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Volume five, number three November 28, 1971

3

Lunch at the Library.

DeLieto and Lee on Wry.

Editors: Richard Conniff Suzanne Wittebort

6

Movies into

Managing Editor: Ron Roel Executive Editor: Michael Csar Designer: Judith Fletcher

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10

Poems from Viet Nam

14

Schlock at the Shubert

The Niche Pitch

by Roger Warner

Copy Editor: Tom Joseph Business Manager: Ray Rund Contributing Editors: Daniel Yergin Jonathan Marks Stephen Thomas Sam Miller Susan Holahan Joel Rogers Leo Ribuffo Michael Lerner Steven R. Weisman Staff: Rachel Hooper, Kiki Gordon, Alan Cameron, Suzanne Wofford, Roople Hacher, Kathy Lally, Dee Siegelbaum, Marguey Yates Publisher: Paul Goldberger Third Class and Non-Profit postage PAID in New Haven, Conn. The New Journal is published by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. 3432 Yale Station, New Haven, Conn. 06520, and is printed at The Hamden Chronicle, a division of Imprint.

The New Journal copyright 1971 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., a non-profit corporation.

Telephone: 776-9989 Letters are welcome. Unsolicited manuscripts should be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Opinions expressed in the articles are not necessarily those of The New JournaL

There are niches in most Gothic buildings around Yale, in the Branford courtyard, in Sterling Library, the _gym, the Law School, the entrance to J.Javenport, and so on, but most of the niches are empty. Only Harkness Tower has been filled completely, and that with statues so high up you have to crane your neck to fmd them, though they include such notables as Jonathan Edwards, Euclid, Homer, and James Fenimore Cooper (expelled from Yale in his junior year).

Why has Yale foregone the opportunity to provide models of inspiration and righteousness for its students?

We asked Wesley Needham, adviser in Tibetan literature for the university library and a fellow of Trumbull College. Needham, who now works for a furniture store in New Haven, learned frrsthand about Gothic architecture as a draftsman for James Gamble Rogers {Yale's Louis Sullivan) in the 1920's.

Mr. Needham explained that the niche, like the stained glass window, served an essential purpose in the ecclesiastical Gothic style of the Middle Ages. It was the shape of an arch, pointed to heaven, and it held a statue of an apostle, saint, or martyr.

When the Reformation came, however, many of the religious statues were disposed of and the niches left empty. When Gothic architecture was adapted to collegiate purposes, such as at Oxford and Cambridge, some of the niches were filled with historical figures and scl_lolars, but many remained unfilled. The niche became an embellishment without function, an art form all its own.

-when James Gamble Rogers designed the Yale buildings," Needham said, "he used photographs of Oxford and elsewhere, not to copy but as guides so he wouldn't go astray.

The Law School is an exception, but he wanted to develop the Gothic style as it would have developed on its own, if the Gothic tradition had remained unbroken."

The empty niches did not pose a problem at fust. "When the buildings were built," Needham said, indicating Saybrook, Branford, and Davenport in one broad sweep, "it wasn't a serious matter if the niches weren't filled. It could come later. Maybe they could get a donor to give some money."

Later could be now. An impromptu survey shows that Yale students have varying ideas on whom to put in the niches. Some would like to see the great brains of this century, the Albert Einsteins and James Joyces.

Others favor the great jocks of Yale history, notably Brian Dowling, Calvin Hill, and the mythical Frank Merriwell. (Payne Whitney Gym has plenty of niches.) But most have indicated a desire for American cultural heroes, from Davey Crockett to Mickey Mouse. The actress Diana Rigg scored high; did a lot of counterculture figures like Jerry Garcia and Ken Kesey.

Some would like to see Buckminster Fuller, facing east toward Science Hill. Others would like to hilVe Jerry Rubin sitting down¡ on his niche, rapping with the kids. Still others including William F. Buckley would like to see William F. Buckley or nothing at all.

Perhaps a movement could be formed to fill the niches, to bring CJbout the greening of Yale. Think about it. Decide whom you believe in, contact a sculptor, and then worship at the niche of your choice.

MeirKahane

by William Bulkeley Religious figUres don't usually attract big crowds at Yale, but tonight the little rabbi with the yarmulke faces a crowd of 400 from where he stands at the Political Union's rostrum. A sizeable number of New Haven residents have joined students at the university to hear him speak. The citizens are middle-aged, respectable.

By the end of the evening one of them will have risen to accuse the speaker of hypocrisy. Another will quote the Talmud to him and call him a murderer.

The speaker is Rabbi Meir Kahane, leader and founder of the militant Jewish Defense League. In the past year he has spent more time in jail and has made more headlines than either Huey Newton or Jerry Rubin.

And what does the rabbi talk about tonight? Jewish kids.

"It is time for young Jews to open up a Jewish book. Philip Roth is not a Jewish book. The young Jew is raised not to be a true Jew, but to make the local caterer happy on his bar mitzvah." The students laugh. The adults smile uneasily.

Rabbi Kahane addresses himself to the adults about their children, many of whom are gathered in front of him.

He tells them that being a Jew loses its meaning when Jews do not fight for their rights.

"To love a Jew means, for another Jew, feeling the pain of Israel as your own." He tells the audience about Silva Zalmanson, one of the Jews arrested in Russia for allegedly trying to hijack a plane. She is now in a Siberian jail where, he says, the temperature drops to 40 degrees below zero in the winter. "Any Jew who hears the cries of Silva Zalmanson and doesn't heed them is dead as a Jew. They will be as guilty as the Jews were 30 years ago." he says.

The motto of the Jewish Defense League is "Never Again," referring to what Rabbi Kahane considers the shameful passivity of Jews during World War U.lt is more than a motto for the rabbi. It is a creed, almost a religion in itself, based on a combination of ethnic guilt and ethnic pride. He harps on these two themes as he attempts to rebuild American Judaism.

He mocks the "Uncle Jakes" who do not follow his militant lead because they are "obsessed by the need for respectability." He sneers at the Jews who were unable to persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to bomb the rail lines to Auschwitz or allow Jewish refugees to immigrate to the United States during the war. "We couldn't get 200 Jews to go down fo Washington and chain themselves to the White House gates," he says disparagingly. He warns that, "with a few exceptions, a Jew's only ally is another Jew," and he blasts those who will not fling themselves into the battle.

"I have stood at the Soviet embassy for two years, waiting for the people we marched with in Selma, in Washington, at the peace rallies, to join us.

When it's a Jewish problem, who marches? Jews. So," he warns, "we come to the question of violence." He goes to the Bible and the Talmud, and continued on page 13

The Imitation of Mayor Daley "

By William Marshall

i

When Richard C. Lee announced his retirement from politics in 1969, many who knew him were convinced that only retirement could save his life. During his sixteen years as mayor of New Haven, Lee had wrou~t tremendous physical changes in the city, and the sheer effort of the badgering of state and federal officials, the selling of the programs locally, and the publicizing of the old programs in anticipation of the new programs that were always ready in the wings had itself wrought tremendous changes in Lee. In 1967 he was too ill even to campaign extensively for re-election, and by the time of the inauguration of his successor, Lee was frail and old well beyond his 53 years. . However, two years out of public office seemed to have served as a remarkable tonic for him. He still could be observed gobbling antacid pills as he waited to deliver his review of Mike Royko's Boss, but he looked younger and healthier than he had in years.

The New Haven public library made a good match when it paired Lee and Boss. The parallels between Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago and Mayor Richard Lee are striking. Daley is fond of hi~ways and monuments (preferably in the form of hi~-rise apartment buildings) to his abilities as a redeveloper. Lee has faced charges which have the same ring in terms of his support for the luxury high-rises of the Oak Street Redevelopment Project, Route 34, and the New Haven Coliseum.

