Volume 8 - Issue 2

'v'D I. 8

no. c;;1

Volume eight, number two

\

~

.\

••• ~ ••~

November 7,1974

The NewJoumal I November 7, 1974

page2

TheNewjournal -------------conanaent------------------~ Sweat sock circus complacent expression of this sentiment. If, as is quite probable, Yale's Volume eight, number two The old AY A coffee pot was a boil students have higher I.Q.'s than the and percolating alumni. Imperialists "masses," this is to be attributed to David Sleeper of the meaningful expression had reheredity, good nutrition, and general Editor-in·Chief turned for another go, a quick alcoaffluence-to one's family's money, Daniel Denton holic transumption with the past, a in short. No one need imagine himExecutive Editor boisterous revel through foggy self or herself superior to the rooms, through Mory's, and the "masses"; we do not create ourStephen Sternbach squashed muffins of brunch. They selves, and even geniuses have no Managing Editor came for circuses and they got cause to feel pride.

Marla Schay them-this was the 1974 alumni conOutside the formal seminar, I met Desigrn!r vocation and its topic was "Trends innumerable people of natural, in Athletics." All these cheerful, unstrained intelligence; inside the Michael Jacobson maudlin relics made their own nosseminar, there was an emphasis upon Associate Editor talgia in the cavern of Commons, artificial intellectualizing, the kind of Tammy Jacoby their chance at the big time, three old Yale- Hurrah! The dollars ring Lit. crit. posturing that writers like Production Editor rings strong. ; in. Somewhere a blue and white Ionesco, Nabokov, Barth, Bellow, Jerry Lewis is watching the tote God only knows what brought and many others (including, I supRobert Lichte board climb. The cash wheels spin, Business Marw.ger them all here. It couldn't have been pose, myself) have always delighted Brewster, certainly not the Associaonly 300 million more, go, go, GO.' in parodying. Criticism is a secondNancy Olcott Look at us, we're walking! tion of Yale Alumni-and would you ary activity: even the artist, when he Circul4tion Manager Jon Etra is attempting criticism, realizes the come to New Haven just to give money? And that trumped up topic Limitations of what he is doing. But Jon Etra is Jon Etra.

Staff: Jean Benefield, Jim Bick, Carol Eliel, of athletics was about as enticing as it is easy to forget, to imagine that Eric Kueffner, Sandy Lee, L. Buck sweat sock stew. Maybe the invitaby juggling cliches and currently Levin, Frank Martin, Naomi tion contained a dare-spend three fashionable jargon, one has captured Pierce. Justin Radolf, Tony I was asked why I write days in this unspeakable town and the essence of art. Where there is no Segall. Ed Troncelliti. Larry Yang Joyce Carol Oates, novelist, short we will give you whatever is behind natural sense of creativity, or no abilContributing editors: Ronald Roel, Stuart Rohrer, Steven R. Weisman, Daniel story writer and teacher, visited Yale ity along such lines, there is often the curtain. Maybe there were veiled Yergin threats to the family dog. For sure it on October 15 and discussed her the illusion of superiority because work with students in a Calhoun was something crafty that only the one can "make judgments." Perhaps Credits: Daniel Denton: pages 4, 5, 6 College seminar, "American Writers most devilish of the Machiavels at this goes along with the elitism I David Dunlap: cover (The National Lampoon design is a Woodbridge Hall could devise: Come in the Seventies. "':fhe class had read sensed. registered trademark of two collections of her short stories. or we will burn your yearbook. The One example will do: the critic 21st Century Communications.

Ms. Oates wrote this letter to Karhelpless hundreds came. assigns the writer a category. If the Used b.v permission.)

But of course they loved it. Smok- en Herold, a student in the seminar writer is morally involved with his Jim Firth: pageS (top) Kirby Kennedy: page3 who had written to Ms. Oates prior ing big cigars in public, opening society, he is called "didactic" and Frank Martin: page 12 to her visit. In the letter, Ms. Oates heavy doors with assurance, glowertherefore inferior; if he is concerned Roger Ressmt-yer: page 15 responds to questions posed by Ms. ing at menials, lurking about the mainly with art, he is Art-for-art's Marla Schay: pages 2, 10 Herold and explains her reactions to gyro-superb! Finally a banquet at sake, and in danger of being rejected Zippy Tone: page 8 Woolsey hosted by the President and the seminar and to what she found to as a "dandy" (in Camus's sense of be the mood at Yale. Excerpts of the Th~ Neu· .Journal is published by The New co-conspirators- bliss! Dinner as the word). So the critic achieves an Journal at Yale, Inc., 3432 Yale Station, letter appear here with the permisusual aboard the Titanic, the rich illusory victory over the writer-but New Haven, Conn. 06520, and is printed at and beautiful awed and impressed by sion of Ms. Oates and Ms. Herold. it is illusory, indeed.

Trumbull Printing Co. in Trumbull, Conn. the sheer spectacle-the giant I was also struck during the semiDistributed free to the Yale community. For YALE banner, the cameras and all oLhers, subscription rate $7.50 per vear.

The Yale of our brief and no doubt nar by the inquiry of whether I was Copyright ~ by The New Jo.•rnal at Yale, lights, the obsequious servants in superficial experience is rather homo- "bothered" that some students in Inc .. a non-profit organization. traditional livery. Not the slightest the seminar believed my stories to be geneous; the atmosphere is intense, Phone 432.0271. hint of chill in the air. confined, analyticaL I came away funny, and some did not-as if anyThe New Journal U'ishes to extend special They heard the same tirades and wondering if a remark made by a one with a sense of his own identity, thanks to Lloyd Graue, The New Haven pleas: they supplied the same attenwhether a writer or not, could be preyoung woman during our Fiction Register, and The National Lampoon. tion and wild applause. Here we all sumed to be so easily swayed by the Seminar might be representative, are-Joy! Help us out (even though since it was incidental and went casual opinions of strangers. A conw_e_b_l_e w _ it_ l_a_s t- ti_m_e.;.l_ B_r_a_v_o _! G _ ood _ _ unchallenged-she alluded with con- scious artist is, of course, open to tempt to a "mass" audience, a "mass opinions and judgments by indicomment: Jon Etra wonders why the helpless hundreds came; Joyce market" population, as if there were viduals whose work he or she Carol Oates warns of the dangers of literary criticism; John hordes of unclean, brain-damaged admires-people whose personalities Ellis and Naomi Pierce hear Jane Fonda tell the same old tale. or achievements indicate that their barbarians swarming out in Amerremarks should be taken seriously. ica, beyond the walls of Yale's col3 The Perfect Spill James F. Smith But only a politician is anxious to leges.

I am not a political radical, but an analysis of last month's oil spill in the New Haven harbor please everyone, to conform to whatI am idealistic enough to believe that 4 One Man's View of the Harbor Daniel Denton the basic philosophy of democracy is ever attitudes a certain group seems Andy Panzo has seen the harbor change to hold. I know this question was put both intellectually and morally sound-and in any case, the implicit to me innocently- but, like many 6 Tastelessness Done Damn Well David W. Dunlap remarks uttered in innocence, in the inside scoop on Natlamp's big boff machine elitism and snobbery of such near-unconsciousness, it reveals a remarks are contrary to the'spirit of 10 Will the Signs Point to "Yes"?

Doug McKinney great deal. Would it alarm you to be any "American studies" program. I scenes from the tangled story of film at Yale said nothing at the time-1 was rath- told that the emotions, moods, likes and dislikes, and various expressions 11 Glimpses of an Interrupted Education Charles Musser er shocked. of opinion of late adolescence are Not only was there the evidently a journey from Yale to filmmaking and back again really not terribly important? unconscious assumption of the Along these lines, I also noticed superiority of everyone in the semi12 The Emperor of Concrete Douglas T. Yates (continued or. page 15) -nar, or in the room, but the frank, a review of Robert Caro's The Power Broker

0

_contents________

The Perfect Spill

by James F. Smith

I

'•

"It was a perfect oil spill," says Bill Hawley, a partner at Sea Land Environmental Engineering in Milford , Connecticut. " If there had to be a spill, it couldn' t have gone better. " On Sunday , October 6, 100,000 gallons of black oil poured into New Haven h.a rbor from the ruptured forward compartments of the 560 foot long S.S. Messinaki Bergen. More than half the spillage was contained by floating protective booms, and the oil that did escape before the ship reached its berth became the focus of an intensive 12·day clean-up oper· ation.

The story received front page headlines in the New Haven newspapers for two days, and then the issue faded. An editorial in The New Haven Register two days after the spill briefly mentioned the general abuse of the nation's waterways, but focused on the facts of the local accident rather than their implications.

The coverage was superficial.

Few traces of the spill remainthe oil is gone from the beaches, the heavy industrial traffic in the harbor continues, and S.S. Messinaki Bergen has left to carry another cargo. ·with the routine successfully restored, industry officials are congratulating themselves for their efficien. cy. while the public happily tums its. concern away from the harbor. In the aftermath of a near-disaster has come relief rather than reflection.

