2 Michigan State News, East Lansing, Michigan This issue of Collage marks the beginning of a new era (of uncer¬ tain tiuration) as a new director, Mike ()'\eal, assumes the mantle of editorial responsibility, is always. Collage encourages any and all to submit their creative endeavors, whether they be essays, photography, artwork, humor, poetry, fiction, re¬ view's or any other printable crea¬ tive form. Collage is a unique form of expression in the I niversity com¬ munity—use it. For those of you who have al¬ ready submitted work and have not as yet been notified concerning it, please be patient. A s in most at up d'etats there has been a certain amount of reorganizing necessary, and nsequently things are just be¬ ginning to get under control here. We'll try to get in touch with you as soon as we're able to go through our files. Hesides contributions in general. Collage is looking for people who are interested in doing uell-re- searched, readable, critical articles on issues relevant to the I niversity community. We've got some chal¬ lenging subjects to be handled this spring and need top-notch writers if they're going to come off. \ow is * K your niche on Collage staff. (Incidentally, for those who may be concerned about the welfare of David Gilbert, the previous direc¬ tor, place your hearts at ease. The old fossil is being kept around the office for sentimental reasons and is still available to anyone who wants to come in and reminisce.) Collage is your magazine. If you have any ideas or suggestions about what you'd like to see done in Col¬ lage, let us know. Send your cards and letters to Collage (c/o State \ews. Student Services Bldg., MSI), or drop by the office, or call us at 355- 8252. We'll be waiting. Moral: Do like the birdies do.. .Sing/baby, sing/ Co/itrib iutor CO They (today's young people) spend their time iinclassrooms and are so career-conscious they are afraid they will never get ahead unless they • • • have a degree. At 19 or 20, they should really be Copyright 1969, Michigan State News enjoying themselves, instead of always having nervous breakdowns or taking tranquilizers. So much education tends to specialize you--now- ne t oki u ( la in i s adays few people really stimulate you with what Director Michael O'Xeal they say, and these are usually men. (,ruphics editor Sandy Moffat Sands Moffat Agatha Cristie, 79-year-old mystery writer, Editorial adviser David Gilbert Panes, /, 0, 7 in . . . . Sandy Moffat an interview in McCall's magazine. Hrure Curtis, Jeff Ju still, Milch Miller, Roger laul Or lot, l.inda If a ft- P^ages.t, H Douf; Ilaston ner, Kathy tngley. Page 5 Photo, pafte 12 Iloh ... . Bayer Tuesday, April 8, 1969 3 A White Man's Nat Turner man or woman. Nat Turner works and plays, William Styron insists upon his right and duty to reject discrete historical facts when is petted and pampered, educated and trained, elevated and cast down, in the white house they impede his novelistic purpose of seek¬ culture. His meaningful intellectual exchanges ing a "larger"truth. are with white. His sexual fantasies are lily When one examines reactions to the book white. The most meaningful human relation¬ it quickly becomes apparent that critics who ship he experiences is with a white girl. She praise it are predominantly white, while those who damn Styron and his novel are teaches him of the temporal and spiritual dim¬ ensions of love. William Styron's Nat Turner predeminantly black, and that, although they wants white. He wants to be integrated. But. receive some white support, they are in the his promised manumission shatteringly denied, minority. It is also clear that black critics, like those represented in "William Styron's his not-fullv-recognized yearning for ful¬ fillment with a white (on white terms) Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond," are incensed primarily by what they see as blocked by his slave status. Nat's potent, visionary religious drive provides a vehicle Styron's misuse of facts, and by his con¬ and a. rationale which carries him, sword in sequent cruel, distorted and racist character¬ hand, a new but vacillating avenger Christ, ization of Nat Turner. No doubt Styron has down the road of revolt that leads to Jer¬ been surprised by the amount and intensity usalem. Va. of criticism that he and his novel have faced in recent months, especially from black writ¬ Understandably, numerous black critics do ers. For it seems probable, despite charges not recognize Styron's Nat as either a richly to the contrary, that Styron acted in good complex human being or a reasonable fac¬ simile of the historical rebel slave and Black faith in attempting to create a richly complex Hero. To them, this white-washed Nat is human being. His Nat Turner was fated, by weak, cowardly, ambivalent and emasculated. innate intelligence and inherited slavery, to Their Nat is the prophet of black power, a be caught and torn between two cultures, and oetween the violently contradictory emotions founding father of the revolution. As their Df love and hate for both his slave brothers culture hero he is the black equivalent of ind his white masters. the whites' George Washington. Perhaps those It may be that black critics reject Styron's who praise and defend Styron's novel should ask themselves this: How would they, or their "Nat Turner" because it is essentially an ancestors who are seeking an identiy as a integrationist novel. Styron tries continually, sometimes by main force, to bring black and people, have reacted if 150 years ago, say in 1811 on the eve of war with Britain, a white together, to have the black, at least, novelist, say an Englishman, had published a By BRUCE CURTIS try to understand white, to have Nat succeed, EDITOR'S NOTE: Bruce Curtis, assistant ultimately, in overcoming hatred by escaping "mediation on history"' in which he tried to professor in ATL, also holds an appointment from the clutches of emotional ambivalence present the rich human complexities, ambig¬ into the arms of Christian love. It is be¬ uities. idiosyncrasies and weaknesses that teaching in James Madison College. His made up the character of George Washing¬ major field of specialization is American cause William Styron wants black and white ton? The novelist of course would have been intellectual history. to be reconciled (or is it that unconsciously Certain books ^re deceptive in appear¬ he wants the black to be reconciled to seeking to create a "larger" truth, which would have allowed him to ignore inconven¬ ance. The cover or title or stated intention whites?) that he ignores or alters some of of the the soundest facts about Nat Turner. The ient facts or to fabricate when there were author misleads us. prepares us to be chief historical source is Nat's own "Con¬ none to guide him: taught or titillated in a certain way. And then fessions. transcribed and published soon t.eorge II ashington was a Hrilish subject our expectations are disappointed Will¬ iolon\ iam after the revolt by a white lawyer. Thomas in I lie of I i rain in. is a young man Styron's The Confessions of \at Tur h< in nL'iiisril anil sought to nttfiin the sup- ner" is such a book In the interests of R. Gray According to Gray's parenthetical _of the mother viiusSry. Hut. v iti■ ri.v twin" A,.,.,. •»> .. -AAui** y..