Miss Wilder of "Friends of the Library" noted further parallels as she introduced him: born and raised in an "Irish ethnic enclave," entered politics fresh out of high school, experienced "civil disorders" as mayor of an American city, and channeled millions of dollars of federal money into major renewal projects. Miss Wilder did make two distinctions, however, which in her mind made Lee emerge the better man. While Daley had ordered police to shoot to kill and maim during Chicago's 1968 disorders, Lee had settled New Haven's 1967 flare-up without a shot being fired. And finally.

Daley had procured only $80 million in federal money during the 1950's, while Lee had scrambled for $95 million. continued on~ 4

A cop may throw the book at you,

By William MarshaU

Larom Munson , director of the Munson Gallery on Orange Street and a police commissioner for the City of New Haven, stood at the podium in the basement auditorium of. the United Church on the Green. It was 12:10 and the 150 people who had come to hear Police Chief Biagio DeLieto review Albert Reiss' The Police and the Public were getting nervous. The New Haven Public Library had designed their "Books Sandwiched In" program for lunch hour enlightenment, and many in the crowd had exactly that: one hour. Now, ten minutes of it were gone and they had not been enlightened one bit. There were of course many retirees in attendance, who had nothing but time, and there were also several leading yankee attorneys, who had nothing but money and therefore, if the converse .of the old saw is true, a great deal of time also. But many of the people were in fact secretaries and had to get back to the office.

Somehow the gold cross on the podium did not seem inappropriate for Munson, a man so obviously at peace as to be at least ordained, and possibly divine. He might well have passed for a Groton and Harvard educated priest and certainly did not resemble the cunning grafter that former Police Chief Ahem had implied he was the night before. Munson introduced the speaker: "Biagio DeLieto, as New Raven's chief of police, has made himself extremely visible in the community. This is is one in a series of efforts to present himself, and through himself, the police department." The chief sat at a table behind Commissioner Munson and shuffled his papers as his past achievements were enumerated for the audience.

Biagio DeLieto thought he should have been New Raven's police chief in 1967. He had one of the best efficiency ratings in the department, he had earned something of a reputation as an innovator in police training procedures, and he had been with the force since 1946. Arthur T. Barbieri, the Democratic town chairman, also wanted Biagio to be chief. That in¡itself may have been enough to~liminate the possibility of appointment in the days of Mayor Richard C. Lee ; but, in any event, Lee appointed James F. Ahern, and the rest is history.

Ahem, prematurely gray and preternaturally liberal, went on to become the best known police chief outside of Philadelphia. Like his patron, Lee, Ahem quickly got on the Federal gravy train, pouring thousands of dollars from the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act$ into restudying the role of the police and re-organizing the department along lines dictated by the study. Even the policemen themselves could tell that there was a change in the air. Under Chief Ahern, officers were allowed to smoke (tobacco) on duty and mustaches were permitted with the personal approval of the chief. Ahern played a good game, taking.cred.it for keeping May Day cool, getting appointed to the President's Commission on campus unrest, and appearing with kingman Brewster on the Dick Cavett Show.

Meanwhile, Biagio DeLieto, or "Benny" or ..Biggy" or "Bags," depending on your degree of familiarity With the captain of the communications division, spent four years being introduced at Melebus Club {Barbieri's bomb shelter on Olive Street, where most of the real business of the city is conducted these days) testimonial dinners as " ..ladies and gentlemen, the man who should have been police chief of New Haven ..." At times, even the testimonial dinners were not enough and DeLieto considered talcing advantage of the police early retirement program. But he hung on and, in so doing, proved once again that patienu is oft rewarded. In November 1969, the voters of New Haven decided to throw the rascals in and, approximately one year after the inauguration of Bartholomew F _Guida as mayor, DeLieto was indeed the chief.

Ahern had departed in a cloud of aJJesed politic:al • continued on~ 5

Mr. Marshal is a freelance writer who has contributed to life, The Saturday Review, and Esquire. He is presently researching a book dealing with politics and urban renewal.

continued from page 3 ·

He said that his review would be defensive. That was it. Nobody was going to catch him covering up for his own failures by pretending not to recognize them in others. He wasn't going to. pretend anything. He had made mistakes and Daley had made mistakes, but in the long run, ~he voters bore them both out. As he had always done everything else, Lee vigorously assailed the task of review . " He [Royko) charges Daley with hypocrisy, autocracy, arrogance, petulance, high-handedness, indifference, ignorance, and vindictiveness ... Dick Daley may be guilty of all these things; l'm-sure he's guilty of at least some. But the City of Chicago is made up of four million people. Daley has been mayor for sixteen years and last spring, when he ran for his fifth term, he was elected by 72% of the vote. He must be doing something right."

He went on to describe what : the world's busiest airport, the world's largest convention hall, and parking garages downtown, all under Daley's management.

Royko suggests that in Chicago all of these things have been accomplished at the expense of the people. In the past five years in New Haven, the same suggestions have been made, the same claim that bulldozer renewal has prevailed at the expense of the average citizen and for the profit of the private entrepreneur. But Lee would not back down from his sixteen years. According to his statistics, Chicago has all of the monuments, as well as a family income 30 per cent above the national average.

"The Old Man" continued in his personable way.

Granted, Daley had a reputation for tampering with the electoral process, but, " whatever his reason was, he did support good people." He had made certain that Jack Kennedy carried Illinois, "on what wings, I will not discuss." Then there were the anecdotes. Kennedy, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, and Daley, all clinging to a life raft which would only hold one person. They vote to see who will survive. Daley wins 11 -2. The audience laughed. They loved him. The week before, they had been polite to Delieto, but they loved Lee. Many of his old associates were present: Joel Cogen, former executive director of the Redevelopment Agency; Charles Gill , former alderman and himself a mayoral contender in 1969; Charlie Parker, campaign manager for Hank Parker in 1971. Even a group of students which had entered the auditorium. armed with notes and apparently eager for questions. seemed to be swayed.

Lee charged that the book was unfair. Royko had not only challenged Daley's politics, but also his family life and religion. And Lee was right. If anything, Boss

suffers from its own excesses of vitriol. Royko's Daley can do nothing without malice aforethought. And Royko himself is so consumed by his hatred for Daley that it twists his own vision. Ethnic neighborhoods are the bigoted, racist fiefdoms of bully gangs when they produce Richard Daley. They are charming little selfdetermining colonies when Daley obliterates them in favor of a University of Illinois campus. Boss' picture of . Daley is .so one-sided as to be slapstick. This makes the book both delightful to read and ineffective as a political weapon.

But Lee couldn't be just right in his appraisal of the book. He had to bring the crowd not only into agreement, but into support. He had to control, and he knew how. He cited Royko's use of quotations from William Kunstler's cross-examination of Daley during the Chicago Conspiracy trial. At the mention of the name Kunstler, the audience let out a gasp. Now, that was unfair. As he had always managed to do, Lee had now won them over.

He did not try to whitewash Daley, however. Lee took the mayor of Chicago to task for his racism, his nepotism, and his tolerance of criminals in public office.

He deplored the 1968 "shoot-to-kill" order and the activities surrounding the Democratic convention. But he also cited the shortcomings of other mayors, shortcomings which could be equally fatal to the functioning of a large city, such as John Lindsay's " inability to suffer fools gladly." From his sixteen years as a mayor, Lee seemed to be saying that public responsibility required just the right admixture of vice to a strong base of virtue. He seemed to be saying that a mayor had to be able to call an uncooperative developer or government official a " prick," as well as be able to address luncheon groups in the basement of a church.

