Phoenix - Fall 1971

oenlx ,

CONTENTS

STAFF

Sections Pages Non-fiction ........................................................ 3 Fiction ................. '........................................... 6 Art .............................................................. 10 Reviews .......................................................... 14 Poetry ........................................................... 18 Photography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................... 22

Editor Richard Robyn ~..anaging

Editor

Mike Altizer

Fiction Editor

Art Editor

Ray Trotter

Linda Rothwell

Review Editor

Poetry Editor Linda Lyle

Ski Hilenski

Ihotography Editor Harlan Hambright

Pho to contributors:

Advisory Chmmittee

Harlan Hambright-6, 7, 22,23, back cover David Stansbury-3, 14, 1 7 Mike Altizer-18 and front cover

Mr. Richar4 LeFevre Dr. Richard Penner

Prospectus He who becomes a new fresh to the campus, of (if editor, veteran editor, and you will) burning old ideas former editor all within the and creating something new space of four months speaks from the ashes of those with a voice of admittedly ideas, in the best sense of the dubious experience. The ancient myth of the Phoecapsulation involved here is nix.

Of the changes that have rather like losing your virginity by spending a week in been made, the most obvious bed with a whore. It can be is the paper. Newsprint was shocking, trying, mysterious, first brought to our atoften gruelling. But, I sup- tention only through econopose, it is at all times mic necessity, but as work on the magazine progressed, in teresting.

One thing that was inter- the enormous possibilities esting was the attitude the inherent in this particular staff took toward the Phoe- paper form began to open nix. We began this quarter up. To begin with, it is now with the notion that what possible to print something was past for the Phoenix was close to all of the material decidedly past, and that that needs to be published there was no idea, either in each quarter. The fact that the technical or the purely there is more material in this creative sense, that was issue than in any previous immune from criticism or one is ,gratifying to editor s not subject to being dropped who have been forced time when and if we decided to and again to cut whole pages drop it. This does not mean of articles, poems, photoa complete break with the graphs, and artwork. This past, making change a virtue 'increased space is possible in and tradition a deplorable light of more mundane convice. It rather nleans bringing siderations such as lower all the ingenuity and honesty printing costs and less printthat we as editors, writers, ing time. Greater distribuartists, and critics of the tion is another factor, with immediate present, to bear this issue reaching more , on the problem of rendering people than any previous this outlet for creation a one.

But those are technical more thoughtful, responsive organ on campus. That is not changes: of far more interest easy: pulling the stops out in to us, and hopefully to you, this way brings problems on are the innovations in conyour head, many problems. tent and style of display.

But it also, I think, gave Each genre covered by the those of us that worked with Phoenix now has its own the magazine an exhilerating section. Each of those secfeeling of doing something tions is given a unity and new, of bringing something form unique to its own

particular nl0de of expression by way of its own type style, column width, display and introductory photograph. (For those of you who are graphic arts freaks, this is the assignment of type style: ,clear, solid newspaper style 9 point Century medium for nonfiction; the more elaborate and elegant 11 pt. Univers for poetry; 8 pt Univers for reviews, which is a smaller and clearer style; and 10 pt Press Roman for fiction, which is the old Phoenix style. Variations in column widths and headlines are too numerous and too involved to mention here.)

One of those sectionss, reviews, has for the first time its own editor, and has more reviews than in any other previous issue. Revamping of the contents page was perhaps more from technical considerations than an itching to be different. And, at long last, the issue includes humor by two of the most famous and most creative minds on campus, Dan Staten and Vince Pomeroy.

Or is it ... ? Well, whatever.

The changes mentioned have nothing to alter the quality of the content: this will improve or decline only according to the temperament of those artists who contribute to the magazine.

But we feel, perhaps with perverse satisfaction that comes to all editors who have the opportunity to review the work of talented people, that the contents in this issue are the very finest this campus can produce at this time.

Phoenix '71

1

And finally, this quote from Dickens in Martin Chuzzlewit could not be passed up. Although his two characters are referring to America, their remarks could also be applied to the symbolic dimensions , of this magazine.

"I was a-thinking, sir," said Mark, "that if I was a pain ter and was called upon to paint the American eagle, how should I do it?"

"Paint it as like an Eagle as you could, I suppose."

"No," said Mark. "That wouldn't do for me, sir. I should want to draw it like a Bat, for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam" for itS bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity; like an Ostrich, for its putting its head in the mud, and thinking nobody sees it-"

"And like a Phoenix, for its power of springing from the ashes of its faults and vices, and soaring up anew into the sky," said Martin.

"Well, Mark, let us hope so."

The staff hopes, with this issue and the others that follow, to prod itself to create, and in doing so, to prod others to create for it.

If you, our readers, disagree with the results of our attempts, we ask-better yet, we demand-that you meet us with your ideas and that if you can find the time and energy, you work with us to make the next issue one of more substance and more importance. It can be done: whatever sins committed in the past should never haunt a future we ourselves can make better.

R.R.

"Ah! We're beginning to get some feedback!"

Reprint permission Saturday Review

A Visit to Brushy Mountain State Prison

By Bruce Hight

"T 0 be a prison guard you really have to have the attitude of 'I don't give a damn.' And if you have any fear in you, you better get rid of it. You could be taken anytime. You never know."

The speaker is a Vietnam veteran wounded three times in action, a former private detective, a part time union organizer wanting to go fun time and a prison guard at Brushy Mountain State Prison since 1969 named Bobby Cox. And he was giving a tour to six UT students of the bleak pile of rock and steel that Jimmy Cagney would find comfortable as a setting for a 1935 prison movie.

In a physical place, Cox is a physical person. He's about 6 '2", weighs around 240 pounds, some of which is muscular fat around the stomach; he is direct and leans into your face when he is asking a question. Profanity flows as easily and eloquently from him as the suspicion that clouds his eyes when he is scru tinizing a prisoner.

and told the Yankees to mind their own business in 1861.

"I was wounded three different times. Those sonofabitches were trying their damndest to kill me."

He was a squad leader in Vietnam and spent a great deal of his time fighting "a stupid lieutenant."

"The thing I fell out the most with him was when he got two or three of my people killed," Cox said. The squad was ambushed three nights in a row on the same trail, and "on the fourth night the men were getting upset." He then went to see the company commander, who talked to the battalion commander, and the lieutenant was told to keep that

squad off the trail. His unit was eventually awarded the Presidential Citation Unit-"that's supposed to make you feel great."

Cox still carries with him the enlisted man's contempt for those who are supposed to know, and . the contempt has been useful in his union work.

Cox came to the prison after working briefly as a private detective in Oak Ridge. He left, he said, because he got bored and tired of "following people around all the time and watching their comings- and goings." The prison job paid a little better. Two years later, the Blount County native grad uated from high school into

Cox is a tough man, one who accepts authority only so long as that authority can benefit him-in his willingness to rebel, he is as deeply American as the men Who told King George III to go to hell Phoenix '71

3

the U.S. Marine Corps found himself with several long hairs who were touring the prison, asking one question after another about the Attica massacre.

Cox's world has been described often since the time of Dickens, which is sad, because it means prisons haven't changed very much and if they do anything useful, it is hard to see what it is.

Prisons-and prison guards-are now a cause celebre, mostly because of the death of Black militant George Jackson at San Quentin and the Attica riot. One wonders how long the liberal and the left infatuation with prisons will last. And though he and his

fellow guards don't say much about it, it seems obvious they partially resent the sudden interest, while at the same time are also partially amused by it, especially in the prisoners.

The pr i son squats in a back of a hollow with corner mountainsides so steep that at one pOint the solid rock wall, topped by an electrified fence, stops at a face of the mountain and then resumes abou t 50 feet further up. Before one can get to the forty year old prison itself, the town of Petros, a shabby place with a handful of buildings containing stores, homes and offices, must be suffered. The road twists past the warden's home, then turns back to lead directly to the front of the prison.

On the outside there is " small, separate two-story building, surrounded by barbed wire and housing an armed guard.

The guards are friend' j with the students, but only, sayS Cox, because they are with him. Cox is president of the prison union local and has worked Vi th UT workers who are trying t set-up their own local. The studt 1tS and Cox find each other n utually useful, the union needing student support and the studen ts having the opportunity to combine with a politically powerful group of men-hardhats. The relationship is a tenuous one, for it is based on a common adversary-the

esta blishmen t-and position. They are the target, entrenched not on similar ideologies or a both for the prisoner's wrath and long-felt sympathy for the other. the public's complaints. At It is, indeed, a classic American Brushy Mountain they go the unarmed when they are with the coalition, much like Rooseveltian coali tion of poor prisoners. The only weapons seen Southern whites and Depression inside the prison itself is a .22 Blacks. And the differences rifle that a guard behind between the guards and the bulletproof glass shield brandishes students, while not acrimonious, as he peers at the prisoners when are evident and soon emerge. they are in the mess hall.

The prison guards have their "If a fight or something like ideals, but they must, and do, that breaks out, the guard has face the reality that many of the orders to shoot and kill. If you men they deal with would just as don't stop it there, it's going to soon kill them. The students have worse." If a guard is in the middle their ~ealities, but they deal with of a melee? "You hope you don't what can and what should be, hit him." knowing and not to do so is to opinion A difference of doom themselves to between the students and the meaninglessness.