*. - S , should have been subtitled "A Novel of To¬ to read by his black father and mother-appar¬ rejeihil •/Hi hilly by Hritishers us nil in¬ ferior < nhmuil, he became a bitter, anarch¬ day Confusion arises because, since Nat ently both could read--and Nat says he was Turner was hanged as a rebel slave in 1831. fond of his deeply religious grandmother. Al¬ istic rebel ii ho. ill revolting against the King's authority, laiil waste the properly anil the books seems to have a claim on the past though Gray undoubtedly altered the "Con¬ lives of thousands of loyal Hrilish citizens and invites examination as an historical novel. fessions" in some respects, it seems improb¬ But "The Confessions of Nat Turner" is able that he falsified the record so as to anil soliliers. Throughout a long mill trying re¬ bellion. George Washington appearetl us a truly best regarded as a work whose writing and emphasize the influence of Nat's family. The best evidence available, then, suggests that human figure, subject to all the doubts anil reception, while casting a har^h light on the the black slave quarter as indecisions that any leader not a demigod present, is less than successful in illuminat¬ well as the white big house, considerably influenced young would have felt. I he culminating crisis of ing the gloomy past The novel is a pres¬ W ashington's faith in his cause and his i.od ent-minded document. And Stvron-and his Nat Turner's development. came at I alley forge where, cold and hungry, critics as well-can teach us much about the Virtually the entire thrust of Styron's novel, however, is to exhibit a black slave who has with great numbers of ill-disciplined forces uses of the past in the hands of present- minded men. been almost swallowed up in the dominant now deserters, he railed against "my damned In white culture, who is a virtual stranger to army," which had led him to successive, discussing his reportorial technique in his black fellows, whether slave or free, (continued on page 11) "The Algiers Motel Incident." a story of three killings in the Detroit riots of 1967. the novelist John Hersey wrote: There was a need, above all. for total conviction. This meant that the events could not be described as if witnessed from above by an all-seeing eye opening on an all-knowing novelistic mind; the merest suspicion that anything had been altered, or made up. for art's sake, or for the sake of effect, would be absolutely disastrous, (p 27) John Hersey sacrificed art to ensure absolute veracity. William Styron, like Hersey. a while novel¬ ist writing in a time of racial turmoil, but a Southerner as well.takes a diametrically opp¬ osed position. As author and defender of his "Nat Turner." Styron insists: the book is neither racist nor a track but a novel, an essay of the imagination where the necessities of always questionable fact often become subsumed into a larger truth. (Nation.. April 22. 1968.545) In further defending his novelistic method. Styron quotes George Lukacs. the "greatest Marxist literary critic." who asserts: What matters in the novel is fidelity in the reproduction of the material foundat¬ ions of the life of a given period, its man¬ ners and the feelings and thoughts deriv¬ ing from these. This means that the novel is much nmore closely bound to the specific¬ ally historical, individual moments of a period, then is drama. But this never means being tied to particular historical facts. I Ibid . 546) 4 Michigan State News, East Lansing, Michigan POETRY Jeffrey Justin was poetry editor of Collage last year. After graduating from MSU, he spent one term writing at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He is now teaching in Monroe, Mich., and writing "a great deal." The poem, "Growing Old," is an example of Jeff's latest experiments with prose poetry. THE STREET PREACHER SURFACE ONLY GROWING OLD He squawked and cars honked Florida sticks out like a tongue. It savors the old Headlights show long strokes in the aim of traffic lights. people on it. I tell them, don't go there! Green is no plant but the slowest, largest and most of night rain u-ashing the streets. He said, '"The truth kills complicated of animals. I don't know if Florida but you can't see no blood." is a full body or just the mouth. Travel posters The bed I lie in is a phone booth. picture a blue forehead and green fur around The door sticks. Sheets of rain smiling lips of land. Day-to-day mothers, drape the facades of buildi ngs. huddling children to safe J'lanks, Day and night, the metabolism of green pounds had no ear for his war-talk. steadily as a piston. Though it assimilates and sloughs off, green does not age. It is the electric Jerking passers-by around, He stopped people. idling of now. the flasher on a police car Flowered shirts are paws! The grip is too deli¬ winds attention tighter. For fourteen years cate for old people to feel. They believe they re¬ he stuck in the street gullet. tire in safety. But all around, green stalks, green This doesn't illuminate: the white page stalks. Young people see green for the animal He stuck out of his bible it is, but believe that the roads they whip down it announces. among buildings the color of gallstones. have tamed it. Each fears he has been found out. Suddenly green clutches and accelerates, into The chain of cars clanked as it tightened. the future. In an instant people are past. The loneliness of the petitioner He jangled in the lock. with his forms lost or misfiled. Even the sea there is sick, heaving from the salt seasoning with which it eats green. So I tell The trapdoor of bed can't drop me: —Jeffrey Justin old people, go home up North! But they say, I see there is no bottom to the world. there snow freezes us out. We are shut in and shut