Lee summarized by describing Daley as a "benevolent despot," and acknowledged that he had been described that way himself while mayor of New Haven. He seemed to enjoy the memory, just as his physical appearance suggested that he seemed to enjoy his distance from it.

Then the question period started and a woman in the front row brought up the·oak Street issue. She charged Lee with being responsible for the present New Haven housing shortage because of the extensive demolition during the early renewal years. Lee denied her charge absolutely. Since 1950, there had been a tremendous migration of low income individuals and families to the city. This had caused the housing shortage, together with the failure of the suburbs to absorb their share of low income housing. The housing units he had demolished were unfit for occupancy. They lacked heat, electricity, and in some caseS, even running water. His voice reached a pitch . He was moving again. His programs were being challenged. Out of some reflex action which he had no doubt developed from hours in federal offices and aldermanic caucuses, he let loose with all the emotion befitting the issue, " Those units were not fit for dogs, let alone people!" The audience, carried along with him. clapped their approval.

Meanwhile, five blocks away, workmen were finally busy constructing Crown Court, the last phase of the Oak Street Redevelopment Plan. After years of delay because of grudgingly given federal mortgages, the eight story luxury apartment building was finally going up, on the same block as the luxurious Crown Towers and across the street from the luxurious Madison Towers.

Whether these buildings and all the demolitions required to put them there will, in the final analysis, stand as a monument to Lee's callousness or to his vision remains to be seen. Maybe he will be better remembered for Church Street South. or for the nation's first Section 221-d-3 housing, or for the inception of a business relocation plan for small businesses being dislocated by renewal. Regardless. these buildings and much of New Haven will stand as a monument to his energy_e

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but he probably hasn't read·it

continued from page 3 terference and, not unexpectedly, }$ departure was met with cries of anguish from the liberal community. The sophisticated and erudite gentility of the former chief made him a perfect political plum for the anti~uida Democratic alliance, as well as for the liberal-leaning, once-and-future mayoral candidate, Paul Capra. Many of the top officials in the Lee administration had already fled New Haven, but DeLieto was the major, high-proftle appointment of the new mayor. Guida had chosen to leave vacant the important positions of director of administration, development administrator, and city engineer' and had been frustrated in attempts to appoint a party regular to the position of zoning director. Now he was making his move, and it would have to be a good one. The new chief would have to prove that he was every bit as intelligent, every bit as personable, every bit as liberal, and every bit as competent as the man he replaced.

Hence, the rush for the headlines, or, as Commissioner Munson put it, "visibility in the community." DeLieto was uncommonly well suited to the task, being possessed of a seemingly insatiable ego, and he paraded to openings and dinners and every ceremonial occasion imaginable. Every morning, his secretary would place a set of glossies from the previous day's events on his desk for the chiefs review.

But with all the glory of actually being chief, DeLieto still labored under the image of Ahem. As he strode to the podium to deliver his review, he could only be adjudged second best in his competition with the image. Greeting Jerry Lewis as he stepped off a ftre truck and onto a bandstand on the Green was just not the same as marshalling the city's forces against the Panthers from the front line. There was also some lingering embsrrassment, as well as lingering litigants, concerning $450,000 of cocaine which turned out to be 50 cents worth of quinine. Upper echelon police morale was at an all-time low, what with the chiefs absences to be visible in the community, and the department had recently lost two division ~rnmanders, Heaphy in training, and Talbot of planning and budgeting. Nevertheless, the chief would try it again.

From behind his dark, wide-lapeled suit, red shirt with •·nth black-stone-set-in-gold cuff links, and wide silver, red, and black tie, DeLieto made a somewhat shallow admission of awe "in the presence of so much sophistication." He further confessed, and later proved to the satisfaction of one and all, that he had never reviewed a book before.

There can be no doubt that the book in question was a good one for DeLieto to cut his teeth on. Any police chief could have had a fteld day with Reiss' exhaustive and exhausting sorties into the never-never land of the sociologist. The Police and the Public is a collection of belaborings of the obvious and lamentations of the real, all held together by the author's unshakeable conviction that the utopian is best of all.

One is hard put to disagree with the author's conviction, and is therefore quite disappointed to ftnd that the entire piece is completed without the slightest hint as to how one might go about correcting the little flaws that nature has so cruelly inserted into the crystal of man.

It would certainly be impossible to fmd any fault with the thoroughness of Reiss' basic researches, which spanned ftve years, took place in four major cities, and included patrol observations as well as detailed analyses of police ftle statistics. However, the average reader does not feel a genuine need for an eight page analysis to establish once and for all that most antagonism toward the police comes from people they are arresting, as opposed to people who call the police requesting that someone else be arrested.

Reiss very thoroughly documents the problems the police have with the public and vice vena, many of which start out as the simple failure of the police to be

civil to offenders and the failure of an officer to recognize the legitimacy of policy authority. However, once this information is imparted to the reader, nothing further is done with it than to suggest that people have simply got to be more polite to each other.

From the several typographical errors in the printed text and from the book's title, which is more journaJ.is... tic than academic, it is apparent that the ·publishers rushed some in their hope to capitalize on the public's concern for the state of law enforcement in America.

They need not have bothered, for The Police and the Public has only a very limited value to the average citizen. Although some interesting points are made about the evolution of a national police force and some shocking statistics are developed concerning the extent of police corruption, the book's main utility lies in its pages of data tables, which, while not put to any immediate good use, may have some value for future scholars who are more inclined toward practice than statistical gymnastics.

Unfortunately, Chief DeLieto missed all of this, choosing instead to descnoe the book as refreshingly readable, being neither "abstract or excessivelv legaJ.is... tic." Any reader of the book would immediately wonder how the endless pages of sociological jargon had eluded the chief, how sentences such as "A bureaucracy requires the standardization of rules by a central authority in the expectation that universalism will prevail in the application of these rules," could have escaped his comment. The ansWer, as it turns out, resides in the fact that he had never read the book, and only recently had had the text of the review delivered to him by a staff aid.

However, like the chief himself, and probably with every justification, the public had paid no attention to the book. As a result, the question and answer session followins the revic:w did not pursue the few issues raised in The Police and the Public, but featured citizen complaints about the scarcity of speed traps and the demise of the foot patrolman. These questions were ones with which the chief could deal handily enough and so he ftnished off the lunch hour, confidently Aherning in the name of community visJoility. Solemnly, the chief assured a female inquisitor, "The police officer is as near to you, madam, as your telephone." Enthusiastically, he bestowed the ultimate .compliment on a black member of the audience, "You are a very, very perceptive young man. This is an idea I have been trying to stress for years and years." He explained one of his favorite theories and qualified it with all due humility, "My appraisal at best involves intuition and empirical judgment."

Shortly after 1 p .m., the question period ended. If anything, the review would have delighted Albert Reiss, both for being favorable to his book and for being such a civil encounter between the police and the public.

However, upon leaving the basement of the United Church on the Green, one could not help but wonder where, between the ego and the image, books had in fact been sandwiched in. e

Rita Hayworth can make time without history.

Cin,ma verit,, documentaries, fragments of a certain moment: History.

The raw material is time: wars, floods, rock festivals; the camera consecrates these ephemeral phenomena, invests them with an unnamed significance and thus preserves them. History, however, is intention, the dramatization of time, a shaping of phenomena to show causes and effects. History is not tirqe: time is meaningless, history is meaning.

But where is there no history, only time? Lewis and Clark found time, pure flux , when they found the North American plains Indians. Children live in time. So do those peoples who are obliged to be the extras in someone else's history, the so<alled colonial nations. For these people, history always seems to be occurring somewhere else; the great dramas of world events are always somebody else's dramas in which they are always the audience; they are always "behind the times."