The guards prison guards at Brushy Mountain spend their days shaping and over the handling of the Attica disciplining; the students are riot quickly appeared. The searching for spontaneity and students asked their questions individuality . obviously in sympathy with the There is a basic contradiction prisoners, pointing out the lies of

Warden Robert Moore (1.) talks over prison problems with guards Don Daughtery and Bobby Cox. use corporal punishment. I don't mean cruelty or beating a man until he's almost dead. But you've got to have discipline. They have to conform, or you may as well forget it," said one guard.

I t has been said that police and criminal are alike, that the only difference between them is which side of the law they are on. Like most sweeping generalities, that statement contains a nugget of truth, and that nugget seems to apply to prison guards and prisoners. The former graduated from high s~hool and went into the service, got out, and eventually became a prison guard.

The latter didn't graduate, didn't go into the service and eventually wound up in prison. But both came from the same neighborhoods, gave little thought to college, both were lower middle class. One became the authority he resented when he was younger, the other still fights that authority. And now they confront each other in prison, a surface friendliness with each other, but each wary of the other.

The guards seem genuinely interested in the welfare of their prisoners but hold few illusions.

They like to see a man become a model prisoner, get out of prison and lead a productive life-they can get little satisfaction from in today's prisons and Brushy Mountain is typical. Prisons were created by society to reorient a man, to make him see himself as a member of that society and at the same time make him see himself as an individual human being. Yet everything at Brushy Moun tain is set up to destroy individuality, (you have to have conformity, said one guard) and make them respect the guards, not because the guards are better or more moral men, but simply because they are in authority. The walls and cellblocks are all painted an institutional white and green, meals are all distributed at the same time, every cell is like every other cell and the prisoners spend most of their time not with individuals who have stayed out of trouble but with men who are there for causing trouble. The prisoners are not taught to be men, but how to be prisoners and criminals. And in that respect, prisons are abundantly successful.

The guards are in a precarious

New York State officials, the refusal of Gov. Rockefeller to make a personal appearanc~, the indiscriminate shooting on the last day, the deceit that followed.

The Brushy Mountain guards talked about the first day of the riot, the failure of the guards at Attica to do all that was necessary to put the riot down in the first few hours.

The guards 'are authoritarian, whereas the students, who never gave prisons much attention until Jackson's death, and only then after the Attica riot, expressed deep concern with the prisoners as victims in a sick society. The current resentment of guards towards the public became easily understandable, for the students could not seem to really comprehend what it must mean to be around a man 40 hours a week who regards murder as a fact of everyday life rather than a monstrous exception.

"You've got to 'have discipline.

And if everything fails, then I say Phoenix '71

4

their working conditions or paychecks. But they also know that their prisoners are desperate men. A few days before the students visited the prison, an escaped convict from Brushy Mountain was shot and killed in Cocke County. "I knew that guy, and I believe he was coming around. He didn't seem so defiant anymore and I really believe he was reforming himself. He had a gun with him when he escaped and he's a convicted murderer, but he didn't use it and he never hesitated to use it before. Bu t when you got more than 300 years for your sentence and no chance to get out, I guess there ain't much left to do except escape," said Cox. he shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

The guards at Brushy Mountain are sensitive to the mood of their prisoners.

They have to be-drastic changes in behaviour and attitude are often a clue to the man who is planning an escape, an escape which may end in guard's death. And the guard's number one complaint is the classification system.

"The board of corrections in Nashville determines what classification each new prisoners is going to be in, and the warden can only recommend changes, not do them himself. So you can get a man who in a fit of temper killed

his wife stuck in a cell with a man who started getting in trouble when he was a kid and may have committed armed robbery and murder. Or if a man in the cell starts improving and has shown a real willingness to change-you may think he deserves to be a trusty, but you can't do anything.

And it may take forever to get his classification changed."

Leaving ~he prison, the air was pleasantly cool with the coming of autumn, the sky was clear and the surrounding woods 100 ked inviting. And in the sense of escape that overcame one upon leaving the prison, and in the desire to get out and away from ' the prison, back to the insane that produced the world monstrosity behind us, it became easier to understand what drives a man to risk his life to escape. No prisoner has ever successfully escaped from Brushy Mountain Prison.

And they will never stop trying.

Bruce Hight, senior in Communications is fall term editor of the UT Daily Beacon.

r

(

"Of course the busts have been beneficial. ..The police, indirectly, have helped me.

More power to them. The more arrests, the more my popularity grows."

Drugs, Pushers, and Operation Aquarius

By Art Keeble

Four phone calls, and a few minutes of whispered, urgent conversation was all that was necessary for me to arrange to buy 5 ounces of marijuana, 1 grams ot hashish, and an unlimited supply of amphetamines (speed).

The purchases were never made, but the conversations were invaluable in getting the contents of this report.

This took place on Monday, Nov. 1, in the UT area.

Since early August, 185 people, 22 of whom were UT students, have been arrested for the sale or possession of drugs. The drugs have ranged from marijuana to cocaine, toLSD, to heroin. Have these arrests actually altered or decreased the drug traffic in the Knoxville, and especially the UT, area?

Opinions vary.

Randy Tyree, Director of Safety for the Knoxville Police Department and ramrod for "Operation Aquarius," the drug search, said recently that the arrests have driven the dealer off the streets and underground. So what? is the question asked here.

"The drug situation in Knoxville is tight," Tyree said.

"There is very little drug traffic, and none involving strangers."

None is right, especially when the strangers are undercover agents for the police.

"The cost 0 f drugs has increased and roughly doubled since the arrests," Tyree continued.

With that in mind, five dealers were interviewed by phone. None of the five are considered by this reporter to be "big-time" dealers because they do not wholesale drugs nor do they sell in large quantities. No names were asked and no names were given.

According to one dealer, Tyree's statements are not true.

He (the dealer) said that there was more hashish in Knoxville last week than in the past year.

"I bought an ounce (of hash) for $95 and within 2 days the price had dropped to $75," he said. "I had to sell at cost just to get my money back."

Another source said, ''There is some of the best grass here right

now that Knoxville has ever had.

And, it's going at the usual price ($15 per lid)." For the novice, a lid is three-quarters of an ounce.

If these two statements are true, the recent busts had little or no effect on the drug traffic in Knoxville. Evidently, the effect was only on the serious pusher, not on the smaller dealer, who in reality, makes up the majority of available sources here.

According to Tyree, "Out of the 160 arrested for dealing, 55-60 were considered primary traffickers of drugs, and 80 per cent were dealing hard drugs (heroin, LSD, cocaine)."

Why did these people get arrested?

"Indiscriminate selling," Tyree said. "All of those arrested had sold drugs to undercover agents for the police department." .

Of those arrested, 90 per cent have been indicted, according to the safety director. Two have been convicted, one receiving a 6 year sentence and the other 10 years. The penalty for selling is a 5-15 year drugs imprisonment.

Does a reported arrest scare other dealers and users?

According to most sources, no.

"Anyone who gets caught deserves it," said one dealer. "He got careless and too open in his dealings.

"Anyone who would sell to a stranger or 路even to a previous buyer with a stranger present is asking for trouble. If you select who you sell to, you won't have any problems.

Normally, there are two undercover agents, "strangers," making the buy ...one to make the arrest,. and the other to testify as a wi tness.

Another dealer reported, "It's not the people selling to only UT students who get arrested. It is the guy selling to high school and town kids."

The picture painted of the pusher/dealer by anti-drug' commercials and publicity is indeed a grim one. He is usually a suspicious-looking character, vil1a.inous, sinister and eager to "turn you on" to his products.

"This is the type of man who gets busted," said one source. "He

makes his living selling dope and couldn't be trusted for one minute."

"I don't really care if people use drugs or not. If they do I can provide them. Of course I sell to make money, but I also sell so the people who I know use drugs can have them."

Usually, it is not as if these small dealers depend on the major dealer, such as those arrested were called, for their supply. Not one of the dealers interviewed had ever bought a supply of drugs in Knoxville. Most reported their supply coming from Atlanta or Nashville, either brought to Knoxville personally .or by a friend. The original source for these drugs, according to 3 of the 5, was Mexico.

Only two of the sources questioned knew any of the persons arrested, and those two only knew one each.

None of these dealers have any fear of being arrested. "I know who I sell to and I never sell openly," one said.

"I never volunteer that I have drugs for sale. I just wa it until someone I have gotten to know asks where he can buy."

Another source said that his pro tection is his "straight" appearance. "I keep my hair cut and wear fraternity-type clothes."

"If I looked like a hippie, I would be under suspicion just because of my looks. Like this, no one would ever suspect," he said.

If what he says is true, the best supply for drugs might be as close as your elbow-the guy next door, the friend in class, the drinking buddy on Friday afternoons.

These people will probably never be bothered by the police.

They look as average as anyone on the street, they go to classes, they sell at football games, they write home to Mom. Also, they deal dope.

"I just play it straight," one dealer said. "The man with the best dope could as easily be the Gant-shirted, tidy, curly路haired frat man sitting beside you as the long-haired, dirty, red-eyed freak in the middle row."

In general the arrests during "Operation Aquarius" have had some indirect impact on the drug scene in Knoxville. It is safe to assume that the streets are now cleared of the s,tereotyped, "big-time" pusher, and most of

the major dope dealers are behind bars or awaiting trial. But what about the little man who just has some dope around for his, and his friends', enjoyment?

He knows that he has to play it cool in order to keep enjoying it freely. As Tyree said, strangers are out. But even then, as in the case of one of the 22 UT students arrested, a best friend turned out to be an agent and readily turned the dealer in. Sad? Perhaps, but then again, who can you really trust when you are dealing with drugs?

