The following synopsis and outline is partly a description of work that I have completed and partly an attempt to formulate the underlying conceptions and intentions of my novel. The work as a whole is one which has the working title of "An American Comedy."

chronologically

The first part/is a novel which can be made an independent book and published independently: it has the working title of "An American Dream." The plot roughly is this: Two rich young Catholic brothers who have been orphans and who have been educated in a Dominican school and then gone to the University of California have become convinced during their first two years at college that the triumph of Communism is inevitable. The book begins with their departure from college, in the middle of the term, in 1932, and their determination to devote themselves to what they call their sacred mission: the nature of this mission changes from time to time but remains the same in general. They are convinced that it is very important to convert the Pope to the necessity and the practicality of coming out in favor of democratic socialism. Since the predictions of Marx have convinced them that the triumph of Communism is inevitable, they believe that this is the only way in which the Church can survive the social upheavals and economic disasters of the next twenty-five years. Their plan, which they immediately carry out is to go up and down the California coast visiting rich Catholics, poets, painters, intellectuals, etc., and persuading them to sign a petition to the Pope which they intend to deliver personally, and which they are certain will result in the Pope announcing on Christmas 1933 in a broadcast to the capitals of the world that since Divine Justice was incompatible with any

2

form of social or economic injustice it was necessary to reform
the social and economic order of the present, particularly since
the social and economic order which had been just in the past was
quite clearly now in 1933 a cause of profound social, economic,
thus
and spiritual injustice.

4

Volume II

1948-6 Waldemar (Richman)
The Dedicated Whore Master
The Two Sisters
The Second Time
(Richman) Meets Newman at Bloomingdale's

1949-70 A Weekend In the Upper Class
A Poet Publicized

1950-51 "Successful Love"(
What Difference Does It Make?

1951-53 The Institute for the Study of Human Love
(KINSEY)

1952-53 The Nun's Prayer

1952-3 THE HARTFORD INNOCENTS

1944 The Great and Fearful Joy
(The Siege of Courvoisier)

1945 Grand Central Palace
The Brothers MacCormick (Recruited and deferred)

1946 An Academic Scandal (Newman as Professor)
The Fabulous $20 Bill

1947 A Weekend In the 20th Century
(Script)

4

Volume II

1948
Waldemar (Richman)
The Dedicated Whore Master
The Two Sisters
The Second Time
(Richman) Meets Newman at Bloomingdale's

1949
A Weekend In the Upper Class
A Poet Publicized

1950
Successful Love ( )
What Difference Does It Make?

1951
The Institute for the Study of Human Love

1952
The Nun's Prayer

The MacCormick brothers were devoted to a conception and a purpose so important, so ambitious and so comprehensive that other human beings, at times, became unclear, incoherent, or self-conscious and embarrassed when they encountered the MacCormick brothers and heard what their plan was. Their aim was simple and overwhelming, whether or not one thought the realization of the aim reasonable, desirable, possible, practical, or on the other hand opposed them and supposed their plan was the crack utopian, dream of two excited and possibly deranged young men. To one of the first of those whom they approached on their sacred mission their plan seemed to be that of two lunatics who were supported by the boundless optimism of early manhood and supported also -- to an equal extent, or to a greater extent -- by an inherited income.

Those who heard of the sacred mission for the first time directly from either or both of the two brothers, Newman and Thomas MacCormick, gasped, thunderstruck, and disassembled their feelings, remaining silent and hardly knowing what to say because it was impossible to deny very often that the motives which inspired the two brothers were entirely noble and the plan itself desirable in one or another way -- in part if not as a whole. At the same time the fact that the two young men were rich, well bred and "upper class" and had nothing to gain and everything to lose by the realization of their plan was equally or more effective in making the two brothers seem noble and disinterested in dedicating themselves singleheartedly to the accomplishment of their mission.

On a very beautiful morning, in 1932, in the state of California, two young men were waiting for a ride on a typical state highway. It was typical also that one of them, Thomas Cavanaugh, should be standing up, his thumb upthrust, signalling their desire to lift the cars as they came over Cavanaugh the hill, while Newman, the younger of the two brothers -- immediately recognizable as brothers, almost as twins, so strong was the visual and facial resemblance -- should be seated on a suitcase as expensive as the tweed in which the brothers were dressed. As they waited, as motorists responded to Thomas' outthrust thumb by speeding past them, the argument between the brothers gradually increased in intensity and sharpness. The argument was essentially indescribable: it concerned, among many others, the Pope in the Vatican, Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini, and the President of the United States, Herbert Hoover. The president was involved not only as the occupant of the White House but also as a human being whom the two brothers thought of as a devout Quaker, which had an important relation to the mission which had made the two brothers take to the open road. Important the Pope in Rome and the President in Washington certainly were in the argument and the remarkable purpose which preoccupied the mind, heart and all the energy of Thomas Cavanaugh, Newman, standing up, and Newman Cavanaugh, sitting down on an expensive suitcase -- custom made for travelers that they might impress hotel clerks and bell hops rather than preoccupied motorists in passing cars. Other famous and obscure human beings were equally important to the mission whether or not they were mentioned in this particular argument. Among them were William Shakespeare, Plato, Dostoevsky,

2

the Czar of Russia and the Pope who occupied the Vatican when
Dostoevsky was writing *The Brothers Karamazov*; John McGraw, the
manager of the New York Giants and Knute Rockne, the celebrated
coach of Notre Dame; T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, the famous American
poets

3

-- the list numbered others but the names taken together were
of the same sort -- they were such that if the conversation of
the brothers had been overheard, it would have dazed the listener,
and if the listener had heard only the names mentioned he would
have thought it inconceivable that any one subject could make the
conversation a unity apart from an omnibus topic like the history
of the modern world, the extreme variety and heterogeneity -- like that of
a traveling circus -- of human nature.

