Among the Intellectualoids / A Marxist Remembers
Stillman, J. Whitney
he achieves such renown that he is ultimately hauled before a congressional investigating committee (back when such things were run by the Bad Guys) where, on behalf of his suffering...
...My play was accepted for presentation...
...We ate our sandwiches--still nothing...
...It would be impossible to radicalize my classmates by this means...
...Perkins asked me to address the school at morning assembly on Attica Day...
...It is ETHEL & JULIUS MEEROPOL, dying unquiet...
...What's impressive is that it was all bought with food stamps," she said...
...The vote was to return to our homes on a provisional basis and give it a try...
...Inside the rapidly chilling houses, tropical plants drooped, tropical birds shivered, tropical fish died (more from having their aerators shut off than from cold...
...The essentially Marxist arguments made a tremendous impression on them, to the point where, in several weeks, many had become militant proponents of radical social change...
...Autumn followed summer and turned into winter, which became spring...
...I've had them on my show...
...And those who made it to the street didn't get far...
...drain the pipes, which of course meant doing without water, which, it turned out, everyone would have to do without anyway because the city's pumps were all electrically operated...
...I considered abortion, of course, but felt that a successful pregnancy might be an important growth experience, both for me and for the child...
...It is too bad that my parents were too bourgeois to see that the world will only be at peace when it is united under the red flag...
...A company called Ling-Temco-Vought had an exciting plan to develop learning machines for school use...
...Spuds in the morning, spuds at midday, and spuds in the afternoon...
...Sixth, I am innocent...
...We should have told you...
...Capitalism is beautiful yet it must be destroyed...
...It was very difficult at first...
...That is the only way our society will be restructured...
...She was in a much better mood and giggled at my remark...
...And yet, among all this, the solecisms...
...Her services had at one time been useful, but now she could be discarded without inconvenience to her employers...
...In only a little more than ten years all of you will have the vote...
...This was not always easy...
...I might as well be dead...
...Mrs...
...Johnny sort of scares me...
...Don't try to follow me, Signed, Will P.S...
...When the first ice-laden lines started crashing down it seemed rather romantic...
...It meant refraining from comment on my classmates' insane desire to eat as much cand...
...They were impressed and Miss Fisher later reported to my parents that my work in colors had been "Outstanding...
...I have a friend in the department of welfare...
...There has, of course, been no mention in the press of Fudd's case...
...20 The Alternative: An American Spectator January 1977...
...Some did leave, and more time passed...
...I hope that it is interesting...
...Or, why is the network so eager to do the bidding of a professional blacklister...
...People with gas stoves and ovens, some of them, could at least cook their food for those candlelight dinners...
...I hope that you can now better understand our decision to leave New York...
...People screamed, cheered, danced in the streets...
...In a later report to my parents Miss Parsons described it as "outstanding" and she told me that it reminded tier of some of the "theatre of fact" docudramas she had seen on television...
...This is how it went: Love on Trial An Amerikan Nightmare The Scene: A crowded courtroom...
...The Vietnamese children also happen not to be white--but that will have to come later...
...National Student Marketing failed, but it was a worthy investment, even if a loss...
...But the rewards are not always tangible...
...I look out on a room of well-fed white faces," I said...
...Some people think it's incongruous that we should be organizing the potato workers," he said...
...And everyone looks up at those overhead wires now with respect, and awe, and fear...
...IX After my return later that afternoon, my father, in an uncharacteristcially subdued mood, asked me to join him in the library...
...But then I thought better of it...
...After weeks on the road, there's something awfully relaxing about sitting in a chair which allows one's feet to touch the ground...
...Mr...
...Perkins, stepped into the clearing, smiling broadly when he saw u s - - a trait which remained from his days as a practicing Episcopal clergyman...
...ETHEL & JULIUS MEEROPOL: We are completely innocent...
...I could sure use one...
...She returned wearing something more comfortable and sat down next to me on her sofa...
...That's what's really disgusting and that's what we've got to change...
...It took the Great Midwest Ice Storm of March '76 to make most of us realize that our daily lives, indeed our very survival, now require an uninterrupted flow of power...
...Yet it is clear that he represents Death...
...One by one the DEFENDANTS come forward for sentencing...