To live in such a culture is to live in a social structure which perpetuates itself through repetition. The flow of time must be dissimulated, repressed, or the utter madness of the situation pokes

We don't need a seven-cent nickel just yet

By Lawreoce L Eilenberg

At the heart of the Marx Brothers' f'J.lm comedy was stage comedy, and at the heart of their stage comedy was vaudeville. Irving Thalberg, boy genius of MGM, intuitively sensed this when he began producing the Marx Brothers at Metro. The five pictures they had done for Paramount had become progressively thinner and thinner, and Thalberg knew that if the totally anarchic comedy of the Marx Brothers were not to wear out completely, their comic energy would need to be framed in a more or less cogent story line. For the explosion to have effect, there was need of an object susceptible to sabotage.

The obvious source for this sort of screenplay was not in Hollywood but in New York.. Thalberg reached across the continent to the Algonquin and emerged with GeorgeS. Kaufman and Morrie Ryskind, authors of the Marx Brothers' early Broadway and flf1t film success, The Cocoanuts. With the aid of AI Boasberg. a gag specialist, these New York wits sat down in the hot California sun and sweated out the tcreenplay for

A Night at the Opera. The script was good, and Thalberg enthusiastically met with Groucho to discuss the shooting.

Groucho was pleased, but not confident.

Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers had been hits, he maintained, because they had weathered years of live audiences before they ever made it to the screen.

Who knew whether A Night at the Opera would work?

Thalberg's solution to the problem was obvious, yet inspired. He suggested that the Marx Brothers put together fJVe of the big scenes from the screenplay into a vaudeville show and go out on the road to test the material. The show opened in Seattle and flopped.

During six weeks of touring, however, the scenes were revised, distilled, and injected with new material. Ryskind and Boasberg att:mded each performance, noting .vhat had worked and what had not, and then rewrote to -accommodate the audiences' responses.

By the time the tour closed at the Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco, it was a hit. Thalberg knew that they had a movie on their hands.

Lonnie Carter' s The Big House, currently at The Yale Repertory Theater, has something to do with the Marx Brothers and something to do with the movies. In the program for the production, Michael Feingold, literary manager for the company, states that, " Lonnie Carter's prison farce is an attempt to recall for contemporary audiences the tone and spirit, though not the factual details, of the Marx Brothers comedies, and the flowering of American comedy in the 1920s and ' 30s generally, filtered through his own distinctive use of verbal play ... The poster for The Big HOUS#! is a photographic collage of the Marx Brothers, Cbadie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy.

The distinction between " tone and spirit" and "factual details.. of the Marx Brothers' comedies remains unclear to me. Surely we do not expect to hear the same lines as we have heard in the Marx Brothers' movies; after all, this is a new play. Nor do we expect to see Groucho. Chico, and Harpo, in the

'7/The New J oun:al/November 28 , 1971

Can Toto? throu!ll and the reality of chaos assumes its ri!lltful place. This tum of events does not happen, because certain truths are never tolerated publicly, neither by individuals nor by cultures. Archetypes save such a society from collective mad· ness, archetypes derived from institu· tions with historical pretentions: govern· ments, churches and families. Colonial )! individuals may not know who they are, but they certainly know what they are.

But no system is free of surds, erratics. These are real individuals who by chance are granted immunity from the destiny of those around them. The immunity is also a burden: self· consciousness, the awareness of differ· ences between oneself and those around him, the awareness of the unreality of everyday life. Yet this self-aware individual must derive a sense of reality from some· where, and if this sense cannot be found in local circumstances, then it must be found elsewhere, a physical or aesthetic elsewhere.

This is the subject of Betrayed by Rita Hayworth : the appearance of a self-aware individual in rural Argentina, a character born In an ahlstorical setting, in a context of social archetypes, a character who derives his sense of reality from films. Manuel Puig, the author, is '!itally concerned with

history, with the phenomenon of time, bt.it he does not deal with this material in dialetical terms. He is not interested in recreating history, as for instance a novelist would be, by creating charac· ters whose lives reproduce the dialectical factors of the era in which he sets the book. Rather, he reproduces the results of a situation (not really a historical situation, but an archetypal one) : its people. The characters here are not charged with historical signifi· cance, but with psychological and archetypal energy. That is, people are not created as representatives of a class, and the work does not derive its structure from the interplay of these classes. We get the feeling that there is no community here (because there is no history) , that this is in fact the work's overriding moral comment.

But once that primary associat ion is understood, there seems to be no imperative in Puig's aesthetic to enlarge upon it. Social conflict as such is therefore virtually absent from Betrayed by Rita Hayworth , displaced by internal, psychological realities, wnich sometimes fmd expression in social reality. It is this fragmentary social structure which gives the book its Shape: it is composed of isolated, unrelated chapters in which the characters think, converse, write, or are

described. Puig arranges the chapters in chronological order, ironically reproducing the flow of time as it occurs in the world the text imitates, with one exception.

When we reach the last chapter of the book, we suddenly find that we are again at the beginning. Chapter XVI, " Berto's letter, 1933," is in the wrong place. It should appear as an interpola· tion in Chapter II , " At Berto's place, Vallejos, 1933." This dislocated chapter, a signal to the reader that the book's reality is somehow outside of chronological time, may be understood as an episode not essential to the plot; part, perhaps, of the plot's prehistory, or as one of the events which do in fact push the action to its conclusion. And yet, if we examine the information contained in the chapter, we see that althou!ll it does give us information about the characters, it has nothing to do (except as a distant, indirect cause) with any dramatic action. The meaning of Betrayed by Rita Hayworth does not depend on our biographical knowledge of its characters; it is not therefore a novel and not bound to the cause and effect relationships implicit in any plot.

Novels are permanently wedded to plot and history. When an author abandons these, his art becomes some-

thing else: romance, satire, anatomy.

Puig is clearly writing about a world which cannot be novelistically reproduced. If we accept the idea that it is the fate of any writer to express his age, that it is moreover the onerous task of the novelist to bear the weight of history, then we may certainly accept the concept of an author writing something other than a novel when he has no history to reproduce. Puig, despite the contemporaneity of his setting, is chronicling a myth. The myth is modest: not the birth of Orpheus, not Prometheus giving fire to men, but the appearance of self-awareness. This myth may seem Iike just another archetypal role repeating itself, and yet it would seem that it is th is self-conscious individual who lends dignity to those who lack his awareness.

The aesthetic center of gravity of Betrayed b y Rita Hayworth is a boy, Toto, who dominates only three of the book's sixteen chapters. That he is not the rrotagonist of the work is a tunc· tion of the sort of book it is. It has no real plot, and it attempts to recreate no historical period; rather it traces the early manifestations of self-awareness.

But what we learn about Toto in these three chapters clearly points out his significance : he is intelligen~, he has under-

'

.When the movie ends, does it end?

Will Groucho Marx join the revolution? flesh, running around the stage. Other than these facts, the relevant details of the Marx Brothers are precisely part of their tone and spirit. We must admit from from the start that we cannot recreate their idiosyncratic talents. For that matter, even if we were able to do so (as was attempte d in Minnie 's Boys in New York), the essential point in a serious re-creation would still revolve around tone and spirit.

