Phoenix - Spring 1971

u n i v e r s i t y of t e n n e s s e e

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PH O ENIX

phoenix

F ictio n E d ito i Ray T r o t t e r

Art E d it o r Mike Altizer

EDITORIAL COMMENT In Praise Of Wandering

P o e t r y E d it o r J o y c e Woolsey

N o n - F ic t io n E ditoi L a m o n t Ingalls

Photography E ditor Harlan H am b rig h t E d ito rial A ssistants J a m e s M o n te ith , T e rr y W. Wilson A d v isory C o m m i t t e e Dr. A. Ensor Mr. R ich a rd LeF evre L a y o u t A n d P r o d u c t io n S taff P ro o f r e a d e r S taff

In T his Issue V O LU M E 12 N U M B ER 3 S pring 1971 Non-Fiction Washington, April 24; The History And Character Of A March, by Richard R o b y n .............................................page 3 You Can’t Make It Without A College Education; Or, Stuck In Knoxville Without Nixon,

by Robert D om inic..................................................... page 1 2 Of A Fire On The Hill, by Richard R oby n................page 22 Fiction A Process Of Growing Up, by Shari G rib b e n ..............page 5 The Missionary, by Kathleen M cIn ty re.................... page 10 A Modern Parable, by David W ilh o ite...................... page 16

Summer travel! Hey man, the whole gd world is out there awaiting your presence - sun, and seas, and strange places where, contrary to national American belief, you will be considered the so-called “forei­ gner” and everybody else will be native.

Just think of the many, many places that you can visit. You can take the sun on the beaches of Termoli along the Adriatic Sea, or you can roam the sun-baked foothills around Avignon in southern France. You can catch the ferry from Hong Kong to Kowloon in the early evening and watch the junks, silhouetted against the Kiplinese “China Sun,” come down the bay from Macao on the Pearl River. You can stand on the street terrace of the Phoenicia Hotel and watch the bathers swimming in the warm waters off Beirut. You can stay indoors at noontime in Barcelona and sip a cold drink and lazily doze away the heat like a true Catalonian, or you can idly stroll along the Champs Elysees in Paris and scurry beneath the dripping storefront eaves when a summer shower drags rain down the valley of the Seine.

Nick L ong................................................................................ 21

Yes, my friend, the whole world is yours. All you have to do is go see it —go take a little bit of those strange lands and store the memories in your mind. You know, of course, that the world won’t come to you. It’s up to you to get out there and travel the sea lanes, or wander the land ways, and when you do, then man, you’ve something more inside you the a mere college experience. You’ve got a look at the real life on this third planet from the small backwater star which is caDed Sol.

Poems

C.W.L.

Review Othello: A Critique, by Nancy T e rry .........................page 26 Art

P ag es..................................................................8, 9, 19 and 20 Contributors: Stanley A. Parker, W.R. Johnson, Terry W. Wilson, M.G. Gibbonghole, Barbara Bryant, Michael Carberry, Richard Laurence Barclay, and Debby Moberly.

Cover by friends; Centerfold by Bill Worley; Rear Cover by Jack Logan.

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Copyright 1971, all rights reserved. The ■;.:.;PHOENIX is published three times a iigyear during the Fall, Winter, and Spring |!quarters by The University of Tennesigsee Puhllshing Association, Inc. Submit lleditorial contributions to PHOENIX, ■:xThe University of Tennessee, Knox::::::ville, Tenn., 37916.

WASHINGTON, APRIL 24 The H istory A n d Character O f A March

by R ichard R o b y n

“ . . .and like it was really big, w asn't it? A n d being peaceful and all, I th in k i t ’ll accom plish a lot, like getting N ix o n to g e t o u t quick. B u t if n o t N ixon, then at least a lo t m ore Congressmen are convinced about w hat the p eo p le want. That was really what this was all about. ” “Y ou d o n 't sound very revolutionary.”

“N o . . .well, yeah, I do. B u t n o t the way y o u ’re thinking. I w ould like to see a lot o f the things I believe in being im plem ented, that's all. L ik e an end to the war, a m in im u m wage, abolishing the d r a ft. . .B u t i t ’s g o t to be done through Congress from the people, ya k n o w ? ” “You d o n ’t sound very revolutionary.”

“M m m . . .y e a h .” He laughed. “I ’m afraid I ’ll be

selling ou t. M y h eart’s still w ith Che, b u t I really d o n ’t think th a t’s the way to do it. N o, n o t any more. ” A post-W ashington dialogue w ith a form er revolutionary.

Between 1965, when one Norman Morrison burned himself to death before the Pentagon, and 1969, when 320,000 amassed on Pensylvania Avenue in the largest demonstration in United States history, the character and goals of anti-war protests have changed dramatically. Lone, scattered outcries gradually evolved into gatherings and marches, then into the tremendous, multi-day long “mass-ins” that involved intricate planning and phenomenal organization. Following the November 15, 1969, moratorium in Washington, it was said that the days of the mass demonstrations were over.

P h o e n ix : Sp ring 1 9 7 1 3

Much of the pessimism came directly from the top. Sam Brown, chief organizer of the moratorium and one of the most influential figures in the history of the anti-war movement, was quoted as saying as early as spring of 1970 that mass demonstrations had lost their effectiveness. The big rallies had become merely glorified in gatherings; cultish and hmited.

Without work at the local level, said Brown, there could be no rebuilding for another great offensive.

Events in the months after the moratorium added weight to Brown’s argument. The immediate fury over Kent State and Jackson State seemed to subside in time to a feeling of caution; the long anticipated spring offensive produced one major rally, that of less than 100,000 on May 9. The “Honor America Day” on July 4, which Washington police estimated drew around 250,000, usurped anti-war power in the summer slack season. Returning to campuses in the fall, students read news articles by the dozens testifying to a change in attitudes, a general lack of interest in protests of any kind. Many of the faithful graduated and found that keeping to the old ways often meant no jobs, and the word filtered back. Nixon’s withdrawal program seemed to undermine the basic premise of anti-war sentiment, blunting the thrust of protest. And “Getting Straight” became the movie to see, the first half of which spoke well of pursuing the academic, far outdoing the contrary and contrived final scenes. Winter wore on without a major demonstration or a burned ROTC building. Anti-Admin­ istration forces lost an ally when Agnew became suddenly quiet. Apparently there was no central figure in the government and no immediate issue such as Laos or Cambodia on which to focus. It became fashionable to pronounce mass national demonstrations officially dead.

How then did the Washington and San Fransisco gatherings on April 24 come to rival the largest protest of all time? “ By working every day, day in and day out, to get the marches moving,” admitted Sam Brown, now just another leader within the united organization o f the National Peace Action Coalition and the People’s Coalition for Peace and Justice. NPAC, generally regarded as the primary organizational force and philosophical spokesman for the April 24 demonstration, gave the march its character and form: “Mass actions, organized in a peaceful, orderly and non-confrontational fashion are the best method of reaching and involving the largest numbers of Americans.” Formed in June, 1970, NPAC had since its inception opened its ranks to the widest possible divergence of groups and beliefs. Its overriding bias against revolutionary rhetoric and tactics, its tendency to disavow individual leadership, and its adamant belief in mass action to produce results were destined to have a profound effect on the direction of anti-war expression.

To anyone there on Permsylvania Avenue it was obvious NPAC's influence had been felt. There was no single class or group leadership, but rather a conglomeration o f workers, blacks, GI’s in and out of uniform, the angry young, the patient young, middle aged couples, the elderly, Jew, WASPs and tourists. The essense o f the march was its girth, and no central leadership meant it somehow found a leader in itself, only physically guided by the some 20,000 marshalls provided by the coalition.

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The coalition (NPAC and others), working throughout the months they were supposed to be disbanded and dead, accomplished the near impossible: bringing together the thousand and one splinter groups expressing everything from disruptive anarchy to vocal but democratically poUte dislike of those presently in power; garnering endorsements from such unlikely sources as Joseph Heller, Kate Millet and Sam Pollack (President, Amalgamated Meatcutters, Dist. 427, Cleveland), among others; rejuvenating interest among the greater numbers of people not affiliated with anti-war groups; obtaining permits and legal sanctions from an admittedly unapproving Administration; and working out the formidable mass of details accompanying the housing, feeding, protecting and entertaining of some quarter to half a million people. A step by step analysis o f the work of the coalition would in effect be a handbook combining the practical techniques of organiza­ tion and administration with a knowledge of governments and mass psychology, with perhaps a prelude devoted to the necessity for the dramatic.

Short of the means for such a handbook, only what would perhaps have been the conclusions of that study can be presented. Certainly large, peaceful, massive demonstrations, if well organized, can be incalculably influential. The planning and bringing into being of the April 24 rallies in Washington and San Fransisco prove undeniably that anti-war expression is alive and in action, and that the conception of protest in the form of mass action is definitely a part of the philosophy of that sentiment.

As for the future, that remains in the hands of those who believe—and in the hands o f those they oppose. However irritated the later may be by the presence of protestors and placards in the nation’s capital, it is apparent that they will be feeling this presence for some time to come.