out and finally shut up. White is the ex¬ treme and so is black. We would rather be in .4 traffic light at 4 a.m. Florida where green preys for us. signals an intersection So they even garden green. I am amazed at where night is stalled. the courage of this act. -Jeffrey Justin "Jeffrey Justin NIGHT RAIN It e stopped to match ourselves with the real bus running in a file cabinet on purple streets. U indshield wipers ticked: clock hands waring in nervous breakdown. Heads had popped from jack-in-the-box seats into yellow light. Hut during supper the couple next door just started singing. —Jeffrey Justin Tuesday, April 8, 1969 5 By MITCH MILLER By ROGER HOWARD EDITOR'S NOTE: Mitch Miller. State News Roger Howard, Detroit junior, is majoring in staff writer, is a graduate student in com¬ munications from psychology. He is chairman of Students for Wynnewood, I'a. White Community Action at MSU. I was born in West Philadelphia 22 years The White man in America today is a con¬ ago. and I spent a considerable portion of fusing sort of animal. Question him. and like my youth there, working in the basement of a a jack-in-the-box. he is up. asserting himself, mom and pop store at 42nd and Lancaster. hastily arranging the particular mask he has Anything that happens in this world happens grown to know and love and chosen for the at that corner The kids that I waddled around particular occasion. Confront him. and he with grew up to be Big 42. the worst murder vigorously I offer what inconsistent with the way in which our society I have learned and what I feel about the cities is operating. and what I think are some questions that ought to be asked. Some do talk of freedom: that ambiguous I learned about the building inspectors that word so glorified, so nebulous, that few Ameri¬ never come around, because the slumlords cans care to do little more than merely ac¬ make the payoffs to tfes- £>9-5noera\ic City cept il too. I ask: freedom tor whom? Freedom Two Committee. for what? Freedom from what? I learned about the constables, the magis¬ Freedom to choose, perhaps; freedom to trates. and the credit merchants who have choose and to examine the alternatives, to grip nice little three-way partnerships going. and cling to the realization, and develop the I learned about how the big stores and the courage to act upon that knowledge. For Teamsters get together to deprive everyone White ideas, choices, are nothing unless they are else of any chance to work for themselves. acted upon. I learned how the other unions, the construc¬ tion workers, the plumbers, the electrical But this freedom, you say, is guaranteed. workers make sure nobody who is black gets Guranteed, yes, but is it taken advantage of? a good job. Is it taken advantage of by the white man who I learned how highways always seem to go finds himself "playing a role" in the inter¬ through certain neighborhoods, and how there never seems to be enough money to relocate everybody, and five years later the highway is cracking everywhere because the concrete is 50 per cent more water than it "legally"' is Views personal relationships he may experience with blacks9 Is the "freedom to be real' advantage of by those in the "golden ghettos'' who find themselves psychologically strained and tense upon the arrival of a black neighbor? taken allowed to be. Or is this freedom taken advantage of by the I learned how a bricklayer who builds black man who compromises himself to be hospitals that collapse gets to be ambassador "accepted" by White society? to Ireland. Perhaps it is a freedom which will allow I learned all about how the Mon. James the White man to act like a human being; a M. J. Tate and Daley, and Cavanaugh. and freedom which will allow to act, us ignoring their cronies run the city custom, and freed from the strong "cultural And I have learned something about my own pattern" present in our society today. Gordon feelings about race. I think of Afro-Ameri¬ Allport. in his book "The Nature of Prejudice," cans as people. Not as a "race,'' not as has stated that about half of the prejudiced either all good or all bad, some of whom attitudes present today are based solely on this work and some who don't, some of whom need to conform, this desire to accept and. are criminals and some who aren't. in turn, to be accepted. And if this is the Certainly black people (as well as tan and case, it is the black man who is deprived, or is it the white who is bound by the chains of brown people, who are becoming the nation's most neglected minority group) have some custom, of tradition, or the idea that "to leave well enough alone" is acting in the American problems in common. But I have had too much personal contact with them, as buyer way? For what other than acting upon this from and seller to, as co-worker and underling freedom will redeem our country from the "American Dilemma?" to say either All the sohwatzes are lazy, good-for-nothing . " or "We must do But of course, you see. there is no "Ameri¬ something to lift from our black bretheren can Dilemma." The white man does not act the burden of our guilt toward them So I find that I am not a white racist, as unless he is directly threatened. He doesn't some people would like me to be. Nor have I give an honest damn about the "rights of man" taken up the role expected of my people, or "equality." After all, the North did not fight the Civil War to give blacks their equal¬ that of the long-suffering but sympathetic lib¬ ity (if indeed the North could give to blacks eral. that equality). The Men in Blue fought to I do not have any guilt to assauge by pious preserve the Union, to put an end to slavery, liberal platitudes, by listening to people revile but no black was allowed to fight for himself me. by pretending those whose skin is darker if he stood beside, on an "equal" footing with, than mine are guiltless of any sin or free a white soldier jn the Union Army. And ta- from criticism I continued on page 9) (continued on page 11) 6 Michigan State News, East Lansing, Michigan MC3 * Floating away from the eye on the walJrdn tr Ml -6U.0M) MQ OT * W Hct Ffia(^oJya^t^iI\TnGgway the eiyeonthewallfr .11 [Ada, n opting pv/av on the wallllll 1 1 3 i cl rj -3 cr " gbih y<3° DMuk- -> floating A W AY IT 0 u V * ' < using my own "abstracted" mind-image When I first nail the eye on the wall, it stares deprived with all my senses turned on. lights, a. cP at me and I stare at it. It bugs me. It winks, noise, sandwiches I don't taste, women I don't blinks, it "knows" all about my inside me. really enjoy. I live swinging between past see Then two weeks later it's there, but I don't it anymore, not "it," but only some faded, (shoulda done i and future i gotta do>. but never stop in the present < am doing» &&&■?