A dozen things could have gone wrong. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, the Bergen was making a normal approach through the harbor's ship channel just after midnight Sunday morning when the crew felt a slight impact. Had the accident been worse, more of the ship's hull might have been ruptured. Had the ship grounded on the obstruction, a major rescue operation would have been required with tugboats pulling the tanker free as she continued to spew oil into the harbor.

Also, the Coast Guard might have instructed the leaking ship to remain away from the shore. This safety precaution would have caused a far greater spill.

Instead, the Coast Guard told the ship 's captain to proceed to the ship's berth at Wyatt, Inc. , a local commercial oil distributor. Although a visual check from the vessel's stern did not reveal any leakage, Wyatt personnel prepared their emergency containment system-a floating plastic boom that traps any free oil on the water's surface inside the company's dock. When the ship arrived at the pier, a Wyatt crew immediately deployed the protective boom around the stern of the ship.

The boom kept 60,000 gallons of oil from flowing across the harbor.

Forty thousand gallons had al-

ready escaped, but since the wind was light the spill did not spread far. Had it been anything other than a calm, warm night, the initial emergency measures and the subsequent clean-up would have proved much more difficult. Once the mishap had occurred, luck seemed to be playing a major role in its repair.

The clean-up began soon after the le·aking Bergen reached the pier-the contained oil near the Wyatt dock was the first target. The crew used heavy-duty skimmers wide-mouthed suction tubes submerged a few inches beneath the surface-to draw the oil into tank trucks, which were then emptied into Wyatt storage tanks.

An official from Exxon International, which charters the Bergen, arrived before dawn on Monday, 6 hours after the accident, to coordinate the clean-up. Three environmental firms assisted- Sea Land, from Milford, Hitchcock Gas and Engine, from Branford, and New England Pollution Control from New Haven.

At dawn, crews began to shovel the black sand from the beaches, which the spill had fouled as far east as Bran·ford.

It took twelve days to complete the job. Cleaning the beaches involved shoveling the sand jnto trucks, scraping the black residue from saltwater marshes, steam-cleaning the rocks on shore, and re-landscaping some of the beaches. Officials in aircraft directed the attack on floating slicks. After they removed the bulk oil with the skimmers, the crews began gathering the more dispersed oil.

They used mats that were designed to float on the water and absorb only the oil.

An entire industry has developed around pollution prevention and clean-up. " Back in the sixties, during the Santa Barbara spill days, " says Bill Hawley, "they'd just throw straw or styrofoam into the water, and move the pollution from the sea to the land. We've developed a whole new technology to handle a spill. We either recycle the spillage now, or incinerate it, usually leaving the shore in better shape than it was before. " The oil distributor did, in fact, reclaim most of the free oil, and the fouled sand and sludge were taken to oil refuse dumps in Rhode Island.

Whether or not the beaches and the water have been restored will be the decision of Connecticut's Department of Environmental Protection.

State engineers monitored the cleanup and are still analyzing sand and water samples for oil residue. If they find the clean-up lacking, they will order additional repairs; so far they have not.

The Department of Environmen-

•

page4

The New Journal I November 7, 1974

tal Protection also monitors long range ecological effects of the spill.

Some oil inevitably escapes the clean-up, or sinks to the ocean floor. , - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - . The pollution often causes more real damage than the esthetically displeasing surface spillage, and is impossible to clean. Fortunately, the Andy Panzo is short and fat, about homes along the lush slope down to tend the bridge for eight-hour shifts, type of oil involved was not highly fifty years old. He walks with a heavy the river, a few of the old piers and one as flagman and the other as oper- soluble, therefore it did not penelimp, has a wart on his left eyelid, boats. But the oyster docks are diator. Many of the other tenders are trate the water as much as a lighter and a large diamond on his finger. lapidated and the boats have been under thirty years of age, and Panzo oil might have. The settled oil will His hands move in broad gestures hauled and abandoned. The few recannot understand this. be watched closely by the D.E.P. to when he talks, which on the job is maining traces of the oyster industry "No job for a young fellow," he learn just how severely the bottom less frequently than he would like. are barely discernible on the river's says, "it's too damn boring. You life in the harbor was damaged. Very Andy Panzo is a tender of the Ferry think I'd be here now if I hadn't got shores, where oil tanks now set the few waterfowl or fish were harmed Street Bridge. mood. laid up so bad?" Panzo worked on during the spill, mostly because no "Best bombshelter in New Hav"The big boats," says Panzo, "the the road crew that built Interstate 95 time was wasted clearing the oil until a ditch he was digging caved in, from the water and the shore. burying him in rock and sand up to The clean-up proceeded with rehis neck. "I was laid up for three markable cooperation. "Those comyears until I could walk again. This panies worked side by side, twelve is about the only job I could take afhours a day, and all day on the free ter that." ¡ oil in the slip," said Walter Temple, The construction of the turnpike operations vice-president at Wyatt. also left its mark on the life in the "A few years ago the same job would harbor. According to Panzo, the have taken two or three times as dredging for the turnpike bridge long." All the parties involvedhelped destroy the oyster beds. "I Exxon, Wyatt, the environmental don't know that they could tell that engineering companies and the Coast would happen, but it sure did. GovGuard -met at the start of each day ernment came in afterwards and to plan the most efficient use of manstarted pay in' for some of the oyster- power and equipment. The cooperain' because the oyster men hollered tion was due, at least in part, to a so loud. They had a point, but the sure source of funds. damage was done."

Exxon has an agreement with all His attitude toward the governits chartered tankers that it will iniment is more fatalistic than bitter; tiate and guarantee payment for the Panzo is a public employee. The deentire clean-up operation for any of struction that progress brings seems their spills. The popular belief that somehow necessary to him, and, they have a legal responsibility to do besides, the government can usually so is wrong. In this case, a Greek en!" he says of the bridge tower, a ones you have to raise the bridge for, be counted on to pick up the pieces massive stone structure built in 1940 they used to come through to the company owned the ship and was afterwards. He has his evidence-his under contract to carry Exxon's carunder the WP A. The living quarters tanks on the shore until they got the job and the subsidized oyster indusconsist of a small dark room with a pipeline in." The pipeline carries oil go. Just as a train line assumes retry. Panzo looks at the turnpike and sponsibility for its freight, so the couch, two chairs and a television. from the New Haven Terminal, says, "When Uncle Sam foots the Greek company was responsible for Panzo is rarely inside when the where the tankers now unload, to bill, time marches on." weather is good. the safe transport of the oil. tanks around the harbor. Like all the He has few complaints. He Exxon is aware, however, that no "I've seen everything but dead tanks, the ones near Panzo's bridge doesn't like to look at the harbor any one remembers a Greek tanker combodies float under this bridge,'' he are large and round and have commore, but he knows it very well and pany when a spill occurs-they just says. "Used to be we'd swim down pany names painted on them. They its people know him. He is, in fact, remember that "Exxon's had anhere as kids. Back then you could see set the river off from the land, breaksomewhat of an institution judging other spill." To counter this publiing the fragile interplay of forms. your feet in the water, and along the by the number of horns that sound city, they insure payment for the shore there"- he points to the eastThe river's edge has become a wall. as cars hum over the bridge's steel clean-up and make certain the job em shore of Quinnipiac River and a If Panzo seems blase about the gets started quickly and is handled grating. "Kids come out here from building with the faded words, harbor and t~ pollution beneath his Yale all the time too, with their cawell. They will not pay for the cleanbridge,..it is because he suspects it BROWN SEED OYSTER- "used meras and notebooks," he says. ~p in the long run-whoever is found does little good to care. He has lived to be oyster houses. Used to oe an Andy Panzo is tired of the harbor. legally responsible will have to pay near the harbor all his life, and has old lady, she'd run a coupla the He used to fish and swim there with Exxon back. But the important fact places-! don'tmeanjustown 'em, I seen it change. Now there is oil and his friends; now he avoids the water is that Exxon saw that as little damsewage and industrial waste in the mean run 'em, shellin' the oysters age was done as possible, and took herself." water, and Panzo is resigned to their after work. When he talks about the the immediate responsibility for the presence. He watches the water present, he talks about apartment Oysters are no longer harvested life and the team he coaches in the clean-up. This is a direct result of just closely enough to do his jo}?in New Haven, because the harbor's Little League. 0 public outrage over accidents in the polluted waters make them inedible. listen for the signal blasts, seal the past few years. In effect, the public roadway shut, pull the levers down.

Some elements of the oyster comhas held the oil companies accountHe does not work alone: two men munity still exist-the shingle style Daniel Denton able for damage to the waterways.

These companies have both the capital and the manpower for such vigilance, and their resources are far better suited to the task than are theresources of any local agency.

No one, least of all the companies

One man's view of t he harbor

The New J oumal I November 7, 1974

Haven; like Boston and San Francisco, is beginning to rediscover its harbor by renewing waterfront communities and cleaning the water itself. A new restaurant will soon open on the West Haven shore, and Morris Cove - on the eastern side of the harbor - now has a marina which offers public sailing lessons. But the improvements do not touch the blighted industrial section of the harbor.

The recent spill will no doubt discourage developers from settling along the shore. Although the cleanup succeeded this time, the prospect of another spill under less fortunate circumstances appears all too real.