H A R L A N HAM BRIGHT

A Process of Growing UP

by Shari Gribben

The feeling had been coming upon EUzabeth for some time.

In the late afternoon, as she sprawled on the grass beside her best friend, exhausted after running the length of the block, she felt the slow swelling o f the feeling begin again. It wasn’t because it was spring and she loved the warm sun on her arms and legs; it was something deeper inside than the sun could reach. But the feeling was warm like a light, and it touched all of her insides as the sun was touching her face.

Picking at the grass, digging her fingers around the tangled roots, she never dreamed of speaking about it to her friend.

“Have you got much homework to do tonight?” That was all she said. The friend rolled over onto her back. The sun bounced unbearably off her glasses. She rolled back onto her stomach.

“Yeah,” she said.

Elizabeth was sure that her friend couldn’t possibly know the feeling. Myra was too plain, too utterly sensible. Elizabeth liked to think of herself as half-crazy, a person apart from the ordinary people she knew. She was sure that even her thoughts were different from anyone else’s. As she performed every little act during the day she would describe it to herself.

Helping her mother in the kitchen, she would think, “The heat of the stove flushed her face, and httle tendrils of hair escaped from her ribbon and curled prettily hke a halo of ringlets.” Or she would think, “She stared loftily at her little sister who stood pouting, a grimy finger in her mouth.”

Elizabeth’s thoughts always sounded like the books she read. She often wished someone were up in Heaven taking notes of all her thoughts, so that she might compile them someday into a splendid, thoughtful book of her own.

Myra trudged across the yard to her own house. Elizabeth watched her go, loving the sight of the familiar figure, shirttail flapping and disappearing through the hedge. Myra was loyal, and a totally satisfactory friend for a person such as Elizabeth.

“I am perfectly, wonderfully happy,” she thought. “I’ve

always been perfectly happy.” She closed her eyes and concentrated on the prickhng of the grass through her shirt.

The dog approached her from its place on the porch. It nudged her with a soggy nose, yawned, and flopped down on its stomach. EUzabeth ruffled the dog’s neck ferociously, and bent to examine the toenails on one paw. She pried out a burr with a flourish and tossed it over her shoulder. “ Animals just make a family complete,” she thought with love. She stood up and dusted her hands against her jeans.

“Come on, girl, run!” She broke into a wild gallop across the lawn, with the dog bounding behind. As she ran, she held her arms out straight from the shoulders, loving the feel of the wind pressing against her. Her mind described it to herself. “ She darted over the meadow, her long, strong legs carrying her in her flight from the fearful danger behind her.” The air passed between her fingers; she tossed her head, thinking she probably looked like some wild free colt with silky mane rippUng in the breeze. A colt whose nostrils flared back in fright. Elizabeth flared her nostrils.

FinaUy she veered back toward the house and vaulted onto the porch. Her mother found her lying on her back in the porch swing, pushing one toe against the floor lazily as the swing drifted to and fro. Elizabeth opened her eyes and smiled dreamily. “ Elizabeth. My word. Don’t you have anything you should be doing?” Her mother wasn’t mad, Elizabeth knew; she had “a look of consternation creasing a Une between her eyes.”

Her mother, EUzabeth ruminated, missed so much of life by constantly doing things. She knew her mother didn’t have “the feeUng,” which was too bad. Both feet pounded the boards of the porch at once. EUzabeth stood up and stretched languidly.

“Guess rU hit the books awhile,” she said. “Who did you say is coming to visit tonight?”

“Mom and Uncle Tommy,” her mother told her as they went into the house.

P h o e n i x ; Sp ri n g 1 9 7 1 S

“Great,” was all Elizabeth said. In her own room she squatted down before her bookcase and ran one finger along the row o f books. There were the shiny dimestore adventures and mysteries, her mother’s old cloth-bound Alcotts, two tall, thin volumes, Poppy, the Adventures o f a Fairy, and Cinderella, the Catholic Youth’s Guide to Life and Love, and four library books. Her Algebra 1 text, and English in Action lay on the bottom shelf.

Elizabeth picked up the Life and Love book. It fell open immediately where the spine had been creased. She read swiftly and silently for a few minutes before taking the Algebra book and a notebook over to her desk. She worked several problems energetically before she fell to doodling on a blank page. She drew palm trees and a hula dancer, then a fat Santa Claus, and then a three-dimensional box.

“The artist at work,” she thought. A limp hank of hair hung beside her face; Elizabeth pushed it back, thinking “She flipped her blonde lock over her shoulder carelessly.”

Working with the Algebra problems seemed to have considerably reduced her wildly happy mood. She sketched lightly for a moment, and then scratched jagged lines across the page. The television in the next room was entirely too loud. How could they expect her to study? They show her no consideration. Filled with righteousness, she marched into the den. Her sister was cross-legged on the floor, slurping a popsicle. “ I can't even hear myself think, this thing is so loud.” She stalked to the television and switched it off. Her sister looked at her desperately, and bleated at the top of her voice, “MamaMamamamamamamamamama.” Elizabeth collided with her mother at the doorway.

“Oh, Elizabeth, what is the matter with you? What have you done?” The little sister scowled and switched the set on again. Elizabeth scowled and defended herself. “ I am trying to study, for your information, and that stupid kiddie show gets on my nerves.’’Her mother waved a finger under Elizabeth’s nose.

“Young lady, don’t you talk to your mother that way. Go on back in your own room and cool off. Leave me in peace.”

The mother left, saying something about being blessed with unpleasant children. “ Oh, you people!” Elizabeth flounced to her room and banged the door, but the edge of it caught her toe, bringing

P h o e n ix : Sp ring 1 9 7 1 6

tears of pain to her eyes. She slammed around the room for awhile, dropping books on the floor and pushing the bed up against the wall, as if to say, “I’m still here, and I’m still mad.”

Finally she was called to dinner. She ate quickly, but amply, and cleared the tabl e without saying a word. Naturally, she thought, it was her turn to do the dishes. But she did not really mind that. Her friend Myra hated doing dishes. She would feign sickness, homework, and allergy to Palmolive to be free of that chore. Elizabeth had tried to explain that it was really rather pleasant to slosh around in the warm water.

Going through the mechanical motions released one’s mind to think about things, and to plan the next day.

Tonight, nevertheless, the stack of plates and cups offered her no consolation. While she stood there, swishing the saucers through the suds uninterestedly, her grandmother and uncle arrived to visit. For some reason everyone congregated in the kitchen. Elizabeth ignored them. Her grandmother grabbed her by the neck and kissed her, then snatched up a towel and dried all the dishes. EUzabeth felt immensely better, after all, when the dishes were done. She and her Uncle Tommy were big buddies, and she liked to tease him about Judy, whom he was going to marry in six months. “ How is Aunt Judy?” she asked him. She thought that probably reassured him that she had already accepted his girlfriend as one of the family.

“She’s fine, working hard on the wedding, you know.”

Uncle Tommy nodded and smiled, and shrugged as if to say, “Yes, well, that’s what she’s doing, uh-huh.”

Elizabeth listened to the adults talk for awhile, and trailed after them into the living room. She plopped down on the floor and leaned back. Her mother told her not to put her head on the waU—it would stain. Sitting there, with the lamps throwing arcs o f light onto the floor and walls, the family in the comfortable chairs, and talking companionably, she felt the warm feeling begin to slowly grow in her again.

“This is so pleasant,” she thought. She contributed to the conversation about Uncle Tommy’s new car, and was gratified by the others’ attention.

Suddenly someone was saying something about home m ovies. “ Let’s do!” Elizabeth urged her father. “ Let’s show Mom and Uncle Tommy our old movies.” So she dragged the movie

screen out of the closet, while her father carried in the projector, and her sister found the old shoeshine box full of rolls of film. Chairs were grouped before the screen, and her father threaded a roll onto the machine. Elizabeth switched off the lights.

*

^

‘

A white square flickered onto the screen out of the dark.

Then a flash of blue and there stood Mother smiling and holding tiny Elizabeth. The projector whirred as Mother and Elizabeth walked up the driveway toward the camera.

“This is Easter, 1958,” her father’s voice came out of the dark. Elizabeth looked at herself hard. She thought her baby hair was much prettier than her hair was now—much blonder and silkier. Mother held the baby out toward the camera, and the lens zoomed in on an expression of toothless bliss. “ Look how happy I am there,” Elizabeth said. “Someone must have just changed my diaper.” Everyone chuckled, and then white dots appeared all over the screen and that film was through.

Elizabeth kept her eyes shut when the lights went on. Her father threaded another reel into the projector, and turned out the lights again. This time Elizabeth and her sister were both in the movie—and it was several years after the first one. They were roller skating solemnly down the sidewalk, moving their skates slowly and balancing carefully. Elizabeth’s bravado seemed to have gotten the best of her, for she took her eyes off her feet for a moment and waved to the camera; her skates went straight out from under her, and she sat down hard on the cement.