"Of course," the dealer added with finality, "the busts have been beneficial. There are now 185 fewer people to buy drugs from and that means that I get my share of the new market.

"The police, indirectly, have really helped me. More power to them ... the more arrests, the more my popularity grows."

Indiscriminate se_lling?

Art Keeble is a graduate student in communications.

On a dark, secluded corner of the campus, a 'hit' is made.

Phoenix '71

5

The Moustache ByE.B.

Jess Compton wasn't an overly complicated man, but he was unique in several small and somewhat important ways. Jess was from a large family of eight brothers and four sisters, and out of the whole group, he was the only one whose physique was still humanlike by the absence of an exaggerated belly. When people considered his early childhood home on top of a mountain with no electricity or running water and his five mile walks to a school that was left unattended on corn-hoeing days, they realized Jess had advanced pretty far in the world. He was a miner, but he operated a complex coal-cutting machine, and was equal to the best at that job. He was rough. Besides, Jess was the only one from his family who dared desert the money-grubbing Republicans, and he was the only one for miles around who didn't care to claim that more than half of what the preacher said was pure hogwash.

In that area in which his native genius seemed to lie Jess could even be said to fit into that category of men who are ahead of their times. That area was travel and camp Jess not only outstepped his family, but he surpassed the whole country, and some of his schemes still haven't been caught up with. Working upon the experience he had gained from working with all kinds of mining tools 'and from designing and building his own motorcycle, Jess launched into the world of camping rigs. He started with an old Volkswagen bus that he converted into a camping van for six people. He planned and welded, tore loose and put back together, and he cussed the drill press, but he built a rig that worked the way it was supposed to. Later, he engineered his Dodge van into a much improved camper, and in it are some of the devices that have not yet been equalled by the company manufactured campers. Jess had plans of patenting some of his ideas, but nothing that exciting ever got off the ground. Pat.ent lawyers were too expensive,and no one was available to make allthe drawings.

These details all helped explain Jess's character at one time, but he was getting older, and they weren't central to his thoughts any longer. He had become disinterested in the next camping rig he had started to design; politics lost all but an occasional appeal. He never thought of the motorcycle; and he had become used to his job. But one other unique aspect of his life in these, his early fifties, became more important to Jess and occupied his thoughts more often than it ever had before. Jess considered himself to have been and to be an exceptionally fine parent.

He took pride from the unanimous agreement that his children were more intelligent, harder workers, and just generally better than any of his brothers' and sisters' children and than any of his wife's brothers and sisters' children. He knew to be on his guard against the old saying that every parent thinks his own kids are best, but he believed there was a genuine basis for his giving high quality marks to his four.

Jess took a great pleasure from the路reflection that he was responsible for his kids amounting to something, and this reflection was hovering in his mind more and more frequently now perhaps because the children were just beginning to leave him for that world in which they were to struggle and succeed as he had done. First reports were coming in, and they were fairly good. The older son in the army was staying out of trouble and planning marriage to a neighborhood girl who commanded general approval. The second son was at the university and riding near the top of his classes; the older daughter had just entered college and the youngest child was ranked first in her tenth grade class. Jess congratulated himself for raising the kids right, and that didn't mean just teaching them to obey and to work, but it meant helping with their school lessons, buying them decent clothes,taking them on all those camping trips, and just being a damned good parent to them.

It happened at this time that Jess was peevish with his wife rather often, and their conflicts reached a steady serious level. It was also at this time that Jess Phoenix '71

decided to grow a moustache. Jess thought about sprouting his whiskers a great deal before he ever ventured into leaving the razor from above his upper lip. Moustaches, beards, and long hair were the fashion among the younger set, and in the cities at least the older folks were already catching on , but none of the older set locally had latched onto the trend. A few of the younger fellows had , but Jess's boys weren't among them. Their father had personally seen to it that they kept close-cropped hair and smooth shaves. He would even cut their hair himself if they let it get too long for his approval and every time he did so he would not leave intact a single hair of the younger one's sideburns which were having a hard enough time of becoming visible without the razor's constant enmity. Thus it was that when Jess decided to grow that mpustache he was going to be getting ahead not only of his brothers and of his wife's folks and of the community but of his sons also.

Every time he thought about growing that moustache, Jess got around to wondering about the reaction of one person or another to it. He knew what his brothers would db. They would laugh and see who coul~ make the best joke about it. They would rib him a little and then go eat and forget about it. He knew damn good and well that the men where he worked would say. They, too, would compete for the best joke; a couple of the flag-wavers would get stuffy; and a few of them would follow his lead. Jess didn't think much about what the neighbors would say.

He never saw them very often anyway. The girls would complain and say they wouldn't be seen in public with him, but secretly they would like it and be proud of him, and his boys would probably give him surprised looks, laugh, and go back to the barracks and the dormitory and try growing moustaches themselves.

There was somebody else Jess thought of, but she was not a defmite person like the others. She was sort of an ideal woman who was going to be attracted to him, his moustache, and his upcoming retirement and travels. She was more understanding than his wife, and she had a deep and genuine respect for the man behind that moustache. She was pretty.

Jess also thought of himself. "What in the devil are you goin' to look like in that mirror in a few days?" he asked himself. He would rather look at his wild and youthful face with its attention-catching whiskers than at his abdomen which was getting slightly paunchy like those of his brothers.

Then there was Jess' wife. He hadn't really thought much about her reaction. He figured she would bitch a little.

Jess decided, and after one day the whiskers could just be detected. His wife, the visiting sons, and the daughters,in that order, first noticed them. There were some jokes and laughs; Jess' laughs were slightly nervous, and then his wife said, "I remember how he used to go around saying he'd like to get some of those hippies down and use a pair of scissors on them; now look at him." Everybody laughed just a little more since nobody knew anything else to do.

Then she kept on. "And remember how he would jump on the boys so bad they would almost cry if their hair got just a little bit long? That time all of the people were in and Roger was old enough to be working. He came in tired from his new job and right in front of all the company he bawled Roger out and said 'There's not any hippies going to live around me.' Treated him like that in front of everybody, and made him get his hair cut. Roger was so hurt he could cry."

Roger and his younger brother had started walking. away before the speech started, and they kept going, but they still heard Jess pitifully half shout and half moan, "That's a lie." As he said it, his eyes darted around the room to see if the boys had heard.

Jess was upset the rest of the day. He thought more and more of the understanding lady he would meet. That night he shaved off the moustache.

6

Aunt Lizzie

Speagle's Purpose

"Speagles have the reputation of being the most contrary, stubborn, mean, and dis onest of all the kinfolk. Well, that ain't all true ... "

By Ski Hilenski

Aunt Lizzie Speagle was jiggling her jaw up and down, setting her false teeth firmly against her gums, as she hobbled out to the sitting room from the kitchen.

That was always a sign she wanted to talk. The fact she hadn't said nearly a word since church that Sunday settled it. She had come to the sitting room for a purpose.

Now, you don't know Aunt Lizzie Speagle. I've got to tell you some things about her. The things I tell you about I set some store by, but you might 'n set no store by them at all. It's hard to tell just what.s important about someone, but seeing as how Aunt Lizzie Speagle's eighty-six years old, and her being most her life a country woman, she ain't had, nor likely to get, much exposure, so to speak, I reckon I got no choice but to tell you what I know.

The first thing about her is she's a Speagle. Speagles have the reputation of being the most contrary, stubborn, mean and dishonest of all the kinfolk. Well, that ain't all true. I've known some Speagles you could trust, and I even knowed one who wasn't mean, to my way of thinking. But I'd have to go along with them being contrary and stubborn. It's said that this comes from them having the highest farm on the rockiest mountain in all west North Carolina, but I'm kind of wary of that notion too. Speagles haven't farmed, 'cepting garden plots, for two generations now, ever since the depression when they went looking for work in the mills round Dallas and Gastonia, and if'n it was possible for Speagles then to be more contrary than Speagles now, then I reckon they must have farmed in Hell.

The second thing you ought'n to know about Aunt Lizzie Speagle is that she weren't Speagle born. She married a Speagle. I don't recollect her maiden name, but it don't make no difference, seeing as how when she married she became more like a Speagle than any Speagle I knowed. You might'n have thought that she'd have got that way kind of gradual-like over a long time, getting contrary, stubborn and mean-she was always a Spea.gle you could trust-after living with a Speagle and having to do with Speagles. A lots of people think that. But I know for a fact that_ she was married to Frank Speagle just five years before he died. I also know for a fact that of all the Speagles there was, Frank was the best of the lot. A sorrier lot it might'n have been, I'll grant you, but he' was the best -by a long shot. Y~t none of Frank Speagle's brothers' wives -could touch Aunt Lizzie Speagle for contrariness, stubbornness and meanness, and most of them had a lifetime to live with some of the most onery critters alive. And while I don't know this for a fact, but I have it from a Huffstickler, who are close kin and everything Speagles ain't, I do believe she changed ,real.sudden. The Huffstickler said that, even though she was a couple of years older than Frank when she married, Aunt Lizzie Speagle changed nearly overnight from darn near the sweetest person in the world to the worst Speagle there was. And what puts the icing on the cake, to my mind, is the fact that she never had no children.

Now as I said, this is all to my way of thinking; it's not the usual explaination for these things. And I'm not saying that mine is any more right than any others', which is what I said at the start, that you don't never know really what to tell about a person. So you can set store by what I've said or not; it wouldn't bother me none one way or the other.