It could cancel out years of planning, and reverse whatever gains might have been made in the fight against themselves, wants an oil spill. that by ocean-going vessels. Yachts- industrial pollution. The scenario is Though Hawley declined to state the men would never consent to this indisheartening, and it partly explains cost of a clean-up, one source said it terference, yet are often the most why New Haven people care so little costs about $2,000 per hour. If this is vocal critics of the oil industry. for their harbor. correct, the New Haven spill costalThe public's insatiable appetite The ironies are painful. The public most half a million dollars-a consid- for petroleum products puts great demands an entire clean-up industry erable deterrent to everyone indemand on the shipping industry, be invented to handle accidents, yet volved. There are fewer deterrents, increasing the likelihood of accitolerates and commits intentional however, against another form of oil dents. Reducing consumption would pollution. The New Haven oil spillpollution, far more damaging in the mean reducing pollution, and the pro- a model of concern and cooperation long run, that takes place just bebability of oil spills as well. But it is by the industry-received wideyond the public eye. much easier, it seems, to affect outspread coverage_. then was quickly Each tanker that discharges its rage at the accidents, demand they forgotten. The "perfect spill" was cargo in the northern states cleans be fixed , then continue intentional cleaned; the more difficult crises reits cargo tanks at sea on the way pollution as if all is well. A life style main. It may be that the current back to the Gulf of Mexico or the is harder to fix. economic value of the port is worth Caribbean, dumping the waste over New Haven once had a superb remore to the city than clean water and the side. The practice is illegal, but source in its harbor. Many people a living waterfront community. Yet virtually impossible to police. The it is clear that a more thoughtful made their living from the rich oysecological implications of this abuse ter beds there, and much of commun- approach not only to New Haven far outweigh those of a small spill harbor but to all our waterways is ity life centered around jobs andrein New Haven, but because it occurs creation connected with the sea. Pro- essential unless we are prepared to offshore it continues unnoticed or choke in our own over-consumotion. 0 gress and industry have taken their ignored by the public. tolls, and now the interstate highway Small boats also contribute a large separates the harbor from the city. percentage of the oil pollution in the The beach near Long Wharf is James F. Smith worked last year as an American merchant seaman aboard sea. It seems unlikely, however, that strewn with garbage, and industrial oil tankers in the Caribbean and the government will attempt to control waste and sewage flow into the harGulf of Mexico. He is now a junior in the pollution by small craft.in the bor.

Pierson College. same way it atte~pts to regulate A few signs indicate that New

'/

page5

Tastelessness Done Damn Well

by David W. Dunlap

"I'd also like to take this opportunity to make a brassiere out of a handkerchief. It's something we usually save for special occasions like this. I did go to Harvard, and you can understand how I'd like to pad out the time. Thank you and fuck you."

Is this any way to address the formal banquet crowd assembled to mark the transition of power at t he Oldest College Daily? Well, boys and girls, it sure is if your name is Doug Kenney, senior editor of the fastestselling-new-magazine-on-campus.

The National Lampoon's message, carried at our newsstands, in our theatres, over our public airwaves, on our phonographs, and within the privacy of our very own bedrooms is this: the best way to express outrage is to be outrageous.

The magazine's tribute to African famine is a cover photo of a molded chocolate Sahel baby, complete with distended stomach, empty food bowl and a nice, big, juicy bite taken out of its head. President Kennedy is seen asking Governor Connally, "My insurance company? New England Life, of course. Why?" as a tiny figure in a distant building window prepares to open fire. P'Eggs are offered for sale: pantyhose for women whose legs are missing. A special contest entitled " Forgotten, But Not Gone" rewards the reader who comes closest to guessing the date on which Mamie Eisenhower will die (presumably, the contest is still on).

A treatise is offered on America's greatest Jewish presidents featuring a Mount Rushmore monument equipped with extra structural bracing to support the weight of the presidents' enormous noses.

And who is left to safeguard the moral fiber of our country? The Lampoon artists catch the Supreme Court off-guard, in the midst of pondering the obscenity issue. Mr. Justice Rehnquist, bedecked in Frederickof-Hollywood style brassiere and panties, is whipping a supine young woman who wears nothing but a pair of leather boots that the Chief Justice is licking. Mr. Justice Black.mun is found fondling the sexual organs of a mature kangaroo, while Mr. Justice Marshall gazes up at a naked boy perched upon a bench, to the obvious pleasure of Mr. Justice Douglasthe very picture of avuncular licentiousness.

1 Clearly, there are no standards of taste operating within this editorial framework. The only discretion is that imposed by the Lampoon's legal staff. Most frequently, such control touches on infringement of copy-

right. It is one thing to propose that Richard Nixon and his lieutenants were a group of neo-fascist drag queens ("Boys in the Bund" finds John Dean advising Dixie Nixon: "Listen, Miss Landslide, there are some very icky things around that are going to need a cover-up. And I don't mean your crow's-feet!"). It is quite another thing to print a letterperfect parody of a Volkswagen ad (capitalizing on the Bug's sealed chassis and its ability to float on water), proposing in the copy that "If Ted Kennedy drove a Volkswagen, he'd be President today."

The ad looked too genuine, readers mistook it for VW authorized copy, and Volkswagen of America sued for $500,000. The National Lampoon never paid, but withdrew all remaining copies of the magazine with the offending add and printed a public apology. Co-founder Henry Beard points out that "the First Amendment has nothing to do with copyright law.' ' Where the lawyers do not interfere, however, the editors declare open season on everyone. And to their own amazement ("We weren't surprised-we were completely astonished,'' says Beard), the magazine is a commercial success, phenomenal in a period when most periodicals seem to be last-gasping their way to extinction. Sandwiched between extravagant four-color advertisements for the latest, most expensive stereo equipment and recordings, the Lampoon's wicked worldview now sells 900,000 copies a month (second only to the formidable Playboy in college campus circulation).

The editors are hard-pressed to reconcile this modern marketing miracle tale with their own unflagging efforts to alienate every portion of America.n society. Such a paradox is reflected in their Self-Indulgence issue: a magazine dealing almost exclusively with the editors and writers of the Lampoon. In the issue, plans

are unveiled for the N atLampCo Building. In the style of 1930's decadent monumentalism, the building rises to 1071 floors and contains its own indoor sea, ocean-going ship harbor, airport, steeplechase, and blimp docks. Elsewhere in the magazine, however, noting that revolutionary heroes of the past have fallen by the wayside, dead, or co-opted, the Lampoon editors claim that "When it comes to revolution...we're all you've got left."

Boasting inheritance of the revolutionary mantle might seem ill-founded to readers who remember the "Revolution" of the late 1960's. The Lampoon's cause is unilateral-it makes no attempt to appease the sensibilities of the Left, and its overkill portrayal of racial, ethnic, national and sexual stereotypes offends those who propose to eradicate such stereotypes. The Lampoon sends Nancy Drew off on "The Case of the Missing Heiress." In the course of her investigation, Nancy overhears the SLA plot out its demands: "Tickets to all Athletic home games."

"An' a free two-toned Caddy-lak fo' de away wunses." "Cinque!" "Yo' welcome!''

But to the men who carried the Harvard Lampoon tradition to national audiences, the issues were never expressed as left vs. right. As Cantabridgians, they learned an us v&. them ethic. Kenney ('68) and Beard ('67) were exposed to too many hypocrisies on either side of the spectrum. For Kenney, the telling moment was the draft counselor who belonged to the Progressive Labor party. Kenney found it difficult to understand how objective a PL member's advice would be to bewildered draft-age students. The inconsistencies, foibles and deficiencies of the New Left provided ammunition enough for a good skirmish- throwing in the mediocrity of middle America (June Allyson's guide to a boring lifestyle; Liz Taylor & Dick Burton's tacky gift catalogue with J .F .K. toilet seats and pet Koala bears-"Kick 'em, punch 'em-they won't squeal!"), and the crypto-fascism of the conservatives (a headline screams "Chile's Back on the Menu.

ITT's All Over For Allende."), provided enough ammo for all-out guerilla warfare.

2 One of the more subtle mysteries of the Lampoon formula is readership appeal. Unlike its contemporaries, the Lampoon caters to no one's taste. Such a message is clear in the editorial policy: there is surely sufficient material in almost any issue

The New Journal I November 7, 1974

page7

to offend everyone on one level or another. A common strain exists that demands a white, Christian, male, upper middle class background (with working knowledge of the flavor and fads of America from Korea to Vietnam) to fully appreciate most of the parodies in the magazine. But this small segment receives perhaps the cruelest and most incisive attacks, because it is the background Lampoon editors know best. It might be difficult for WASP's to enjoy Son0'-God comics, featuring the savior as a muscular super hero.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that neither criteria nor controls lie behind the Lampoon's wild forays. If the magazine is grossly offensive, and Kenney confesses that he personally finds "a certain amount of it shocking," such material must be superbly scurrilous. It is, in Kenney's words, "tastelessness done damn well. " A cursory comparison of the Lampoon with its collegiate imitators and the ill·conceived Harpoon will support Kenney's claim. A nothing's-sacred policy encourages the impoverished excesses that characterize most of America's pitiful attempts at black humor. The Lampoon rises above this morass.