In the midst of the argument, as its acrimony increased,
four cars passed, one rapidly after another, and none showed any
sign of being aware or moved by Thomas Cavanaugh's upthrust arm
and upturned thumb: and in fact, his arm and thumb looked out of
relation to the rest of his body since he continually turned backward
and looked downward towards his brother -- seated upon the suitcase --
save for those over-excited moments when Newman Cavanaugh rose in
passion to make a point which, it seemed to him, only stupified
blindness and deafness prevented his brother from understanding.

"Perhaps if you directed a little more intelligence to
the way in which you use your thumb," said Newman to his brother,
"we would get a lift before nightfall. Four cars have passed us
by like the Twentieth Century Limited passing through a whistle
stop at the height of a blizzard."

"One does not have to be a wizard," said Thomas Cavanaugh,
"to understand that the subject of birth control is one which will
excite the extreme disingenuity of the human mind. Take you, for
example, or for that matter, take me, or take -- "

"For Christ's sake," replied Newman, "we will be here all
day until we turn to stone if we fail to get along before we have

4

come to an agreement about topics like birth control or waste time
analyzing your
in/motives and those to which I admit and those which are wrongly
imputed to me by you --"

"I am not saying anything new to you," Thomas continued.
"For God's sake, I am only saying exactly what you yourself say when
you are less excited about this problem and many others too: we
will get nowhere if we do not propagandize to the faithful in such
a way that there will be no question of the purity or impurity of
our motives."

"There goes another car," said Newman, rising from his
seat upon the suitcase and determined to concentrate upon the matter
at hand just as a Cadillac touring car came slowly over the hill,
suddenly taking the attention of the brothers Cavanaugh since it was
moving so slowly that it seemed the most likely prospect of a lift
than any car which had sped past during the last hour.

"You never -- not once ever -- f____d a girl without using
a rubber," said Thomas CAVANAUGH in hot anger to his brother. Newman
Cavanaugh surely would have replied in a like way, had not his
# brother's remark/awakened the most pleasant and interesting thoughts
of the past and the future as well; and had not the Cadillac slowed,
pulled to the cinder shoulder of the highway, and stopped.

"Temper, temper!" said Newman softly, in a tone which was
for him self-irony, self-mockery, first of all: "Remember: we must
never descend to the rhetoric of obscenity and profanity, but be
pure in tongue as we are in heart and in mind -- "

Thomas Cavanaugh ran ahead of his brother and leaned into
the window of the big, black, Cadillac. Newman arose, dusted himself,
lifted his suitcase and started across the road as Thomas called to
him that they had finally secured a lift.

["5", "\"Now don't be a wise guy, Newman,\" said Thomas as the two doubled up in the front seat with the kind driver. Newman sized up their benefactor with a quick slit glance as he made himself comfortable, thrusting his arm over his brother's shoulder. He knew that Thomas had seated himself between his brother and the driver to prevent any disputation from occurring, such as had occurred too often before. The driver's appearance made the prospect of a disputation seem quite unlikely: the driver looked prosperous enough to be the image of a man in an advertisement who would be likely to purchase a Cadillac.", "\"I'm heading for Frisco,\" said the driver. \"Where are you boys going?\"", "\"We are going to San Francisco too,\" said Thomas, glancing at Newman as he spoke. The brothers had agreed long before starting out on their journey to say nothing of the purpose of their mission to anyone who was not immediately and obviously apt to aid in its fulfillment -- or at least to be entirely sympathetic.", "\"Visiting friends or going back to school?\" asked the motorist, glancing at the brothers, immediately aware that his new acquaintances were unwilling to say very much about their destination and yet unwilling himself to forego the possibility of conversation. It was his reason for stopping. And giving the boys a left, and going the boys a left, and giving the boys a left, and going the

6

normal speed of California highways. As the car raced on, both sides of the highway dived backward, the sky rose before the windshield and receded, and the blue and gold morning glittered all over. Thomas stared ahead, uncomfortable; and Newman stared ahead also, comfortable. Finally the motorist decided to try again.

reflected
"My name is William O'Neil," he said, and he looked upon the fact that the two young men immediately exchanged glances.
"I write advertising copy for a Frisco firm. What do you boys do? Don't mind my asking. Both of you look like students, and you're dressed far better than almost anyone who is likely to be looking for a lift fifty miles north of Los Angeles."