The Rep, under Robert Brustein's direction, has, to a certain extent, captured the Marx Brothers' spirit quite well. Dick Sbawn"s performance as Wolfgang Amadeus Gutbucket, that is, as the Groucho character, is simply brilliant. Lonnie Carter bas been quite clever in his juxtaposition of two permeating American myths, that of the ..big house,.. or as I Jiriaht haw preferred "hi& home,•• the American pn.on which holds us aD, and Hollywood, our sbared and collectiwly c:onsc:ious fantasy worJcl. There is, however, a stumblina bloct here, and that is the Marx Brothen

themselves. Lonnie Carter's notion is a good one. The political message is clear. There is a dissonance between our dreams and our reality, between " Golddiggers" and the "big house." Both have trapped us, and both must be exploded. Walls and tinsel must come down. Who is more likely to do the job, Carter must have said to himself, than those mythic anarchists, those brothers Marx (who may be unrelated to Karl, but whose instincts are just as revolutionary).

The Marx Brothers, however, as myth, cannot bear the weight of politics. The problem with 1"he BW Hmue is that it is a Marx Brothen scenario with serious intentions. whidl is to say that it is self-contradictory.

The play uses cinema as a continuous metaphor, yet the Marx Brothers were not cinematic. '11u! BW Howe forces political substance upon an anarchy which remained, fcx the Marx Brotben, always stylistic.

The Marx Brothers mow4 from ftUdeYille to Jeaitimate theater .......

they had alienated B.F. Albee, who controlled the best vaudeville houses.

In search o f a stage, they fell into Broadway. The move into movies was just as mechanical. Sound arrived at the right time, and movies meant more money, less work, and a bigger audience.

It was as logical a step as Groucho's later move into television, and was made with as little artistic pretnse. Yet the 'Marx Brothers' popularity on Broadway and in the cinema was in spite of these forms. They always remained the beadline vaudeville act, and though they were framed into a plot, be it play or scenario, they constantly fought against it. Thalberg was right to try out their movies on the vaudeville stage.

The Rep bas m.isUkenly focused on the form of the film med.ium, whidl is the one thin& about it whi<:h the Marx Brothers resisted. Furthermore, The BW HOtUe delineates good guys and bad JUYS; for the Marx Brothers no sudl value judameot could be made. Values and their inevitable derivative, politics. would haw subverted the Marx ·

standing and intuition, and he is sexually ambiguous. This last detail is important in that it isolates the boy, sep· arating him from the blind copying of patterns revealed to him by his father, his cousin, and his masculine friends.

Toto's reaction to all situations, particularly unpleasant ones (being rebuffed by a girl, feeling cheated when his father does not bring him to a cafe after a movie, being attracted to the uncle of the girl who treated him badly), is to create a metaphorical rationalization for the event. The stage for this primitive form of artistic creation is the movies. They are reality; therefore particularly strong social situations are analogous to them. For example, in Chapter V, "Toto, 1942", we see a systematic restatement of Toto's relationship with his father - his most serious competitor for his mother's love. To explain, in veiled terms, what he is experiencing, Toto allegorizes the film Blood and Sand (starring Rita Hayworth and Tyrone Power).

For Toto, Blood and Sand is a lesson about evil triumphing over good, about the death of innocence. He says about Rita Hayworth, "And sometimes she looks wicked, she's a pretty actress but she's always betraying somebody." later he adds: "But In Blood and Sand

she betrays the good boy." The "good boy" is Tyrone Power, but he is also Toto. In Chapter II I, he describes him· self in that way when he takes part in a dream version of a Shirley Temple film . Here he is Rita Hayworth's vic· tim, but his simple appropriation of Tyrone Power's part implies that she too has been recast. As the chapter goes on, we see that Rita Hayworth has become Toto's father, who had "be· trayed" him by inviting some· friends to the house instead of going to a cafe with Toto and his mother.

Toto is perpetually betrayed by his father, because he cannot be his father.

His father is all of the oppressors in all of the films Toto sees. In The Great Ziegfeld, Toto takes on the role of a bellboy whose stepfather mistreats him.

Here he metaphorically displaces his father by creating an alternate family, with a mother he helps and a father he loves. His own father is his cruel stepfather. In The Great Waltz, the subject of one of Toto's school compositions, he becomes an artist (Johann Strauss), a victim who when he loses his mistress laments that "he never succeeded in making her fall madly in love with him ... " Toto wants to be in dreams what he cannot be in life: loved without reservation, loved so

madly that he can victimize his lover.

He fails in his dream, just as he fails in life.

Toto can never be free of his rela· tionship with his father, his Oedipal heritage. But his awareness of his lack, his unconscious need to fill that space through metaphorical activity will ultimately be one more step in his separation from his social setting. The ~ success of this activity depends on factors which have nothing to do with his family. They occur in the reality of films, films metamorphosed in dreams and mixed with catechism lessons (particularly the Last Judgment, which stimulates in Toto a grand fantasy in which he becomes a displaced version of his father by crawling inside the body of a man he wishes his father would copy in dress and grooming).

The other characters in Betrayed by Rita Hayworth lack Toto's individuality; they are the normal inhabitants of Coronel Vallejos, the small town where the work is set. They are two-dimen· sional figures, either possible versions of Toto (an adolescent who seeks sexual release, whose undifferentiated sexuality is instinctive, without aes· thetic t ranscendence; an old-maid piano teacher whose talent·has dried up in pedagogy), or figures who typify a ~·

Is Groucbo · Will Rita Hayworth take Toto to lunch?

Is Toto Tyrone Power?

Brothers• total irreverence. There is something not so laughably reverent about The Big House.

The Big House is most interesting, perhaps, as an illustration of something which is happening in the theater today.

The Marx Brothers, as we know, took essentially stage vehicles and techniques and brought them into the movies. In this, they were typical. The American journey has traditionally been from east to west . and as with settlement, so with theatrical/cinematic properties.

There is a long heritage of Broadway shows being adapted by the Hollywood dream factory. Everyone's work. from Rodgers and Hammerstein to Eugene O 'Neill, has made this journey west.

Now, just as America has begun to look east (to VietNam) and Captain America has taken his trip from the Pacific to the Atlantic (Easy Rider), so the traditions of adaptation and influence have been reversed in the theatrical/cinematic world. Broadway now feeds on the movies. In the last few years we have seen a TONY award

winning musical, Applause, adapted from Hollywood's All About Eve, as well as a number of misguided shows based on Elmer Gantry, Georgy Girl, and and even La Strada. More insidious, however, in its own way, has been the movies' effect on more serious playwrights' imaginations.

Movies have made their way into the theater in two particularly subversive channels. The fust is technical, at least in origin. We see a frustration on the part of young playwrights at not having access on the stage to jump-cuts, closeups, and sound editing. The result has been, at its best, theatrical fragmentation, and at its worst, recapitulation of movie devices on the stage. Maria Irene Fornes, for example, has successfully used the movie cut as a stage technique.

Her plays refuse to be localized; scenes flow from one into the next. Terence McNally, even in so flawed a work as Where Has Tommy Flowers Gone?, has used flashbacks and fragmentation in a valid theatrical manner. However, when in a work like The Big House we see

strobe-flickers used for a gratuitous silent-screen effect, and when we see mugging at the edge of the apron for invalid close-ups, we wonder what the movies are doing for or to the stage.

The second influence, a more serious one, is in the realm of matter, not method, and it is related to myth.

America's mythic resources have always been minor in comparison with its more ancient European cultural rivals. There is a vast difference between Daniel Webster and St. Joan, and we have suffered because our hero is the former.

Now, however, our movies have provided us with a seemingly rich mythology: Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, the Marx Brothers. Even Ruby Keeler has taken on mythic proportions, and thousands flock to No, No, Nanette to worship her.

The problem with our Hollywood myths is not that they are neither valid nor rich. but that they are not ready to be used. They are not fully digested; they remain uncomfortably close in time and therefore ambiguous.

It is easy for a playwright to dress a character in derby, cane, and floppy shoes- he knows the audience's response will be to click Chaplin.