Beard and Kenney credit the Lampoon's legitimacy and excellence to former Art Directors Michael Gross and David Kaestle. Suffering at its birth from the misdirection of Cloud Studios, whose graphic designers sought to impart an "underground" flavor (i.e. , Other, Rat, Freep, Barb, Seed-remember those, goldenagers?) to the product, the Lampoon quickly sought out the talents of a designer who could impart the authoritative stamp of slick, extravagant, Chermayeff/ Glaser/Lubalin graphics and Avedon/Penn photography to the magazine. Gross has done a superlative job in this role: parodies (like Psychology Ptoda.y) are as close as to be mistaken for the "real" thing (Volkswagen proved that point conclusively), and the magazine's own identity (a hybrid of jazz modern motifs and Esquire layout) is distinctive and successful. " We should have remembered from our Harvard Lampoon experience," Beard notes (he and Kenney were chiefly responsible for the remarkable Life parody -remember Life? ), " but Michael had to teach us again : second-rate writing can be completely disguised by excellent graphic design." Examples abound to support this maxim. The Lampoon's own bestial version of Penthouse, entitled Pethouse, features a basset hound named N ana as pet of the month. Nana's ga.ms are spread invitingly in one photograph, she delicately sniffs at her own feces in aJl· other. The merit of such indulgence

fact that the only black person among the ba.n quet's guests was Rudy Green, Yale football captain and recipient of a News athlete-ofthe-year award. In prefacing his spoof of Whiffenpoof singing style (the Whiffenfruits, as he called them), Kenney said that he was going "to honor perhaps the oldest and most famous of the singing groups, known and traditionally revered by Yale people and frankly, all the people here, with the exception of the one Negro. Sorry, Rudy.

You know where it's at, and so do I. Kind of fun.n y- if you can laugh at it." The News's guests could not laugh at it. There were some embarassed chuckles, but the prevailing reaction was one of silent, surprised anger. Kenney had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory-the audience did not like the act.

Beard was not disappointed by the performance, however. "If you leave a gathering of mediocre people like this without making most of them hate you," he said, "you'v~ missed a great opportunity." This comment, spoken aside as News staffers left the dining hall, bears out his fellow editor's (Kenney's) philosophy- "if they don't like it, fuck 'em. " The infamous Rudy Green remark bears on the touchiest of areas through which the Lampoon stampedes, lights on and sirens flashing: prejudice. America may be ready for the true romance story of "First Blowjob" ; or Rodrigues's cartoons that cruelly mock the plight of the blind, the retarded and the crippled; or Tom Eagleton's address to the Democrats: "Bree, bree, ga-ga-ga-ga, frip, znip, bzzzt!" But those Americans who read the Lampoon are usually not ready for the word Negro. It comes scathingly close to the fear of latent racism that permeates a liberal society that wants to deny the beast. One cannot make pious pronouncements about South In personal encounters, Doug Boston one moment and then laugh Kenney and Henry Beard are most amiable and seem to suffer gladly the the next with the black and Puerto Rican cast of "All in de Fambly," incessant questions (" When did you wherein the family poses in silk s tart it? Why do you do it? How do smoking jackets, bathrobes and lowyou get away with it?" ). But even a cut dresses with dollar bills stuffed brief trip, in the company of fellow in the cleavage, surrounded by J &B editor Tony Hendra, to address the bottles, cockroaches, rats, dice, and Yale Daily News banquet in New several color television sets. It is Haven left no room to doubt their a troubling tableau for a liberal white purpose and attitude. · ~You have no reader : does one laugh because the idea what contempt I have for all of you/' Kenney told the distinguished portrayal is so outrageously wrong or because it is so outrageously crowd. "And you have no idea what right? Does the use of racism as a contempt you'll have for me after I parodist's device help eradicate vomit. " The designer, Michael racism or does it serve to foster and Gross, was not present to affect an prolong racism? emission of vomit onto the dais, so The dilemma faced when dealing the humor was passed off as locker in stereotypes to attack stereotypes room genre, insulting but frivolous.

Kenney did not strike an Achille's is evident in Kenney's words. For heel that night until he addressed the three hours, he has treated the New is debatable. What is beyond argument is that the lavish design and the elegant, plumed surroundings of Nana's world provide a much more effective censure of Penthouse than any single example of feminist rhetoric. It is the designer's success.

The only standards that Lampoon staff members obey are those that they impose upon themselves. The question of what might please readers is not an issue. Some consideration is given the degree to which the audience will apprehend the material, but the problem of audience approval seems to trouble no one at the Lampoon. "Sex. will always sell the magazine," says Kenney. The Zits & Tits combo does move more Lampoons at newsstands, but who a mong those plunking down the price for the Strange Sex issue will empathize with the wedding cake on the cover featuring a little plastic groom in the company of a little plastic sheep?

'Well, if they don't like it, fuck 'em," is Kenney's answer to negative reader response. "You have to go ' ha-ha' when you read the magazine," he says. "We must make the magazine funny. But we write about things to strike a nerve. That's what we're trying to ao. We're doing these things for shock appeal." The tradition of slapping audiences into accepting (or, at least, considering) a moral message stretches back to Aristophanes and includes such heavyweights as Swift and Rabelais.

The day may come when old Lampoons are considered suitable reading material in geriatric wards and grade schools, but for the moment the Lampoon continues to earn the vituperative indignation for which Kenney and Beard seem to strive.

3

pageS

Journal to glib answers-informative, to be sure, but easy. Suddenly comes a confession of uncertainty.

"The race question is the most difficult thing for me to deal with in the magazine."

"I don't know," he admits. "I guess all I can say is that we haue to do it. It's just a feeling that we have to do it. It's America's last taboo."

Beard concurs: "We can't afford to go easy on anyone.'' The prospect of softening up their full-frontal attacks is more abhorrent to the editors than the criticism such attacks engender.

•'I have a lot of Jewish friends,'' Kenney continues, "so I'm much more sensitive to that issue. I don't have many black friends, there aren't many black staff members here at the magazine. All I can say is that I know of two reactions to •All in de Fambly.' One was a black guy who's

The New Journal I November 7, 1974

very involved with trying to be white, and he was disgusted. Then there was a black woman who is really black, really secure, and she loved the piece."

The Lampoon demands from its reader an acceptance of the hyperbollc perspective. If one is secure in one's personal identity and enlightenment, so this argument runs, black stereotypes do not threaten as much as they inform. Ultimately, nothing in the magazine profoundly shocks a generation weaned on presidential assassination, urban riots, ~nd televised Vietnam ("We'll return to the war after this word from Anacin ... " ). This notion of a violence-in· ured populace is often used to justify the excesses of contemporary en· tertainment. The notion may be right: the National Lampoon, a bona fide mauler that sooner or later

QWLI TY I

CoNTR~

ENGI~.~R

leaves everyone gasping in disbelief, is a certified marketing success.

900,000 people paying one dollar each to be crassly assaulted and de· prived of every precious pretension is some kind of achievement. Can it continue?

The Lampoon already seems to be standing in an increasingly solitary position. "We are now a threat," says B-eard. "When we printed the word 'fuck' in 1970, everyone was printing the word 'fuck.' When America had the Black Panthers, the National Lampoon seemed harmless."

But the legendary Panthers have disappeared and Bobby Seale is now a municipal politician. So while the forces of the Left are busy picking up the pieces, the Lampoon may in fact be all that remains.

How can the Lampoon address its new·audience effectively? Doug Kenney, class of 1968, is trying to speak to college freshmen of the class of 1978. They are a different breed of student. "When I was at Harvard," Beard notes, "there was an unspo· ken understanding that some people had better things to do than go to class; they had come to Harvard for different reasons. I spent my life at the Harvard Lampoon, and still managed to graduate cum laude.

Harvard understood that academic honors were for parents.'' Kenney summarizes the intra-generation gap succinctly: "You know what the bestselling book on campus is today? I'm O.K., You're O.K. Can you believe that? I couldn't. Because I'm not O.K.!"

Yet Kenney is doing very well by commercial standards. His position as an editor of the fastest-sellingnew-magazine-on-campus troubles him and epitomizes the nature of the Lampoon paradox. The editors pose as revolutionaries, but dream up an office building that would embarrass the most self-indulgent power-broker corporation. ''I'm comfortable my· self," Kenney tells us, "but I'm getting sicker and more twisted every day."

Such convolutions of spirit con· tribute to the malaise any humor magazine will suffer. Kenney asks us point-blank when we walk into his

office, "Do you think the Lampoon has gone downhill in the past year?"

Perhaps it has. Energies have been drained by special projects: the Radio Hour and the 1964 Kaleidoscope yearbook, the latter a particu· larly ambitious and admirable effort that has been graced with critical approbation and a second printing.

The past year has seen the departure of Michael O'Donoghue, who, with Beard and Kenney, was one of the Lampoon's three muses, one of the forces who shaped the magazine's editorial approach. The Lampoon has suffered.