...You're known to be a dedicated Marxist...
...That's it...
...The roads were solid ice...
...The terrible ors accumulate...
...Perkins, an ordained Episcopal clergyman...
...It was nearly 4:30, so I prepared an Ovaltine to take to the playroom in time for "Satellite Six," an anthology of top American cartoons shown on Channel 6, WRGB, in Schenectady...
...These contemporaries accepted without question the analysis of the American class system included in my essay on the assigned topic, "What I Did During Summer Vacation...
...October 1976 E. Uhr The Imperial Kilowatt Power corrupts...
...What, too, about Elmer Fudd...
...Washington dinner parties tend to run late and it was way past my bedtime...
...What impressed me most was the tremendous idealism of the young people, the majority of whom were, like myself, between six and seven years old...
...Mansfield waking me in their second-floor guest room so that I could brush my teeth before going to bed...
...VI Faith Hussy was one of the most beautiful and talented leaders of the women's movement...
...A week after its first performance CBS bought the television rights to the script and broadcast an expanded version of it as part of their docudrama "theatre of fact" series...
...Suddenly our school principal, Mr...
...there isn't any more...
...On the airplanes being shot down, they drew the swastikas in the wrong direction, so that they looked like the Navajo Indian peace symbol...
...Bosco has never tasted so sweet...
...But one branch of artistic endeavor had a tradition of polemical success--the drama...
...III In kindergarten, as in nursery school the previous year, I managed to keep my political convictions to myself and my profile generally low...
...Potato Head" with equanimity again...
...There is nothing in Marx which says that women shouldn't use antiperspirants...
...Lillian Hellman's early dramas convinced the West to take a stand against Hitler and Fascism, and a single play by Arthur Miller later stopped Senator Joseph McCarthy from seizing power in the United States...
...Friends," he said, "friends, I find it incredible that a trial like this could actually have taken place in the United States...
...You couldn't buy a thing at the supermarkets...
...I knew that if we could only hold out for another month we really might accomplish something...
...There is no crime in love--it's what Christianity is all about...
...He changed it before going into politics...
...This trial was a farce...
...Several hours passed, but nothing happened...
...But I am afraid that not everyone knew what we were trying to do...
...And that made things seem a little bit better...
...I have always been interested in helping students and this company gave them the chance to work their way through school...
...My husband's real name isn't Straus...
...The FBI, CIA, and big business must be held accountable for their actions...
...More spuds...
...I don't think there is anything we can do," Senator Clark said...
...One afternoon my walk...
...reading in bed by flashlight...
...But the potato workers have a just cause, so I thought I might compliment Mrs...
...The average six-year-old, I realized, had not yet developed an appreciation for the visual arts...
...It meant silently enduring the mindless recesses, with their smug games of catch and kickhall...
...Elsewhere, it was generally observed that candlelight is difficult to see by and fireplaces give off very little heat...
...On Saturday morning my parents, and those of twenty-three classmates, awoke to find a message like this on their kitchen tables: I have left and will not return until American society is radically restructured...
...For the sake of discussion, I asked them if there were any circumstances under which the United States should go to war to defend Britain...
...An ecological happening...
...During the commercials I plan to take a look at a book by a writer named Sigmund Freud...
...Surely McDonalds had its own generator...
...Perhaps she seemed particularly lovely to me since she was in her late twenties, just like my mother...
...And what did tomorrow promise them...
...Is that a crime...
...Patricia was afraid of my love...
...Two characters standing on the sidewlk are photographed from afar that we may see the vintage Plymouths in the foreground...
...Only in a socialist society will men and women have real equality...
...These differences are biological...
...In fact, it is doubtful whether Mrs...
...When we arrived at her apartment Faith 18 The Alternative: An .~merican Spectator January 1977 made me my drink and then asked me to excuse her for a moment...
...I can't imagine how anyone could bear picking potatoes for a living," Warren Maine, the Hollywood hairstylist, said...
...Do you think it's decadent for me to wear the dress...
...Not all my classmates, however, belonged to these two schools...
...The rest of the population ate it cold and raw...
...At first I considered resisting my parents' plans...
...I t ' s not frightening that some people have to pick potatoes, it's frightening that some people will go through life without ever having to pick potatoes...