I don't reckon I'll say any more about Aunt Lizzie Speagle, 'cepting to tell you what she said that day she come into the sitting room from the kitchen with her mouth agoing and a look in her eye like a revival preacher. As a matter of fact we had 'a revival preacher to dinner that Sunday. He was in the sitting room too, come there to settle the fried chicken he had ate. He had ate right well, I recollect. He was young for a preacher; all the ones I knowed were old men. So old their voices cracked and they coughed and weezed a lot when they commenced to preaching.

But onc't they was a clicking they'd start a sentence low and deep in the chest, then proceed to let it crawl up the gullet till it could jump straight out the back of the Phoenix '71

throat. Toward the end, the words would be dancing off the roof of the mouth, bouncing through their lips like a shaker speaking tongues. But then on that last word, they'd catch it and swallow it and it would sound low and far away, and they was ready for the next one. The rise and fall of their voices would be as smooth as the timing on a new Ford straight from Detroit, and they could tune it as easy as I could the screw on a carburetor. Aunt Lizzie Speagle would always fall asleep and snore listening to revival preachers. If it hadn't been for the fact that she was a Speagle, folks wouldn't have allowed that kind of carrying on two minutes.

But this here was young, like I said. He hadn't sounded smooth like the rest. I reckon he hadn't got the hang of it yet. Aunt Lizzie Speagle hadn't gone to sleep.

He'd preached 'bout how God directs all things, how there weren't a bird in the sky or a lamb playing in the grass what did a thing without the Lord deciding on it, fitting it into His Great Plan and all. He preached 'bout Jesus being the Son of God and being the Teacher of the Great Plan, and how He'd showed us what it was and how we fit into it. He told how God had made the plants to feed us and how man was meant to till the soil, and how that everything that happened whether good or bad was done by God, so as to set men straight and to make sure they followed the Great Plan.

To my mind it weren't the best preaching I'd ever heard. As a matter of fact, I'd heard 'bout the same words dozens of times, and I 'spect I'd never heard them preached worst. But folks said that was because he was young, and it were an uncommon thing for this day in time that a young man took to preaching the word of God, and they ,1.10wed that in a few years he'd be as fine a preacher as ever been in these parts. Well, that might'n be true enough; I'd allow he was a mighty Chris.tian alright. But in my opinion he'd never make a preacher like Preacher Morris or Preacher Reditt. Preacher Reditt I 'spect was the best preacher in the conference. He preached a powerful sermon, my! I never heard such a powerful voice come out of a smaller man in my life. He looked so old and frail that only the grace of the Lord 'llowed him the strength to stand and preach his word. He'd start off normal enough, sort of feeling the words as they come up, seeing if'n they was the ones he wanted. He'd start a bit, blow his nose, start some more, generally putting folks on edge. Depending on who you were, most folks liked to see him carried off in a golden chariot right that very minute or else falloff the platform.

He'd carryon this way for what seemed like forever. About the time you couldn't stand it no more, he'd start aclicking. His voice would rise, his arms would commence to waving, and the words come from his mouth as smooth and sweet as summer syrup. After you heard his preaching you'd want to jump out of your seat you was so full of the Lord, just begging to lit it all out in the last hymn. To my mind he was the best preacher there was, but Aunt Lizzie Speagle slept right through him every time.

The young preacher sitting in our sitting room that day, resting after all that fried chicken, was talking ' 'bout the Great Plan. It seemed 'bout the only thing on his mind. He'd even said that the dinner he had ate was part of the Great Plan too.

That was when Aunt Lizzie Speagle came and said her piece.

"Was a nigger onc't who used to clean out the church over in Boone. He was a good nigger; he'd cleaned out the church as long as I can remember. He was a God-fearing nigger. Had a long white beard. Onc't we was having Easter service. Had a young preacher preaching, up from Raleigh. When he finished the choir got up to sing, "He is Risen." Just when they got to the "He is risen" part, that old nigger stuck his head through the alter window to see what was going on. Three women fainted dead away at the sight of that nigger's head arising up that way, and the organist had a heart attack that afternoon. He died later."

Aunt Lizzie Speagle laughed at that. She laughed all the way back to the kitchen.

7

He was on his last trip from the house to the car, on the porch steps, going down,when he saw the picture and stopped there, quite surprised, to look. It was one of those familiar little domestic snapshots that somehow, from the very first, would have been more appropriate in the family album than on the living room mantelpiece. It didn't seem at all appropriate where he found it now.

Previously it was-or had seemed-like some permanent fixture to the interior of the house, as integral as the woodwork, so familiar that for twenty years no one had noticed it except strangers, so familiar that even he wouldn't have missed it from the mantelpiece now, himself, either, if he hadn't found it there by the porch steps on his way out. It was true that he had sensedinmore vague and subtle terms a change in the general atmosphere of the house, but even now, in the fIrst confused shock of discovering the picture there, he couldn't yet have said with certainty what the change was. At most he could have said only that he had begun to sense it there on returning, after five days, for his belongings.

Five days ago he and his aunt had quarreled; rather, his aunt had quarreled. He had merely left the house. He had gone quite suddenly, with, as few words as possible-with almost no words, in fact-and had stayed with friends. There had been a certain vague sense of fInality about his departure; but then there usually was a sense of finality when he left. Only this time had been different: he did not wait the two weeks, the month, or three months for his aunt to admit she was wrong or grow lonely and call him back.

"I can go back any time I want to ," he had assured his friends. "But I don't know ...Some things you can't take. You know what I mean." So when he had come back now after five days, it was only "to get some things," as had assured her when she first came to let him in. It was, he could remember later, the fITst time 路in years he had found the door locked in daylight.

She hadn't said much on first seeing him back, although he wouldn't noitce that either until later . As he entered she had only stared at the floor and stepped back stiffly, like some offIcial doorman, without emotion. She was capable of a'kind of cold intense indifference herself at such times. But she answered finally: "That's quite all right. You do whatever suits you. Anything you want is fine with me.

Anything. " And he hadn't recognized the change in the house even then-only a slight chill to her voice that all but passed unnoticed. There was nothing particularly new in her rather bitter attempts to make him feel guilty. They had seldom gotten along very well anyway. Through the years they had come to disagree on a number of things. She was perennially incapable of letting him make his own decisions,had for years seen her role as that of proprietor as well as foster-parent, and had become increasingly resentful as that role was im;reasingly denied. She had an irritating and persistent little habit of reminding him to wash his hands before meals,ofl~vinga toothbrush and toothpaste on the night-stand by his bed so he wouldn't forget to brush his teeth. It was such small things that had come to annoy him most. And he

Picture was aware of having failed somewhere-or refused-to fIt into a larger more general pattern she had established for him over the years. But he had made up his mind not to feel guilty about that. She had wanted too much from him, he had finally realized. That much he knew.

Now as he stared at the picture he thought about it. Once she had planned for him to become a doctor, he remembered-like her son in Virginia who was a reputable chest surgeon. But she had let it be g~nerally known that she would settle for a lawyer or an engineer, or later, when it looked as though he would take to neither in spite of her, even a school teacher. It was with a str nge kind of malicious glee that he had dropped out of college in his senior year and gone to work ona construction job. And it was with the same kind of pleasurable foreboding that he had informed her of the Haines girl five days before. He had known beforehand that there would be trouble, and there had been.

"You've got no pride, no pride at all," the aunt had said, because she didn't approve of the girl's mother. For her it was the worst accusation one could make.

For him also it was something more than just the signal for another dispute, although he had attempted to feel more deeply hurt than he had been and had only half convinced himself it was indignation that made him leave. Since then he had tried to think of the scene as a kind of landmark in their relationship. He hadn't even bothered trying to argue or say goodbye; he had only shrugged and walked out, knowing she would sooner die than ask him stay. It usually took two weeks, a month, three months for heI to reach the stage of asking him back, depending on the bitterness of their particular parting. He sensed that it took that long for her to swallow her pride.He wasn't even surprised that she hadn't come to his room today to try to patch things up, the way she usually did. He hadn't been gone long enough for her to miss him yet. Not that it would have mattered what ,she did: he had already decided ...

Still, there was something mysterious and puzzling about the house on his return today-an incompleteness, a loose end left hanging, a question mark-that had made him linger curiously before coming out. And now the picture.

It was lying there among the empty bottles and coffee grounds and other odd relics from spring cleaning that had been put out for the trash men. His stopping to look had been instinctive. It had taken him by surprise, another element in the little mystery of his return. He seemed not to hear the voice that calle. from the car when he stopped: "What's the matter, Honey?"

He stooped and touched the picture cautiously. The glass front was broken. The frame was smeared with something that suggested snuff or perhaps dried blood and an accident by the cleaning lady. He didn't pick it up as he had started to but just stared at it, puzzled. There was something about it he had never liked anyway-a distaste he felt, on seeing it, without knowing quite why: the prim little still-shot

"It would have been enough just to go away in peace-even a peace without understanding; perhaps 'acceptance' was the word ... "

Phoenix '71

8

of a Boy

By Ray Trotter

of himself in short pants and matching jacket and tie, too formal to be quite natural, made too long ago to be remembered. His reasons for disliking it had long since faded with memory. Only the distaste had survived.