And, after all, comedy is a serious business. One chokes on the cliche, but the big hoff machine must be constantly oiled. The Lampoon's revolving editorship policy tries to prevent staff members from burning out, but even Kenney had to simply give up the routine for more than a year in order to function.

4 In the Lampoon offices, cluttered informality seems to be the rule and cross-pollination the medium of communication. Ideas are carried from room to room by word of mouth while proofs of upcoming issues circulate to the accompaniment of candid reaction: "This isn't a great is-

10f31S

DE

---·HUMORMATIC ••~

~\K~~~~

JOG

The New Journal I November 7,1974

sue, but there's some good stuff in . it." Kenney asks Matty Simmons, \ chairman of the Lampoon's parent company, Twenty First Century Communications, to wait before he can conduct business. The reason: "Matty, I've got some guys from Yale here. This is important." The decor is surprisingly subdued, but staff encounters seem to be made of friendly, facetious wisecracks. What happens when the ideas stop circulating?

"Parody. It's easy. It's popular."

Kenney speaks of conceptual humor, "Original stuff is rare and it's risky.

Our parodies are appreciated. Sometimes you can really fail with conceptual stuff." Beard goes so far· as to say that the National Lampoon is parody, that the predominant image of the magazine is based on its unique capability for mirror-like parody of comic books, hate literature, government publications, glossy maga· zines and even the S.A.T. The function, if not the purpose, of their efforts is, in Kenney's words, "to ex· pose the tricks of the magazines.''

But derivative humor succeeds only as long as the reference is commonly understood. What else has the Lampoon to offer?

"Excellent political satire, the best in the country,'' Kenney res· ponds. Political manhandling extends from the simple insult (Q: Who is Jerry Ford's favorite President?

·1

page9

A: President Rushmore.) to the Lampoon's monthly review of .. News on the March." "News" is the first section a reader encounters. There, in New York Times Cheltenham type, the past month's events are presented with a deadly twist. The assassination of Franco's heir-apparent is headlined with an homage to "The Man of La Muerta." The Lampoon observes the G.O.P.'s "sCandal Semi-Centennial" ( 1923-24/1973-74 ); so, too, Israel's celebration of Bomb Kippur! -TORAH! TORAH! TORAH! ran the headline. Chilean citizens bemoan Allende's overthrow in a caption coming from La Moneda palace: "Our beloved president is dead, the victim of a self-inflicted airstrike. Also, he shot himself twentyseven times in the back with a machine gun from thirty feet away, pausing only once to reload.'' "News on the March" greets Ford's accession to the Presidency with "Democracy In Action! Ford Elected by Smallest Landslide in History. Unprecedented Mandate: He Carries No States, Gets No Votes.'' Later in its resignation package ("They've Fired the Shit Heard Round the World"), the Lampoon reveals that several eleventh-hour strategies were devised to keep Nixon in office.

Among them, Nixon dressing in a light brown suit and mailing himself to his wife at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Pat would refrain from opening him and anyone trying to remove him from the White House would be guilty of a federal crimeinterference with the U.S. Mail.

Future issues will emphasize political satire. Beard has become increasingly distressed by the un· checked advances of the giant multinational corporations. There is much new territory to be explored, particularly as the nation seems to be racing headlong into an econo· mic and political Goetterdaemmer· ung. The call to nostalgia (embodied in so many of their parodies) has run its course. "The yearbook was a great achievement," Beard says, "and the last of its kind. How much more nostalgia material can we pro· duce after that?" The editorial shift is under way.

Kenney goes so far as to see the Lampoon as a muckraking journal.

Kenney and Beard, the original team from Harvard, continue to control much of the Lampoon's policy. But if their perception of the world's aberrations as fodder for a humor magazine became transformed in other hands, the Lampoon could easily become a violent and ser· ious assailant. "News on the March" is commentary of the most sobering nature.

They have become an establish· ment in themselves. The National Lampoon is the American Humor magazine: imitated, reviled, at· tacked and sometimes feared-but always noticed. Yet the iconoclasm shared by Doug Kenney and Henry Beard seems to guarantee that the Lampoon will not become a com· fortable, easy magazine that pulls

3EX . j~1~~~ . ,.

• • • • •

RrcE

David Dunlap, editor in chief of the Yale Banner and freelance contribu· tor to the Minneapolis Tribune, is rumored to be a senior in Pierson College. Such reports, however, are largely unsubstantiated.

___j

ararn . ......................... ..........................

~ . . . . . . . . .. .. . . . . . . . .. . .. . .

····-···················· :::::: : :::::::::::: .................•. ................... . ................. .................. .. ...................

1~1. ~ j j 111 ~ ~ ....................

I

.. ..

punches and steers clear of contro· versy. There is too much delight to be had in sending the entire society up in elegantly constructed balloons and then blowing the balloons to bits with relentless, unmerciful attacks.

For the present, several million read· ers eagerly share that delight.

And in view of a culture that now seems to demand discretion, tact and compromise, how will the Lampoon respond to the increasing pressure to make itself more palatable and in· offensive? Henry Beard issues the answer and the challenge: "We will become even more outrageous.'· 0

,.

.

'

~·························· ~ ::::::::::::::::::::::::::

..

-

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!•• •!

Film at Yale: Will the Signs Point to "Yes"?

by Doug McKinney Film at Yale is an iceberg. Beneath been a longstanding faculty disbelief the surface is a collosal tangle of inin film 's value. Fortunately, as a terests, needs, uses, ignorances, glance at the amount of film screened amazing talent left truncated and in "respectable" classes shows, this abused, great resources developed attitude is not quite as pervasive as and wasted, high hopes, and a pocit once was. ketful of wait. Yale does not have a Students actually can get degrees Film Department. Yet in the last in film study at Yale, but they must eight years, I have seen the interest first satisfy catches 1-36: that is, the and activity in film increase at this course credits. The first twenty University by spectacular proporaren't hard to find , they are the ones tions. These gains have come despite that insure a liberal education along the administration's unofficial policy distributional guidelines; actual film of non-recognition. But several years courses are harder to come by. Getago, Yale finally realized that film ting accepted into a film course at was here to stay.

Yale is like trying to study in BeiOne reflects on the screenings, the necke Library with a ballpoint pen. courses, the traditional battle of For a long time, Standish Lawder's survey course (History of Art 68a) " Film is/is not deemed an approwas the only game in town. At inceppriate course of academic study," the mythology surrounding the film tion, its location in the History of societies, the love-hate relationship Art Department was delightfully ironic: giving de facto recognition to between the University and the film societies (the relationship is never a film as an art form , a point contested clear one), and the special events. adamantly by many faculty memIt's very simple: today, everyone is bers. Stan Lawder has been a oneaffected by movies. The film medium man film blitzkrieg at Yale; he deis one of the most pervasive and sigserves credit for the Griggs Collecnificant developments of this cention, the Yale Film Festivals, filmtury (witness the largest movie promaker guests, lectures, Yale Film ducer in the world: the U .S. DeQartAssociates (alumni interested in ment of Defense). We all grew up film) , the Butch Cassidy premiere, with film. Media trivia has practiand those precious few courses. And he still has time to "publish." cally become a national sport.

While the importance and undeniWith the advent of the College Seable influence of film in modem life minar program, film courses began seem obvious- a " given " in any disto appear in small but significant cussion ~f mass media and art-one numbers. The reason, of course, was of the major reasons for a hitherto . student interest. New courses were non-commitment to film at Yale has offered in criticism, filmmaking, and

- -- -

The New Journal I November 7, 1974

writing for film, all taught by respected professionals (among others, Andrew Sarris, Vincent Canby, Richard Schickel, Mike Roemer; and at the Art School, Arthur Penn, Sidney Lumet, John and Faith Hubley, and Roberto Rosselini). Even though the courses were far overscribed, they soon disappeared. While some were repeated, not one made it to the Yale College Catalogue, an ostensible aim of the seminar program.

Luckily, the seminar program survives, new courses are suggested, and a happy few get approved.

While negative preconceptions about the artistic value of film seem to be on the wane, there is still a subtle fear (held by .the faculty and administration) that filmmaking is strictly a how-to proposition, like carpentry or hair-dressing. Vocational training is an item to be dreaded in a mental gymnasium such as Yale. To call film a form of creative expression is not much better. For a long time, Yale has inadvertantly squelched creativity-an issue mentioned explicity in the Report of the Study Group on Yale College. For years, the English Department would not teach students how to write. Such policies tend to discourage attractive candidates.

As usual, money underlies the entire film problem. Find it, and the indications are that Yale will recognize and support film study and activities. Acknowledging the need for a University commitment to film, Dean Horace Taft organized theY ale Film Committee, which issued its report in the fall of 1972. It recommends to the University virtually everything that supportive recognition of film implies. Unfortunately, the report does not suggest ways to raise funds for film. With money, everything becomes academic.

Yale's commitment to film studies remains, "We haven't got the money yet. " But who decides when "yet" has passed? When does Yale decide that it won 't get the money from outside? Rumor has it that the current Capital Fund Drive has budgeted $50 million for the arts; of that, $10 million is to go to film.