...I couldn't help staring at it...
...But it's too late for that...
...Or, why are the victims so ostentatiously Jewish and their tormentors non-Jewish, a state of affairs that must intrigue Roy Cohn and Alger Hiss...
...New Windsor, N.Y...
...This was no one's fault...
...Note: This is as good a place as any to mention a persistent annoyance of historical dramas, and The Front is a typical offender...
...No heat meant that while things were getting soft in the freezer they were getting hard in the pipes, and that could mean burst pipes, because of water's peculiar tendency to expand when it freezes...
...For days I sat in front of the typewriter with a blank piece of paper staring me in the face...
...two men interfered with my free speech and got killed...
...Besides, there aren't many large metropolitan dailies anymore...
...Perkins took the podium after me and proposed that the usual school election procedures be waived temporarily, so that an immediate vote might be taken for school president...
...When the power finally came back on, block by block, it was like the lifting of a siege...
...Over 300 colleges and 750 nursery schools offered courses for credit based on the show, using educational materials prepared by me and distributed through public television stations...
...Mike Mansfield...
...Senator Clark was instrumental in stopping the suffering in Angola early in 1976 and he is also the host of American Bandstand, my favorite television show...
...She had apparently carried me upstairs from the dining room...
...It is their decision, not ours...
...However, the studio chiefs finally caught on and today Fudd cannot find a job in the film industry...
...It is twentyfive years ago and the men are wearing sideburns, their hair tumbling over their ears...
...LENNu BRUCE: American society killed me as surely as if Gerald Ford pushed the needle in himself...
...It was then that we hatched our plan...
...She asked me whether I'd like to stop off at her apartment...
...Unfortunately, the plans were too advanced and the company failed...
...A WHALE: American society killed me as surely as if Susan Ford threw the harpoon herself...
...There was the whole literature of Marxism to discover and, my father having attended Harvard, our library was filled with it...
...Then you might not have The Alternative: An American Spectator January 1977 19 taken it so hard and blamed yourself...
...And, most importantly, not until I found a girl who was politically correct--if there even was such a person...
...The killing has got to stop...
...Fifth, Whittaker Chambers was obese...
...It was perhaps the most exciting period of my life...
...I robbed the payroll not for money but as a symbolic gesture...
...It is good to want to help the underprivileged, but this is not the way to go about it...
...I found it nearly impossible to write that first word, particularly since I couldn't type...
...After a brief discussion we decided that it would be most effective to work within the system, at least for the time being...
...Dinner by candlelight...
...But, for the first time, America had been shown to them in its true light...
...You're known to be a dedicated Marxist...
...I t ' s frightening...
...Hostess Twinkies, I discovered, are manufactured by ITF, which murdered Allende and installed the fascist Pinochet regime in Chile...
...In Vietnam children go to school hungry because America has never sent the aid it agreed to under the Paris Peace Accords...
...I had, in my first thirty-six months, come to love life on this street: the strolls with Nanny each afternoon, the lush evergreens on the traffic islands at Christmas time, and the constant whirl of birthday parties, sometimes, more than one on a single Saturday afternoon...
...Perkins walked up to the front of the auditorium, visibly crying...
...A year before you were born I invested a large sum of money in a company called National Student Marketing...
...The DEFENDANTS are led offstage where their sentences will be executed...
...There is no way to open an electrically operated garage door manually: like electric typewriters, computers, phonographs, elevators, hair dryers, waffle irons, and television sets, they either run on current or they don't run at all...
...Besides this there was the proximity to the world's finest toy stores, such as Rappaport's and F.A.O...
...AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS by J. Whitney Stillman A Marxist Remembers What follow are the first-person memoirs of William Bryant Bullitt, the child Marxist, during a vital period of our nation's history--the early 1970s...
...he achieves such renown that he is ultimately hauled before a congressional investigating committee (back when such things were run by the Bad Guys) where, on behalf of his suffering acquaintances, he is uncooperative...
...By the authority vested in me by the ruling class, you are sentenced to immediate execution...
...My skill at penmanship was nearly as limited...
...In June I learned that I had been promoted to the first grade...
...In addition to the inconvenience of no water for drinking, cooking, washing, or flushing, the pipes and toilets filled with noxious fumes and more substantial matter as the sewers, abhorring a vacuum, backed into the empty plumbing...