£ )is< washed-out abstracted environmental-complex reference frame in which everything fits The Caboose Coupled on to the Non-Sense Time- without being looked at. If someone took it off Train We are pulled through time by habit and can¬ I'd notice, but as long as it's there, it's no long¬ er "there." not it, it's changed, floated away not easily un-link (un-couple) ourselves from from me and I've floated away from it. our anti-sensory neurotic mind-confinement. We need help The girl who works in the Art India store, filled with exotic silks and cotton-prints. In¬ PL 0 ATI KG A;/AY FRO:.. THE dian musical instruments, sandals, the air thickened with incense, is "there." but isn't EYE ON .VALL ' hj w ti. "there." The guy who works in the psyche-out Hb poster shop has been there eight hours a day for IZT ?!* a month, and the walls become blank for him I N walk in. turn on. he sits in the middle of it and -t: w --—d H* cb & e doesn't. Art India and poster shop change places A movie is a show; it discloses what had O and the magic happens again, reality ups its po¬ been concealed from us in reality, or * H* ^ f5< o £ ^ tency. the "thisnesses" of things ooze out again, what had never been before, as in sur our eye inscapes into the realism.7 v ^ cjcl landscapes. >-+> • ^ wj'i rr ctD • • ty (sanity) but want to destroy it. The linear moves in to "straighten out" curved space. Healthy paranoia. Electronic "turn-on" is necessarily corpor¬ ate and communal (permeability equals social permeability) but not automatic: "perceptual can be learned and taught, in fact out to t* learned and taught."15 P. Adams Sit- ney in a kind of nvtebook-scratchpad in Film Culture quotes Artaud: "Cinema implies a total reversal of values, a complete smash-up of op¬ tics, perspective and of lagic." * Electronic communion, salvatioa. transfigura¬ tion IN LIFE. The generation gap if a gap be¬ tween tit eh writ literary (the pong) and eiec- troaac ittteracy (the old). TV aa tar at d oa pre ctadjr hecanae they amtf\ (tnmad on) focus out«4 NOW ialo MND-ABTTFlCIAiJTY which aa the circie sanity equals continuous peak experience and TV chief lnr»H| AnnmI (th» circle) con- sensory withdrawal equals mwms ef»li so la open white the world i-ih (the cir¬ humming along equals what today is termed nature of the poasiMe Mccstaticen- cle) area itself i*immu\y (with its eyes "normal." Today's "normal" m ciesed, iaflex- half-dosed) The eye it a part of the mnd ible, paranoid. terials, can (Leo Steinberg) tastichyaH Uahury the Eye ami Let h Im Dow* (hi) Kit ell —icGmh»»i 1. See John Gruefi's The Xew BJWwi«, N Y Learning is "applied'' creativity, and change- , im p. in. conditions (pattern-breaking) that enable us to The non-enlightened, anptugged-in, inflex¬ 2. See Husserl's Mm*, N.Y., 1N2. Pp. 45-57. penetrate into continuous peak-experiences ible, impermeable, trapped with stale thought- 3. See Ludwig Von Beriaianffy, "The Mind- creativity-wise, also apply to learning. Light shows (total-environment freakouts) break pat¬ hags tied around their heads, distrust electronic Body Problem," in Tke Hmmmm Dimhtgue, ed. humanism, but (conversely) electronic human¬ Matson-Montagu, N.Y., 1*7. Pp. 238-7. terns, re-establish sense-non-sense equilibrium, turn us on and turn ism, getting in to Heidegger's Exisiem*, snipping 4. Colin Cherry's Om Hmmmm Commmmicmli»m, our learning potential up (all the way): away and discarding the aa- or anti-essential, M.I.T., 1988. Pp. 285-9 for a discussion of C.S. inevitably creates permeable flexibility. I look Pierce's pragmatic theory of sign6. up and see yoa in slow-motion moving through 5. Duane P. Schultz, .Ww#fy Metric***, life-span-time on this planet-surface and--aware Effects oh Behmvior, N.Y., 1986. Especially ettt pu« of the meaning of time-experience (experience pp. 102-111. 9j« 89.mq.oei in time)-seeing you move luminescently toward 6. J. Needleman, ed., Beimg-im-the-W orld. •raee^ee £xj«x me carrying your "thisness" with you, I see the Selected Papers of Ludwig Binswmnger, N.Y., -noi^jbd uf pxeq q.ou oj« total-you, present, past, future, in relation to the 1963. P. 217. 80oubp 9l{q. pu9!^q.« 01{m 8xjj2 total-possible-vou, in relation to this particular 7. William Earle, "Some Notes on the New 9i{q. 'a9A09aoji uBieena bleep on the world-contexted U.S.-centered his¬ Film," Tri-Quarterly (Winter), 1967. P. 158. torical-time screen, and I can step inside you, 8. Rudolph Arnheim, "Art Today and the 9^i8a9AB gqq. iCx^T^ see myself seen through your life-vision. Film," Film Culture, (Fall) 1966. P. 45. ipiBa ^.OU S80p J9TPX0S SB9X 9. John Dewey, Art as Experience, Chap¬ -tmi9d 9t{q. q.ng •gq.sdiOTq.a'ed The "high or true art . . . that is an art which ter III, in Philosophies of Art and Beauty, ed. oq. dn popunoa ojb exa^3 Hofstadter-Kuhns, N.Y., 1964. P. 604. doesn't confirm people in what they already PUB * JJ99M l[0B9 U9tU 91^ know . . . arouses (a) state of ecstasy ... if you 10. William O. Reichert, "The Unpolitical' JOJ P9ZTITB3.I0 9.TB 880UB(£ get into the presence of truth, it will create this Philosophy of Sir Herbert Read, " in Arts in So¬ •^xxm ecstatic state . . . and I take it to be the function ciety, (Spring-Summer) 1968. P. 139. ^siunannoo 9uno^ e4ifau« of . art to teach through this ecstatic state."12 11. George B. Leonard, "The Future Now," 9qq. ui of oq. uoiq.'BUfxo^T Look, (October 15) 1968. P. 66. 