Everyone in the darkened room laughed at the expression on the child’s face, as tears engulfed her eyes and poured down her cheeks. Evidently the cameraman took pity on her at this time, for that segment of the film stopped, and a new scene flickered onto the screen. Although Elizabeth had seen the movies many times before, she always enjoyed watching them again. She felt bad, however, that her roller-skating movie always brought laughter; she still remembered, somewhere back in her mind, the outrage of falling down and being picked up, dusted off, and laughed at so many years ago.

The movies began to be more recent—vacations, hoUdays.

There was Elizabeth and Myra side-by-side, self-conscious in a Christmas play at school. A sheet was wrapped around Elizabeth’s middle, and tied with the belt of her father’s

bathrobe. Myra’s eyes were invisible under a drooping veil.

There was Elizabeth learning to water ski, a bouncing, hilarious film taken from the the rear of the moving boat.

The camera zeroed in on Elizabeth’s face as she was hauled over the sideof the boat—such a disgruntled, dismal expression.

As she watched the movies, Elizabeth felt happy and glowing all over.

“This is practically the story of my life in pictures,” she thought. “They show me growing up from a fat baby to a dirty little girl, to a girl like I am now.” The last film was taken a few months before, a snowy winter morning. It showed their house and yard covered with snow, and Elizabeth and her sister building a snowman. They were unaware at first that their father was taking the movie. Working together they were tolling a huge ball of hard-packed snow. Elizabeth’s mouth was working furiously as she gave her sister directions.

They stacked the snowman’s body and laughed together over their creation. Evidently, they just then noticed the camera, because they started clowning and capering and waving. The last minute of the film showed the girls’ faces, red and laughing, bright-eyed.

Elizabeth thought, “That is me as I am, and others see me.

This is the last movie. I have grown up to where I am now.”

She had been thinking how adult she was; but now, looking at the movie, at the girl floundering in the snow, making faces at the camera, it seemed there should be another film, and another before she was a grownup entirely.

The warm feeling was still there inside her. She supposed it was distantly related to growing up. It had something to do with realizing things about yourself—that you are a person, in your own place, and that you had such a lot of things in front of you. But this was a start in being who she was going to be—this knowledge that she had come so far already. She had just seen herself actually growing up. The sudden changes in mood, and her crazy fits of temper. They would pass; it was all right, for everything was present and time accounted for.

“There’s no hurry,” Elizabeth told herself. “I’m unique and great the way I am.”

As the lights beamed on, she closed her eyes and thought to herself, “The lovely young girl shielded her face from the glare of bombs bursting in air.” Then the room was full of talking people, and Elizabeth furled the movie screen and put it in the closet.

P h o e n ix : Spring 1 9 7 1 7

Relationship

Urbanism II I stood in an elevator today With others who had nothing to say.

It hoisted us in solemn silence.

And we poked near-meaningless nods To other parasites of this metro-madness.

Love is expression.

Expression . . . understanding; And though we live through life As though we had One last boat to catch.

We must realize Though the boat may be reached "The ocean still remains."

We watched the numbers bounce us From level to level As if in our surveillance Our vehicle would suddenly leap Through its vertical path With new found speed.

At the apex of assent We tumble from our cage To bury ourselves within Our great urban palisade.

Where neighbors know not neighbors And locked are all the doors.

M ichael E. Carberry

M.G. G ibbonghole

She

When my soul is waking.

She polishes the sun.

When my soul is rising.

She lights the path it runs.

When my soul is wandering.

Into noon and imagining.

She lets me be free.

When my soul is questioning.

She soothes and answers as she can.

When my soul is tiring.

She gives it strength She holds my hand.

Afterward

Love is like Life and Death.

It comes unannounced, with no forewarning.

It comes and goes at will, teaching a valuable lesson, but all too often, leaving total destruction.

Love carries with it the beauty of a new-born babe and agonies equalled only in dying.

Love nudges like a gentle fog, then crushes like an iron fist.

Love is wonderful and unbearable, the beginning and the end, the finite and the ultimate.

When my soul is dying from the day.

She gives me life; She makes me a man.

When my soul is asleep.

She assures it of the day to come.

When I am alone.

She comes to me And She and my soul are one.

Terry IV. Wilson W.R. Johnson

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N IC K L O N G

That Year and that year I lived among the blank minds of the loveless and fished in the teary waves and returned from the morning with shy lips to my gray neighbors but their eyes were perpetually questioning the sun and had no time for life. and at night I climbed onto the moon-wet roof and whispered to the stars of the garden growing within my summer head but they could not hear because they had run so far from words to hide in the lining of the day and with each blackness they came to look more alike. and as I sat in the grave surrounded by my decaying neighbors I felt a yellow breeze pass through my dirt-stained fingers and the brownish tears pushed to be free.

-D ebby M oberly

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The Missionary

DAVID GILBERT

by K athleen M cIntyre

The bar had been there ever since he could remember. His father used to take him in there on Saturday afternoons. He’d sit in a booth with a Coke while his father discussed the world problems with the rest of the men over beers.

Richard decided to go there on his own that night, and his father had said he d join him later. He knew his father wanted to show him off to all of them. He had not only graduated from that prestigious school; he had done so with honors.

Very few of his father’s friends had gone through high school.

As he walked into the bar, the sticky, stale smell of the room hit him. He had forgotten the heat, smoke and the heaviness that no air-conditioner could alleviate. Richard noticed that the room had been redecorated, and was now a plush red and black. “Nicely padded Hades,” he thought as he looked around.

John, who owned the place, was tending the bar that night.

He pushed a drink across the wooden bar to Richard and smiled.

“Heard you graduated,” John said. “ Yeh,” Richard smiled back.

“What did you major in?”

P h o e n ix : Sp ri n g 1 9 7 1 10

“Psych . . .ah . . .Psychology.” “ Hmm,” John said as he wiped the counter with an old, damp cloth. Richard had noticed years ago that John did that all the time, even when there was nothing to wipe up.

Richard looked around the room at them mostly working men who earned enough to insure a comfortable life.

“Blue-collar workers” was the term he had heard at school. He always felt better if he could define people that way, classify them. It provided the necessary distance, and he liked distance.

“What is it that makes men crowd into bars like this one?” he thought. “The grimy clothes and the inane faces, all grinning stupidly at one another. Some would stay until it closed, then try to sneak back into reality, tip-toeing into their houses. Everyone today wanted to escape, especially these people. They all wanted an easy way out, a way to somehow ease and blur everything. Nerves that fell asleep when the night come, so they gathered here?”

He wanted to help them, save them from it. “They’re drowning,” he thought. He felt very thankful that he could face reality.

Richard’s thoughts were interrupted by the loud yells from the old man at the end of the bar. “ Hit the long ball! Hit the long ball! That way ya don’t need a sliding pad!” he yelled over and over again, and moving his right arm out, as if throwing a baseball.

The rest grinned at him. “You tell them, Jake,” a slurred voice said.

“Who is he?” Richard asked John. “What’s the term?”

Richard thought.

“Name’s Jake,” John said. “You never seen him before?”

“No,” Richard said. “What’s the matter with him?” “ Nothing, I guess,” John said. ‘He just gets that way when he’s had a few drinks. He lives by himself, and when the night comes, he gets lonely. So he comes over here to be with everybody.”

The old man grinned at the others and repeated his formula for life. The others grinned and laughed. “ He hved with his mother, until she died last year,” John said. “They say it happened in the war. He was hurt real bad, real bad. Guess nobody knows how bad.”

John didn’t like the way Richard was looking at old Jake.

Richard always did have a way of butting his nose into everything. John always thought that Richard was just mad because he didn’t get to be Christ in the scheme of things.

John didn’t know quite what a psychologist was, but he was sure he didn’t like much of it, and he had never really especially like Richard. The boy was always too mannerly for him. Richard had always had that compulsion to help someone or something, to bring them up from what they were to what he thought they should be. Before, it had been birds with broken wings, stray cats. Now Richard was looking at Jake, and John was afraid of what might happen. “ How’s the family?” John asked. “ Fine,” Richard said absently, “Dad’s coming in later, I think. Do they always laugh at him that way?”

“They don’t laugh at him, really,” John said, and thought that Richard was the only man in the room who was really laughing at Jake, in spite of that earnest look of pity and concern. Sure, they showed him off and laughed when he said it, but they never put him down or laughed at him. He was their friend. They were not above him at all; they were all in the same boat. “ Has anyone ever tried to help him?” Richard asked.

John stopped wiping the counter. He looked slowly up at the young man. “Nope,” he said.

“Why not?” Richard asked. “ Help him whatV' John asked.

Richard was stunned. “These people,” he thought, “ Don’t they know what they’re doing to themselves? Can’t they see he’s sick? Don’t they even care?”

The laughter grew louder, and the men became more drunk.

No one but Richard seemed bothered by the old man or his repetition.

John tried to explain, to keep Richard from doing anything.