Meanwhile, the handful of students presently enrolled in the filhlmaking program at the Art School were told at the beginning of the semester that the program had run out of funds. Ever had you,..major discontinued?

There are still ways to study film here at Yale. Aside from tutorials, independent study projects and the like, a number of faculty in many departments are quite happy to let students approach their courses from a cinematic viewpoint. This has al(continued on page 14)

page 11

r-------------------------------------------. .

Glimpses of an interrupted education

by Charles Musser

At Yale, I discovered film. On successive nights in the fall of 1969, I saw Truffaut's 400 Blows, Shoot the Piano f'layer, and Jules and Jimand I was hooked. Later, I would see the real stuff, ftlms by Jean Vigo from which Truffaut "borrowed" freely. But back when I was a freshman I probably needed the romanticism of the New Wave. My money ran out and I joined the staffs of the various film societies, thereby avoiding the price of admission. I later found that I could be paid to watch films. I became a projectionist and learned that film had holes running down one of its sides and clicked off at twenty-four frames a second. I also discovered that film was not simply an art or an addiction-it was a business.

My sophomore year I made a discovery of equal proportions: a device. known as Division IV in Film, which allowed Y alies to watch films to their heart's content while receiving academic credit. This was a loophole, since eliminated, which let students who c.>uldn't write compositions graduate from Yale. Those permissive Sixties. At the same time I fell in love with a f'llmmaker who was shooting a film based on Dante's Inferno.

My problem was that I was watching films (passive) and she was making films (active). A severe identity crisis followed. Result'; I became a filmmaker. This was a very easy do; one simply had to run around and say, " I am a ftlmmaker." Lots of people called themselves filmmakers then, just as in the Fifties lots of Yalies called themselves writers, or today call themselves pre-meds. My girlfriend and I would talk about the features we'd make with Warner Brothers after graduation. We considered working with Arthur Penn or Sam Peckinpah first-just to pa:v our dues (after all, we were radicals and didn't want to be elitistet. Eventually, I decided to make my own film. I hired my girlfriend and drove to North Carolina. The film was about a woman there and the way she struggled to accept her son's death. When I first knew her. yean before, she told ghost stories; now she bad eeen her son's ghost, aDd the etoriee were about him.

The film wu a whnk:al failure which ended up on the shelf. Y81e would DDt teach the technical dimen-

sion of filmmaking, so we had to learn the best we could, picking up skills from the older students who didn't know either. In class, I studied film with Standish Lawder and Jay Leyda.

Jay Leyda studied with V ertov and Eisenstein (whose theoretical writings he edited and translated).

His book, Kino. is perhaps the best book ever written on the history of film. He showed us Vigo's films, not Truffaut's. Through Leyda, some of us actually learned what film was about. But Yale University did not understand what Jay Leyda was about, and so they encouraged him to leave. When Leyda left, film began to die at Yale.

About the same time, I began to hear about starving filmmakers. I wondered if I should become a doctor, and make medical films on the side. Could 1 make a living in the film business? I would have to leave Yale to find out. I gave Yale one more chance. I said (to myself), "01(, Yale, make me Scholar of the House in Film. Make me the biggest minnow in this tide pool and I '11 stay." I didn't get it, so I left.

I moved to New York City and found an apartment in Hell's Kitchen, between the docks and Times Square. Bebell and Bebell Film Labs was on one side of the apartment, and Motion Picture Enterprises was on the other. Half a block away was the Film Center Building, where the elevator operators still tell how Cary Grant used to come by thirty years ago. I took the elevator to the fourteenth floor, determined to work my way down, handing a resume to anyone who would take one. I never had to find the staircase. A little beginner's luck, and I had a job for three days-working on a medical film!

After that job, I retyped my resume and struck paydirt again, this time on the eighth floor with Mature Pictures, Inc., the exhibitor of Deep Throat. The films Mature Pictures had made a few years before were "no longer hot enough to have legs," so they hired me to splice in some hard core inserts. I also thought up some "stories," and put together a short film using the same footap from which I took tbe in8erta. I edited two Qf the bigpat 8G 8tuB in New York. 'lma Rueael aDd Hany Reams, but ODC8 tbe film 'opened (oppoeite Deq J"luvot) I was apia out of a job.

I passed out more resumes. One secretary let me see her boss because he had gone to Yale, and when it turned out we had lived in the same residential college, I was in luck again. He found me a job that was supposed to last two weeks. It lasted two years.

The film I was hired to work on was a documentary on the Vietnam War, called Hearts and Minds. It presents the war as a crisis in the American ruling class, and its hero is Daniel Ellsberg. While 1 stayed in New York to synchronize segments of film and soundtrack, the rest of the crew went to South Vietnam.

There, they filmed farmers sifting through debris in a village that had just been strafed by American planes. In the late afternoon, the crew would drive back to Saigon, back to their hotel and their seven course dinners. Documentaries are burdened with massive contradictions.

The ftlm moved from New York to Hollywood-from 42nd Street to Sunset Boulevard- to be edited, and I went with it as the assistant editor.

Cutting one hundred hours of film down to an hour and a half was a monstrous job. Just screening the materia) took more than a month, and the entire job took the better part of the year-six days a week, ten to eighteen hours a day.

We watched other people suffer.

We played with people's lives, and the images we had captured were often the only remaining proof of a villager's existence. A woman trying to climb into her son's grave. A South Vietnamese ranger, who would die from his wounds, telling how he killed a captured Viet Cong captain at Quan Tri because, ''They are cruel.''

The day-to-day grind of filmmaking was a search for pragmatic solutions to narrow problems. I began to look forward to the end of the job.

When we finished the film. I returned to New York, and found an aparbnent on the same old block.

But what I came back for was no longer there-people and places had changed. I needed a wider perspective. a rest from the rigors of a ..vocational education." ADd for that, Yale would not. be a bad place. 0

Clu:.uWs M....,. is noro in Berkely Collep tutd llo~s to be nuzking films after Ia. ~ tlais December.

The Emperor of Concrete

by Douglas T. Yates

\.. __,.

·---

'- - --

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New. York

by Robert A. Caro Alfred A. Knopf, 1162 pages. $17.50 Robert Caro has.performed the quite extraordinary feat of writing a serious epic about public works-the building of highways, bridges, connectors, parks and public bath houses. At first glance, this seems to be like writing an opera about garbage collection. The feat is possible, because in talking about the physical development of New York in this century, Caro is able to focus on a single "heroic" figure-the Emperor of Concrete- Robert Moses. And herein lie the strength and weakness of his massive, much-debated book. By making Moses appear responsible for the laying of every block of concrete in New York state for almost a half-century, Caro is able to personalize, politicize, and mak~ vivid th~ L~ous enterprise of

(_

--

-----

__..

--= ··

. .:e..._ .______ - ·

~--

/

./

public works construction. This is certainly a great virtue, for the reader is drawn into the intricacies and difficulties of park building and road designing with the same intensity (and sometimes suspense) that comes with reading a finely-constructed detective s~ry.

9n the other hand, in making Moses into an epic figure, Caro gets into the kinds of difficulties often encountered by epic writers. Too much attention is paid to Hercules and Odysseus to see what is going on around them. The hero is made responsible for everything, his decisions are shrouded with the most ser· ious questions of good and evil, and his accomplishments must, almost by definition, be outsized, heroic.

Finally, in the epic style (and also in the style of tragedy) great attention is paid to the fatal flaw, the overweening pride, the defiance of the Gods, the final descent into arrogance and rage. Of course, with this kind of potent material, it is no wonder that the epic writer does not spend too much time worrying about things like political structure and context, detailed historical comparison, or careful assessment of power relations. This is the sort of thing historians and political scientists do, and they rarely write epics that get serialized in the New Yorker.

So, what you make of Caro's book depends on the way you read it. If you read it as a modern epic (with intimations of Hercules, Achill~, Faust, and Lear), it is a delight. Moses's personality is sharply drawn, and the needed events are all there.

The hero goes from one amazing feat of physical construction to another.

He becomes rich and powerful-and then more powerful still. But at last, he is corrupted by power (he has sold his idealism for more highways); he becomes a villain and, at last sight, is seen dimly as a bitter old man raging at a world he does not understand, and that no longer honors him.

If you take Caro simply as a journalist reporting on the legislative process, the techniques of city planning, and the design of public works and recreation facilities, he is also fascinating. Seen in this light, the book is an encyclopedia of particular insights into New York government-on the structure of public authorities, the use of eminent domain, and the role of patronage and graft in putting together legislative deals and public works contracts.

Finally, if it is not already obvious from what I have said, if you read Caro simply as a story-teller, he is superb. You finish the book wondering why these great yarns had not been told before or made into a Cecil B. DeMille spectacular.

TheNewJournal/November7,1974

Unfortunately, if you are a political scientist or an historian and read Caro's book as a serious historical and political analysis, there is a great deal to quarrel with and to be disappointed by. In the first place, there are serious problems of fact.