"We're Catholics too," and Thomas, nudged by Newman in reproach for providing this information. Thomas wanted to resume the conversation he had been having with Newman about birth control and O'Neil's name had made him feel that it might be possible to discuss this subject without revealing the nature of their mission. This necessary silence was one which Newman violated more often than he did.

"I can hardly call myself a very good Catholic, I must confess," said William O'Neil. "When I was a boy -- "

"Now, do you know, neither of us," said Thomas impulsively and warmly, "find that we can agree -- agree is not the right word -- with the doctrines of our Church in some important temporal matters. In fact, we were arguing about one of the dogmas just now, just before you came along and gave us a lift."

"Don't let me stop you," said William O'Neil. "You know, this kind of driving gets extremely monotonous and I don't like to listen to the radio so early in the morning. It's all soap operas:

7

a beachcomber, or a housewife
it's immoral in a way -- like reading a detective story instead
doing her
of <u>xuomingxiao</u> work -- "

Thomas, impressed by the comparison, looked toward Newman
who squeezed his eyes shut to say that it would be foolish to
resume the argument.

"As it happens, Mr. O'Neil," said Thomas, irritated with
his brother, "the subject of the argument was a rather delicate one,
and it was also theological in a technical way. You probably would
not think it particularly interesting and you might be shocked -- "

"I may be bored," said William O'Neil, "or I may be
shocked, but it is hardly likely that I am going to be both bored
<u>and</u> shocked, so fire away -- unless you feel particularly uncomfortable
about discussing this subject in a stranger's presence -- "

"We were arguing about birth control," said Thomas, with
the utmost degree of gingerly tentativeness, "the Church's attitude
toward birth control: Newman here was defending the doctrine of the
Church which prohibits contraception and I was criticizing both the
doctrine and his defense of it quite severely."

"And quite foolishly," added Newman, "and with a set of
arguments with <u>quite</u> <u>arguments</u> <u>au hominem</u> gratuitous personal
remarks," certain that any Latin phrase would seem peculiar to most
human beings encountered on a state highway in California: in Anno
Domini 1932.

"Suppose you make it a kind of debate," said William
O'Neil, "just like in political campaigns: each of you try to convince
me and when we stop for lunch," (he glanced at the discreet, expensive
watch on his wrist), "we can regard the argument as concluded and
if you will forgive me for what may be presumption, the winner will

8

be the one who persuades me. I know almost nothing at all about
the question of birth control, save that everyone in my own com-
munity practices it, whether or not they are Catholics: so I have
no preconceptions or prejudices, which ought to make me a fairly
good referee."

"You have just mentioned a serious prejudice and pre-
conception," said Thomas politely. "The very fact that you yourself
practice contraception -- "

"I said my friends, not my wife and myself," replied
O'Neil, "but you're right: no one cares particularly to admit that
he is engaged in evil practices: but I am comparatively innocent
in that I have never given the matter any thought -- not once in
twelve years of marriage."

"Morality for other people," said Newman sharply. "You
don't care what others do or are told to do, as long as you follow
your own inclinations. But others ought to be supervised."

"If you like," said William O'Neil with genuine good
nature, "I suppose that in the last analysis your characterization
of my attitude toward the social order is accurate: I can only say
-- and you will think this worse than anything -- that if I have
sinned, it is the sin of unawareness. The problem has never presented
itself to my wife and me -- we have two children -- nor, I should say
with some certainty -- has it troubled our friends in the community
in which we live."

"That's no excuse," said Newman sternly, "and for the
first time William O'Neil became aware of how young the two brothers
were and -- for the first time -- felt annoyed also.

9

"Maybe we better talk about something else," said Thomas quickly. His remark was directed at Newman, but William O'Neil answered.

"Oh no," said O'Neil. "The little you've said is extremely interesting. Please don't stop. But perhaps you --" he nodded towards Thomas -- "had better give me a quick rundown of what has gone before and then continue from that point --"

"In brief," said Thomas, who thought this suggestion excellent for several reasons, and who spoke as if he were writing an essay, "Newman here -- he's Newman Barrowmore Cavanaugh, and my full name is Thomas Aquinas Cavanaugh -- Newman here defends the Church's doctrine that the practice of birth control is a sin *contra natura* -- against nature in the Aristotelian and Thomist sense of being unnatural. On the contrary, I believe with St. Thomas Aquinas, my patron saint and sponsor, that the purpose of the act of love is *concupiscence*, the mutual joy of two human hearts. In *ad majorem gloria dei*. The real point of disputation, however, is whether the act of contraception can be said to be a sin against nature when it is clearly --"

"Clearly to you," Newman interrupted, "but don't let me interrupt you."

"I won't. Clearly the question of whether any one act of love was and is intended by nature to bring about conception is at the very least extremely open to question: it is a moot point, surely, and hence one about which it is necessary to maintain an open mind -- not in public, of course, but --"

"Clearly!" said Newman, interrupting Thomas hoarsely -- the brief effort to be silent had clogged his throat, "it is extremely easy to confuse an open mind and a hole in the head."