Unfortunately, it is too easy and too frequently done. The click is not easy to gauge. Chaplin is a contemporary; his associations are not generalized yet.

Too many people know him, not through revivals, but through his original releases. He is still too much of a celebrity to be a myth, too much, indeed, of a person. We must know our myths only at great distance, and we are not yet distanced enough from any of our Hollywood heros.

There is a speech by Groucho in Animal Crackers which gets right to the heart of the matter...Do you know what this country needs today?" he asks. "A seven-<:ent nickeL Yessiree, we've been using the f"'tve-cent nickel in this country since 1492, and that's pretty near a hundred years' daylight saving. Now why not give the seven-«nt nickel a chance? If it works out, next year we could have an eigbt-<:ent nickeL

9/The New Journal/November 28, 1971

class mentality (the character Esther, a fanaticql peronista whose displaced Oedipal energy is funnelled into politics). But the characters who stand as counterparts or alternatives to Toto do not have his self-consciousness, his intense dream life, in itself a sort of artistic activity, while the others conform to certain archetypal structures, the kind at work in Puig's second, un~ translated book, Boquitas pintadas.

Boquitas (Little Painted Mouths)

is a second trip to Coronel Vallejos, but this time Puig studi~s the entire situation as if it were a serial romance novel or a soap opera. Here his concept of history seems more apparent.

There is no history in this world, there is not even a character like Toto who might conceivably represent a kind of aesthetic consolation to a people de· prived of historical reality . In Boquitas we find only archetypes, characters who reenact social roles without de· · viating from them. Like the figures in soap operas, they are not three-di· mensional because they have no real identity. They merely embody a certain cluster of emotions. Puig attempts to give historical significance to these cardboard figures by arranging them in family groups, the family representing ~the organization of time in generations.

But this dissimulation (which Puig car· ries over from soap operas) is quite· transparent because there is no real progress in the work. Just as in Betrayed by Rita Hawworth, chrono· logical sequence is an irony, a joke which underlines the eternal present operative in a society which exists in perpetual flux, where there is no dialectical tension between social elements, just the incessant reiteration of the same interplay of passions.

Boquitas is the more hermetic of the two texts, and the least accessible to non-Argentine readers. Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, with its succession of "close-ups" reminiscent of Under Milkwood or Eyeless in Gaza at least bears some resemblance to familiar literary structures.

Boquitas, on the other hand, is onl\4 comparable in structure to film: it utilizes flashbacks, documentarystyle objectivity, "pan" shots (the narrator describes a character's bedroom, then "moves" out through a window to depict an action going on in a neighboring lot, and a narrative technique which utterly reifies the characters. It is the narrator's total detachment whi<;h supports his presentation of characters doomed to a kind of human underdevelop-

arx Dick Shawn?

Think what that would mean. You could could go to the newsstand, buy a threecent newspaper and get the same nickel back again. One nickel carefully used would last a family a lifetime! " Our movie figures are still only fivecent nickels, or seven-cent ones at their inflated best. The theater, with its ancient history, has for a long time been trading in dollar nickels. Bringing the movies into theater at this time seems to me to be an uncomfortable deflation.•

This is L(IWI'mce Ellenberg's second -appearance in The New Journal.

men~. This text and Betrayed by Rita Hayworth together form a kind of

whole, a reduction of the false face of colonial history to its true components: an endless succession of moments without meaning. They form an exhaustive vision, one which Puig will clearly have to abandon for some time. His latest, still unfinished text is in fact about life in Buenos Aires, not unnaturally a mystery novel, the quintessential romance structure.

Puig himself is something of an anomaly in Argentina and, in fact, in all ot Latin American literature. He seems to have disconnected himself quite consciously from all extant literary patterns. He does not imitate Borges, Cortazar or Garcia Marquez.

And yet he is the result of the upsurge in the "new" Latin American literature, born some say in 1941, with Borges' volume The Garden of Forking Paths. This literature has always been conscious of its metaphysica·l content, always divorced from direct subservience to any ideology, always extremely selfconscious about style and form . Puig stands alone in this context because of his having broken with a specifically literary mode of literary produc-

tion. He does not use literature to make literature as Borges does; he is not trying to harmonize himself with his own vision of literary tradition as is Cortazar; and he has not set out to write the mock-epic of Spanish America, as Garcia Marquez has. He is unique in this hemisphere.

Luckily, he has been well translated - unlike many of his latin American contemporaries. Suzanne Jill Levine, a New Haven resident, working closely with Puig (perhaps the best way to translate one reality into another) has •produced a genuinely interesting re-creation, which can stand on its own merit as a work of art. •

Manuel Puig, Betrayed by Rita Hayworth (original title: La traicicSn de Rita Hayworth), translated by Suzanne Jill Levine (Dutton, 1971).

Alfred J. MacAdam, an assistant professor in the Spanish department, teaches a course in the. Latin American novel.

Only the vvords .. I love'' get slanted Because of mortars and cannons, artillery and

tanks~

These are poems of Viet Nam, written by youth who have known only war and by members of older generations who have watched war tear their homeland in two. Underlying the joy, hatred, and sorrow is the overwhelming love for Viet Nam and the reverence for the family.

Some of these poems have sent their young authors to jail. Others were written in jail, smuggled out, and meticulously copied by hand to be passed from youth to youth. Still others were printed in underground newspapers and distributed in the crowded corridors of schools and at secret meeting places of youth.

Poetry is the common property of the Vietnamese people. Farmers, students, and soldiers, everyone writes poetry. Their love of beauty and dev.otion to aesthetics is evident in their approach to the spiritual as well as the physical world. They are fond of saying of a particularly courageous and inspiring person that his life was like a poem.

Please Give Me Back

People have said a lot About the count,.Yside In difficuft and lofty phrase$· With 'feeling$ ·aarkas night Cryptic or bitter As the words of a lover betrayed.

But I would lik.e now to say some simple things, Simple as a field of rice or sweet potatoes, Or a silent early morning.

Please let me breathe again The air of yesterday.

Let children play in the sun With kites over bamboo bridges.

Just a narrow little space will be enough, Four rows of bamboo trees surrounding; And leave a little space for an entrance, . A place for a girl and boy to tell the story of the moon, For old women with babies to gather and chatter.

Please give me back these things I've mentioned: A story so simple As a bird's unbroken song, As a mother, As a baby, As the life of long ago the poets used to tell...

By a Student of the University of Dalat

A Dream Which has Withered

The day I grew up, Near my father. near my mother.

Near my sister, near my brother.

I only knew how to plant mulberry trees, And cultivate rice; And then one day war by chance came And trampled on my native village.

People in the name of the father land, People in the name of man, People in the name of freedom, ~eople in the name of hC!PPiness, Spy on each other. destroy each other.

My father went up into the mountains, My mother waits and waits, My brother resists the war • My uncle is a nationalist; People teach me how to hate, People teach me how to kill, to cut off heads, All in the name ·of love, Of philanthropy. of compassion; Fathers, mothers, wives, children, whole villages Turn into strangers And become enemies.

People teach me to bear grudges, to resent, But I only want to be a husband, A father. with a wife, with a young son Who knows how to say the two words: Viet Nam, From Cao Bang to the seas of Thailand.

But my dream is a small trifle, Dim and uncertain, as the days pass.

By

Hoentl Minh Nt.ng

11/The New Journal/November 28, 1971

r

The Present

Black Flower

I sit down to write you a poem As the sounds of AK47 rifle fire pour into my brain, As the sounds of R 15 machine guns pin up my heart; But my hand doesn't shake.

Only the words " I love" get slanted Because of mortars and cannons, artillery and tanks.

Outside, they are fighting, for glory in battle: On this side one person slumps down, dead.