12. Kenneth Kelman, Film Culture, (Fall) 9t[^. dox9A9p oqM ao '.tbo Only the non-ecstatic, still linear, sequential, abstraction-based, non curved-spatialist, simul¬ 1966. P. 80. b.jootjjo ub j-jBdoa oq. Moq taneous and 13. George Amberg, Film Culture, (Fall) MOU31 Ot[M 8OTU«q09Ul-J9ipXO8 "reality" based, are ecstasy (peak experience) illiterates, not only do not parti¬ 1966.P. 27. oq. 119!).JO H9Al3 9JB sgABgi 14. Ibid., p. 78. • (Trn" cipate in the mystique of electronic sanctity 8 Michigan State News, East Lansing, Michigan Fiction MaybeShuffle By PAUL ANTHONY ORLOY up to the Library, up the steps, is Book get a table, open ne safely in hand, all you've gotta do now the book, and you're away • • turns . . .but don't look back her face toward the desk, face, and there it is-the same toward your look, the same from all the world in the shroud of silent moment again. Same silent questions being through the door, through the turnstile, into asked, louder than ever, intense, between your the womb of irreality. Gotta forget about thoughts Table empty, that's where it's gotta be. so nobody can sit there, so close to you. eyes her eyes, wondering more than ever . yesterday and all the other yesterdays, gotta Now or not at all. should it be now. baby " go in and study and do the world's work. eyes glancing up awkwardly, wonderin' what You think her eyes look yes. look come on. Safe with the books, away from the competi¬ your eyes say back. Just about to sit down look risk it. look reach out. look maybe it'll tion and solitude and coldness of the outside- at the empty table and you look up a last work out. life alone, you can cop out on living, just time, and there she is. Some girl takin' You have to decide now. before the moment off her coat, lookin' at you. ten feet awav doing your thing with your computer-sharp is gone, before she lets the fear rise again, mind, keep those four points rollin' in. so through silent space, sees you look up. kinda widens her eyes as you iook back at her forcing her to turn her eves away, to walk easy and secure. on. You hesitate, yelling inside yourself, VVearin' your uniform, cords, sweater, stomp- You both stop your mindtimeclocks and look so hard at each other, but in the intensity asking for what to do. can she really be in' boots, beard, cold eyes keep on the . some of your soul comes up through your looking yes'' Underneath the cold silence facade like everybody, gotta look hard, self- vision, so does hers. Thinkin' to yourself, only uncertainty comes back to your mind content. just shufflin" along like you don't in answer you look at her again, eyes isn't she afraid, does she want me to dare to . give a damn, not feelin' uptight about a deep and steady, reading the same doubt, thing, you know you're too groovy to care approach her soul through her eyes, like by hope. fear, wonder in her eyes-she must be it seems Ah. but appearances can be de¬ really talkin' to her. losin' the safety of being seein' the same in vours. Ten feet awav. ceiving. but then you never know for sure, strangers, by lookin' at and into each other'' 7^ Mii'sta been a mistake you just surprised so you can't penetrate the facades you see walkin' the streets and you've gotta keep your her by lookin' back, don't make a fool of cool by meetin' the stoneyes with your own. yourself. She's got her table to herself, Softness inside you. inside them, lookin' for you've got yours, that's the only way to play somebody--to be with, to groove with.-behind it: nothing intended in a single meeting of the stoneglance. could it be ? Hell no. not me eyes over ten feet of silence, wall of hardness. Just slide on up the stairs, through the next No way anything coulci've been intended Read the book awhile, still thinkin about door-you see yourself in the glass of it as it slides toward your pulling hand, seeing her eyes. Did it mean anything, could it ever, even though shades of gray of winter eyes hard and defiantly afraid, could truth be known But don't you know, haven't weather" Finish the first reading assignment, time to shuffle back and get a different book, you heard'.' You can tell it like it is. but time to play a different call number for new you'd have to be a fool to let it look like it is on your face, cause nobody plays the experience. You've got the book. turn, re¬ turn to the hard, wooden rectangle of asvlum- maybe closer, but gotta decide, gotta move game that way. and everyone plays by the now. Last long look, knowing it has to be at stopping only to glance at her again, quickly, but she catches the impulse, reaches out for once or forget it. her eyes holding steady, the moment, looks back again. Again she could be right, try. She starts moving slowly widens her eyes, slightly raises the eyebrows ahead, looking back at you once more, same in surprise, looking the question of what is look of wondering in lifted eyebrows and widened eves; you start moving too. looking meant, so deep, could something be'' You sit down, your back to her. reading again, eyes at her. yelling at yourself inside Then you seeing black on white, growing hazy and darken¬ finally know. You can't do it. don't think so. she's pushing open the door, out on the ing into the mind's eye where she's facing you. looking at your eyes again, silently wondering landing to the stairs, glances back at you if sbs- dares, if you dare You start on a once uuick.lv vuu moving again but you know it's too fate. Waited too long, couldn't fantasy into the darkness of the coming night, do it. now could, but she's gone. Should you you see you and her able to put down the hard run down the stairs, catch up with her. tell exterior, to reach out and touch inside each other's souls. Can almost feel it now. al¬ her you still want to reach out, touch her. most feel the warmth, the other-ness of her look yes if she'll do the same, showing it's there with you. so close and important, at alright'.' least for one otherwise cold, silent night of No. Impossible. You can't play it like that, you couldn't take one moment as it piercing darkness without you within you Maybe you should try, maybe she hopes you'll lingered across ten feet of silence as eves try like you hope she wants you to. Mavbe- met and questioned. So she's gone, it's over, you'llsee. Yeah. ok. but maybe. what the hell. Maybe you were wrong any¬ Time and silence roll on, reading finishes way. How can you ever know now° Yeah, somehow, goodboy. you'll make everybody so but maybe. So forget it. just another girl, another moment, nothing special. There've proud again with those golden grades, real been lots of times of almosts before, so why boywonder of academia. Nothin' left to do but not now? No reason why this should've been leave now. unless, maybe ... Is she still different than anything past. Gotta go places there0 Will she look at you that way again0 iin m .. and do things anyway. Forget it. bop down the WimB Has she kept thinking maybe, too° same rules or you know they've gotta be los¬ You push back the chair, getting up to put on stairs, put the facade back in place. Hey the coat as if to say. that's that, book, world's eyes, no regret, just be cold, just be hard, ers. Go ahead, so simple now to enter the not lookin' back to her or anything behind room, get a book, pick a table, focus on the work done, not thinkin' about what's past. words, lose yourself in it and forget the Coat on. fingers scrambling up the buttons