“Nobody really knows what he means. Guess he knows. He’s not hurting anyway, and everbody likes him. It’s not that bad.” John had never thought Jake so different. After all.

everyone had his own ideas, his own formulas, and everyone was like Jake in some ways, even Richard.

“Maybe some place where they can help him,” Richard was saying. “ Let him be, Richard,” John warned. “You can’t help him; you can only make it worse.”

Richard carefully analyzed the situation. He had been taught all the principles of communications, he’d learned all the therapeutic devices, he’d heard all the theories, and he remembered the main theory. Distance. That was easy.

“Distance is necessary for objectivity; don’t become involved.”

He walked over to the old man, who was swaying by now.

Jake grinned at him as he came over.

“You’re Richie, aren’t you?” Jake asked. “I know your Dad.” “Yes,” Richard said. “What do you mean, Jake, when you say t h a t. . .Hit the long ball?”

The wide grin faded, and the eyes became very soft. The old man finished his drink and looked ino the glass. The room grew very quiet as the men turned slowly; defensive faces staring at Richard, expectantly. It was as if he had broken some very high and revered custom, committed some very bad error, a sin against all of them.

Who was he to ask, or dare to question what they felt or did? What did he care, really? They had known Richard since he was a little boy. Who was he to help Jake?

“Let him be, Richie; he’s OK,” a voice came from the back of the room.

John moved down the bar to where Richard and Jake were standing. For the first time, Richard could think of nothing to say or do. He felt the heat of the room and the eyes of the men on him, waiting.

He leaned down and whispered to the old man, Jake, “1 want to help you.”

“No, no; you don’t.” “ Yes I do.”

Jake turned and stared hard at Richard’s soft, young face.

Richard was held by the gray, half-closed eyes and the slack, coarse, scarred face of the man before him. He saw the personal hell that was the man, and no theory fit, and no key would unlock it; and he felt for that moment as one with Jake, not apart from or above any o f them: himself locked in a stale, hot room every night, as drunk as they. And the babbling, sing-song Uttle message became meaningful, and he knew he too had done it many times. So they were very much alike, missionary and native to this land. On the same plane, and how couuld he help thernl He saw John’s hand wiping the counter as he stared at the bar, and the simple act calmed the look of them, and low talking began.

“Can I get you another drink, Richie?”

“Have another drink,” Jake said to the young man who couldn’t seem to look up from the bar. “ It’s a very short ball game,” Jake grinned.

And Richard turned away, in horror, from them to the cool wind outside. As he ran, their laughter and talk followed him down the street, and bade him come back for another drink.

P h o e n i x : Sp ring 1 9 7 1 11

YOU CAN’T MAKE IT WITHOUT A COLLEGE EDUCATION OR, STUCK IN KNOXVILLE WITHOUT NIXON

by R o b e rt D om inic E D I T O R 'S N O T E : New a n d u n usual e x p erien ces a w ait t h e college g rad u ate th e s e days. He eith e r ste p s in to e x t r e m e a f flu en c e o r Into a b ject p o v e r t y ; his d a y s ar e either s p e n t in f ra n tic o c c u p a t i o n a l ac tivity o r In boring u n e m p l o y m e n t ; he indulges eith e r in nights o f rioto us social affairs, or h e closets him self in s o m e g l o o m y gar re t t o d ejectedly p u r s u e his prov erbi al navel. Or, if n o n e o f t h e s e ex perien ces co m e his w ay , he eith e r b e c o m e s a part of t h e U n ited S ta te s Military, o r he dies, o r b o t h . T h e follo w in g pages give a firs t-h an d e x a m p l e o f a r e c e n t UT a l u m n u s w h o has alread y se rved his t i m e in t h e Military. H is is a special case! P oor guy.

It’s a pretty nice day outside today—clear, sunny, and the temperature is about 85 degrees. Now, isn’t that just about the most interesting thing you’ve heard all day long? Sure it is.

Let me teU you a little more. Have you ever sat is a stuffy trailer on a clear and sunny day when the temperature was about 85 degrees with no air-conditioner or fan? Nice? Try it sometime; you’ll really be impressed. But hold on, let’s carry this thing a little further. How about a nice stuffy trailer sitting in the scorching sun on a clear day in KNOXVILLE, TENNESSEE? Now baby, we’re getting somewhere. A question: what the hell are you doing in a trailer in Knoxville on such a nice day? Well, what the heU are you doing reading this absurd, purely existential tale in Knoxville?

Once upon a time I was a happy middle-class boy (remember back when middle-class meant that one was from a blue-collared background). My father worked as a laborer for the plutocrats of General Motors, and my mother hung around the house and ate Italian food all day. Momma did, howev er, work as an indentured servant for many years in a bookbinding firm. But that was long ago in a quaint, corrupt, little town in northern New Jersey (for the uncultured, it’s

P h o e n i x ; S p rin g 1 9 7 1 12

pronounced “Joisey”). I grew up there, in Nutley, New Jersey (or Joisey), which was a town of approximately 30,000 souls, situated between Newark and New York City on the beautiful Passaic River. If I remember correctly, Nutley was a cross between a large metropolitan city and a small hick town. It was cosmopolitan in the sense that some of its leading vegetables read the Wall Street Journal, or Esquire. But Nutley was rural in the sense that . .. that . . .well, let’s just forget about Nutley and get back to Knoxville.

We’ve all heard the line that goes, “without a college education you’ll never get anywhere.” Take it from someone who k n o w s- it’s the damndest truth! I mean, if I hadn’t recieved a University degree, I would have never made it to Knoxville. And that’s a fact! So, you see, I got somewhere (even if it is only about 45 miles from Bull’s Gap). The plain fact is that I’m here and am in the process of hibernation —in the summertime, no less. ActuaUy it’s only spring, but it might as well be summer with this damn heat.

Presently, the local yokels are celebrating the “Knoxville Dogwood Arts Festival.” Yes, every spring the dogwoods burst into bloom and the city of Knoxville goes into festive fits of adoration. Nice? There are parades and picnics, and social gatherings, and arrests (on the UT campus, anyway), and open hearth fires, and wild Romanesque orgies, and pot parties, and human sacrifices, and much much more besides. But, I’m not here solely for the festival. I’m here because I’m stuck. Yes, my dear friends, stuck, s-t-u-c-k, STUCK!!!! You see, I was in search of the answers which have been plaguing mankind since

the beginning of time. Yes, I sought and I found. Where? At the University o f Tennessee in Knoxville. Yep, that’s the place. And, a few months ago I graduated — just Uke Benjamin — and now I’m unemployed, underfed, sexually deprived, broke, and sitting in a hot f—ing trailer in Knoxville, Tennessee! Oh me! Help me. Albert!!! And whom do you think I should call? Richard Nixon, meybee?

A few weeks ago I decided to go into agriculture. I went down to the comer hardware store and bought a package of flower seeds (beheve me, they were MERELY flower seeds).

Because I’m a college graduate — a symbol of power and knowledge — I didn’t have to consult the county agent for information on how to grow my crop. I just inherently knew. I took the package of seeds out to the back of my extravagant trailer and put a few holes into the ground. Then I gently dropped a few seeds into each hole and covered them up with the fertile red soil. When that was done, I dropped to my knees, bent over, and placed my palms on the earth and prayed: “Five fools their gold, and knaves their power; let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall; who sows a field, or trains a flower, or plants a tree, is more than all.” I didn’t realize it at the time, but throughout the whole ritual my 90-year old landlady had been sketptically watching me.

“Mornin’ Bob. Watcha doin’ down thar?”

“Oh! Hi, Mrs. Landlady. I’m just making my contribution to the Dogwood Arts Festival.”

Have you ever thought about blowing up a trailer? I mean really becoming radical and buying some gasohne and making a few Molotov Cocktails? Sure, why not? It’s done almost every day. When I woke up this morning, I remembered a story about some students out in California who had blown up a bank. They used Molotov Cocktails and did a pretty good job on the bank. Wouldn’t it be fantastic to blow up my trailer? Just imagine the headlines in the KnoxviUe Urinal.

“Umemployed Red Pinko UT Graduate Launches Dastardly Communist Attack Against Knoxville And Unresisting Trailer.” Wow! I’d be famous. Maybe as famous as the Boston Strangler, or Joey Stalin, or Hilda the Hun (who, in case you’ve forgotten, was the wife of Atilla).

Let me tell you about an up-and-coming hterary artist who I predict will make it bigger than the great Erich Segal. His name is Babs Gonzales and his book is I Paid My Dues, Or Good Times .. .No Bread. I was very fortunate to come across Babs’ book while loitering in a Washington, D.C., drugstore last month. As I was paying the cashier for a small box of Ex-Lax, I saw I Paid My Dues, slightly covered with dust, resting on a bookshelf. I asked the cashier, “Have you read the book?”

“Which one?” she replied questioningly.

“The one with the picture of the guy in the ‘zoot’ suit on the cover.”

“Oh, yes,” she answered. “It’s a great book. You should buy it and take it home with you.”

“I don’t have a home. I’m a lonely rambler.”

She was startled. So startled, in fact, that she dropped my box of Ex-Lax on the floor and accidentally stepped on it.