...The electric company made a door-todoor survey to find the extent of the damage...
...Hearing my father's explanation of these past events was like having a huge stone lifted off my chest...
...J u s t because I'm a Communist," I told her, "doesn't mean I'm a sissy...
...I t would be a mistake to see England as strategically important," Senator Clark pointed out...
...To the left upstage a large kangaroo in dark business attire silently observes the courtroom proceedings...
...I'm out ofBosco," she said, "but if you don't mind Cocoa Marsh I could offer you a glass of chocolate milk...
...Nobody realized that the furnaces would all go out...
...Johnny likes to reserve the last seven or eight minutes of his show as a kind of intellectual forum, and both of us were scheduled to be On then...
...LADY CHATTERLEY: Yes, I shared my love with another human being...
...We didn't explain the circumstances to you then because we didn't think you would understand...
...I met Faith in the green room of the Tonight Show...
...Job offers also poured in...
...That's the main thing...
...After all," Senator Mansfield said, smiling, " i f the Russians want to have a Vietnam of their own, who are we to stop them...
...When the artwork of the entire class was put up on display, our realistic drawings attracted considerable attention and some converts...
...I was doubly pleased to find Senator Dick Clark of Iowa at the Mansfields' when I arrived...
...FIELD MARSHAL CINQUE: The rich are different from you and me...
...From below us in the glen came the sound of a man ' calling...
...Someday I would marry, I decided, but not until elementary school was behind me...
...Cars are, after all, the seventh wonder of the world-completely autonomous units with heat, light, radio, and motion...
...Two men dressed in blue pokce uniforms, but with pointed white sheet masks obscuring their faces, lead the first defendant in for sentencing...
...Amewica was afwaid of my dwamatic awtistwy...
...They wanted to quit...
...It used to have valuable rock musician supplies, but they're all over here now...
...Electric power corrupts electrically...
...Lenin himself changed his name, which was originally Ulyanov...
...This is basically a tribal conflict...
...Most remarkable was the effect of the pageant on the school principal, Mr...
...It's like a Restoration comedy with a score by Wagner...
...Fourth, I am innocent...
...Faith was relieved to hear this and continued to talk to me confidingly...
...Second, they weren't that important anyway...
...After what we have just witnessed it would be impossible to continue in good conscience with business as usual...
...One stock market reverse did not dry up my sense of compassion...
...I could not fully comprehend all, or perhaps any, of the passages in Marx...
...I took a long nap earlier in the day to ensure that I wouldn't be tired for the show...
...When life at home became unbearable, citizens turned to their cars...
...It was not long afterward that I had my first opportunity to prove that statement...
...He h a s n ' t been out yet and needs a bath...
...The important thing now is that the United States halt its blatant disregard of treaty commitments...
...I asked the student body to join me in a fast through recess, so that the money usually spent for our milk and crackers could be sent to the school children in Vietnam...
...Walt Disney, a beloved figure to many young people, made his first fortune on the backs of the dwarf miners in Snow White...
...After the emotional ovation for the play began to subside, Mr...
...E. FUDD: My cawewa has been wuined...
...But i t is actually recordec[ earlier...
...The political views expressed by Master Bullitt are not necessarily those of the tree they are printed on...
...Please feed Fala...
...Later, in the cab heading back to my hotel, a deep feeling of loneliness overcame me...
...Do you think it's decadent to change one's naaTle...
...Straus took me aside and asked me whether I would advise her on something she had been concerned about...
...The First Grade Class Pageant provided the perfect vehicle for a drama of this nature...
...It was now afternoon...
...There is nothing decadent in namechanging," I said...
...The End The pageant made an enormous impact on my schoolmates, far exceeding what one _would expect for what was, after all, only a brief drama...
...The move from Park Avenue left a void in my life which Lincoln Logs and Dinky J. whitney Stillman works on Park Avenue in New York, but does not live there...
...V The New Windsor Country Day production of Love on Trial was one of the turning points in my life...
...I made a large investment in their firm to support this experimentation...
...You must work within the system...
...Many people found they couldn't get their cars out of their garages...
...This was followed by summer again...