in the times you've seen. Shuffle back out of the library, listen to the bell-tower chime, people whose eyes are hard and averted on quickly, locking yourself in another layer of time going on like nothing happened or could their own books. Like a roomful of kids, cover against the coldness of eyes and wind outside. A sound behind you like a chair have, so why-regret0 Forget it. keep moving absorbed in themselves ahd studyin' to find down the street, looking up at the cold, gray out what life's about in words, knowin' the pushing back from another table, another coat going on, other fingers scrambling up but¬ sky and taking some of its surface reflected words are only part of the story, but it's so back on your eyes as they meet other eyes rough to hack the coldness you pass through tons and gathering books. You pick up your to get at the real experiences So much books, walk to the desk, return the leather impenetrable, unknown, quickly averted. You see that girl in your mind once more, wonder easier this way, and the system you know package of instant truth, never looking back. so well how it is in the books you quietly You pause at the desk, thinking, was she about again, move steadily on. protected in your take inside you to fill all the voids of time to leave too? Turning eyes slowly toward core of hardness, forget her. Don't think and space. the back of the room, you see her coming about her; pointless. Softness inside you, inside her, inside others, lookin' for some¬ Now comes the rough part, gotta bop on up your way, going toward the doors. 10 feet to the desk, face the girl there, can she see across the floor from you, walking slowly as body behind the stoneglances? Hell no, it couldn't be. not me. Well maybe next you stand still, trying not to look at her, yet . . it in your eyes? No, couldn't be. Look up time but don't ever look back. the call number, like you'd look up the phone unable not to. She pauses, slows down. . . . number of someone you're afraid to call be¬ yft,' y/ V cause neither of you can admit it that maybe you're not totally self-sufficient. But it's so easy with the book you get, just silence, give her the number, get the book, sign your name, you've got it and you're set . . . not like callin' tha' phone number you're always ready to call and never do, to reach out and be set where it matters. After all. you start doin' that you've gotta talk, you've gotta let somebody see you where you really live, 'cause the words come from inside, but eyes and silence keep up the great facade. You're always safe with facade, you're impregnable, you're golden. Yeah. baby, golden, 'cause nobody else knows how it is deep and dark inside your being, inside your soul. Tuesday, April 8, 1969 9 ing richness. Two of the best of these poems are "Life in Death City" and "Moment;" interest¬ Review ingly, both do make use of Detroit as setting. Bumming around, I in this mess move of crushed fog that is Detroit in winter. Racism (continued from page 5) Nothing is open and A. Quinn Smith everybody is dead except my wife and me. All my friends- day, unless the buildings are burning, unless a where are they? And the strangers black leader is brutally felled by a sniper's . .. bullet, the white man is not torn and tortured I IIII I can see flower bulbs, dead by the conflict between his devotion to the The Eighteenth Floor in the dirt. I can see American creed and his actual behavior. cars, crusted with salt and mud, moving down Woodward in If this short article sounds to redundant, a funeral train. And the river too indicting, it is only because I have been is packed with foot-thick ice; raised and conditioned in a society that places even the breakers shy away too high a value on guilt, while it avoids and In "Moment," the "citycrow" shies away just skirts the dynamic processes of concrete, like the breakers. And we feel that Smith active change. That sentence, in itself, you shares their reaction, that the eighteenth floor can see, indicts our society, which only goes has been a good perch from which to view the to show the power of socialization in the hands restless alienation of modern man. Perhaps of the white middle-class in America. his second book will go a step beyond this awareness, to some kind of solution. Until the institutions maintained by that class are functionally changed, racism will remain a prevalent force in our country. Until the moral philosophy of the American creed enters the pragmatic world of business, the hard world of realism in politics, the educa¬ tional world with its many facets, will white, middle-class America continue to destroy it¬ A SIITMIST PUB1ICATI«(N self. The idea alone makes me very tense. And I see the freedom from racism, from "White Racism," as a freedom allowing me to By LINDA WAGNER save myself, to save myself as a White man, The with all men benefitting when I am able to Eighteenth Floor by A. Quinn Smith stand unconfused, and unconfusing. Zeitgeist, 1969. Illustrated by Todd Smith. EDITOR'S NOTE: A. Quinn Smith is a 26- year-old Wayne State dropout. The Eighteenth Floor is his first collection of poems except for a limited edition published previously. Linda Wagner is an asst. professor in English at MSU. There aren't very many good "city" poems. Gwendolyn Brooks" recent "In the Mecca," Williams" "Paterson," Hart Cranes "The Bridge"-the lyric tradition somehow turns away from all the discord usually associated with the urban. A. Quinn Smith s "The Eigh¬ teenth Floor" sounds as if it might be a "city book " But even though Smith uses Detroit as hflf>k0rniinH in some of the poems (Wood¬ ward Avenue, riots, "great nagging snow¬ drifts"), his focus is primarily himself and his reactions. And Smith as a product of urban liv¬ ing seems not so very different from most of us. Many of his best poems are self-realization studies. "Journey's End" recreates in strong images and well-paced understatement a man's coming awareness: Don't you see, I knew the dark & winding road by heart. Tho the white flowers were bits of strangeness. Or was it just me .. . It has been a while-this ride- but I was nearing the house. Then the small town came upon us--a gaping, unexpected lair. When we treated ourselves at the only, local bar, the Drambuie tasted like the cashews that tasted like the coffee that tasted, too, like cold stars of sugar. And then I saw that it was a black sky & no more & very frigid stars with no taste to them. Those flowers, too, along the road were more than likely weeds. I began to