With tears beginning to gather in her eyes, she leaned over the counter and touched my trembling, rambling hand. “You are

alone, aren’t you?”

“Yes, lady, I ’m very alone and hungry too.” “ So was he,” she said.

“Who?” I asked.

She pointed to the book. “ Babs Gonzales. He was very lost and alone.” She let go of my hand and began to stare at the ceiling. Then in a hard voice she said, “ But that didn’t stop him. No, he searched on. Yes, he searched far and wide.” She paused and adjusted her bra strap. “Yes, Babs did it. He found his home.”

“Where?! Where?!” I was frantic —desperate! “ Buy the book and you’ll find out,” she said. “ Believe me, Mac, you won’t regret it.”

So I bought the book, and I didn’t regret it. Hell, it’s a masterpiece. I Paid My Dues is Babs’ autobiography; it’s all about the rough life he had, beginning with his birth in Newark, New Jersey. And believe me, anyone born in Newark is bound and determined to have a rough Ufe. Just ask LeRoi Jones.

Well anyway, the simple fact behind aU of the preceeding buD is that I’m stuck in Knoxville, hving in a trailer, cUmbing the walls, and listening to the birds. Have you ever listened to the birds? I swear to God there’s this one bird that sounds like he’s saying, “Birdie! Birdie! Birdie!” Isn’t that amazing? Sure.

I’m living in a jungle. I’ve got rabbits and dogs and pet bees and ants and wild, tropical plants, and quicksand — and sometimes I imagine that I have a 23 year old half naked woman who swings around on the vines outside —and I even have a fierce herd o f crabgrass thundering through my tiny yard. Did you ever realize that quicksand was a living organism? Stick around Knoxville for awhile and you’ll come to relize that (1) telephone poles talk to each other, (2) magic rugs and carpets exist, and (3) Nixon is a good President.

Isn’t this whole damn story absurd? Of course it is — especially to aU of you undergraduate intellecutal genius’. I bet they never taught you about Bucky Bukowski in American History. They never taught me. You see, you don’t learn about Bucky Bukowski until after you graduate. Bucky is a famous twin-spoon player who was brought up in the Halsey Street district of Detroit. Because he was poor and couldn’t afford a set of drums, he began to play the twin-spoons, which consists of slapping two spoons against your body in time to music—at an early age — say, twenty-one. Bucky rose to unbeUevable heights. In 1932 he toured every Greyhound bus terminal in the south, and on the following year he did his act in KnoxviUe, where, incidentally, he died of an overdose of ramps comphcated by cancer, brain tumor, a heart attack, two broken legs, all aggravated by the fact that the bus in which he was riding attempted to cross the L&N railroad tracks on Sutherland Avenue while a fast freight was rumbling by.

Now, do you all like stories with surprise O’Henry endings?

Good. You see. I’ve got to get back to my meditations. Thus, I wiU leave you with a quote from Milton (which is a remnant of the education I recieved at the University): “Who brought me hither will bring me hence; no other guide I seek.” Ha! What a joke! I love Knoxville in the springtime, I love Knoxville in the . . . .

P h o e n ix : S p rin g 1 9 7 1 13

A Modern Parable

by David Wilhoite HARLAN HAMBRIGHT

Allan Wesley Wade trudged along the highway with the taste of salt sweat in his mouth and the feel of it oozing down his spine. There were no cars coming up or down the highway, so he stopped to rest under some pine trees. The afternoon was fading and he was tired. Hearing a motor in the distance he got to his feet and edged back onto the pavement. He hadn’t even seen a car for almost an hour.

A tiny blur appeared far off down the highway, then disappeared suddenly below the dip of a hill and finally popped back into view. It was a sports car. Allan held out his thumb and moved even further onto the pavement. The car slowed almost to a stop as it neared him, but swerved sharply in his direction and passed by in a burst of noise. He managed to catch a glimpse of the occupants as he leaped as ide and went sprawhng in the gravel. There were two of them, about his own age, laughing and making the well-known hand gesture. A decal with the initials of Allan’s university was on the back window.

Brushing the dirt and gravel from his clothing, Allan made his way back to the pines. He lit a cigarette and sat down with a grunt, gently rubbing his right leg, which he had fallen on heavily, and wishing he could get even with his assailants. The darkness was growing as he crushed the cigarette butt in the red clay at his feet and rose to start out again.

“No more thumbing,” he thought to himself," not if it means asking rides of these redneck peckerwoods. I’ll just get a bus for Americus.” Americus, Georgia,wgs Allan’s hometown.

A couple of short rides were all he had gotten since leaving the university that morning. One had been with an aging farmer who answered Allan’s questions either by spitting out

P h o e n i x : Sp ri n g 1 9 7 1 16

tne window o f the pick-up or by nodding slowly as he switched his chew from one jaw to the other. Allan had taken the old man’s reticence as a sign of disapproval, a misjudgement in which he revelled. The other ride had come from a high school boy who had asked if it was true about all the radicals and drug use at the university. Allan assured him it was so and had hinted darkly at this own involvement in such matters, an involvement that did not exist in reality. The boy had let him out soon after that, obviously put-off and perhaps even scared. Walking along the deserted highway, Allan had amused himself over the incident until the sports car set him to more cynical and condescending reflections on the local inhabitants.

Several cars passed now, but Allan limped on and made no attempts to flag them down. Instead, he tried to imagine the derisive comments the motorists were doubtlessly making about him. The thought of them increased his anger, but filled him with a certain pride too.

It was dark by this time and the trickle of passing cars had almost stopped. Allan’s leg was throbbing and sending out quick flashes of pain with every step. The sound of a truck broke into Allan’s thoughts as it approached from behind. The boy turned to face the glare of its headlights, his anger yielding to weariness. He stuck out his thumb once again. The truck

blew past him, heedless of the upraised arm or the curse that rose from the throat of its owner. But the epithet was choked back as the taillights came on and the truck pulled over with a screech of air brakes. Allan hobbled sullenly down to the cab and got in.

“Thought you might need a ride.” The driver was a small thirtyish man with bright, mobile eyes and a large Adam’s apple. His pudgy white warms could just reach the steering wheel, which seemed too big for him.

“Yeah, thanks,” Allan replied, easing himself into a comfortable position. He glanced over at the little man before closing his eyes in tired disinterest. The driver did not fit his idea o f a trucker or anything else. “Nice of you to stop, sir.”

Allan put the slightest touch o f emphasis on the last word.

“Oh, you don’t have to call me sir. Name’s Jerry.” He obviously hadn’t caught the sarcasm in Allan’s voice. “What’s yours?”

Allan hadn’t been listening. “What? Oh, Taylor. Taylor Davis.” The name came from a war novel Allan had once read.

Taylor Davis had won the Medal of Honor and returned home to marry his high school sweetheart.

“We ain’t suppose to pick up hitch hikers, but I like somebody to talk to, know what I mean?” Jerry’s voice cracked and broke as he spoke, but he hurried on, his Adam’s apple sliding up and down. “Besides, I don’t like to see some boy stuck out here after dark. You want a pecan divinity?” He thrust a box toward Allan and let out a laugh like hiccups.

Jerry had pronounced pecan as pe’kan, much to Allan’s disgust. He had discovered at the university that such usage was substandard.

“I’m carrying 300 cases of ’em, so it’s aU right if we eat a few. They’ll never know.” He rolled his eyes expectantly toward Allan, who finally took one with a nod of thanks. It was aU the politeness he could muster. They ate without speaking for some time, the only sounds being the crunch of broken crusts or Jerry’s half-smothered chortles. From time to time he would glance over at his rider with a wide grin. Allan concentrated on his divinity and looked the other way.

“How far are you going?” Allan felt that he had to say something at least.

“Why, all the way to St. Petersburg. Where you headed, Taylor?” Jerry asked, his mouth full.

Allan had to smile. “Taylor” , he thought to himself, this guy is acutally calling me “ Taylor.” “I’m going to Americus,” he replied.

“ I’m going right through. You live there?”

“Yes,” said Allan as he reached to the box again. Jerry was obviously pleased. The boy felt better now, having eaten, but the rich food had made him thirsty.

He cleared his throat and added, “Yeah, I ’ve got a week or so before classes start again, so I’m going home.”

“Those pecans making you thirsty? Here, drink some of this.” Jerry handed Allan a smaU thermos.

“N o , I couldn’t drink all your —” “Go on, I want you to have it.”

“Thanks. . .really.”

Allan drank the warm liquid and laid his head back against the seat.

“Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all,” he said to himself - “ for a hick.”

He knew that Jerry wanted someone to talk to as he drove, but the droning of the engine soon put him to sleep despite himself.

Allan woke suddenly in the grey freshness of pre-dawn. He was rested and enjoying a drowsy sort of satisfaction. The outline of familiar buildings told him they had reached Americus. The truck had stopped. Allan looked across the seat and found the little man staring at him intently, his eyes glowing. A plastic tooth pick was working up and down at the corner of his mouth. Allan was almost ashamed to look at him.