Again, if you are writing an epic it does not matter how bad the Augean stables really were. But if you are writing a careful analysis on public sanitation, it does. Caro repeatedly exaggerates the problems Moses faced, the feats he accomplished, and the ease with which he accomplished them (all three exaggerations are probably necessary, however, in building the case that Moses needed enormous power to do what he did and, gaining that much power, he became a public menace in a democratic society).

One small example of the method: Caro discusses at considerable length the heroic task of keeping the sand at Jones Beach from blowing away. Moses is shown using an army of public works employees to plant beach grass on the sand dunes. The implication is that if Moses had not been such an extraordinary power broker and task mas ter the whole project could never have been accomplished. The fact is that there are over two hundred yards of fine ocean sand at Jones Beach measured from the water to the bat h house that is not protected by dune grass, and somehow it has survived from year to year without Moses's lavish attentions. More to the point, public beaches have been created routinely up and down the Atlantic Coast by apparently ordinary engineers and planners. Many seem to persist without help from anyone but the Comprehensive City Planner in The Sky. What is interesting about Jones Beach is that it was a pioneering experiment designed on a grand scale and that it illustrated use ot government power in the public interest.

Caro makes this point, but much of the rest of his account of this and other facts lies in the realm of theatrics and the kind of breathless " you are there" journalism associated with the writing of Gay Talese. Indeed, the book that in my judgment most clearly resembles Caro's is Talese's account of the building of the Verrazano Bridge. The two books have a strikingly similar tendency to turn public works construction into the acme of human daring, adventure, and skill.

The main trouble with Caro's awestruck account of Moses 's accomplishments is that he constaritly loses perspective. Not only have other cities and states built beaches without Moses but they have also built highways, bridges, and all the

page 13

rest. What is more, the pattern of this urban cohstruction looks much the same in one city after another.

Caro, the epic writer, tries to attribute much of this national development to the influence of Moses 's seminal ideas and experiments. But any social demographer or economist can tell you why the public works in our metropolitan areas take the form they did without conjuring up individual heroes and villains.

If Moses were not the epic figure Caro depicts him as, what can we safely say abouthjm? He was s urely determined, resourceful, and ruthless. He served in high levels of government for an unusually long time which in itself explains much of his impact. In his last years of service, he was clearly imperious and cranky.

He had very important political allies in AI Smith and LaGuardia, and they did much to make the Moses legend possible. He also obviously knew how to get things done-and how to use patronage in doing so.

Caro seems to be shocked by Moses's use of under-the-table political tactics and pay-offs. He should study public construction in other states (Maryland would be good starting point).

In general we can s ay that Moses won a number of political bat tles, but he also lost far more than Caro acknowledges. More t han anything else, Moses succeeded in becoming a secure feudal baron in the turbulent world of municipal and state politics.

In this, he was like countless other police chiefs and chairmen of independent boards and commissions.

No doubt, he operated on a bigger scale, but he was playing the same game. City Hall (and the state government) could not easily get rid of him, and so they let him go about his business as long as his work commanded popular support and until he aroused intense opposition and became a liability. Indeed, when the public mood turned against Moses, he quickly became the favorite scape· goat of John Lindsay and Nelson Rockefeller. And then all the concrete and patronage in the world could not long forestall his political .decline.

My point is, that to understand Robert Moses we must look at the political context in which be worked; be was shaped by that context far more than be shaped it. My complaint is that Caro refuses to put Moses in political context, since that would spoil the story. Thus Caro does not sufficiently underline the fact that Moses gained power in large part because he was providing a winning issue for elected public officials. Caro does not emphasize that there were no existing public mechanisms for doing what Moses

a

wished to do. The city and the state were too fragmented in their organization to plan for large-scale public works. The job called for a centralized administrative structure with some freedom from the political mar· ketplace. This is the same logic that led to the creation of the New York Port Authority and to similar public agencies throughout the country.

What is more, it was (and is) re· formers who called for this kind of institution, capable of long-range planning and efficient business· like administration. .

To argue that Moses was himself responsible for creating dangerously centralized and unresponsive public institutions is to miss the forest for the trees. The fact is that there ap· pears to be an inevitable and troubling tension between long-range planning (that is not subject to narrow political manipulation) and ef· fective democratic control.

Finally, in evaluating Moses's career, Caro fails to offer any convincing points of comparison or assessment. He begins and ends with his focus firmly fixed on Moses, the failed prophet, the tragic hero. But how, we may ask, did Moses's record actually compare with public works in other American cities? Better, I think. How did his methods compare with the shamelessly corrupt dealings of t he machine grafters and t raction rings of the 19th Century? Far better, I am sure. How did his vis ion compa re wit h other major public leaders in recent American politics ?

Certainly, he bad extraordinary vision at first, better than most. And certainly, his vision became rigid in the end-not unlike that of a lot of public leaders.

In the final analysis, the serious question posed by Caro's book is this: Can we blame Moses for the "fall of New York, " and thus indirectly for the apparent strangulation of American cities by the car and by the highway? We can if we wish to dismiss virtually every other major social. economic and political force that has operated in American cities in the post-war period. Otherwise not, I think. Curiously, Caro never honors Moses so much (and so unjustifiably) as when he places Moses's personal power and will above that of an entire society.

In short, in Caro's treatment, Moses is made into a god and, for ail his objections to the book, that probably pleases the old boy just fine. O

Douglas T . Yates, Assistant Profess or of Political Science, is the author of Neighborhood Democracy. He is curren tly working on a new book, tenta· tiuely titled, Urban Policy-Making.

The New Journal I November 7, 1974

page 14

next month in

TheNewjournal Kingman Brewster's Years at Yale

By Brooks M. Kelley

The New Journal is interested in good writing, photography, editing, layout and business.

If you are interested, call: 432..()271 432-1021.

Opening November 13 STRAVINSKY'S

SOLDIER'S TALE with BEAUMONT & FLETCHER'S

KNIGHTOFTHE BURNING PESTLE in a new adaptation with music by Peter Schickele Student Rush Tickets $2.00 I

call787-4282

I

t I oIN t; '"'H A n 1~ I

Free Bus Service Tuesdays

T H 1~ A T n1~

'

222Sargent Or,New~.exit46Connlpk. (203) - 787-4282

1HE YALE SERVICE AGENCIES are now open Sun.-Thurs. 7-9

Yale Ring Agency Yale Record Agency Yale Typing and Tutoring Agency our office is at 198 Elm St. next to Durfee Sweet Shop 562-1209 or 432-4667

$ VVE'VE MOVED! FOR THE FINEST IN ALPINE AND NORDIC SKIING, BACKPACKING, MOUNTAINEERING,

~:~:~~:,CLOTHING new and O.rger store

Mon, Tues, Sat: 9 7 5:30

Wed, Thurs, Fri: 9 - 9

-Qt

~Jti !Itrt

the

;nc

2840 Whitney Ave. 248-4475

(continued from page 11) ready been done in English, French, anthropology, American studies, and sociology courses. Film study is no gut; it just looks that way sometimes because it's fun.

The prospects for original film re· search (in any major field) are astounding.

A great deal of film at Yale depends on the film societies. With four regular (Yale Film Society, Yale Law School Film Society, Berkeley Film Society, and Ezra Stiles Film Society) and a dozen occasional groups operating (including depart· mental series and the Branford Film· makers), there is an incredible amount and variety of film screened here, more so than at schools with a heavy official commitment to film.

In addition to screenings, the film societies have underwritten a num· ber of other film activities and events.

Again, money is always a problem.

Contrary to popular belief, the Yale Film Society and the Yale Law School Film Society receive no finan· cial support from the University.

The Berkeley College Film Society receives only limited support from Berkeley College. All the film groups operate on a non-profit basis. And despite the long lines at the ticket counters, nobody is raking it in. The ticket receipts of the Law School Film Society are used almost entirely for operating expenses, special events, new equipment and film· making grants.

Essentially, film groups are left to run programs on their own. For years, Yale carried out a policy of benign neglect, occasionally arbitra· ting disputes, but hoping not to be bothered by the whole thing. For· tunately, the film societies prefer to cooperate rather than to compete.

Competition would result in a losing situation for everyone, especially the audiences. The distinct danger with so many different groups running s hows is that the "pie" of audience financial support will get spread too thin to allow certain kinds of worth· while but less profitable programs to be shown. Some of this has already been felt, and the overall film pro· gram has suffered in recent years because of it.

Screenings have not always been as abundant as they are now. The first film series at Yale was held in the fall of 1935, totally underwritten by one undergraduate. There were ten filpls, and about fifty people at· tended regularly on a subscription basis. Film was regarded then as something unclean. Ironically, in the 1920's Yale had produced (i.e., funded) some high·budget·for·thetimes documentary films, a series called theY ale Chronicles of America. They dealt with large-scale re·

constructions of scenes from Ameri· can history, and were used as educa· tiona} films as late as the 1950's. It was an incredibly sophisticated, high quality operation For years, films were shown spo· radically at Yale. In the early Sixties, theY ale Film Society gradu· ally established itself as a regular series, mostly on Fridays and Satur· days. In the mid-Sixties, screening time expanded to Tuesdays, when silent films were shown largely in conjunction with Standish Lawder's course. In 1968, in response to in· creasing student demand, an Ameri· can Film Series was added on Wed· nesdays and Thursdays. At the same time, the Yale Law School Film Soci· ety established its series on Sundays and Mondays, and inaugurated a policy of special events- bringing directors and other film profes· s ionals to the campus. The Yale Law School Film Society has had Sam Peckinpah, Robert A ltman and Fritz Lang, among others, bring t heir new films toY ale. The growth of film s howings culminated in the early Seventies with t h e proliferation of residential college film groups, after which it levelled off. Now, the Yale community has a unique oppor· tunity to see a wide of variety of film, something the University should be proud of-and which it should maintain.