catch a cold. The straight, idiomatic opening and closing are characteristic of Smith's writing. It is as if he literally begins with a statement and then push¬ es out past the colloquial into more impassioned levels of speech, coming back at the end into what seems his normal restraint. "A Return to Satori" ends with "I am a stranger within/ my own rooms;" "Smith's Odyssey" mourns the poet's cigarette smoke, which carries with it ■'no recognition of the sender. The awareness which Smith reaches in some of these poems-"Half Your Age." "Posses¬ sion "-proves to be their greatest value. (Technically, in his short poems, organic form and colloquial language too often give only a cute image or a flat description.) But when Smith tries for the theme of man alone, separat¬ ed, searching through love for love, and finally despairing-then the poems take on a surpris¬ o g £ o to p 3 HSA1ATPURR9DILY, oPrse"ale W91:i0e3l04s. 7&91<0. B7&9lian.k SWSphalaotsewhr WIoM>men's CLSiteemrna¬tuuryKCee>nlotgr WMisvScosnU. Va>corusrtistyEleCphant."lev¬ A(u8dicvksaon A2P1IL RiQchuainrdtseAMntihl'n8o:e1r5y. Behold a "Morgan "Point Gre n & Anthonyi Conradi 00. <7 16 18th iniar Ten is. African 00.11 Grant land SUNDAY. Concert. M(4us:0ic. MONDAY. Concert. Aiud and Music Show ^/AV/AV #11#I*-: THRUSDAY. B1AP7RIL&9Brlank("o-7. WSpalatesrh IWMome)n's A1PR8IL &791(0. HP7orse"(ale Wels) &WB9(lial¬7n.k LReetcitarsl. QSu(t8r:r1ien5tg MMicvhSgUa.n FKJoolhdb'ns Northvwess¬. Vacourrsts)iyWSSphaloatsewhr IWMome)n's "Point dv) Gre n 00. (6 FRIDAY, "Morgan Anithony "Baehold 91:0304. "Point and BAeratusx Aud.) Basebal. (3: 0. MTenSUis. (3:0 . Gre n 00. & son) Arts Music ern 16 Universty04. Patric Musc Tur Msic Lans¬ <8:15. Music Adtorum) Oboe Dame 106 Albion F2eld. A1PR3IL Concert. Symphon Recital. So(p2r:a0n. RDeecaitnl. (2:0. A1•PR4IL E(7:3.0 Li>brav 1APR*IL Orchesta Maoterifls Music GDebaolreah. A>ud Nvotsre. icourts A1PR6IL Biafr &9(7. MvSsU. Kobs SUNDAY, Easter &MChoSruIs Auidtorum Senior Case, i Gradute Clarinet i MONDAY. "noipmahC Public TUESDAY, Clev and Auidtorum Concert. (3:0 . Recital. M(u8s:1ic5. MTeSnUis. V(a3r:0sit.y WEDNSAY. fo"Lifelrn "Casblnc Wels) Basebal. Jo(2h:3n0. games) Aud. ner. Aud. ing "Two Vet S h a n g e e " m ofi n "Winds a r B1APRIL HtapaoenbdyW&19e:03ls8i.&9Road"(:175. &971<0. SMtre"(7a:3in0. &94151"(07. CDoanncecret McDoneli KE>ricivksaon 1ASAPTU2RIDLY,7Rtoh'aed Conrad» &45911"(07. BHtapaoenbdyW&19e:0l3s8').&91Jim"(07. CDoanncecret McDoli SChange"eminar KEriicvkaso)n C "FRIDAY. Whatevr 7Jane'(" ftoher Wilson) Jim""Lord Clinc) "oShnop Auidtorum "Fahren it Anthoy) Modern 7(:P1A5C.. (8:0 . for 9:15. "Fahren it Anthony* "Whatevr Jane1?"(7 "Lord Clino Modern 7(:P1A5C.. "Woindfs dav. "Two & Vet (Al e<—■_ ozn j8Evpefgnt.s APRILS CDoanncecret. TA8h>r:e0ana. KExrihebsgton 2Ah7rpour)gl UTtnhirvo¬ueg Pla(eAtbrraiumms, A2p7r*il MReacrictail. C1Hluai5rsn:ce.t W9AEPDNRSILAY. &1935">o7f CDoanncceret Wonders 1APR0IL SCehmainngaer KEriivckas»on Te'i8c:h15.r &Road"t(h7e Caolendfar TUESDAY, Modern (PAC. Faculty Galery, "Journey "esr through Gradu te Hilden. Audi "Goldigers Wiels Modern 7(:P1A5C.. THURSDAY. "Woindfs (8:0. Fearanndte Aud>itorum for Brodvi 106 9. Two 9:15. " Tuesday, April 8, 1969, 11 'White' Turner (continued from page (continued from page 5) 3> just as "objective" history has. But nei¬ unnei essai y defeats because they iliil mil ther advances its cause much when it too I do not bear the burden of being a Jew- imi■ i-noiigh aliaul l licit awn freedom. kncel- blatantly ignores historical facts and prob¬ liberal. The Jew-liberals are the social i lit: in the sunn. he tried la pray. Itul he abilities in order to create its own reality. workers, the welfare bureaucrats, the school¬ could Is it probable, for example, that the real, in nn nil) reach llml all-healing, nll- teachers who stopped thinking in 1932. They historical, condemned Nat Turner, after lead poiverful conqueror (,inl an whom hi' hud are the ones who have been perpetuating tlepetitled na i ■ompletely Jar so Iang. ing a long-planned, bloody and devastating poverty by playing the liberal game. (It is Is ii truly human figure, (.rami' s sexual holy war against white slave owners, acted as Styron's Nat did? Is it probable that immensely gratifying to me to see black I if'' utis u ii mil nrkn hie. far nn IHth-century he managed at the very end to reconcile himself people waking up to this fact and kicking the I irfiiniun. I.v nn adolescent he hail u slip/illy to his God and his fate, and to avoid analysis paternalists out, like at Ocean Hill-Browns¬ homosexual encounter with n hiilf-brol her ville. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch while swimming after n hard ilny's surrey- of the revolt and his role in it, by repenting of people. > his murder of a white Southern belle? I think inn. hut that experience soon fmleil from his consciousness anil he began courting the not. Styron says that his is not an historical The question I find myself forced to ask novel but a "meditation on history." But how girls. lie married the widitw < ustis, hut of is why Afro-Americans put can he escape having taken Nat Turner's up with all this course the union was not blessed with child¬ nonsense for so many years? And whv. in name9 In taking the name, whether he real¬ ren. Always privately something of a vision¬ great new era of "black self-awareness" ized it or not. Styron also necessarily took ary. (,eorge imposed on Martha a pact that are they continuing to put up with it? they should never seek to consummate their up the whole burden of fact and probability associated with that name. John Hersey's Why should blacks continue to vote 95 per relationship because George felt called, like cent for the party nonfictional study of black boys in Detroit responsible for their op¬ a secular priest, to a broader, all-inclusive is more effective than Styron's fictional study pression North and South, the party of Daley hitherhood. Despite that pact, however, as u and Maddox? of a black man in Virginia, not because it is Why should they vote for the slaveholder l.i •urge almost inevitably drifted crooked constables and building inspectors, "fact" rather than "fiction." but because Her¬ into sexual fantasies peopled by the earthy the county clerks and the deputy sheriffs? black women on his plantation, h'antosy was sey's book is more credible We believe transmuted into reality when he found among Hersey. Styron, we think, tells us some im¬ Whey should they vote for the unions that them the one soul-mate