He rubbed his fingers over the glass as though to wipe off the smear. From somewhere he remembered hearing once that the picture was made the year after his parents were killed in the automobile accident, when he had first come to live with the aunt. He supposed she had told him that. He believed it to be one of her favorite pictures anyway. That was the strange thing. He remembered bringing her a petter one once-one of his high school football pictures t ha t had been made before she even knew he was out for the team-and how she had laughed and shaken her head and brushed her hair back with her hand and refused to believe the figure in uniform was not someone else. The childhood picture was the only one she had ever framed.

"Larry," the voice called from the car again. There was a familiar but hesitant note to it, as though only recently accustomed to being answered. "Larry. What are you doing?"

"Can you wait a minute," he said. "I'm looking at .. .at something. I'll be on in a minute." He glared at the girl briet1y, then bent forward again. It occurred to him that she might want the picture herself if she knew, that she might feel she had some claim to it now. The idea came to him with a kind of shock. He thought of his aunt's attitude toward the girl, whose mother had been the subject of recent unpleasant rumors whispered among local society women. His aunt hadn't even revealed her attitude except to say that he had no pride, but he knew what it was just the same.

Now he hesitated, torn between uncertainty and resolve. It wasn't that he agreed with or even recognized any kind of validity to his aunt's attitude; it was just that he was aware of a certain difficulty, a certain incongruity .. .as though of trying to visualize the picture of the Haines household, perhaps on the Haines mantelpiece.

Or perhaps the difficulty was of trying to visualize it in any other house, on any other mantelpiece ....He shook his head as though to be free of all but the most central question: in spite of his distaste for it there was something confusing about the picture just being here, now, that his mind could only cope with by degrees.

He thought of the other times he had gone away-the misunderstandings, the quarrels, the harsh words between himself and his aunt, but always, eventually, reconciliation, a giving in on her part, an effort to bring him back; and on his part, perhaps, a willingness, perhaps at Hrst even a child-like need to come back. He was remotely conscious of this, but of later having become less willing, of having felt less need, and of a time when each successive reconciliation was more difficult and when each successive return was made more from deference than from choice. She always asked him back. He thought of his aunt's words again: ...whatever suits

Phoenix '71

you. He thought of the way she had avoided looking at him. And he was puzzled.

The only question she had asked today on seeing him-and it was more a statement, an assumption, than a question-was: "You didn't bring her with you, did you?"

The only answer he had given was: "No ma'am. Just as far as the driveway. Not in here." He had started to add that she might never have to worry about that possibility as long as he had anything to say about it, but he didn't. He had felt by her silence that what he said was enough. It was as though this time, for the fust time ever, he was facing her on equal footing, without anger and without apology, neither belligerent nor submissive. At the time it wasn't so much a deliberate plan as an intuitive feeling, as of the change inside the house.

Her other question had remained unasked and therefore unanswered, but he sensed what it was just the same: "You're going to marry her, then?"

"We're getting married," he could have said but wouldn't. Or even better: "We've thought about it," or "we might."

But he had begun to sense that it wasn't even this particular girl, this particular family, that she objected to so much, as something else more vague and inexpressible. And this reply would have sounded too deliberate anyway. He had felt a need to keep the situation on a controlled-even if impersonal-level. He wanted if possible to avoid both open antagonism and implied submission, but it would be hard, very hard.

He had felt the need to make peace before he left, to establish some kind of understanding, to define their relationship-whatever it was, whatever it was to be-on some kind of permanent basis, something with a label they could always come back to so they would know where they stood. But the label of "approval" would be expecting too much, and it was not what he most wanted anyway. If he had to choose.

It would have been enough just to go away in peace-even a peace without understanding; perhaps "acceptance" was the word ... But out of the awkwardness of this new encounter he had begun to sense, somehow, faintly, a new and mysterious element in the old futility. On leaving the house with his last armful of clothes, he had stared at her for a minute, groped clumsily for the proper words, and finally said, simply, "I'll see you," and had come out.

And then the picture.

Now as he lipgered on the stairway, going do.wn, he was aware that there had been a movement somewhere in the house behind him and a sound like the soft turning of a lock. He was startled at first and raised his head and turned without thinking. But he could see nothing.

Turning to look once more before descending toward the car, he decided not to mention finding the picture. It was just that the whole affair of his return was still somewhat puzzling-so much that his first, his most immediate reaction to the picture itself, was that it must have been thrown out, somehow, by mistake.

9

bailey on chatfield berry on berry hilenski on film miller on birnbaum porn eroy on staten staten on pomeroy still on music tile phantolll of the cineilla

Just what is it we want when we go to a moviehouse? 00 we want to be entertai ned, moved, cheered? To be enlightened, taught , preached at, sca red, excited , stimulated, or just plain- relaxed? Probably at one time or another we have wanted one or all of these things to happen once we have slappoo down our two bucks_ Yet, what extraordinary demands to make on anything, much less a movie.

I say "much less a movie" because we really don't know what a movie is.

So we ask it to be something like a bestselling book and an esthetic masterpiece all rolloo into one; we ask it to be a "box office smash," yet we also require it to fulfill some set of mysterious criteria known only to film critics and a few people at cocktail parties.

Why? Well, we ask a movie to be a bestseller because down deep we are not entirely convinced that an investment in one is justifiable. So box office sales become a ktnd of plebiscite on the inherent worth of the whole medium. Maybe that's why we still hear the term "film industry" so often-somehow it's easier to justify spending money if its spent in "industry."

We ask a movie to meet some standard of estheticism because a lot of reasons, and because of no reason.

What I mean by this is that we don't really know what to expect of a movie, but whatever it is, it ought to be good.

So often has an analogy been made between the movie and the book-even by books and movies themselves-that we sort of blindly accept the critical standards of literature as being valid for films on the rather shaky premise that anything that tells a story has gotta be something Ii ke a book.

Most of us haven't caught on yet that movies don't just illustrate books.

It s1::: is common to hear someone remark about a new book,"1 'II wait for the movie," or vice versa. But when we make a choice between "reading the book or seeing the movie," we are actually choosing between two entirely different works of art. It is impossible for a movie to convey the same type of understanding that a book does, no matter how "faithful" it may be to it.

A good example is the David O. Selznick production of Mark Twain's "Adventures of Tom Sawyer," filmed in the '30's but released (again) last summer . Right there in the titles is the claim that this film" illustrates" Mark Twain's classic.

Not so. For one thing, half of the incidents of the book are missing, and the half that's been included has been altered to make the screen story coherent. Then there is the small matter of point of view. It is virtually impossible to translate what in literature is called the "first person"

successfully to film. In films, we may see via the camera's eye exactly what it is a character is seeing, but that's all.

You might ask, isn't that enough?

No, it isn't. When Tom Sawyer in Twain's book describes I nji n Joe killing Doc in the graveyard, he doesn't tell just what he saw. He tell s what he thought he saw; that is, the elements of the experience are colored, ordered and shaped according to the pecularities of Tom's mind. Thus, in the book, when Tom describes the scene, we not only learn about the murder, we also learn about Tom Sawyer.

The camera's eye doesn't have a mind attached to it; the only intelligence anywhere near it is that of the viewer. Events conveyed to him through the camera at most carry only whatever suggestions of thought the director can imply through photography, film development and editing. Any ordering or shaping of the elements is done by the viewer himself.

So what in the book is the conscious narrative of a participant in an event becomes in the film the "eye-witness account" on an aloof, all-observant reporter. I nsight into the character of Tom Sawyer via the literary "first person" is exchanged for the viewer's insight into himself.

Often the camera sees too much.

What is important in scene-what can be dwelt on in a book to the exclusion of something else-often is buried in the wealth of detail the camera r-ecords. When Tom speaks in the book of the moon glea'ming on Ole- Monk's knife, it is a detail isolated to convey to the reader the cold terror of the event.

But in the film, the gleam is not there, or if it is (I don't remember it particularly), it is lost among the record of detail the camera observed.

In this sense, the scene has been weakened, not because of any lack of skill on the part of the film -maker, but because of the inherent differences between word and image.

II

see the word "bird" without it in itself arousing any feeling, but it is difficult actually to see a bird without some passion, some immediate emotional response.

When a director forgets this distinction, the result is something like "Wild Rovers," a film written, produced and directed by Blake Edwards. He attempts in it to make a filmic statement on the Legend of the Cowboy.

All well and good. But too often he forgets the "filmic" part of his purpose, and gives us just pure statement. William Holden , one of the rovers,becomes sort of a western Socrates instead of a typical cowboy, willing to dialogue about the nature of bovine-man with anyone who comes along. And when there is no one, he dialogues with himself .

Here's an instance where a director simply threw up his hands and quit making a movie. Instead of using images as the bricks of his art, he uses words. But an artist is justifie-d in using words in this way only if he is writing a book. Otherwise, he has missed the whole point in making a movie.

I n contrast, there are films like Robert Altman's "McCabe and Mrs. Miller." Not only does Altman know what to do with an image, he knows what to do with words.

I nstead of using them as a crutch to forward his narrative when he gets into a tight spot, he uses them to shape and strengthen his images. He allows drifts of words to pile against ideas,giving them highlight like shadows in a Wyeth painting. Or the words may smother ideas like a blizzard. Words spoken by huddled men tumble over each other and themselves in their haste to get out, while every day pleasantries assume the distance of the soul that spoke them.

Individually, the words are not distinguished; often they are even hard to hear clearly. LaAguage here submits to the primacy of the visual image.

And because the relationship between image and emotion is direct,we cannot be dispassionate about what we see.