Another uns ung hero in the brief history of film at Yale is Charles Lewis, director of the Yale Audio Visual Center. Virtually all media at Yale depends on the efforts of Lewis and his staff in spreading the limited resources of the University as far as they will go. It is embarassing to note how ill-equipped Yale is in terms of basic equipment and facili· t ies. a fact t hat professors in need of various equipment discover with in· credulity. Cameras and editing facilities are constantly overbooked.

I t is a testament to the talent of the people at Audip·Visual that media life at Yale goes on at all.

The question remains, does Yale have a commitment to film? It's like asking the Magic 8-Ball. Whenever you ask an important question, the answer that swims into view is ••Reply hazy, try again later." If the funds can be found, this response can be amended to "Signs point to yes."

Meanwhile, the Yale College Dean's Office, on its own, recently organized a screening of Renoir's Rules of the Game. There is hope.

Support your local film society, and tell Robin Winks he is missing something. Movies are adventure.

Hope you enjoy the show. 0 Doug McKinney is director of the Yak Law School Film Society

page 15

The New Journal I November 7, 1974

(continued from page 2) an odd but typically American parA;" ochialism: an inability to realize that there have been many historical precedents for what is called the "new" American writing-Dadaism, the post-war French writers, not to mention Gogol and his descendents, and the ingenue tradition of 19th century American writing, especially of the frontier. A reasonably wellinformed writer of the present day chooses to write in a tradition and is not forced into one; the options are many, but those who choose to explore the possibilites of human consciousness are hardly to be ranked as "less intellectual" than those who are following the anti-psychological tradition of the "new" French writers (who are hardly new in the 70's).

A mP.ric.ans are often stmused to hear that in Red China, many people believe that the assembly line was invented by Chairman Mao sometime in the 60's-just so it is amusing to hear, from undergraduates, that something radically "new" and "innovative" has just come along, a new American consumer product, without history. Charles Newman, editor of Triquarterly, has summed up this myopic spirit succinctly: "Nothing like us ever wuz."

You ask what the "total" vision of my work might be: There is none, nor can there be any. There is no "total" of Barth's work either. (And how could your seminar have summed it up?-have you really read all his books?) Of course a hack writer for an encyclopedia, or a student pressed for time on an examination, can sum up all of Faulkner in a sentence- all of Hemingway in a cliche· ~ but these are the usual lit. crit. word• bubbles, nothing more. Cartoon-balloons arise from earnest, clever faces, meant to impress listeners with the intellectual depth of the speaker. But who is impressed, except those who would believe anything?

Much of the literary judgments I encounter are no more than vapor.

There is a considerable difference between intellectual posturing and intelligence; why the academic routinely admires the former, and is irritated by the latter, I have no idea.

Too much idle time, too much affluence? But even a pure, unsolipsistic rationality has its limitations; as Whitehead said, "The function of Reason is to promote the art of life. ' ' No one could have put it more beautifully.

The ceaseless questioning of reality is, of course, exciting when it leads to action-on a personal, or a political level. Or when it allows an evolution of one's vision. But the pseudo-problems, the pseudo-statements, the pseudo-inquiries I often \ encounter (not just at Yale, of course) are only vaporous manner-

•

•

tim in interviews (Playboy and Rolisms, ways of filling time. I am not a ling Stone).

Buddhist, but surely the Buddha was correct-many centuries before That night she speaks to the Yale Wittgenstein, even Kant-in pointPolitical Union, and the words are still largely true. The Indochinese ing out gently to a disciple that his questions were largely meaningless.

War is "still America's war." The And yet dangerous: because they funds allocated by Congress for the engage the intellect in silly, ceaseless Food for Peace P.rogram are being used for military purposes. The activity, and draw one's attention away from direct experience, from political oppression in South Vietnam is atrocious. And so on. the eternal-in-the-temporal, from But what is eerie about her speech what orthodox believers call God and others call simply the creative exper- is not the repetition-it is.the sense that almost no one cares anymore. It ience of the world, the activation of is an indication of how far we've the objective psyche. I was asked gone. The country is wired into a surwhy I write-which must be transvival trip now, half crazy with fear lated as a question relevant to all about the grim slide towards ecopeople, to everyone who attempts nomic collapse. The last thing anycommunication in any way. It is one wants to !).ear about is Vietnam. really a religious inquiry, at bottom, and takes one's entire life to explore: It brings back too. many painful Why do I exist? Why do we all exist? memories: the light-at-the-end-ofWhat are we doing here in this place? the-tunnel peace, getting stomped in Chicago, Billy Ray blown to bits in As Yeats said, man can embody An Loc. Most of us are doing our truth but cannot articulate it-it is best to forget. experience, not to be reduced to So Jane Fonda speaks into a vacverbal shorthand.

Joyce Carol Oates uum. There is polite applause as she walks up to the altar in Battell Chapel. She delivers a speech which is Joyce Carol Oates won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1970 for her the same speech she has delivered in nov el. them. Her most recent novel, Do countless other cities across the With Me What Y q_u Will, was publish- country. Again there is polite aped in 1973. Ms. Oates is a Professor of plause. Ms. Fonda takes five or six English at the University of Windsor questions from the audience (maybe 250 strong) and answers them as she in Ontario. has for countless publications. One watches all this as one watches Carl Yastrzemski taking batting practice.

It is all so matter of fact. There is a standing ovation and most everymte goes home. Ms. Fonda must attend another meeting. What she should really do is go over to the Department of University Health and get some medicine for her throat, for she can barely speak.

Ms. Fonda has been doing this sort of thing for almost five years now and one can only admire her perseverance. It is a grim way to spend your time. All those hotels, strange faces, bad meals, ridiculous questions which she has answered so many times before, all of it so that she can lay on another audience one Polite applause of the most fantastic bummers of the t-wentieth century.

Why on earth does she do it? I The flood lights from the TV cameras bathe Jane Fonda's face. The Yale haven't the slightest idea. Every-· thing I've either read or heard about Daily News board room is baked and her has never come close to explainmusty. From where I am standing, I ing this most obvious Question. can see her hands tremble as she brushes her hair back. Her voice is Everything she says to the Political hoarse and it quavers, but she reUnion was said back in the middle sponds aggressively to questions. sixties, and if the facts have changed Ms. Fonda does not tolerate intersomewhat, the ba.sic drifts are exactruptions- "Please, will you just let ly the same. Hearing about them in 1974 only drives me into despair. me fmish," she says. Her message is worthy, her diction incisive. She is John Ellis ulith Naomi Pierce an actress, yet it is still somehow John Ellis a junior American Studies shocking to discover that her pasmajor in Davenport College; Naomi sionate appeals-the words that Pierce, a Berkeley College junior, is the seem to rush to her lips-are memoformer feature editor of the Yale Revue. rized like lines. They appear verba-

The Yale LIT

On Sale November 11-13 at The Yale Co-op, Whitlock's, Commons & Yale Station 75c

s;c=...... ,.. ____ ..,__ _

ea __ ,..

-~---..

..... _ c i t y _ _ _

n..l»>c-n..BI-

n....,. ........

'f....

,_

o.___.,.__

-of

Q LL ME. The Idiots J know

I just saw you last weekend, and I know u're busy, but ...

I miss you.

Karamazov .•

by Christopher Durang and Albert lnnaurato directed by William Peters

r.¡ yale

~repertory theatre

Previews October 31

corner of York and Chapel Sts.

World premiere in repertory November 1-December 21

For information and reservations phone 436-1600

new haven teTJ ina/ represents one of the largest and finest transshipment facilities in southern New England today. It coordinates full transfer and trucking operations including: (a) modern pier berths (b) stevedoring for all types of cargo, (c) ship's agent service, (d) warehours and open storage, (e) export and import handling, and (f) a unified trucking service throughout southern New England.

Today the Terminal maintains three major berths affording 35' M'L 'W' at a 650' pier and a quay with shipside rail. With these facilities . and with New Haven Harbor's 35' dee p water channel, the largest freighters and tankers of normal draft in use today can be acoomodated.

The Terminal's many acres of open storage, and million cubic feet of (dry pipe protected) warehouse space are served by spurs which connect directly with the Penn Central main line to Boston and New York, Hartford -Springfield-Worcester line, etc. Motor line connections and t rucks benefit from the new Connecticut Turnpike, (New England Thruway or Interstate 9 5) Exit 49 of which is less than 500 yards away, and w hich leads almost immediately to Interstate Route 91 .

3D waterfront street