Gonzo Band was a rehearsal at still seemed a first for me. lIT. Sensing my nervousness, I was performing with a visitInmon very understandingly ing American group, the Lost started a jazz number, "Satin Gonzo Band, which has three Doll," knowing I would be fapopular albums to its credit and miliar with it. Then, as they behas appeared on stage with such Rocque Fernandes (at the drums) follows Bob Livingston's bass gan their repertoire, I just kept stars as Jerry Jeff Walker, Willie guitar rhythm at the Lost Gonzo Band's recent performance in Delhi.

Inmon's advice in mind.

I Nelson, Charlie Daniels, Neil watched Livingston like a hawk and kept feeling the beat of his Young, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Leon Russell and Steve Martin. In my long and exciting musical career, which began when I was just 20 music. He had earlier mentioned to me the importance of being in unison with the band during the breaks and effects. And as I years old, I have accompanied some of India's greatest Westernfollowed their lead and came out well with my arrangements, style musicians-Pete D'Mello, Rudy Cotton, Dorothy Jones, Livingston and Inmon would nod their heads in approval. We Charlie Smith and Tony Faleiro. Some oftoday's brightest young musicians began their careers under my guidance and with my rehearsed "Loose," "On My Way," "Desperadoes," "Reality," and group. But I had never before performed with a foreign group.

"Railroad Man." But there was one number that I just could not All of us have heard so much about American groups' showplay: the signature tune of the band. It had a somewhat complimanship and their interaction with their audiences, that I woncated beat-it started slow in the verse and doubled in the chorus, dered if and how I would fit in. In addition, this was my first but before the chorus there is an extra beat that almost puts you experience as part of a stage show. Again, I'm used to playing out of rhythm, unless you manage to play it in unison with the simple dance music and a bit of jazz. But the Lost Gonzo Band is band. I just couldn't, despite several rehearsals and Livingston's famous for music that is more modern, blistering, and played at a determined, "If it's the last thing I'm going to do on Earth, I'll get you to do this." Finally, Inmon told Livingston that it was better different pace. to change the beat altogether! They did and that's the way we Only two of its members had come for the Indian tour-leader finally played it, but I felt lousy-until Inmon said a smiling and bassist Bob Livingston and lead guitarist John Inmon.

"Great," when I asked how I had done at the end of the lIT show.

Livingston's wife Iris was also with them; a talented musician, she Yes, I did slip up once. I got so carried away with the rhythm of writes songs for the band. The United States Information the audience's clapping, that I started following their beat and Service, which had invited them to India, requested me to join them since their drummer, Paul Pearcy, had not been able to come.

Livingston had to tap loudly with his foot to bring me back to the band's tempo! After that, I just kept feeling the beat and everyLivingston struck me as rather serious (almost stern) for a thing fell into place automatically....

0 musician, but Inmon was amiable and full of fun. However, they both, in their own ways, helped me feel part of the group and gave me valuable tips. Yes, one can learn even after three decades of About the Author: Rocque Fernandes, SPAN's editorial assistant, is also performing! When I asked Inmon if I would be able to play with one of Delhi's top bandleaders.

MORE ABOUT THE GONZOS: "Don't let the name fool you," said one review when the Lost Gonzo Band released their first album in 1975.

"The band is not steeped in hard rock, heavy metal or any other form of power chording. What they do pride themselves in is their ability to churn out some mighty tasty music that smacks of all the popular influences and yet does not pigeonhole itself in one particular form. The Lost Gonzo Band is free-flowing, something you don't get too often."

The band, which has been in the forefront of Texas music since 1972 rose to fame on the wings of Jerry Jeff Walker, who is best known for writing that classic, folk-flavored "Mr. Bojangles." In the mid-1970s, Walker had a steady stream of albums backed by the Lost Gonzo Band, which also toured the United States with him. Later the band decided to make it

on their own and have since had three albums. They made a determined bid to get out of the Texas groove (their music was termed as "progressive country") and now play rockabilly, reggae, folk and a more modern pop sound along with their special brand of blistering Texas rock. As a critic said, their music has a "joyous and unapologetic eclecticism."

Their shows in India were, as Bombay's Afternoon Despatch & Courier put it, "finger snappin', toe tappin', belly laughin' good." In addition to Delhi and Bombay, they played in Madras, Cochin, Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada. The crowds loved them, often joining in the singing. There was constant clapping and even some dancing in the aisles.

Encore? "We'd love to return," said the Gonzos.

The World of Audubon The Audubon Society, founded more than 80 years ago to make the world a safer place for birds, has now broadened its scope to include the protection of all wildlife and Earth's fragile environment.

Women Executives A recent U.S. survey concluded that it isn't enough for women to be good workers to rise in their professions. Women executives must constantly monitor their behavior to make sure that they are neither too feminine nor too masculine; they have to be tough but not macho, take responsibility but follow others' advice, take risks but be consistently outstanding.

Down Memory Lane M.S. Rajan, now professor emeritus at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, was in the first batch of Fulbright fellows sent to the United States from all over the world in 1950. In a warm and lighthearted memoir, he recalls his introduction to America, American English and the often disconcerting American way of life.

An Air of Uncertainty What is not known about air pollution may be even more disturbing than the widely circulated facts that are causing public concern and clamor for action throughout the world. Even as research offers some hope of improvement, new potentially dangerous compounds are entering the environment each year.

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SPAN regretfully omitted the identifying numbers in the football field illustration used on the inside front cover of the January 1988 issue. The complete illustration is reproduced above, with the numbers in place.

1. Offensive team; 2. Defensive team; 3. Officials' signals; 4. Goal line; 5. Goalpost; 6. End zone; 7. End line; 8. Protective equipment; 9. Overview of stadium; 10. Placekicking; II. Punting; 12. Football.