10

"Let me finish this summary and then you can correct my description of your views," said Thomas, striving to be patient. first,

"I maintain that since every act of love, considered in itself, involves several billion -- or perhaps it is hundreds of millions -- " he hesitated, then chose not to use the medical term " -- of the seeds of the human male, it is _ipso facto_ impossible to assert that nature intended every seed to become a living being, to say nothing of the impossibility of the female to conceive and give birth so often. Secondly -- and this is perhaps more important by far in view of the doctrine of the Church -- the human soul issues from the hand of God, _not_ at the moment of the act of love and not at the moment of conception, but only at the moment of birth: hence, it cannot be maintained as some

On a very beautiful morning, in 1932, in the state of California, two young men were waiting for a ride on a typical state highway. It was typical also that one of them Thomas Cavanaugh should be standing up, his thumb upthrust, signalling their desire for a lift to the cars as they came over the hill, while Newman, the younger of the two -- immediately recognizable as brothers, almost as twins, so strong was the visual and facial resemblance -- should be seated on a suitcase as expensive as the tweed in which the brothers were dressed. As they waited, as motorists responded to Thomas' pleading thumb by speeding past them, the argument between the brothers gradually increased in intensity and sharpness. The argument was essentially indescribable: it concerned, among many others, the Pope in the Vatican, Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini, and the President of the United States, Herbert Hoover. The president was involved not only as the occupant of the White House but also as a human being whom the two brothers thought of as a devout Quaker, which had an important relation to the mission which had made the two brothers take to the open road. Important the Pope in Rome and the President in Washington certainly were in the argument and the remarkable purpose which preoccupied the mind, heart and all the energy of Thomas Cavanaugh, standing up, and Newman Cavanaugh, sitting down on an expensive suitcase -- custom made for travelers that they might impress hotel clerks and bell hops rather than preoccupied motorists in passing cars. Other famous and obscure human beings were equally important to the mission whether or not they were mentioned in this particular argument. Among them were William Shakespeare, Plato, Dostoevsky,

3

-- the list numbered others but the names taken together were of the same sort -- they were such that if the conversation of the brothers had been overheard, it would have dazed the listener, and if the listener had heard only the names mentioned he would have thought it inconceivable that any one subject could make the conversation a unity apart from an omnibus topic like the history of the modern world, the extreme variety and heterogeneity -- like a traveling circus -- of human nature.

In the midst of the argument, as its acrimony increased, four cars passed one rapidly after another and none showed any sign of being aware or moved by Thomas Cavanaugh's upthrust arm and upturned thumb: and in fact, his arm and thumb looked out of relation to the rest of his body since he continually turned backward and looked downward towards his brother -- seated upon the suitcase -- save for those over-excited moments when Newman Cavanaugh rose in passion to make a point which, it seemed to him, only stupified blindness and deafness prevented his brother from understanding.

5

"Now don't be a wise guy, Newman," said Thomas as the two doubled up in the front seat with the kind driver. Newman sized up their benefactor with a quick slit glance as he made himself comfortable, thrusting his arm over his brother's shoulder. He knew that Thomas had seated himself between his brother and the driver to prevent any disputation from occurring, such as had occurred too often before. The driver's appearance made the prospect of a disputation seem quite unlikely: the driver looked prosperous enough to be the image of a man in an advertisement who would be likely to purchase a Cadillac.

"I'm heading for Frisco," said the driver. "Where are you boys going?"

"We are going to San Francisco too," said Thomas, glancing at Newman as he spoke. The brothers had agreed long before starting out on their journey to say nothing of the purpose of their mission to anyone who was not immediately and obviously apt to aid in its fulfillment -- or at least to be entirely sympathetic.

"Visiting friends or going back to school?" asked the motorist, glancing at the brothers, immediately aware that his new acquaintances were unwilling to say very much about their destination and yet unwilling himself to forego the possibility of conversation. It was his reason for stopping.

"We are visiting friends in the Big Sur Valley," said Newman in a tone which clearly suggested that he intended to say no more: what he had said was hardly accurate, for he and his brother were hoping to visit strangers who might very well not welcome them.

The silence which followed was full of the rising and muted lullaby of the motor as the car plunged forward to the

6

reflected

"My name is William O'Neil," he said, and KEMPERMAN upon the fact that the two young men immediately exchanged glances. "I write advertising copy for a Frisco firm. What do you boys do? Don't mind my asking. Both of you look like students, and you're dressed far better than almost anyone who is likely to be looking for a lift fifty miles north of Los Angeles."

"We're Catholics too," answered Thomas, nudged by Newman in reproach for providing this information. Thomas wanted to resume the conversation he had been having with Newman about birth control and O'Neil's name had made him feel that it might be possible to discuss this subject without revealing the nature of their mission. This necessary silence was one which Newman violated more often than he did.

"Now, do you know, neither of us," said Thomas impulsively and warmly, "find that we can agree -- agree is not the right word -- with the doctrines of our Church in some important temporal matters. In fact, we were arguing about one of dogmas just now, just before you came along and gave us a lift."