Our attention is directed to the center of the filmic experience itself, not away from it, as in "Wild Rovers.".

A movie

is a series of images linked in a sequence Ii ke, in a loose sense, words in a sentence. But there the similarity ends. Words are not images.

Words are bits of ideas, concepts of intelligence. Before they can affect us in any way, they must be translated by the mind into signals and relayed to the proper emotional equipment. Only then, in this seco'1d-hand manner, do we begin to empathize with t he anger or pity or joy reported on a page of print.

I mages are different. I mages do not have definite sets of denotations or connotations like words. They need to be set in a context of experience in order for us to understand them. But they can affect us without the need for translation by the mind sight connects them directly to the emotions. We can

on each detail separately, look at several at a time, or return to one for consideration from time to time .

We can do any or all of these things with the experience of a book because the experience is composed of words, whose essence is thought. Thought is linear; if we interrupt or double back in a linear experience, little damage is done to it because of the nature of our way f thinking. The order of a straight line is easy to restore.

The movie, however, presents a montage experience. The elements of it are thrown at the viewer simultaniously at a pace determined by someone outside himself, much Ii ke lived experience. Without mechanical aid, he cannot of his own powers control the speed with which details are presented,nor dwell in anyone nor return to anyone. The experience is not linear , it is not conducive to thought, to comtemplation or analysis, as in a book . This barrage of detail is only fully conducive to the senses.

Thus the experience of film is comprehended di rectly by the emotions, and only se-condarily by the mind, by thought.

The success of a film like "Willard," for example, is entirely dependent upon this understanding of filmic experience. I dare say there isn't a significant scene in it that n~Cluires the presence of mind. The film is entirely dependent upon our feelings about rats-not our thoughts about them, nor our ideas-but our squeemishness, our fear, our nausea at the very sight of them. In this unsophisitcated way this

unsophisticated film makes use of the direct conne-ction between image and emotion. I n this sense,"Willard" is an essential film.

When we establish certain criteria for art, they are of necessity ideas, intellectual notions. While such criteria may be used to evaluate other ideas and intellectual notions, they are useless and even harmful if used to judge the experience, or more accurately, the illusion of experience,that film provides, except when that experience touches an idea.

Hence, idealic standards for thefilm are valid only in relation to matters of form, which is itself an idea. A film does not have to illuminate ideas like a book does, as is the case with "Willard." A film should contain simply the illusion of experience, an illusion of the same kind of thing we live everyday. That's all. Dispassionate, logical consideration of the phenomena on film not only is alien to our means of perceiving it, but, given our method of perceiving it, is also physically impossible to achieve.

A good movie, like a good poem, in Archibald McLeish's word, "should not mean but be." Perhaps that is why we expect so many things of a movie, because it apes lived experience so well. We expect the same things, or don't know what to expect, of experience. It just happens; it is; later on, maybe it means.

Ski Hilenski, who writes a column on films each week in the Beacon, is a graduate student in English.

Phoenix Bestseller List Non-Fiction 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: Brown Last Whole Earth Catalogue: Portola/Random House Fu ture Shock: Toffler Greening of America: Reich Inside the Third Reich: Speer Primal Scream: Janov Beyond Freedom and Dignity: Skinner Norman Rockwell: Illustrator: Guptill Sensuous Man: "M" Design with Nature: McHar g

III

Fiction

A viewer's

experience with a movie differs from a reader's experience with a book. The elements of the phenomenon a book reports are set down in linear fashion. That is , we read one fact after another in some line of logic the author has decided upon.

Each fact comes at us one at a time; we can control almost everything about them, even the speed with which they come at us , without the aid of any sort of mechanical contrivance.

In a boo k, experience is bra ken down for us in little pieces. We can study the relationship of the pie-ces with each other by studying the structure of the sentence which presents them. If we like, we can dwell

Phoenix '71

14

Marius 2. Chocolate Days, Popsicle Weeks: Hannibal 3. The Spook Who Sat by the Door: Greenlee 4. The Bell Jar: Plath 5. The Exorcist: Blaty 6. Revenge of the Lawn: Brautigan 7. QB VII: Uris 8. Strangers in a S t'range Land: Heinlein 9. You Never Promised Me a Rose Garden: Green 10. Catch-22: Heller

1. Coming of Rain:

List composed from reports of Gateway Book Store, Campus Bookstore and University Bookstore for the month of October.

Thanks to Mary Kelly for compilation of the list.

staten was here

pomeroy's static

fÂŁlf

I t's always difficult to write a review, it's usually difficult to read a review, and it's always impossible to understand why the reviewer felt compelled to write the review. But anyone exposed to I Was A Teenaged Teenager has a definite compulsion to do something, and hopefullysomething irresponsible. This review is my own irresponsible reaction to an irresponsible publication .. ,.and only God and Vince Staten are aware of the extent to which I have been exposed to this "book."

The authors have attempted something difficult, if not downright dangerous. They have attempted to be funny for the mere hedonistic satisfaction (yours as well as theirs) of being funny . The world today doesn't like something unless it has a message, doesn't like humor unless it is really staire. But since no one has ever determined where plain humor ends and real satire begins, you can be your own judge. If you can laugh at yourself it really doesn't matter. I f you can't, then nothing really matters, especially you.

At this point I suppose you are wondering what Teenaged Teenager contains, and at this point I should tell you something abou t it so that this won't be a review that really isn't a review. The bookh2s the Vince Staten observations on life that we have all come to know and love (unless you were on the Homecoming Queen Selection Committee last year), and the Pomeroy penmanship that we have all come to accept. Staten, whether describing his attempt to procure a date from a hostile feminine world, his inability to comprehend the inevitable hostility of the omnipresent roommate, or his experience as a non-entity in the environs of New York City, manages to field the charge of relevance and charge the idea of good-natured humor in that style which is all his own, but which carries universal acceptance.

Pomeroy is there, as he always seems to be. I can say no more. If I did it would be like trying to analyze the punchline of a funny joke, or at least attempting to convince an intransigent audience that the punch line actually does exist, even if the King's clothes didn't. The judgment is yours, and the book is yours, and the world is yours.

I Was a Teenaged Teenager is just one piece of that world, a piece which happens to have a 50 cent price tag on it. But then 20th century America has taught us all to expect one tag or another and we shouldn't expect a revolutionary divergence here. Besides, if an yone thi n ks that a 50 cent charge is the authors' own way of entering the glittering world of capitalism he is welcome to take a look at my bank account, and have another good laugh for himself.

~ ,,-..

,.~ ~~

I",

...

I\t.W

~,..,."

_" ca""'Oq ~ '-'

~ e.G,,\- ciAw ~

st~,,~ etiMo"

Dan Pomeroy is a graduate student in history. His cartoons, "Pomeroy was Here, " appear regularly in the Beacon.

Vince Staten, a graduate student in communications, writes a regular column, "Staten's Static," for the Beacon.

L

Phoenix '71

15

From the UT Press "This is the way the world ends, This is the world ends, This is the way the world ends... u T.S. Eliot

III

II A Review of saigon cemetery by D. C. Berry: A Review as View or View as Review Reviewed by Tracy R. Miller Buzzart, 0 great bombardier one to circle circle circle and cautiously circle and recircle a dead calf or Negro prince. Before throwing his shoulder into a spiral, Buzzart gets the eyes of the maggots on beads-eye. From the extended ankle the spur extends. He neatly drops his beak. He plummets.

Swoops ... scoops air.

A hallelujah of wings near the ground . . . swish ... swish ... skeek ... s k e e k ...s k e e k ..... skeek (skeek), and then the pious collection of Black into folded wings. Skeek. He promenades to ther.carcass. He swaggers like a Tudor courtier. His head serves as a tray, to keep his eyes from pitching to the ground. Only his nares know where the whole beast is going .... hatchet-head. -But 0 this idyll was long

ago.

Buzzart knew this; never the less, he longed for the pastorals of Theocritus and of Sidney and of Spenser. Rabbits died then of old age or from the slick of the hound's tooth, from the arrow, from the trap. Then Buzzart's wings were gorgeous black-black shields. He stared at them and dared the brilliance to char his eyes into planets capable of outspinning Kepler's laws. Bacon, fearing to experiment with Buzzart, tested the innards of a rooster and found that ice was thicker than blood. Little did he know that Buzzart blood was thicker than a spur. Skeek.

Skeek. Buzzart worked in geometry then, in cones and spirals. The point of Buzzart's beak balanced in the center of the rabbit's nice heart (skeek).

Many years later; yea, in the latter days ....

Yea, in the latter days there were sparrows andwood-peckersonfamp posts, but usually Buzzart lounged there, leaving little flaproom, seldom preening, just watching .... Buzzart worked his soft beak against the soot-chromed lamp post ....

He shit "splat" on the concrete and balanced without talons. Nubs. He balanced on nubs, nubs worked smooth from hopschotching asphalt playgrounds.

Once Buzzart waited above pastures; eddying there on currents of Attic air, he waited for Baby Oedipus to spoon his bubble and die. But B.O. endoo up downtown, followed by Buzzart: a kite tied to civilization's very long umbical cord.

I n the latter days the people refused "to accept Buzzart as a sign. Yea. They hardened their hearts and made their necks stiff. Lowhulk, they called him. A North Georgia Peace Officer shot one and wore the hulk around his Dodge-Commercial neck, a sign to the niggers that if Buzzart didn't get them that the Law by god would.

