| I'm a phony, Hearn says, and there are times when it goes beyond the flippancy, the easy depression, the almost gratifying self-disgustSometimes there are things which can be done about it
He broods about this through the summer, has a fight with his father
I'll tell you, Robert, I don't know where you picked up all this union idea guff, but if you think they ain't a bunch of gangsters, if you think my men weren't better off depending on me, when Jesus Christ I've helped them out of many a scrape, and Christmas bonuses, Why don't you stay out of this, you don't know what the hell you're talking about
I resent that, but you never could understand what paternalism is
Maybe I don't being as it's a big word, but it seems to me it's easy enough to bite the hand that feeds ya
Well, you don't have to worry about that any more
But after a further series of supplications and quarrels, he goes back to school early, gets a job washing dishes in the Georgian, and keeps it once classes have startedThere are movements toward reconciliation; Ina comes out to Boston for the first time in three years, and a grudged truce is achievedHe writes home from time to time, but he will not take any money, and junior year is a grind of selling college subscriptions and pressing and laundering contracts to freshmen, odd jobs on weekends, and waiting on tables in the house as a substitute for dishwashingHe likes none of it particularly, but there are new processes discovered, new sources of strengthHe never really debates the idea of taking money from his parents any longer
And he feels himself growing older through the year, tougher, wonders at it and picks up no answersMaybe I have my father's stubbornnessThe closest things, the dominant patterns are usually unanswerableHe has lived in a vacuum for eighteen years, cloyed by chanel bags online the representative and unique longings of any youth; he has come into the shattering new world of college and spent two years absorbing, sloughing off shells, putting out feelersAnd inside himself a process, never fully understood, had taken placeA casual fight with his father that has expanded into a rebellion, apparently out of proportion, but it is the sum, he knows, of everything, even of things he has forgotten
The old friends are still there, still appreciated, but their charm is lessenedIn the daily grind of waiting on tables, doing library work, tutoring clubmen, a certain impatience has developedWords and words, and there are other realities now, a schedule to hold to from necessityHe spends little time at the magazine, frets in some of his classes
The number seven has a deep significance to MannHans Castorp spends seven years on the mountain, and if you will remember the first seven days are given great emphasisMost of the major characters have seven letters in their name, Castorp, Clavdia, Joachim, even Settembrini fulfills it in that the Latin root of his name stands for seven
The scribbling of notes, the pious acceptanceSir, Hearn asks, what's the importance of that? I mean frankly I found the novel a pompous bore, and I think this seven business is a perfect example of German didacticness, expanding a whim into all kinds of critical claptrap, virtuosity perhaps, but it leaves me unmoved
His speech causes a minor stir in the class, a polite discussion which the lecturer sums up gently before continuing, but it is a significant impatience for HearnHe would not have said that the preceding year
There is even a political honeymoon for a monthHe reads some Marx and Lenin, joins the John Reed Society, and argues stubbornly all the time with the members
I don't see how you can say that about the men's gucci wallet syndicalists, they've done some damn good work in Spain, and if there can't be a greater co-operation of the elements involved
Hearn, you don't appreciate the issues involvedThere is a history of deep political antagonism between the syndicalists and ourselves, and there has never been a time when it was historically more inappropriate to divert the masses with an unattainable and uncoordinated utopiaIf you would take the trouble to study the revolution, you would realize that the anarchists have a record of sensuality and political debauch in times of stress, and tend to assume a feudal discipline with terrorist leadersWhy don't you study the career of Batko Makhno in 1919? Do you realize even Kropotkin was so repelled by the anarchist excesses that he took no stand in the revolution?
Should we lose the war in Spain, then?
What if it is won by the wrong elements on our side who will be unaffiliated with Russia? How long do you assume they would last with the Fascist pressures present in Europe today?
That's a little too farsighted for meHe stares around the dormitory room, at the seven members spread out over the couch, the floor, and the two worn chairsIt seems to me you just do the thing that seems best at the moment, and worry about the rest of it later
That's bourgeois morality, Hearn, harmless enough in the middle classes outside of its capacity for inertia, but the representatives of morality in a capitalist state employ the same morality toward other ends
Later, after the meeting, the president talks to him over a beer in McBride's, his serious owlish face rather sadHearn, I welcomed you as a member, I must admit, I've searched myself and I understand it's a remnant of bourgeois aspirations, you come from a class which I envy still to the extent that I'm not wholly educated, but I'm going pink prada handbag to have to ask you to leave, because you're not at the stage in your development where we can teach you anything
I'm a bourgeois intellectual, huh, Al
There's great truth in that, RobertYou've reacted against the lies of the system, but it's a nebulous rebellionYou want perfection, you're a bourgeois idealist, and therefore you're undependable
Isn't this distrust of the bourgeois intellectual a little old-hat?
No, RobertIt's founded on Marx's perception, and the experience of the past century proves his wisdomIf a man moves to the party because of spiritual or intellectual reasons, he's bound to move away again once the particular psychological climate that moved him there in the first place is changedIt's the man who comes to the party because economic inequities humiliate him every day of his life who makes a good CommunistYou're independent of economic considerations, and so you're without fear, without the proper understanding
I guess I will get out, AlWe're friends then, thoughThey shake rather self-consciously and leave each otherI've searched myself and I understand it's a remnant of bourgeois aspirationsWhat a meatball, Hearn thinksHe is amused, a little contemptuousAs he passes a store front, he stares at himself for a moment, regarding his dark hair and hooked blunted noseI look more like a Jew-boy than a midwestern scionNow if I'd had blond hair, Al really would have searched himself
But there are other elementsPerhaps, or was it something else, something less definable?
His senior year he branches out, plays house football with a surprising and furious satisfactionOne play he never quite forgetsA ball carrier on the opposing team breaks through a hole in the line, is checked momentarily, and is standing there stock upright, helpless, when Hearn tackles himHe has charged with all his tiffany and co earrings strength and the player is taken off the field with a wrenched knee while Hearn patters after him
You all right, Ronnie?
Yeah, fine
Good tackle, HearnOnly he knows he isn'tThere has been an instant of complete startling gratification when he knew the ball carrier was helpless, waiting to be hitThere is not even any cynical pleasure in making the All-House football team
And other fields tooHe attains a grudged notoriety by seducing a DeWolfe Street debHe even ties up with some of the men he has met through his freshman roommate, now in Speakers, receives after four years a belated invitation to one of the Brattle Hall dances
The stags line up against the wall, chat cursorily with one another, and cut in to dance with either a girl they know or the girl of a man they knowHearn smokes a cigarette or two, quite bored, and then cuts in on a little blonde girl dancing with a tall blond clubman
The gesture toward conversation:
And your name is Betty Carreton, eh, where do you go to school?
Oh, to Miss Lucy'sAnd then the barbarity he cannot forswearAnd does Miss Lucy tell you girls how to keep it until marriage?
What did you say?
More and more often this inexplicable humorSomewhere in the cavernous and undoubtedly rotten tissues of the collective brain of Al, of Jansen, of the magazine men, the college literary critics, in the aesthetes' salons, in the modern living rooms on the quiet back streets of Cambridge, there would be the unadmitted hunger to be bored and superior at a Brattle Hall dance, either that or go to Spain
He thinks it out one nightHe can be genuinely indifferent to the Brattle Hall thing because it is the Class AA minor league affair which all his training on the green lawns, at the dancing school, or riding at night in convertibles on the highways back of Cholive-oil, has cartier ladies must de cartier satis |
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