7

a beachcomber, or a housewife
it's immoral in a way -- like reading a detective story instead
doing her
of कभिनेत्रम् work -- "

"I may be bored," said William O'Neil, "or I may be
shocked, but it is hardly likely that I am going to be both bored
and shocked, so fire away -- unless you feel particularly uncomfortable
about discussing this subject in a stranger's presence -- "

"And quite foolishly," added Newman, "and with a set of
arguments with quite
gratuitous personal
remarks," certain that any Latin phrase would seem peculiar to most
human beings encountered on a state highway in California: in Anno
Domini 1932.

"Suppose you make it a kind of debate," said William
O'Neil, "just like in political campaigns: each of you try to convince
me and when we stop for lunch" (he glanced at the discreet, expensive
watch on his wrist), "we can regard the argument as concluded and
if you will forgive me for what may be presumption, the winner will

8

Be the one who persuades me. I know almost nothing at all about the question of birth control, save that everyone in my own community practices it, whether or not they are Catholics: so I have no preconceptions or prejudices, which ought to mae me a fairly good referee."

"You have just mentioned a serious prejudice and preconception," said Thomas politely. "He very fact that you yourself practice contraception -- "

"I said my friends, not my wife and myself," replied O'Neil, "but you're right: no one care particularly to admit that he is engaged in evil practices: but I am comparitively innocent in that I have never given the matter any thought -- not once in twelve years of marriage."

9

"In brief," said Thomas, who thought this suggestion excellent for several reasons, and who spoke as if he were writing an essay, "Newman here -- he's Newman Barrymore Cavanaugh, and my full name is Thomas Aquinas Cavanaugh -- Newman here defends the Church's doctrine that the practice of birth control is a sin _contra natura_ -- against nature in the Aristotelian and Thomist sense of being unnatural. On the contrary, I believe with St. Thomas Aquinas, my patron saint and sponsor, that the purpose of the act of love is _concupiscence_, the mutual joy of two human hearts. _Ad majorem gloria dei._ The real point of disputation, however, is whether the act of contraception can be said to be a sin against nature when it is clearly --"

10

"I maintain that since every act of love, considered in itself, involves several billion -- or perhaps it is hundreds of millions -- he hesitated, then chose not to use the medical term " -- of the seeds of the human male, it is _ipso facto_ impossible to assert that nature intended every seed to become a living being, to say nothing of the impossibility of the female to conceive and give birth so often. Secondly -- and this is perhaps more important by far in view of the doctrine of the Church -- the human soul issues from the hand of God, _not_ at the moment of the act of love and not at the moment of conception, but only at the moment of birth: hence, it cannot be maintained as some

## PROLOGUE

This is a true story, although it is not always literally true. A very great painter once remarked that the truth is never accurate. He was thinking of the whole truth which is represented in a good painting, poem, story, symphony or novel.

When one is outdoors on the streets of the city or waiting for a lift on a state highway, for example, everyone whom one looks at is *going somewhere*: all human beings in movement are *going away* from somewhere and *going towards* somewhere. The distance between the point of departure and the point of arrival or destination is in the first analysis infinite: yet many arrive at their destination, or at least are under the impression that they have arrived. While in transit they very often are engaged in a conversation with the human beings they expect to meet when they arrive at, for example, a house party or for a weekend visit. The conversation which they conduct with themselves is very seldom the same as the actual conversation which occurs when they have arrived: yet their imaginary conversation has an enormous influence upon the conversation which actually occurs, just as dreams which occur when one is asleep inspire a great many actions of the dreamer when he awakes and throughout the entire day which follows the dream. The present is thus, in a way, the future. We attempt in the present to determine the future; and we fail because although the present is obsessed with the future to the point of being partially identifiable with the future, the future is certainly seldom the present or what we imagine we wished it would be when we were moving from the present to the future.

These remarks, thus stated, may seem paradoxical to some and to a set of platitudes to others. Once what seems a platitude is

2

applied to any particular human being or human beings at any
particular time in any particular place it becomes, -- suddenly --
a mystery or at least a secret. Since the future seldom bears more
than a resemblance to what it was imagined it would be when the
present had not yet become the past; and since, in America, more and
more human beings travel by cars, buses, and planes, to say nothing,
or almost nothing, of those who are pedestrians and those who are
hitch-hikers like the two brothers named Cavanaugh of this true story,
the platitude becomes transformed into a mystery more and more constantly
frequently and profoundly in America, the unknown land of the new world,
than anywhere else. Anyone who looked at the two brothers, Thomas and
Newman Cavanaugh, would merely see that they were going somewhere on
that spring morning in 1932 when they waited on a state highway in
California for a lift. Both young men were convinced that they knew
exactly where they were going. They were going, in the end, to the
eternal city, Rome; all roads not only lead to Rome, both young men
believed, but all roads and all pilgrims went, in the end, to the
Vatican seeking an audience with the Pope, the spiritual representative
of Christ on Earth. Their destination was thus obviously one which
no stranger could have guessed simply by looking at them.