...Patricia was not a kind person--she smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into her money and carelessness, or whatever it was, and let other people clean up the mess...
...I beg you: come back and together let's work to make this a better world...
...There were no street lights or traffic signals...
...Your mother and I could not turn a deaf ear to our consciences, even flit meant the loss of some luxuries...
...The misfortunes which Nanny and I had had to face were part of events much larger than ourselves, with world peace as the goal...
...I could accomplish far more working within bourgeois institutions, working "within the system," as liberals say, than I could on the outside...
...The next Monday I learned that the leader of the fourth grade group had died in a tennis accident over the weekend...
...Probably more than any other individual Senator Mansfield was responsible for stopping the suffering in Cambodia in the spring of 1975...
...Our second grade homeroom was new, but the faces remained the same...
...But actually the two fields aren't that different...
...He gets me unemployment, too...
...We were wrong...
...We all miss you, please come home...
...William," he said, "your mother and I know how upset you were by our move from Park Avenue four years ago...
...As soon as we hit on this scheme everything proceeded rapidly...
...There are, of course, obligatory sub-plots, but they have the unmistakable air of having been thrown in to pad things out, in unconsciously typical Hollywood style...
...The painting of my own which I liked best represented the battleship Potemkin (not, of course, identified by name) blasting Nazi and Chilean air force bombers out of the sky...
...And we don't want to prolong the suffering," Senator Mansfield added...
...Thatcher and Mr...
...But there were snags...
...Actually," I told her, "there is nothing in Marx which says that women shouldn't wear dresses...
...I found the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and my life was changed forever...
...It was nearly a minute before he The Alternative: An American Spectator January 1977 17 got his own emotions sufficiently under control to try to quiet the audience...
...The idea of attending a 16 The Alternative: An American Spectator January 1977 private day school was mortifying for someone of my revolutionary political convictions...
...One by one the October days passed...
...I have therefore decided to declare tomorrow Attica Day...
...All I wanted to make was a political statement...
...I f the Queen resigned so that free elections could be held and a coalition government formed," Senator Mansfield said, "we would have to reconsider aid...
...They came away complacently thinking the outages had been exaggerated because everyone who answered his doorbell turned out to have electricity...
...And if you happened to be out of food, tough luck...
...JUDGE: Nicola Sacco, you have been found guilty of life...
...The only solution was to shut off the water and E. Uhr writes from Madison, Wisconsin...
...He resembles in some respects Senator Joseph McCarthy, but in other ways looks more like IVtlliam F. Buckley, Gerald Ford, and J. Herbert Hoover...
...Shortly after I got to the party Mrs...
...A woman producer, for example, falls in love with Allen, and how she is able to reconcile his sensitive prose with the indolent, unlettered slob that he is remains a mystery to the end...
...Yes," she said as if answering a question, "I am expecting a child in December...
...Those of the first school invariably portrayed one scene--a house, a tree, the sun, the sky, a man and a woman--in short, the lil);-white dream-world of America's racist middle class...
...When I was three years old my family moved from Park Avenue, never to return...
...WNET, Channel 13 in New York, saw the educational potential for the show and arranged to have it repeated several times by the Public Broadcasting Service...
...Nanny was dismissed...
...Marx ever wore jeans, or even knew what they were...
...The month was nearing an end and still no improvement came...
...Since when's that a crime...
...as possible or on their parents' virtual obsession with tooth decay, perhaps racist in motivation...
...II My Marxist-Leninist studies came to a halt that fall when I was enrolled--without consultation or explanation--in the nursery program at New Windsor Country Day...
...And the temperature dropped to fifteen degrees...
...The family piled in: to drive around a bit to thaw their toes, get the latest news, and maybe find an open restaurant and grab a bite to eat...
...Please don't sit so close to me...
...SACCO: My First Amendment rights are being trampled on...
...I wondered whether our parents had seen the notes...
...Within our class there were two predominant "schools" of painting...
...People huddled in close-to-useless electric blankets...
...Whenever I'm around anyone as self-absorbed as he is my palms start to sweat...
...It's essential that they develop to their fullest potential--this is the only way we will ever have world peace...
...At the same time my new political consciousness forced me into an agonizing reappraisal of much that I had previously taken for granted...
...We Will turn the tables and put America on trial...