Weeks later the North Georgia Sheriff was found in a swamp. His neck was very stiff and the bruises on his body could have served as paint samples. A sign around his neck said : Look Ahere What Buzzart Done Done.

The FBI investigated and knowed a Buzzart done it and hung the very motherfucker hulk-up.

Buzzart, waxing human, came and picked his brother and the sheriff from the ropes; but no one took it for a sign, and buzzart skeeked.

Yea. In the latter days skeeks and skeeks filled the air and verily verily ruined radar and even telly.

I n the latter days Buzzart looked for a green tree and found that they were all apocalyptic gray; he lit on a limb and felt it slush Ii ke old ice beneath his nubs.

Skeek, Skeek. Skeek. All the woodpeckers were dead; they had choked on the old ice. Buzzart took a dead woodpecker winglet to the lamp post. Clack, Clack .. .he worked the soot off and carefully sharpened his soft beak on the iron. He ate and then slept-a black ballerina on a quite gray and iron stage.

Near the very end Buzzart gummed the warp of radioactive bone. In a beak of meat he tasted dust. The arm of the lamp post became too high for him to reach .... He no longer worked in geometry but in dots. His breast was one big red dot, as his beak continually fell there and drew blood. He used his breast as a tray to carry his last wounds....

I n the very end Flannery O'Connor fed him short stories which ended in death, and T.S. Eliot offered him hollow men. But Buzzart could not fly in fiction. The ink flaked his wings. He skeeked for the sun but was shown a bibliography of sunset.

D. C. Berry is a graduate student in English . .saigon cemetery, a collection of poems dealing with the Vietnam war, will be published early in 1972 by the

University of Georgia Press.

Some critical works stray far from the central purpose they espouse, and others adhere rigorously to the point at the risk of monotony and pedantry, but Aldous Huxley's Quest for Values maintains a mean between these extremes. This clear-headed, interesting work by Milton Birnbaum, the departmental chairman of English at American I nternational College, avoids both these errors. The author achieves not only a fascinating description of Huxley, the seeker, but also a reasonable estimate of the successfulness of Huxley's quest.

Drawing upon a virtually exhaustive knowledge of Huxley's works in fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, Birnbaum reveals the character of Huxley, a modern man facing all the modern dilemmas. He describes Huxley's soul as "the battleground between the challenging barks of 'Darwin's Bulldog' (his paternal grandfather's sobriquet) and the melancholy promptings for withdrawal of his maternal granduncle, Matthew Arnold." The tension between these opposing forces drove Huxley to seek values in the areas of art, of ooucation, of government, of sex, of nature, of science and of religioun. And, as he traces the quest of Huxley, Birnbaum cautiously distinguishes between the opinions of Huxley's fictional characters and the opinions Huxley candidly expresses in his essays. Noting the gradual development of Huxley's ideal character-from the inadequate Sheldonian classifications of physical and psychological types to the integrated personality of Mark Rampion (Point Counter Point), and finally to the mystical, ideal personality-Birnbaum traces Huxley's quest toward a "self-transcendence" which would make possible an intiutive , unitive experience of God. The quest, characteristic of many contemporary men, movoo in Birnbaum's judgment through three distinct, though paradoxical, phases. An instinctively scientific and religious man, Huxley early rejected western science and religion; later, however, he returned to an appreciation of western science and western religion, though with an apparent lack of full assurance. For Huxley ultimately sought the solice of a drug (mescaline) which, if incapable of producin g values, would at least make him temporarily unaware of his failure to discover values. He sought the equivalent of "some" to ease the pain of his failure.

Birnbaum shows excellent judgment in his analysis of Huxley's literary merit, realizing that it is his "timeliness" rather than his "timelessness" that • attracts his readers. Even though he realizes that "even his most ardent admirers, however, will not claim for Huxley a seminal role in the shaping of twentieth century literature," Birhbaum makes a valid case for the study of Huxley's work. Birnbaum's attempt to determine the successfulness of Huxley's quest ends, unlike Huxley's, in success.

Tracy R. Miller, a teaching assistant in the English Department, h~s a paper, "Archetypal Patterns in 'Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking,'" scheduled for publication in the Walt Whitman Review in Spring, 1972.

Phoenix '71

16

Reviewed by Fred Bailey

A strong pacifist current premeates American thought and like all things in the realm of ideas, has been subject to change. In For Peace and Justice, Charles Chatfield puzzles over the question of whether between this century's two world wars pacifism functioned in a positive, justice-seeking role in American society, or whether it simply performed the negative act of opposing war. During that era, Chapfield discovered that proponents of nonviolence evolved from passive opposition to warfare to a broader influence upon both domestic and foreign policy. Thus pacifist leaders joined with the larger peace movement to oppose rearmament, to propagandizeagainst war, and, late in the 1930's, to support neutrality.

At the same time, these humanitarian individuals applied their theories of nonresistance to labor, civil rights, and social justice movements. Pacifist participation in the Michigan sit down stri kes ( , 936) and early efforts to secure public accomodations for Negroes forshadowed the nonviolent flavor of the protest of the 1960's. However, the movement into the realm of social justice caused an ideological crisis among pacifist. While opposition towar can be an individual's conscientious and submissive act, the more complex application of nonviolence in order to change institutions implies a form of coercion foreign to traditional pacifist-Christian concepts. In his analysis of this conflict, Chatfield produces a significant interpretation of this period and concludes that an element of compulsion, which had entered into American pacifism, would after World War II be repeatedly applied to the problem of social change.

Relying most exclusively on primary materials, Chatfield has done a tremendous job of research. His work is almost encyclopedic and provides a wealth of information. UnfortunatelY, this vast concentration of facts tends to obscure much of the work's meaning..

Doubtless, the author realized this fau It and his inclusion of numerous explaFlatory footnotes is helpful, but a more simplified narrative would have made the book more understandable. In addition, Chatfield assumes the reader has some knowledge of the pacifist role in American history. He does not provide any background to his subject, with the result that the opening pages reveal a mature pacifist movement with virtually no antecedents other than the traditional pacifist religious sects-Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethern. Perhaps he should have devoted some space to discussing pacifism in the Nineteenth century. Given Chatfield's discussion of pacifism and social justice, he should at least have mentioned William Lloyd Garrison, the noted abolitionist, and his role as a leader of the nonresistence movement of the 1830's. In his conclusion, the author is better at relating his work to subsequent events, but even so he still assumes his audience to have a specializoo knowledge. For example, he states that the Followship of Reconciliation clarified its position on the use of coercion in 1965, without explaining what form the clarification took. As a source of knowledge and interpretation on the pacifist movement, 1914, to 1941, this book is excellent.

However, the work does not seem designed for light or casual reading.

Fred Bailey, graduate student in history and former research assistant for the Andrew Johnson Project, is majoring in social and cultural history.

By Hugh Still

T he

who combine vocal harmonies with trend in popular music at the jazz, classical, and pop influences. beginning of the 1970's is toward Other top vocal groups are the Fifth eclecticism-music that cannot be Dimension, the Association, and easily categorized, but draws from all Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. sources and styles. There are many and "Heavy," so-called psychedelic various styles of music which currently music is still quite popular, however. exist, but the borderlines between them gradually becoming more and The utilization of f~zz-tone, feedback, and heavy am_tion characterizes more i ndefi nable. this music, as played by such groups as There is no single major influence Grant Funk Railroad, Black Sabbath, affecting or controlling music at the Cactus, and Led Zeppelin. present time as there has been in the Other variations of rock music have past. Various forms of music all have developed in the last few years. their loyal followings and continue to flourish. These types of music include Latin-rock utilizes Latin-American popular, contry, jazz, blues, soul. and percussion and rhythms and is rock. Rock music is subdivided into represented

by Santana and EI many styles, hard-rock, soft-rock, Chicano. Jazz-rock is represented by coutnry-rock, folk-rock, including horn bands such as Blood, Sweat, and Tears and Chicago. acid -rock, Lati n-rock, and jazz-rock.

It's becoming more and more Horn sections are an integral part of difficult to categorize music now, as so rhythm and blues-black music now many groups are influenced by a large number of sources, which they incorporate into their music. Many artists and performers, tired of being labeled and categorized, refer to all music as "pop," or simply "music."

The most important, and influential, trend in the last year or so is the emergence of country music into national prominence and popularity.

Exposure on pri me-time television of performers sLich as Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, and G len Campbell has been primarily responsible for the upsurge in popularity, but the blending of country music with both pop and rock into smoother, more melodic forms has also been important.

Traditiona"Y associated with white rural Southerners, country music moved north into the big cities and is now popular nationwide. It is the music of the lower middle-class of America, both urban and rural. 路The hillbilly sounds of twanging guitars and banjos have been softened by orchestral arrangements with strings, horns, and choral backup_ The always straightforward, down-to-earth lyrics have been greatly enhanced by better-written, smoother me lod ies.

Commercially successful, popular singers such as Dean Martin, Glen Campbell, Tom Jones, O. C. Smith, and Englebert Humperdinck have helped to popularize modern country music. The emergence of the Nashville Sound into the national limeligh-t has been very beneficial to traditional country singers such as Eddy Arnold, Merle Haggard, Charley Pride, Johnny Cash, and Tammy Wynette.