I appreciate the ride and the food and everything,” he began.“ I sure do.”

Jerry’s familiar grin re-appeared. “That’s all right.”

Allan quickly opened the door, then stopped short. “Well, so long,” he mumbled. “Maybe I’ll look you up if I ever get to S t . Pete. What’s that name again?”

“Campbell.”

“Jerry?”

“Yes. Take care, Taylor.”

“Good by.” Allan jumped down, slammed the door and walked away without looking back. His leg wasn’t aching so badly now. He made his way to a nearby truck-stop, the only place in town that was open, and went in. It was empty except for the man behind the counter.

“What’ll it be?” he said.

“Cup of coffee and some pie.”

“What kind?”

“Pecan,” smiled AUan, “Pecan.” The accent was on the first syllable.

P h o en ix : Sp ring 1 9 7 1 17

Phoenix Bestseller List F ic tio n 1. Segal; L o ve S to ry 2. Fowles: The French L ie u te n a n t’s Woman 3. Dickey: Deliverance 4. Miller: The Crucible 5 . HeUer: Catch 22 6. Heilein: Stranger In A Strange Land 7. Herbert; D une 8. Brautigan: The A b o rtio n 9. Laing: K nots 10. Dylan: Tarantula

N o n -F ictio n 1 . “ J” : Sensuous Woman 2. Reuben: E verything You A lw ays W anted To K now A b o u t Sex B u t Were

A fraid To A sk 3. Reich; Greening O f Am erica 4. Janov: Primal Scream 5. Toffler: Fu ture Shock 6. “M” : Sensuous Man 7. Clark: Crime In Am erica 8. Baker and Jones: Coffee, Tea Or Me: Girls ’R o u n d The World Diary 9. Fast: B o d y Language 10. Laurel; Living On The Earth

This is the top-ten bestseller list in the Knoxville area for the month of April according to surveys taken at the Campus, Gateway, and University Bookstores.’

Special thanks to Mary Kelly for time and effort spent in obtaining this list.

P h o e n i x : Sp ri n g i 9 71 18

Why I Abhor A Lot Of Modern, Pseudo-Deep Poetry

I abhor a lot of modern. Pseudo-deep poetry because In most of such poems the words are arranged On The page In such a pattern that.

In order to read the poem, one's eyes mu st often be Jostled and bounced about Like the breasts Of a well endowed girl prancing down a flight of stairs.

Richard Laurence Barclay

Like The Sun Ascending The Morning Like the sun ascending the morning, illuminating the still, silent landscape into warm wakefulness as it pours slowly over the horizon— so your love is the sun of my illuminated morning.

Like the rain descending the sky, quenching the dry, thirsting ground with its contenting coolness as it softly sheathes its domain in glistening light— so your love is the rain to quench my thirst

Your love, like the sun, like the rain.

Loneliness Loneliness greets us all when we are in a crowd of strangers.

Loneliness is worse, though, when the strangers are our friends.

-Barbara B ryant

Hiatus

The re's a mangled dwelling here And it is a time that was: Where I infantized, childized and adolesced In the foamy cushion — Padded and solaced from The bruising wake of renovation.

The world was macromagnificent.

Yet in its awesome structure; I ackwardly grew and groped In mazes of neon streets.

Or escaped in exploring pleasure To forested hills and pastoral places.

I was schooled, ruled and religioned Very much sculptured In the blueprint of my elders And hammered into their hampered world With its ant people places Of grave faces and great graveyards.

I tiptoed cautiously And at times spirited madly To a place that wasn't and isn't Until quite exhausted And stumbling and tumbling I stopped . . .

Stanley A . Parker Michael E. Carberry

P h o e n i x : Sp ring 1 9 7 1 1 9

Urbanism I (One Side Of A City) Other people exist somehow In their heU hole houses Where rats and roaches mingle With children at play And daddy isn’t daddy Cause he’s gone away.

Two rooms ’a house And a hot plate’s a kitchen.

Where beans and sometimes hamburgers Don’t fill empty stomachs And sadly round eyes Beg for more.

Bottles aside pocked and puddled streets Become playthings and pens for tiny people, And clandestine side alleys Are the salesfloor of the horseman Who plunges his dirty needle Into the heart of smoldering youth.

Bright ribbons and aippled dolls Give way to wombs of swollen fertility.

And baqies bungle into Their wretched rowhouse purgatory While alien men statue street corners.

Night after night, day after day.

Michael Carberry

HANK MCBRIDE P h o e n ix : Sp ring 1 9 7 1 2 0

P h o e n ix : S p rin g 1 9 7 1 21

Of A Fire On The Hill A M aileresque Encounter W ith R eligion , Parody, and E xisten tial Anguish

by R ichard R o b y n

After a disastrous affair he felt the most rewarding thing he could do for himself would be to hit the bottle.

But, he considered again, it was not the time for that, just as it was not the time to write a novel or get into a brawl or read a book deeper than Profiles in Courage (or Six Crises, God forbid!). No, it was not the time to risk what would certainly turn out to be a spiritually fatal plunge into his disoriented and much abused psyche; rather it was the time to work that pattern he rather cynically called Lyricism in Mime in the hope that he could cleanse a soul that had unconsciously set about to collect all the dust and crap produced by an age to which he had unwillingly been joined. He could dare to hope, then, to replenish that stock of good his soul had given generously to a heedless public, to work on a reservoir of energy in the perhaps false dream of finding his cherished

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dharma somehow lost along the way.

He was not offered money but a grade, thus utimately the vague promise of a smooth graduation, to fulfill an assignment the outline and direction of which were happily left much to his own imagination. Thinking mock-waspishly that the fruits of that decision would most probably bloom to bother the one who made it, he walked the campus in a heat, mulling the proposition over: it would involve religion, for that was what at the moment most intrigued that part of him that could be intrigued by mystery and dedication. Besides, he knew he was, with perhaps a few exceptions, the most religious person on campus, and that position of reverence at times demanded justification in the form of labor and literary ritual.

Turning the corner at the bottom of the Hill and stepping to the curbstone that would lead him up, he felt that

unmistakable flash deep within him that he knew was either the birth of an idea of creation or the embryonic stirrings of another death wish. And thus the idea in shape: he would probe beneath the crust of the secular that was inevitably nurtured in a university atmosphere to find the sins or secret divine yearnings of his friends and enemies alike. He would, if necessary, lay his hands to the cross and take upon himself the immense totahty of their experience and pray that by doing so he had arrived in time with enough: the age had long been crying.

THE ESSAY AS JOURNALISM A study of something as amorphous and ethereal as the rehgious condition of a campus would necessarily entail a brief technical essay on departments, professors, classrooms and blackboards that with all its deatil could only clothe the flesh of the essay of the personal, which he felt to be since Montaigne the best bridge from the impersonal philosophical treatise to the suprapersonal art of literature. Thus, as the beginnings for the former he determined the limits of his intentions and the unfortunate Emits imposed externally upon him by time and a reader’s patience.

Then he began the true work, the work of imagination and action and solemn metamorphism. He adopted Scorpio just as an older, more experienced, more audacious and perhaps more brilliant contemporary adopted a sign for his personal reminiscences on space, Apollo and the devil. He was aware, of course, that his spirit of independence demanded he explore under a sign dissimilar to that of his contemporary journahst-philosopher, and that his choice would necessarily throw him out of kilter with the vaunted Age of Aquarius.

But, thought Scorpio, the circumstances surrounding this existential decision (however minor) accurately reflected his own life of constant challenges and frequently unresolved solutions. Scorpio felt that his ways were the ways of a aim inal psyche caught and frustratingly displaced by a basically good and honest character But that could not be explained here.

The Religious Studies Department, located for the most part on the fifth rung of the McClung Tower academic hierarchy (which it shares with the overflow of English instructors), is made up of six professors of various rank and a part time lecturer. Its head. Dr. Ralph Norman, Ph.D., organized the department in 1966, replacing the old Tennessee School of Religion. According to his quite busy secretary, he began with a staff of two and a total enrollment of less than one hundred. At latest count, there are 675 souls enrolled.

The department, Scorpio learned from a paper he found while rooting about an outer office, offers B.A. and B.S. degrees, the B.A. ciriculum generally inclined toward the humanities as compared with the more professionally and socially oriented B.S. courses. The curriculum generally is divided into the history and hterature of religion and the problematic aspects of religions.

Through with statistics, Scorpio ushered himself into a room lined with books. All kinds, from what he could make out without his glasses—from Plato to Nietzsche and Niebuhr.

Dr. Ralph Norman, pleasantly and soUdly tall, smiled noncommittally and expressed a firm but not challenging handshake, at the same time asking the unexpected visitor to sit. Scorpio, attired this morning in the cleanest of his two pairs of pants and bundled in a corduroy overcoat (it rained that morning—he had no umbrella, having decided that three lost in the last year made getting wet rather more attractive than risking another $5.00), sat and felt somewhat uncomfortable staring at the fresh, cleanly shaved Dr. Norman when his own neck itched from a three day growth of beard.