On the other side one person still lives.

There another groans and cries out.

Here one person laughs loudly in victory.

And it all starts over.

You sit in a car With a foreigner And wave your hand .

Is it to say good-bye to me, Or farewell to days that have passed?

Your face rem.inds me of someone I have known; I search my mind, I try to remember who it might be Who has waved to me In bitterness or sympathy.

Oh my love!

More than twenty years And today it still goes on.

I search my brain Looking for a small quiet place To remember for a moment my native village.

But my love, That part of my brain Has been filled with smoke of bullets and bombs For too long.

The fields, The bamboo hedges, Flowing rivers, The highlands with their little trees, The cities big and imposing, All battle grounds spread with blood.

Each hand's breadth of land Has its corpse.

Yet what glory have they won?

They are dead, killed By a Communist's AK rifle Or by a nationalist's gun; By an ally's bullet Or by the shrapnel of a bomb.

They slump and fall Without having known the enemy, Mesmerized by the big words: Peace, Freedom, Unification.

This poem comes to you Whether my village lives or dies; The fire bums high.

I stop here.

Ple818, love, don't ask why.

Some day when there's peace I will write you a different poem.

By a High school student from Da Nang

My god! It is you Whom I love, whom I have spent happy days with; Innocent and small, With soft cheeks and full lips, With virgin skin unblemished, With a scent fine as the frailest flower; The one I worshipped and respected.

And now all that is finished .

I remember when you were a student not long ago, Holding your palm-leaf hat against the sun To shade your face, Pouting when the teacher gave you a low mark.

Now you exchange your flesh for money, Dress up in powder and perfume.

You are called Mrs. or MissDoes it matter?

You are a bitter glass of whiskey Which people of a different color, different race Buy to satisfy themselves.

And I, still just a man Who, morning and night, Drags his feet to the cafe we knew then Without money enough for two cups of coffee.

I look at the people.

I look at you there I look at everybody.

And I bow my head to wipe tears from my eyes.

I want to take the earth in my hands And squeeze it so tightly The meridians will. be squashed out of shape And we, following ~r separate lines, Will never again meet under the great vault of heaven, Because a dream is always beautiful, Isn't it?

Oh, but the sad truth is The day I really say good-bye to you; I will instruct the sun not to rise So I can hold you in my arms forever; I will not tremble with fear, No one will see me blush, And my shyness will be hidden.

This selection, prepared by the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholan for The New Journal comes from a forthcoming volume of Vietnamese poems, We Promise One Another, edited by Don Luce, John Schafer and Jacqueline Shagnon.

Invasion

Letter To My Father

During the years of hunger and degradation Tears wet my father's face.

"What can we do, child?

Stop crying, don't break our hearts."

In the burning sun . My father sold his labor To get our bowl of rice; In the icy mornings My mother worked as a servant.

Clothing and food were heavy chains, My children!

As a child I was curious And asked my mother over and over "Why are the French called invaders?"

With tears in her eyes she answered, " Have you not see n their tread upon our villages And the cannons, the airplanes?"

And angered she would say " They are not Vietnamese."

I nodded but didn't understand For others said the French Had come to help. " Why have Mr. Hai and Mr. Ba grown rich With the French?

Why do you call them invaders, my mother?"

And sadly she answered "Wait, grow up, you 'll understand ."

Oh, why did you cry Mother? Why, Mother?'

We have struggled in life To overcome injustice and fraud , To raise you.

You shall bear the world on your shoulders Love, justice, and truth Look ahead and make our dreams come true The dreams your father , your mother, and your suffering people Dreamt in pearling sweat.

She is dead now.

And the French have all gone.

Still I see my mother crying, Tears rolling down the curve of her face, Today. Is it today? or years ago?

For I am grown And my nephews ask the same old question.

"What is an invasion?"

I want to cry, but only say " You' ll know when you grow up."

But they understand much younger now.

Not like when I was a boy.

And they ask their uncle Harder questions. " Whereâ&#x20AC;˘can we find our country?"

We know now, we all know now What an invasion is, But where can we find our country?

By Huy Vu

The year I was born My brothers in their twenties Were singing in excitement, Taking steps to break the bonds of degradation.

Today, my father , your dream has come true.

I, your courageous son Walk under the flag.

Dead Bodies

The following poem appeared in Lap Truong (Standpoint) in 1964. This newspaper was closed because of the anti-war nature of this poem.

Dead bodies are all over the land, The faces unidentifiable, Without clothing, Lying on the same land Of poverty and hardship.

An old mother with her stick, Tearful eyes, questioned The Nationalist, The Communist, Who live in the same village, Who belong to the same mother, Who have the same black hair and red blood, The same flat nose and yellow skin.

In her burnt garden, The children dug for burnt potatoes like hungry dogs.

The Mother's eyes cannot see the future.

The vultures came over the dead bodies.

Animals and men are the same.

Since my days of birth I have felt pains and sores Made by the iron of foreign boots.

I have chosen justice As my source of life.

I have learnt hatred when fire was destroying my country.

The blade of my sword shines under the moon.

My heart hangs high on the mountains.

In excitement I follow the call toward the flag.

From: Ta Da Lon len Ben Nay ctt.u A

By Van Doan Hoc Sin Saigon

13/The New Journal/November 28, 1971

Women of the South

Tran thi Ly* Long hair, hair of a young mother, Washed in the water of Thu Bon, Adorning your body, wounded in a hundred places.

In life and death, always loyal.

..."' ,,

Muoi Dong Thap

.,..

Just turned twenty, Leader of three hundred struggles.

One leg left, you stand erect, A beautiful flag wrapping your body.

Nguyen thi Ut A guerrilla of the Delta Carrying your only child on your hip, Combing the river bank, Striking the enemy as naturally as you go to market.

Ta thi Kieu With a beautiful name from ancient times, You're a faithful niece of Uncle Ho. Striking the enemy, you' re strong as a tiger.

Speaking of it, you smile like a flower.

Nguyen thi Dinh In the assault you command a hundred squads.

Night returns, you sit mending fighters' clothes.

Woman general of the South, descending from Trao and Nhi, •• You've shaken the brass and steel of the White House.

By Luu Trong Lu

• ••

1966

Tran thi Ly is a woman's name as are the other headings of this poem.

Trung Trac and Trung Nhi, the famous Trung sisters who led Vietnamese against the Chinese about 40 B.C.

Don Luce returned to the United States after tvvelve years in VietNam, when the Saigon government reftned to renew his visa because of his artic/11 on the Con Son prison

tiger cages.

John SchafH, an American, teaches at the Uniwrsity of Hue. .Ricqw/int!l Shagnon is now working with the Indo-China Mobile Education Project.e

continued from page 2 he fmds that sometimes violence has to be the Jewish way. " Moses beheld an Egyptian smiting a Jew and did he form a committee? No, he smote the Egyptian."

Rabbi Kahane is an internationalist who sees the United States as the only bulwark against tyranny. He genuinely fears the new isolationism. ''There is a community of interest between Jews all over the world and this country."

He compares the American efforts at detente with the Soviet Union to Neville Chamberlain's actions at Munich. "He thought he' d earned peace by canceling out a few Czechs," Rabbi Kahane says. ''This nation stands between free.. dom and the long knife of tyranny," he says. Many adults applaud lustily, but their applause is drowned in a torrent of hisses from the majority of the students.

But Rabbi Kahane starts entertaining again, and the hisses are forgotten.

"Many Jews tell me they like my aims, but not my tactics. I was on a television talk show with Abbie Hoffman a while ago. After we had talked for a while Abbie toked at me and said, 'I love your tactics, but I don't like your aims.' How can you dislike a guy like Abbie?" he asks, adopting a trace of Yiddish dialect. "I went out and stole his book."