This is all the more true of the millions of human beings
who, unlike the two brothers, have no idea at all, much of the time,
of where they are going or where they want to go, or the ultimate,
sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes exalted conclusion of their journeys.
Thus there is an immense difference between the imagined and
desired destination of all Americans most of the time and the actuality
at which they arrived. This occurred from the very beginning when
Columbus set out to discover a passage to the Indies and did not

3

recognize that he had discovered the New World, not Cathay. It is
not entirely impossible that if Columbus had known <u>жизнь</u> he would
stayed
die in a dungeon, he would have felt that he should have in the Old
World and disregarded the posthumous fame, honor and admiration of
posterity. It is still very likely, and it was very likely on that
spring morning in 1932 in California that if most travelers knew
where they would find themselves at the end of their journey they
would not start out at all. This is reflected in the well-known
national joke which becomes more and more popular, minute by minute:
the traveler arrives at his destination and finds it so different from
his imagination of what it would be like: "I should have stood in bed."
not
If <u>жизнь</u> the traveler is just, he says: "I should have accepted
the counsels of my imagination so uncritically. I should have known
that reality is far more fantastic and far more implausible than the
wildest fantasies at night, asleep, in bed; or the reveries, daydreams,
IMAGINES images of hope, hallucinations of fear which occur
to waking consciousness all day long." The traveler who is also
a student of history and of mass culture might very well conclude
that Columbus discovered not only America but Hollywood and says to
himself: "I should have withstood Hollywood."

The statement "I should have stood in bed," is far more
profound than it seems when first heard. It is rooted, though at
or experiences of
several removes, in various famous sentences <u>жизнь</u> two famous American
poets, T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound both of whom had influenced Thomas
and Newman Cavanaugh very much. Mr. Eliot was the more influential
of the two: he had published a volume of essays called <u>For Launcelot
Andrews</u> in which he said that he was an Anglo-Catholic in religion,
a classicist in literature, and a royalist in politics. The brothers

er nice question is involved in the effect of the *order* of the verbs
used to represent the point of death:: quench, reduce, extinguish,
obliterate. The question is, are not these verbs pretty nearly inter-
changeable? Would not any other verb of destructive action do just as
well. In short, is there any word in this poem which either fits or
contributes to the association at all exactly? I think not--with the
single exception of phosphor.

The burden of these observations of words will I hope have made it-
self plain; it is exactly the burden of the observations on the form
of the whole poem. The poem is an exercise whichever way you take it:
an approach to the organisation of its material but by no means a com-
plete organisation. It is almost a rehearsal--a doing over of something
not done--and a variation of stock intellectual elements in an effort
to accomplish an adventure in feeling. The reader can determine for
himself--if he can swallow both the anthracite and the gnat--how con-
crete and actual the adventure was made.

Perhaps determination will be assisted by a few considerations on
Emily Dickinson's vocabulary as a whole and how it splits up under in-
spection into different parts which are employed for different func-
tions, and which operate *from*, as it were, different levels of sensi-
bility. It is not a large vocabulary compared to Whitman's, nor rich
like Melville's, nor perspicuous like Henry James', nor robust like
Mark Twain's. Nor is it a homogeneous vocabulary; its unity is specious
for the instance rather than organic for the whole of her work. Its
constant elements are mostly found, like most of the poems, in arrange-
ments not compositions. The pattern of association is kaleidoscopic
and extraneous far more frequently than it is crystalline and inwardly
compelled. What it is, is a small, rigidly compartmented vocabulary of
general and conventional groups of terms, plus a moderately capacious

page 20

as many--that the uncomposed disorder is accepted by the poet because
the poem was itself written automatically. To the sensitive hand and
expectant ear words will arrange themselves, however gotten hold of,
and seem to breed by mere contact. The brood is the meaning we catch
up to. Is not this really automatic writing *tout court*? Most of the
Dickinson poems seem to have been initially as near automatic writing
as may be. The bulk remained automatic, subject to correction and mul-
tiplication of detail. Others, which reach intrinsic being, have been
patterned, inscaped, injected one way or another with the elan or
elixir of the poet's dominant attitudes. The poem presently examined
remains too much in the automatic choir; the elan is there, which is
why we examine it at all, but without the additional advantage of
craft it fails to carry everything before it.

The second stanza of the poem is either an example of automatic
writing unrelieved, or is an example of bad editing, or both. Its only
meaning is in the frantic strain towards meaning--a strain so frantic
that all responsibility towards the shapes and primary significance
of *WORD* words was ignored. "A temperature just adequate/So anthracite
to live" even if it were intelligible, which it is not, would be be-
yond bearing awkward to read. It is not bad grammar alone that works
ill; words sometimes make their own grammar good on the principle of
ineluctable association--when the association forces the words into
meaning. Here we have fiat meaning. The word anthracite is the crux of
the trouble. Anthracite is coal, is hard, is black, gives heat, and has
a rushing crisp sound; it has a connection with carbuncle and with a
fly-borne disease of which one symptom resembles a carbuncle; it is
stratified in the earth, is formed of organic matter as a consequence
of enormous pressure through geologic time; etc., etc. One or several
of these senses may contribute to the poem; but because the context does

5. one
just what would expect of a painter, any painter, since all painters suffered not only from ignorance but from a sense of inferiority about the fact that they were unable to raed and had never been exposed to a liberal education. Brighad had hardly listened. "When he spoke, he spoke to other near him.