He had decided, from the interviews he had conducted, that the best exchanges came in a tense atmosphere created by the interviewer’s conscious desire to construct glaring differences between himself and his subject. Thus a subtle form of animosity is aroused, automatically putting the perceptive interviewee on his guard, aU the better position in which he could then be thrown off balance by a distinctly friendly question. Easy. Scorpio smiled and asked Dr. Norman what he felt was the general state of religious interest on the UT ‘ campus, particularly in view of the recent notorious outbreak of the Campus Crusade for Christ.

Dr. Norman, answering readily, said that he must apologize, but since he had only recently been sick and thus out of touch with the campus and its students therein, he could not answer with any certainty.

Scorpio, who had prepared no questions beforehand, was thrown off balance by the implications of the answer and glanced down quickly at his blank pad, writing quickly and efficiently through the maze of confusion: Crusade for Christ— not in with students don’t know as he searched for a question that could counter the blow thrown by the doctor. But Scorpio was surprised, for Dr. Norman began of himself to talk almost gleefully of what he did know of the rehgious leanings of his stude nts. Thoroughly

P h o e n ix : Spring 1 9 7 1 2 3

off balance, Scorpio strung along helplessly.

Much of the recent phenomenon of the return to rehgion among young people is the result of the ecological question, said Dr. Norman. Here the very basic value committments of a society are being questioned, and the secular was showing up in a rather bad way. Eastern reUgions, with their en^hasis on man’s closeness to nature and subsequent deemphasis of man’s supposed obUgations to overcome the forces of nature as a matter of principle or necessity, holds great attraction for students. Statistically, the religious studies department in general had more than doubled in the last year, obviously pointing to a definite change in student attitudes. But the reasons for the change are hard to pin down in any definite sense. Ecology, dissatisfaction with the drug scene, alienation from government and secular dominance, a sense of indentification with the man Jesus, perhaps just simply trying something new: all are factors, and probably many more. Dr. Norman, friendly and eager and certainly knowledgeable, could offer only an apology for nothing more specific.

Scorpio, given a breather, decided to follow a whim: what did the doctor think of the rehgious tendencies in many of the more outstanding writers, particualarly Baldwin and Norman Mailer?

He smiled in only the way a professor asked about a suqject somewhat out of his element that he nonetheless knows much about would smile, and began to talk on the latter writer. He said Mailer is interesting in his writing of the basic committments people have to themselves, to each other and expeciahy to their work. “ But we must guard against the danger of making literary people more than they are: People good at using words. Much as we should respect them and appreciate them, we should not make prophets of them. From them we do get a picture of the age . , . . but a novel is more data than,” and he smiled mysteriously, “ the truth given to the saints.”

Scorpio shifted uncomfortably as he jotted down the words, the pugnacious part of his mind roaming over the variety of responses he could bring out to refute the doctor’s rather extraordinary and certainly challengeing claim. But Scorpio merely finished writing, exchanged dark thoughts on the upcoming trial of the Graham criminals, thanked the doctor and, not wishing to upset further a metabohsm already in turmoil, left.

He could then have explored the numerous other avenues of faith and belief and expression on campus: The Student Religious Liberals, the Campus Crusade for Christ, the Deseret Club, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, the B’nai B’rith Hillel, the Christian Science Orgainzation, the Baptist Student

P h o e n ix : Sp ri n g 1 9 7 1 2 4

Union, John XXIII Catholic Student Center. But that way lead to more buildings, faces, rooms, words; words he was not prepared to face or ignore. Finding this in himself, fighting an urge to junk the project and accept the defeat he felt within him always, disgusted with himself for letting die that sense of diligence that graced the reader with fulfilling facts, Scorpio folded his pad beneath his arm and walked in the now brilhant sunshine with slow and measured step, uncharacteristically subdued.

THE ESSAY AS WRITING “ The formula of my happiness: a Yea, a Nay, a straight line, a goal. . Thus spake Zarathustra.”

Nietzsche The place was a favorite of his: noisy and dark enough to leave him with at least the illusion that he was alone among half a hundred people. There he could slowly drink himself into or out of a problem with the clear conscience of a Catholic at communion. Though this night his conscience was not clear, nor his mind.

He leaned back away from the glass with his hands pressed whiteknuckled to the table and stared not a httle truculently at their faces. It always brought it on, staring at their faces.

What they wanted. What he thought.

It was an age, try as he sometimes would, that he could not ignore.

He had never consciously wished to be a social critic, so the Uneup of his prejudices grew from the substantial source of his ego that was unconcerned by backwashing opinion and sohdly convinced of itself and its potential life: the marches and protests he attended more out of curiosity than committment, and although his friends in arms had praised his writings they had missed the subtle weariness with which he had arranged them on paper; their enjoyment of sex and the body (which, like his generation, he knew they alone had discovered) was their only real step to reahty, yet their preoccupation with sex he felt would be their first most certain step toward dreamy imprisonment, and with that Scorpio knew that before too long they would be fucked out, shackled to their beds and each other in a suffocating embrace that would speU the gradual yet inevitable petering out of their desperately needed impulses of will and creative selfishness; their music Scorpio felt was their truest and most precious gift, yet even that was too often a gummy mutant, a freakish and abused two minute package deal of catchy beats and absurd rhymes that he still

sometimes lauded for capturing the imagination and talents of the less talented and finding for them a place better than under the thumb of parents or marriage partners (Scorpio did have humanist impulses); their clothes he accepted whole­ heartedly, for he had gloried in ill fitting, clashing colored rags and torn shoes for years, but at the same time he was less than amused to find these very same richly, expressively careless rags on sale at their friendly neighborhood boutique. And worse, being bought!

Yet in the end they rediscovered and gave expression to that great principle no ideology, system, church, president or Congress could refute or overcome. “Do your own thing,” they said (it could not be cliched, only misused), and though so many of them forsook it for the safety of the crowd or their own ill-formed ideologies, enough followed it to make it the password of the 60’s. It was this call to the self that helped to root Scorpio, as so many others of his generation, from the deadly paranoia of introspection fostered in the 50’s, brave the undercurrent of idol worship and role playing always a threat.

“One’s own duty,” Krishna taught, and though a world of literature can and has been written of it, it is yet only a begiiming, an attitude. Its power was the tremendous potential of an entire age, but that power unleashed or misdirected could only be corrupting and obscene.

Scorpio knew this as he knew that the only person he could really deeply dislike was one who had no control over himself, who could not command respect by the certain strength of discipline it takes to be a man, to create and sustain a self.

Once a dilettante himself, he knew the dangerous softness of that influence on the soul. There was no true pain, so there was no true pleasure, no suffering, no need, no will. And no religion. Though he had been an atheist, that was not a prerequisite for being of the unfaithful: he had once befriended many an irreUgious Christian. No, he had had no religion because he had not had the strength to fashion it for himself. Before he began the psychic movement in the little heU of daily writing, he with much of his generation had contiuously abused the essential sense of the human animal.

Thus the confessional: writing for him was an unpre­ meditated process of drudgery and revelation that was consistent only in its inconsistency. It helped him to figure himself and his world out, but he as yet had been unable to use it in the way he knew it must be used, which meant not used at all but simply someting there, not to be thought of but to be. He was thus trapped between those two worlds of word making that he referred to as Journahsm and Writing. The former was the sometimes creative but almost entirely formularized world o f textbook patterns and 9 to 5 punchards that told the journalist he had specific details to make and specific moods to create; the latter was bringing pen to paper

in the next to hopeless attempt to express what there is in a man’s soul: the dreams, hates, yearnings. Then to separate the wheat from the chaff and give not only what is this man’s alone, but what he had that Odysseus had, and Alcides and Faust and Jesus and Leopold Bloom and Joe and Juan and, yes, Richard Nixon. What the best, the ordinary and the bad all shared in that place few could reach.

So, thought Scorpio, it was religion this writing of and for the soul- Though it had little place for God, it did not deny the possibility of such a thing. It had hope and optimism, ws awas as individualistic as its own law would allow, and as tough and determined and dedicated as the character it inhabited who had the luck to recognize it for what it was.

Above all, it demanded devotion. “Destroy, with the sword of knowledge, those misgivings of yours which fill your mind, and which are produced from ignorance. Engage in devotion.

Arise!” declared Krishna.

It was that ingredient which gave substance to that mixture that was himself, that he hoped would eventually help him to withstand that which he most hated to see others be: proud, vain, small, humourless and afraid. He wondered sometimes especially if he was afraid: afraid to drop the secure and the pleasurable to accept the unrewarding. He knew that the only times in his life when he had ever been truly afraid had been when he was not working and had little hope to do so, not when he had been told he was wrong or ridiculous.

He could not help wondering if his generation was afraid, a generation that had within the short span or a decade bounded between the sublime and the ridiculous, that had produced and suckled at the words of Dylan and the 1910 Fruitgum Company, praised Don Sutherland and Soupie Sales, sat at Wopdstock and the feet of drug blasted Leary, loved each other and a wonderful syringe of Horse. He thought that perhaps they were afraid but was unaware of what it was they feared. He thought that now, before the crash, they were in the most fortunate state of mind to avoid the very worst: they were insane.