Rabbi Kahane concludes with an appeal to all Jews to defend their own interests. ''To let yourself be stepped on is not the Jewish way."

The students applaud the performance lustily. Many of the adults await the question and answer period. The questions are generally abstract discussions of the merits of violence, with the adults asking most of the tougher questions. The man who calls the rabbi a murderer does not specify to what he is referring. The rabbi does not dignify the charge with a response except to say that discussion of such a charge is impossible.

Mterwards, the students file out the front entrance back to the library or to their rooms. One student remarks, "Kahane, along with Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, is probably the last of the great J ewish comics."

At the other end of the room, New Haven residents use another exit to get to the ttreet. One bulky man stands and scowls at the podium where the rabbi is talking with some students. The man seems to be about to yell something, but, remembering his respectability, he merely turns angrily and walks away. contirwed on page 15

College Street on November 6 looks like a pep rally for a charity ball. Clusters of women and teenage girls and an occasional couple crowd the sidewalk. Everyone is sober and proud, waiting for Rod McKuen to appear at the Shubert.

You can recognize Rod McKuen from his poetry, "Acne scars/Tired eyes/Wrinkles on my forehead," or by the famous brittle blond hair, or the ubiquitous black sneakers. He resembles nothing less than a poet who moonlights as a hairdresser. Even in the flesh he's a black and white snapshot in a color set. Rod McKuen's sex appeal is a tribute to America, to the democratic principle which says that any boy can, and to the will of the majority which insists that millions of housewives can't be wrong.

Rod stands silently while his entourage busily chooses between two dressing rooms. Rod never talks to anyone before his concerts. His people show none of his reticence.

They turn the Shubert theater lobby into a Congress of Commerce and Art. "Take a bit of Rod McKuen home with you. Try him in your own living room." But for their poetic sensibilities, these lady hawkers might have gone far in Shea Stadium. "Get your limited British editions. Rod in song and story."

Inside, the superficially young crowd soon reveals its in.nate middle age. Although there are only two men in the front row, there are considerably more further back. All wear their hair liberally curled on the neck, or, if fortunate, lanky. but always a cut above the collar like Rod's. Most

By Carolyn Seely

of the women would pass meeting house muster. They wear expressions of studied sensitivity. They have come for Art. The curtain flnally rises and the stage looks as shabby as it had from the wings, disproving all those cliches about the magic of the footlights. Thin volumes of poetry are neatly strewn on stools which are asymmetrically aligned. It has the lived-in look of home and folks. Rod walks on to polite enthusiasm, assumes his stance, and immediately begins to sing. He looks like a flgure study of Resolution: feet apart, head forward, arms at his sides except in the swell of a key emotion. Obviously, this is not his medium ; he is a poet, a bard, a loner.

But he is here for us, Art confronting Culture in the name of Truth.

Rod wears a white sweater which blends into his neck and dark slacks which blend into the musicians. Even the spotlight can't follow him, and the poor JUY is sober. Only the heavy

treaded sneakers seem alive. Rod is both with us and apart, casual and ready to bolt. To this audience, unable to fit into Ken Kesey' s movie and Captain America's speed bike, Rod is the myth, the drifter, the catcher of trains.

He reads about flnding twenty dollars. He bought a fountain pen and a jackknife because he'd never owned one. "He was rich in those days," goes the poem. This poetry operates on several levels. The audience realizes that this experience is deeper than mere words. Many of them can't hear at all, but they are absorbing the thoughts, the vibrations. Discontent is politely stared into silence like coughing at a final exam. At one point Rod describes his poetry as both a diary and the cure for a bad cold. He is only joking, of course.

In format , the concert, like the stage, is designed to display Rod through his art.

15/The New Journal/November 28, 1971

•

. Modesty: Rod humbly acknowledges his debts especially to those artists who have recorded his songs: Mary Trjivers, Petula Clark, and Perry Como.

Bluntness: To those critics who accuse him of sentimentality, Rod answers "tough," and he's not bluff'mg. "Get up and hit 'em in the uead with love."

Xffection: Rod celebrates the fatherhood of his sheep dog, Mr. Kelly, with considerable skill in whistling.

Ambition: Having studied various brand name detergents (Biz, Duz, Top Job, Cold Power, Joy), Rod has come up with the soap the housewife really wants: Climax.

Creativity: He introduces the illustrated Rod McKuen calendar containing 365 holidays and a month of Sundays. Typical holidays celebrate the fourth birthday of Rosemary's baby or King Kong's ten-inch teeth . .

Art is not astronomy.

Concern: Rod leads a audience participation chorus of "Soldiers who want to be heroes/Number practically zero/But there are millions who want to be civilians."

Sincerity: "Remember it doesn't matter who you love or how you love, *t that you love."

Rod delivers this material earnestly and carefully. What emerges, however, . is a true Brechtian spectacular. Every stage direction is clearly delineated.

From his every gesture we know that Rod has been told to move or stand "just so." But why? Why would "America's fastest selling poet" stoop to parody at the hands of promoters?

Is this worth all his evident discomfort? But most of all who is he trying to be? Lenny Bruce? Charles Schultz? George Fenneman? Maybe next fall when he brings us his "oneman show" ...

Rod doesn't have time for autographs tonight, but no one's being sent away until Rod's aide f'mds the girls he's looking for. He is about 25, tall, lean, with Rod McKuen blond hair that is dry but not yet brittle, and he is asking everyone's name. I watch the drama of hope and rejecr tion until I am ushered into a small cubicle, the Shubert's luxury dressing room, and am confronted with Rod McKuen's soulful eyes.

Rod rarely grants interviews nowadays. Maybe two or three a year, although he reads about 60. He has never read or seen "Love Story,"

although he "would like to." Perhaps that's just as well, however, as there is a basic conflict. Rod thinks "Love means continually having to say you're sorry." In fact, he doesn't understand why they've been linked together so often.

Faced with inf'mite possibility I opt for the mundane. "Didn't you say that you'd 'paved the way for Erich Segal?'" (Esquire, January 1971) "I'm quoted as saying that? No. Yes? I couldn't have said that." Rod does feel that there's a need for romanticism, however. "The times are so brittle."

Rod doesn't have time for novels.

He reads nine newspapers and at least 30 journals, because he's "concerned with what's happening now." He writes to "clarify his own life" and in hopes that this may "clarify the lives of others. Today there is a need for people to be honest with each other. Children especially need to be taught this." Is he pleased that many high schools are teaching his poetry along with Love Story? "Well, I wouldn't presume to teach."

We are interrupted by the aide triumphantly leading in sqmebody's "cousins." He starts to break camp.

Buy your beloved a

Oh, My! Eli Screws up Georgeously Dear Adler, Well at least you were consistent, and consistency is the whole thing, huh? But the guy's name is Chile Allam, not Chilly Allan. And, although you may not know how he got it, we all do.

Let's get on the goddam ball.

The Daily News Copydesk

Tyco

a · ·eraomfrl . o ·: .·. Bed Wt .. ·. .

for Chr~stmas Then, {for once) stay home Alone Toqether on New Year's!

"What about your fllm?" I shout at Rod. The script is f'mished and cast. It is necessarily somewhat autobiographical, as it is based on the early poetry. He can't relate it to Love Story because he's "never seen it."

Rod is played by a 23-24 year old unknown whose identity is a mystery.

"How about the woman?"

"Jean Simmons."

"Jean Simmons! But doesn't she represent a certain style, say the Romantic Epic?"

Rod doesn't want to give any more away. And.after all maybe he just likes her name. •

*

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