of his life who saw portant truths. But Hersey gives us a clearer keep them from getting jobs? what he really was, deep down, as Martha glimpse of that larger "truth" about race Why haven't they built political power by could. II hen (,eorge II ashinglon and love and hate in America that Styron tries never came getting specific pledges and candidates in re¬ so earnestly, so sweatily, to create for us. to die, his last concern was to bless that turn for their votes? black. unlettered kitchen girl who had taught Why do they permit the existence of primar- him the meaning of truly spiritual. truly ly Jew-liberal welfare bureaucracy whose pur¬ ( hristian love. pose is to perpetuate poverty rather than The point does not require futher elaborat¬ eliminate it? ion. We are all at least as sensitive about our Why did literally thousands of blacks turn myths, symbols, images, as about our facts. down posts in the Nixon administration, up William Styron, a white Southerner, had the to and including cabinet-level jobs? poor judgment and timing to elaborate a myth Could it of Nat Turner that inevitably called forth possibly be that the old leaders a response, in mythic terms, are getting benefits from their association from increas¬ with the Democrats and the welfare bureau¬ ingly militant blacks. There is no reason to cracy? Could it be that sojne people like suppose that either of these conflicting sym¬ their bolic representations of Nat Turner has much secure political plums0 history on its side Why should it? Neither Why haven't the militants done any really Styron nor the bulk of his critics are his¬ radical thinking, instead of simply following torians. and most of them seem to have little like puppy dogs the voices from Cuba and Red use for history, except as a depot from which China9 Maybe they are too interested in step¬ to d^w anrnw\i*k*\ ^ \heir present-minded ping into the already existing sinecures. Maybe causes. Critics on both sides ignore incon¬ they like to see their names in the paper venient historical facts and probabilities. more than they really want to help their In turn, they cast their immediate desires people. into an historical mold. And in each case out pops a Nat Turner who would almost cer¬ The facts are these: there are laws on the tainly have been unrecognizable to the or¬ books that would make a difference. But iginal. they are not enforced There are solutions No doubt fiction as history and myth to the racial/urban mess available, but they as are met with opposition by the old guard and history both have legitimate claims on us. by the militants. This is not to say that Styron is all wrong There is a way out of the mess, but it and his black critics are all right. Certainly will take not study groups and presidential they are also often guilty of distorting facts commissions, but people with brains and guts and probabilities, of refusing to allow for to look at a situation, come up with a solu¬ the possibility that Nat Turner could have tion and implement it. outraged their preconceptions. Before any There is a way to build Black Power, but critic sets about attacking Styron's novel, it's not with the obsolete economics of the he should study "The Autobiography of Mal¬ 1930 s and R is not by sticking to the Demo¬ colm X" and compare that richly complex crat party and getting nothing in return. and human character to Styron's Nat. Surely he would then find it difficult to assert that There are people who can do the job. And when the Jews move out of their stores in the Nat Turner could black neighborhoods, these people will move never have been attracted to white women, in. When the rich politicians go. these or been both celibate and masculine, or felt hatred as well as love for people will move in. These are the people his black brothers. who will build and control their own neigh¬ borhoods, these are the people who will po¬ Both Styron and his critics, then, are guilty lice them. of raiding the past for present-minded pur¬ And here is the word from 42nd Street, poses. Styron writes as a twentieth-century for the "black leaders" and the "black mili¬ integrationist and novelist. His black critics defend their black militant hero against an tants," for the Jew-liberals and the Demo¬ cratic party. You are going to be very sur¬ arrogant, despoiling, white racist. They are saying of Nat Turner, I think, what Ossie prised at what happens • when they do. Davis said in 1965 of the assassinated Malcolm Things are going to get better, and it is X not going to be due to the efforts of any of you. Malcolm was our manhood, our living, black manhood' This The "bla^k leaders" are going to be sur¬ was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor prised when they find followers considerably the best in ourselves less docile. . And we will know him then for what The "black militants" are going to be sur¬ he was and is-- a Prince-our own black shining Price! prised when the first "Tom" they've been -who didn t hesitate to die. because he terrorizing shoots one of them-and is backed loved I up by the black community and the black po¬ us so. Autobiographv of Malcolm X. p. 454) lice, We The Jew-liberals and the Democrats are can sympathize with them all, with William Styron and especially with his critics. And going to be surprised when progress is being we can learn from them all. But we should made without their being around. not believe that we can learn from them the And that, tor me at least, win De tne most truth about the real Nat Turner. gratifying surprise of all. Tuesday, April 8, 1969 12 Michigan State News, East Lansing, Michigan HIS RET I H V It was a gtntd day to return. Hi* arrival shook the air Into snow. Cold and grief AUTO NEEDS Hit valor equally, damply. Into cheeks: while darkening slightly The outside peered through windows At traditional uords, the traditional Gathering. Solemn-suited men Paired before the entrance ' In a dark line. The ground *Tune-up Kits 'Mufflers ^Tailpipes *Batteries Stiffened the corners of a hole, ^ *Everything For Your Car ( Waiting the winter hour* for him. COMPLETE 1 Church was the same in childho*>d: *Electricol *M«chirw Shop The cross, the candles, the altar, 'Auto Gloss *Auto Air Conditioning I he comfortable black of a clttak *Sprir»9 Service | It tapped about the last priest. FOREIGN CAR OWNERS J P Kramer Auto Now —Kathy I rig ley ^ Has A Fine Line Jfl| Wfg) of Bosch Foreign Car Parts SAVE MOW ON THE RMO KING v AUTO AIR CONDITIONING LARGEST DISCOUNT IN TOWN 484-1303 |