...Jenkins were immediately handed over...
...Nor does anyone ever bother to inquire how one man manages to churn out the effluvia of three...
...Because of the bwack list no studio will hiwe me...
...In the middle of the garden was a banquet table heaped with all sorts of rare hors d'oeuvres...
...Several, perhaps without realizing it, had followed me to ~ h a l i s t realism, the only valid aesthetic: {~ne of their efforts were admittedly crude...
...I f Britain were a democracy it would be different, but I don't see how we can send Americans over to shed their blood defending a country which isn't even democratic...
...There can't be true liberation for women without Marxism," she said...
...At first it was hard to distinguish the words, but then we made out the refrain, "Yoo-hoo, friends...
...For a time after they /save exited there is complete silence, then from offstage comes a raucous sound...
...Flying back from Southampton after the party and passing over one potato field after another, it was impossible not to think of the men and women sentenced by the capitalist system to cultivate them...
...Perhaps I could even build a highly-dedicated Marxist cadre within the ruling class itself...
...I have never regretted putting my faith in young people or trying to give them a break...
...I had composed the drama in my head so all that remained was to get it down on paper...
...There was a certain amount of inanity in the nursery program at New Windsor Country Day, but I soon realized that some of the material could be useful for me later on...
...The greatest honor that came to me as a result of my new position was an invitation to have dinner at the home of Senator and Mrs...
...She would, in fact, have been considered beautiful and talented among any group of women anywhere in the world...
...men will always have fleas...
...The Maryknoll Fathers asked me to be story consultant on their weekly drama series, and Dalton Trumbo flew me to Forest Lawn to consult with him on the script for a new movie patterned somewhat along the lines of Z. The film will reveal that the lone Dutch Communist believed to have set the Reichstag fire in 1933 was actually a CIA agent in the employ of a group of right-wing Texas billionaires...
...Our job was to pass along the unimportant secrets...
...I was particularly interested in the role of the primary colors, and when Miss Fisher asked us how we get the color green, I was pleased to be able to develop the concept of "synthesis" in front of my classmates...
...Yet leafing through the pages of his books I sensed that finally here was a man who could explain what Nanny and I had been through...
...But most children in the world ~ire neither well-fed nor white...
...They were remarkably receptive to new ideas--indeed, for them, new ideas were about the only kind...
...But when I learned I was going to be on the show tonight I went out and bought this dress...
...Finally, a solution presented itself: I would dictate to my elder sister who would set the words down in longhand...
...After we had chatted for fifteen minutes, Faith asked me whether I would advise her on a matter she had some concern about...
...Straus on the opulence of the food display...
...I don't much like that kind of food myself and conspicuous consumption ordinarily disgusts me...
...When classes ended that June I learned I had been promoted to kindergarten, or pre-primary...
...VII Upon my arrival at Kennedy Airport in New York I was flown by helicopter to the Southampton, Long Island, home of DeWitt Clinton Straus, the wealthy young Manhattan state senator...
...Straus seemed to be eating a concoction of chicken livers mixed with fudge whirl ice cream...
...Because of these financial setbacks we were obliged to sell the Park Avenue apartment...
...Not without cash registers...
...As the helicopter approached New York, the fields were left behind, but I already knew I would never be able to play "Mr...
...The plays of Maxim Gorky, for example, set the stage for the Russian Revolution...
...Of course, the real Strauses might feel differently...
...You've got it completely wrong," I told him...
...The world' s future lies in the hands of young people...
...Woody Allen claims he has yet to "find himself" but nonetheless enjoys a good "relationship" with the girl--latterday phrases if ever there were...
...A group of fourth graders objected against this, but they were overruled and I was elected nearly unanimously...
...Our conversation naturally drifted to the question Of what to do about Britain, which the Soviet Union had pledged to occupy unless Mrs...
...One of the most gifted actors of his day, he represented in his roles the working masses, continually exploited by the idle class...
...Of course, she wasn't asked what would be convenient for her...
...What you need is a good antiperspirant...
...It was, oddly, in art class that my ideological 'forebearance was most severely tested...
...After a pause to catch his breath he told us this: "Will, friends, I sympathize with what you are trying to accomplish...
...Schwartz--neither more than a brief taxi ride away...