And then to himself: in the paper he was writing he sought to rid himself in one stroke of an assignment and an influence.

In doing it the best he could in the moments given, he actively and agressively hoped to exorcise a bear of an image within him; an image of style that he had damned near come to kneeling before, an image that had helped him and infured him in that peculiar way that the others before it had done. He worshipped it and hated it, and now was prepared to move on from it.

Scorpio drained the last of the beer and retired to the typewriter, smiling a bit ruefully at his fantasies. They were perhaps good but certainly far from true. When he finished he would have by then discarded Scorpio.

And that was true.

P h o e n ix : Sp ring 1 9 7 1 2 5

REVIEW PLAY

Othello: A Critique

by N ancy Terry

Even Othello had a difficult time securing entrance to the University of Tennessee campus. Assisted by a bodyguard of 44 campus pohcemen, WUliamShakespearemade it to UT. Due to threats of violence, a number of less hearty souls left seats vacant on the sold-out Premiere Night II, but those who attended were captivated by a pageant of enigma. They were entranced by the splendent flourish of costume, sword play, and tavern bawdy, and were gradually absorbed by the rhetoric and living interpretation of Shakespeare.

The strength o f the play has traditionally rested on two pillars; the performances of Othello the Moor, and of lago the villain. In the case o f Albert Harris’s production, the crazed lago of Bob McGee and the proud Othello of Jon Lutz indeed created a tour de force. Shaack Van Deusen exaggerated his character’s weaknesses and created a strange and striking interpretation o f Roderigo, while the angel white appearance of Stanna Sloan as Desdemona serenely captivated the audience.

With Roderigo’s and lago’s frenzied entrance a dissonant chord was struck early and maintained throughout the play.

Such a fast intitial pace allowed the audience little time to orient themselves to the action. They were left slightly bewildered by the apparent lack o f rationale behind the actors’ agitated state, and this lack of rationale made the characters slightly discreditable. There was no warm up — and one was hit by a climatic atmosphere within the first two lines o f the play. Once into the script, however, the characters aD came within grasp; aU, that is, except lago whose psychological interpretation remained allusive.

The play is presented in a highly psychological light with lago as the core of the enigma. Bobby McGee’s lago is different from the stoic Machiavellian archfiend which is the most accepted portrayal. Though perhpas contrary to the norm o f exceptance, McGee creates an intensely powerful character. In McGee, lago is no longer the Machi-villian of cold intent, but instead is a crazed egopath bent on puppeteering

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the world due to an intense inferiority complex. McGee’s wild eyes trust no one unless he is controllling them, and then he is replused by those whom he can control (i.e., Othello and Roderigo). lago’s relation to Roderigo is shaded by several aspects —all of them involving domination. There is a strong homosexual context in the scene where lago holds Roderigo in his arms, caresses him, and plays with his hair. At other times lago is the father image with Roderigo the pouting-stamping child. This is particularily exampled by the scene following the Cyprus tavern when lago reties the lacing on Roderigo’s tunic as one would tie a child’s shoe lace. Each time Roderigo leaves the stage, lago laughs to see how well the puppet-Roderigo is tied to his wiU. Roderigo is so entwined by lago’s character that a physical stamp of lago’s foot jerks the body of Roderigo as if his nerves had endings in lago’s body. lago’s relation to Van Deusen’s characterization is marked by compulsive domination. McGee’s lago refuses to allow Roderigo to have a will of his own and yet despises him for being submissive. Or, perhpas lago despises himself for his homosexual tendencies and thus vindicates his self disgust on the object which serves as its origin.

Van Deusen interprets Roderigo’s dependence as one of submission o f the weaker sex, and also as an affection of need.

Van Deusen cowers, cringes, pouts, stamps his feet, and “flops” down on the ground when he doesn’t want to do lago’s bidding, but he always submits. He fears and loves, despises and idolizes lago. There is a certain correlation between lago and Roderigo, and Cassio the favored lieutenant of Othello and Bianca his strumpet. Both Roderigo and Bianca are mistreated, laughed at, and scorned, but neither can break the bonds that hold them under the domination of lago and Cassio.

In relation to the other characters, lago’s motives and motivation become more difficult to discern. The motives that push lago to weave such a web of terror have traditionally been difficult ones. The Machiavellian machine of horror which was turned loose as a scourge upon the earth had no real personal rationale for evil, since the initial motive of revenge for loss of position was too weak for the havoc which lago created. However, neither does this psychological version fully satisfy the question o f lago, for the concepts are not carried far enough into the interpretation to solve his personality enigma.

We have discussed the obvious egopathy by which lago feels a necessity to dominate. We have seen his homosexual tendencies. But, there are other threads of psychological theory that can be read into the play through the interpretation of the director. Some critics feel that the significance of lago’s relation with Othello can be deepened by classifying it as subconscious homosexuality. lago’s jealousy is not because he enview Othello’s position, or because he is in love with Desdamona, but rather because he himself possesses a subconscious affection for the Moor. If we keep in mind the obvious homosexual attraction to Roaerigo, this theory does not exactly fit A1 Harris’s production. However, the disgust lago demonstrates for Roderigo might not only be caused

HARLAN HAMBRIGHT

by the repulsion for an object of submission, but also the recogniation of a mirror to his own weakness. lago might see Roderigo as the source of his repulsive homosexuality, and since the outward reactions to these two characters is the same, we might find it to be an indication of similar reasons for the reaction. lago might feel the same homosexual feelings toward Othello as he does Roderigo — seeing Othello as the same kind of mirror of his own repulsiveness —and thus desire to destroy the Moor.

None o f these theories are sufficiently carried through in Harris’s production to give clear insight into the possible correct interpretation. The characters create just enough substance for one to realize the psychological format, but they do not give a long enough thread to tie up the loose ends.

Othello’s character of sun-bronzed dignity compressing the inward passion of the desert heat is convincingly portrayed by Jon Lutz. He thunders and pours out his lines as if tempering gold. His body movement is grand and sweeping. He is indeed

of royal lineage. However, the gold of Othello’s dignity begins to tarnish visibly when lago begins to cunningly prod the passionate, inner savage, and finaUy Othello’s nobility deteriorates into an insane, jealous animal. Lutz starts this decline with a trembling hand and ends writhing, crumpled to his knees, using his cane as the only means o f support, and jerking about the floor in a spasm. The transition from Soveriegn to Savage is masterful and visibly convincing but psychologically creates confusion. To credit such irrational passion to a temperate fever from the land of his birth is inadequate in light o f the heavy psychological content in the other characters. The passion of Othello is jealousy, and jealousy depends upon the lack of self-esteem. Othello’s jealousy stems from permanent insecurities that transcend the pigment of his skin and the sunland of his birth. These uncertainties could stem from his insecurity in an alien culture. He is a foriegner in a strange land - a soldier of war in an alien culture. He shows signs of insecurity and uncertainty at his wife’s love by his frequent laugh at the beginning of the play as if he can not believe a jewel such as Desdamona is his.

Desdamona, played by Stanna Sloan, visibly staggers the audience with her glowing white elegance. The beautiful Desdamona is interpreted as a young, airy girl, affected by her own charms. Despite her angelic visage, one is persistently plagued with the thought that the non-innocence shown by Desdamona’s actions might be tell-tale signs o f guilt in accordance with lago’s line: “In Venice they do let heaven see the pranks they dare not show their husbands; their best conscience is not to leane’t undone, but keep’t unknown.”

The traditional Desdamona is the epitomy of purity, innocence, and romance, which is the most appropriate interpretation of a girl who falls in love with a man for the stories he teUs. The only thing that retains Stanna’s image of purity is Othello’s admiration for the interpretation of Desdamona as a spoiled, capricius girl is quite workable in the play, but in tainting her angelic qualities, her death scene is less impressive. Some of the pathos of sacrifice is lost when a seasoned ewe is forfeited instead of a lamb.

Interpretations of these four characters (Othello, lago, Roderigo, and Desdamona) presented the core of the play. The enigma of their characters created both the difficulty and the intrigue. One should note that the interpretations of the main characters were visibly coherent. Only in later analysis does the mind boggle at what the eye saw. Several scenes and minor characterizations were particularly fine. Mary Kois played Emilia, Cassio’s wife, as a delightful, earthy, commonsensical woman with a wonderful bobbing saunter. Cassio made a hilarious drunk that captured the essence of Shakespeare’s tavern bawdy. And the “Virtue of a fig” of lago alone with McGee rolling on his back laughing and delighting in his own rhetoric, was an impressive scene.

With all of the elements, the different characterizations, the room for interpretation, the costumes and setting, a colorful kaleidoscope puzzle was created, and if not all the pieces were present, their absence did not detract from the electrical presentation of Shakespeare’s Othello.

P h o e n i x : Sp ring 1 9 7 1 2 7

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