"The real truth about Horace, as I discovered by accident," Brighad said, "Is that he is a Seminole Indian, His real name is not Horace, but Laughing Boy."

This was so accurate that it was a characterization of Horace back of any sense of humor about himself and insistent and high-flown mannerisms, that some of the others found laughter irresistible. As a result, Meg became furious, and herself was prone to make to spontaneous satirical remarks about her husband, but when others made like comments, she became as difficult a Horace.

This was merely the beginning, as the party continued, the same note was struck with constant increasing intensity; and when the celebrated stranger himself arrived, the others, one after another, behaved as if they had never before met each other, and an occasion arose on which to discuss their views of sex, and he had hoarded up their views on sex until that very afternoon, when Peter Willing appeared.

It seemed to August that the release which occurred when Peter Willing arrived was comparable to a political and social revolution, and it was only the fact that he knew very little of any revolution, apart from a book he had once read prevented him from being entirely certain that about the French Revolution, which made him not entirely the behaviour of his guests soon came to resemble not only a great revolution but that phase entitled the reign of terror.

Peter Willing and the disciple with him had hardly been able to utter a complete sentence, although much of what was said to him was hurled at the one spoken as a kind of questioning—an inquisition. It was true that Peter Willing had spoken, at the start, a single complete sentence, the exact text of which Augustt it is possible to remember save for the fact that it must be spoken very soon after his appearance.

"If it were necessary," Peter said, "to formulate my views on the head of a pin or a postage stamp, it in a single sentence, I would speak in immediate and utter contradiction of two beliefs which most human beings hold at one or another time, —sometimes affirming both at the same time, though

December 3, 1952

Memorandum
on
The Development of the Humanities
at
Princeton University

Preliminary Propositions

I. The Humanities is a term which potentially has two meanings:

A. A designation of a group of subjects which study human experience and behavior and are concerned with the value judgments to which such study leads. The arts, letters, philosophy, history and religion are the traditional core of this group of studies, but large areas of the Social Sciences are also Humanities, and there are important humanistic aspects in the Natural Sciences.

B. A "way of looking at things." The belief that the Humanities are the business of all men because all men, whatever their profession or training, must be concerned explicitly with human experience in all its aspects and must make judgments based on human values. No one of us can escape this necessity and awareness of it should help us learn more from our experience and persuade us to be more conscious of the problems involved in making our value judgments.

II. Never has the world had so many "educated" people in it, yet seldom has civili-zation been in such apparent peril. We learn less from experience than we should; we make unwise decisions based on uncertain values. Obviously, in the face of this confusion the Humanities are not as effective as they should be, and those responsible for education in the Humanities must redouble their efforts to meet the challenge.

10. goodness/ a sociologist in the study// go dness uponataneous in the unesc. and in a way August Fisher recognized the rightness - at least under other circumstances of the kind of blanket identification of which some of his guests made so freely and so volubly: for its when a Socialist said that he was opposed to the regime in the Societ Union, and espected to be regarded by Conservatives as quite dissociaied from Communism in practice, it remained true that there was an underlying unty of vision an point of view, whatever the internicine disagreements might be and how of deminatory the Communists were of all forms of Socialist adherence, or the reverse: the possibility always remained that the acceptance of what made or an underlying unity of assumption an a way of regrding social economic and other problems prepared the way for a Soc et regime--a destestable as well as one of the sort the Socialist himself thought he would be likely to create or support. In precisely the same way, Willing had a great deal in common with Freud and lawrence --just as they, too, did with each other despite L. Anselm Scorn of Freud; they had so much more in common with each other that there was little or no genuine sem blance between criticism, objections, or mi sgivings of someone like Willing-or almost equally the kind of criticism and axiomatic a idealogue like Lawrence--and

the very same objections --such as sex is not everything -even when formulated in the very same words: the two other words might be used bital used to exess the same opposition and yet there would be an abyss of difference be- tween Willing's expression of them and that of. And August Fisher had tried to show say something of the sort when, afte a hectic and even more disorganized buffet dinner had brought about a period of comparative calm and Willing and been taken off and given a different meal in the study: it was not only much too human apology complicated and oblique as an apology and an explanation, but it omitted the truth-or what seemed to him the truth-that his guests had been antagonists because it had seemed to them that Peter Willing was criticalg them whe n he conemwd American quality of life and the persona al relationships in America: he had been ssaying preciely that, so far as he had been able to spak out at all- and what it meant to them wgs that their own country was awful and they were children who refused to grow become adults, and ere terrified by love in is adult

11.