...Few people know or choose to remember the lovely, more gracious Park Avenue of the early 1970s--but for me it seems like yesterday...
...I must have fallen asleep during the dessert course because the next thing I can remember is Mrs...
...Oil, gas, electric, coal--it didn't matter what the fuel was--they' re all connected to thermostats and blowers and God knows what else that runs on electricity, so when the current goes off, there's no heat...
...Bel Air seemed particularly beautiful that night, yet I knew that behind the beauty lay centuries of oppression...
...Some Britons side more with the Soviet Union, others with the Western nations...
...Mansfield stayed to tuck me in, but I stopped her when she started to sing a lullaby...
...Others, luckier ones, hopped around in sleeping bags like contestants who had gotten off course in a potato-sack race...
...The scene, of course, is New York City in the early 1950s, and the designers have gone to considerable lengths to re-create the details of the setting: the clothes, background music, furniture, television commercials, all have been faithfully imitated...
...The resolve of some of my classmates began to weaken...
...And there was no place to go...
...A few of them went out and bought Franklin stoves and Coleman lamps...
...I set out to write a play for presentation...
...IV A new year started, but I had not forgotten the lessons of pre-primary...
...The next person I spoke with at the party was David Swanson, the Newspaper Guild organizer...
...My work in preparation for the documentary won me the Fair Play for Cuba & the Meeropols Committee's Herbert Matthews Award for Historical Excellence, as well as a special citation from the Sidney Hillman Foundation...
...Tree limbs were crashing all about, eerie blue flashes from short-circuited wires lit up the sky like lightning, and the wires themselves, live and writhing, lay across the streets...
...Until then we had looked on the electric company as a monopolistic and polluting enemy, and the overhead grid of wires was nothing more than a nuisance to be peered through whenever we happened to look up for ornithological, meteorological, astronomical, or psychological reasons...
...Women, for instance, will always have cooties...
...First, we did not pass any atomic secrets to the Soviets...
...The Tonight Show is telecast sometime after 9 P.M.--way past my bedtime...
...After the show Faith and I split a cab heading back toward L.A...
...America was afraid of my love...
...I was looking for anything which would take my mind from the broad boulevard that had until recently been home...
...As planned, we all met in the glen in the woods behind school...
...ALGER HISS: First, Richard Nixon is guilty...
...I began to overeat and go on long walks which, out of regard for the rattlesnakes native to upstate New York forests, I chose to take indoors...
...But it is clear that they are guilty of just one thing--life...
...Even eating from a can was impossible for those who had only electrically operated can openers...
...VIII In September I returned to New Windsor to begin my studies as a member of the Second Grade...
...I can remember the pleasure of curling up in my father's armchair with a heavy Das Kapital in one hand and a cool glass of chocolate milk in the other...
...took me to the large library my father had established in our new house...
...toys could not seem to fill...
...Although the country's leaders have paid continual lip service to Project Independence from Arab oil, no one seems the least bit interested in the insidious dependence of the individual citizen on electric power...
...The Strauses were giving a garden party to benefit the migrant potato workers, who had recently been organized by the Newspaper Guild, and I was the guest of honor...
...Ordinarily," she said, "I just wear blue jeans and work shirts...
...Fortunately I had put my flannel pajamas in the bookbag I brought with me to the Capital...
...It was not long afterward teat I decided to devote the rest of my life to the cause of Marxist-Leninism...
...This thought was still on my mind when I woke up the following morning...
...Though a few compassionate grocers toted up bills on the sides of brown bags, most wouldn't, even if they could do the arithmetic, because they were dependent on their machines for bookkeeping and inventory...
...Second, I am innocent...
...I don't regret the investment since it was a worthy project which, had it been successful, would have greatly advanced world peace...
...The paintings of the second school were almost too disgusting to look at: meaningless worm-like squiggles made by smearing fingers in an oily paint, art which could only be produced in the final stages of a rotting civilization...
...what is there cannot support what's missing...
...Third, the Massachusetts Bar Association readmitted me...
...He is Nicola Sacco...
...The JUDGE is dressed in the black leather uniform of the CIA...
...That's true, but even in a Marxist society some basic differences will remain...
Vol. 10 • January 1977 • No. 4