The influence of country music has also affected the rock culture. Acoustic guitars and country instruments such as banjo, fiddle, and steel guitar have combined with rock rhythms and electricity into a new, popular style known as country-rock. Meaningful lyrics, vocal harmonies, both acoustic and electric sounds with a country-folk feel-all have been combined into one by such groups as CSN&Y (Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young), Poco, Barefoot Jerry, and Mother Earth.

Folk music has also been infused with elements of country and rock.

Old masters from the 60's such as Bob Dylan and Joan Baez have changed with the trends, and are still quite popular. Dylan, the leader in folk-rock, also helped to initiate the move into country-rock by recording in Nashville.

James Taylor, basically a folk singer-guitarist, combined elements of country, gospel, blues and rock into his music and _c urrently is one of the top "pop" superstars.

There is somewhat a general trend in rock toward softer, more commercial sound and away from the harder, "psychedelic" sounds. One of the most popular soft-rock groups is the Carpenters, the brother-sister team

known by the popular term "soul music." performed by black artists, soul music was originally popular with only black people but now is quite popular in the white community as well.

Companies like Stax and Motown have achieved commercial success by combining black energy and excitement with slick arrangements and catchy lyrics. Black performers are more popular and successful than ever before and include such artists as Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, t!1e Temptations, the Supremes, and the Jackson Five.

A not her

form of music associated with black artists which has received more acceptance than ever is the blues.

Long looked down upon as a low form of music, the blues was revitalized by

Phoenix '71

17

young white musicians who made it popular.

White bluesmen such as Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, and John Mayall also readily gave credit to the black musicians they e.mulated.Thus, needed exposure and recognition are finally coming to such stellar blues performers as B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howling Wolf, and John Lee Hooker.

The blues is also becoming more eclectic, utilifing string and horn arrangements, vocal chourses, and guitar effects such as fuzz and wah-wah. Combinations of blues and rock are represented by such groups as Steppenwolf, Ten Years After, and Savoy Brown.

I n an effort to compete with pop music, jazz is also becoming more commercially oriented. I n add ition to the recording of pouplar tunes, elements of rock and soul are being fused with jazz arrangements and improvisation. Funky patterns on the electric bass and rock drum rhythms are bei ng used more often, as well as electric effects on guitar and horns.

Big band leaders like Quincy Jones

and Buddy Rich are synthesizing solid, progressive music from various styles and sources. This music is both commercially successful and beyond categorizat io n.

For jazz purists and those into abstract music, the avant-garde jazz musicians continue to explore new forms of music and progress fu rther from melody and meter.

Electronic instruments such as the Moog synthesizer are being used to create music, and have produced some unusual sounds. Electronic music, however, does not seem to be any kind of trend.

Eclectic music with no categories is the trend for the '70's-music which combines elements of all styles including pop, rock, jazz, country, and blues. There wi II always be specialized styles, each with its -own loyal following; but the overall trend is away from labels and categories. Music will just be music.

Hugh Still, a senior in mircobiology, is a professional musician (bass guitar), and has a regular column on music in the Daily Beacon.

love

we met in summer, wondrous idyllic summer; walked on through

sweet green fields

of coming love. dotted with daisies they were, gentle yellow daisies. sweet green fields grew and were forests; Ir e me

mb

er us at fi rst, beautifu I and peacefu I. we passed through pine trees, they leapt into the ai r with love for the sun, tall scepters crowned with jade taking her in was my arms like

a thousand roses; sweet,

tender,

pure hands locked, lips touched,

bl e

s

sed

ne

Ss

the voices

cozing from her to me, me to her, her to me.

So many voices telling what to go and where to be and all the why's and how's and who to obey.

stro lied on, by dinkle-dankle streams

The mother's voice, the father's voice, and having to be on time.

Floating down from billowed clouds of

and Michael who had found himself lost himself again and found himself years later looking musty grey and sitting lonely in

space; empty places where soundless people go to wait wondering where the butterflies have gone, and why the violets no longer cry to them in Spring.

They end tomorrow, never. we were there, touched with freedom, waiting, wanting hoping it was not time to leave.

Then Michael of a thousand dreams walks to the corner To look at himself in the mirror one more time And wonder what he might have been if only.

call you tonite. wonderful. i love you. i love you. later. wouldn't it be nice to stay? here with you i'm happy.

Carol Wall

Phoenix '71

18

Watch for me about seven. rippling on slowly we loved, grew closer. i discovered, she discovered. love together, now. dreams of you come in my window; inside now, with me.

Gazing, staring,

glossy-eyed people.

peace is love. growing, glowing, reaching, straining, stretchi ng. spread you r wi ngs and fly cupid, ovid, venus, krishna, god you are love. rolling, tu mb I路I ngover and over. us. today is beautiful, why live for tomorrow? woods, fields, streams, places of now, places of love. nearer and nearer we grew. one year. i just think this is where i'li do good. please don't leave. it's too late now. wrong mountains for us. you and i. meadow by a pond,

to a friend On a warm August day we met ...

Bright-eyed, carefree, much like two children. the hands of time slowed, we lived, really livedMaybe too innocently, maybe in a dream-world.

The only reality we faced was the essence of Iife itself.

But time has a way of changing things; A new reality came into focus, the reality of each other \Alo rid I i ness Seclusion Guilt Jealousy Body Time False pride, Doubts, Fears The chains connecting us became heavy and sometimes a burden.

But the chains were only a test for our perseverance and understanding; Time is a measure of goodness.

The chains crumbled under their own weight Leaving behind the beautiful marks and the terrible scars of experience and reality, But most of all the most thirlling experience of life, the experience of each other.

Don Miles

i love you. cry and cry and cry without her. my friends, her friends

tear up, split up, break up. she cries, i cry, she cries. sunny, i'll love you forever.

Charles M. Bateman Phoenix '71

19

~.

L'Amour de ce soir Ce soir tu me prends dans tes bras et dis, "Je T'aime."

Et je t'aime.

Cela durera-t-il?

Si je m'etais don nee a toi, m'aimerais-tu?

J'ai des doutes, je suis timide, Mais tu mets 18S bras autour de moi Tu me tiens de pres, Et tu dis que tu m'aimes.

Et je t'aime

love is the feel i ng of your wi Idly beating heart when someone's fingertips touch your throat-

Sherry Whaley

being strangled will give you the same feel ing odd, isn't it?

Barbara Bryant

reflections I write this verse to touch your soul and look inside your mind.

We are all gods, for we are the living.

On a funereal day I wal ked alone, in the rain.

I saw a reflection, the i mage of my mind.

You came and listened, then later brought your friends, together demanding that hemlock pass my lips The strange reflection altered, forming the ripples of your thoughts.

I looked deep within you, and found hate wrapped in cri mson contemplati on of evils yet undone . . In the shadows of your thoughts I found your fears, controlled by death and illusions of reality.

I raised my cup of hemlock, a toast to man.

I drank and wat9hed you die.

ohio summer If God might follow me down this roadHe'd see all my loves, all my lonliness.

Memories of the little Black kids I used to play with when I was little, and whiteevery day in a life that makes it less than a life, all the ways I've loved that made it less than love D. Johnson

day of tenn-s.b. game/Alice Mushrooms won't grow in the sunmy eyes can't find their way to yours unless the lights are all low. if you hold me I'll smilevirgins aren't very good jays.

But you'll try.

D. Johnson

Roger David Chambers

Phoenix '71

20

nixon I remember some children playing at war when I was young.

The kids on Lenin street had red guns the kids from west end wore gas masks. even then I laughed; because war is such a bubblegum psyche. 路And kids grow out of bubblegum.

Oh well ...

Pass the bazooka,路 Joe.

U.S.A. No.1 Red, White, and Blue Checkerboards are laid out by Iions That don't even recognize ants blue and grey chessmen move because the green gob Ii n sticks them with pins; screaming chimpanzees only imitate gorrillas in trees, and they all throw, grape tarts toward tomorrow

Elizabeth Andrews

Charles M. Bateman

o Be My Good Dog Lord ~-

Okay Jesus, okay, what would you have me say, -tell you about the chic with the.high thighs?

Or the way we shot the motorcycle through the tunnels in the Smokies and got back for Carmicahel's early-fall supper and Schubert's "Sixteen Dances?"

holiday haphazard

Ah, Christ, don't pester me with that glance at the lumps in my stomach.

You know those lumps are words; lick the tat ott ot them Lord and layout a plate of verbs.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! Sing happy bi rthday to Jesus?

Silent night? Yes. for Santa to come down the chi mney.

Holy night?

No, it's not.

Peace on the earth, but not in man.

Ocome all ye faithful to reveling and fun We'll decorate the Christmas tree for Santa Claus's son.

HeavenandNature sing. Jungle bells hear them ring.

Deck the halls boughs of holly, hang a cross or two around your neck.

On

And leave me alone, Lord.

Or wi II I have to start read i ng with my navel?

(My eyes go zero when reading. Give my navel a lick, Lord, and open me up to what I feel.)

o be my good dog

Lord and lead me to a plate of verbs, or put a tongue in the lumps and watch me content myself peeing on posts, turning flips, and popping ticks (on my back teeth-the way young verbs ratt lesna ke a sente nce.) .

D.C.Berry

the black home blues I take a taxi past shop face windows sad with cI utter.

a hill far away stands a brightly shi ni ng Christmas tree.

And watch the people marching like run down toy soldiers on the sidewalk.

Noel, Noel I'll see you

HELLO HOMETOWN! Funny I don't remember living here .. ..

Carol Wall

n Hell .

Anony mous

Phoenix '71 lli.

21

D I -

\

\