X: someone//

And the worst part of the party had occured when had been drunken enough
and perhaps inadequate enough to yell out: "Look here, Willing, you said that you
were writing a book --your life work //magnum/opusxchampagne you said --and the name was
was to be a very pretentious one I must, The Philsoppgy of Love: I have a better one
for one, it will sell millions of copies (if it ever gets printed at all: The Philsoppky
of Fu king." Pandemonium took over. Willing himself was calm enough perhaps out of
a very light knowledge of how much wrath and insult for our letter words/word expressed
in America. But the others had been shocked enough or somehow restrained and they
had perhaps half-deliberately concentrated not upon Willing's view of the inadequacy of
the American male and female as sexual beings, but upon his criticism of America
(piddling/playing//mudpies//
This would have been remarkable at any time and place, and it as all the more then one
called to mind the fact that praioism of any kind--let alone I love my country, right
or being kind--had been not only unfashionable but virtually prohibited since
days of 1918 and the end of the world War and now with the depression getting worse day
by day it was unspeakable and it was even barred as an emotion (God Bless America)

It was at the same time that several others had begun for the first
time to cry aloud: "Why are the brothers Kennedy there?" O where are they?, repeatedly
until it seemed not only like a chorus but like an anthem: and the meaning was clear
to all who knew--and disklied the brothers, the conviction that if they had been
presnet they would have made the visiting celebrity tonguetied and spiritually despearete
in little time at all, bringing to bear upon the entire doctrine, Weltanschauung,
point of view (if that's what it
was) of their logical training as students for years of the Jesuit Fathers to which one
would have to add, for the whole trutgh & a discipline in refutation confutation hairspr
splitting and, in short, sophistry based upon the experience of mankind in

the west since Socrates had been a beardless boy: they would have created in
Willing, everyone who shouted surely believed, a sense of confusion exceeding
such feeling
any he had experienced for a generation: for they were capable of in quiring
as to the definition of a crucial word --sex, for example, or genital maturity
would have been likely--and then, when the definition was given - and this
itself would use up energy of the questioned person--then deducing implications

13.

egg/chicken//

and best trained teachers of philosophy in America, Lloyd Suss, asvisits
"auditing", to use the collegiate term, hisgraduate seminar in Hegel
and "arx: no one would ever forget Suss' account once he had heard it.

Terhpas they would come today; and when they did, soemething
only
specatacuar might very hppaen: if/he knew where they were, he would
call them or wire them. Probably the best moent of --and the only
truly delightful one so far--had already occured in an adnwas ekstasis
any
attempt to repat it would be disastrous, late innthe evening, when
after all the hullaballoo, August had remained with Willing and his
soundconditioned equipment which
disciple in the study, which was amognother desirable anex

luck or inspiration had caused him tominstall, a piece of furnushinnwhich
had convinced August 's friends that he inbened, after all, to marry ann
to have children--for what otherunairable clamor would be liqdy in this
remotе place overlooking the Pacific? At any rate, the soud confitianing
had kept out the cominance, among some some, and the resumption, among
others, of the furious denciation which it migbe best no to think
about until the hous party was over and he no longer had any responsiblity
zs a host toward Willing or toward his other guests. Meg was in the study,
throug hinn with Willing, and she was at her angelic best--as ever when
she was seeking to conceal from herself --unsuccessfully--the perennial
occurene c of at any such party: Horace in heat. Some times she left early,
before Horac had really warmed up sufficienhy to go to work; sometimes
she left at gust such a momen as was bound to distract Horace when he
really started work i n earnest; but she never admitted w hat was sometimes
goijg on directly innfronb of her. "nnBrigham Thayer was with them too,
onthe surface
adntirely forgiven/by Meg for isulting her dear husbann; beneath the
surafe, she would newer forgive him. It had been thepresence of
Meg and Brigham--and one more error on August's part--to ask Oswald
brilliann
the delightful and cahramigand plump music critic adn
musicologist, who taught at ?the State University
one of the colleges of the University of,California
: Oswald was probably the most leard person August as well as the most

14.
learned in California itself --which was saying very little: he was one of
the few people who were truly happy and truly happily married; and he was
was also extremely friendly, tactful, and aimable unless something
had really upset him which, though it occurred seldom, made up for infrequency
by means of one's salary. And August had been safe on this occasion, for it
was characteristic of Oswald that whenever one else began to burst into
fury, Oswald surely would grow more anorexic and calm, the only possible
danger being the possibility, particularly at a drinking party that Oswald's
very calm would enrage one or an disturbed person, truculent drunkard,
or excited a larmist: at such times, Oswald's very Olympiannensity was apt
to trouble anyone of any temperament but in the aftermath of what had
occurred during the drinking of co oktails, Oswald's godlike assumption
that nothing merited any anxiety, since it too would pass wawat and
was a mere flicker of time from the beautiful and exalted peak of eternity--
--this was in every way what August wanted during dinner in his study.

When dinner was done and they were drinking coffee and brandy
--Willing and his disciple Cyril Reid were not, however, for principled reason
--August had been anxious for a moment when for the first time Oswald spoke
directly to Willing.

"Are you convinced once and for all, Mr. "illing", Oswald had
had sex with a gentleness which was sometimes desceptive--"that America is
a tragic and unfortunate experiment on the part of Western man--or really
Californ(Chinese/ Japanese//
of mankind as a whole--I myself am not sure of what I think after almost forty
years of life except that, perhaps for purely personal reasons, I would be
extremely unhappy if I had to live elsewhere and I have lived for two sabbatical
Italy
years in Europe and in a country I love."

Some drunkard had banned and stamped upon the door at this
point August had hardly heard the muted sounds, gone to the door, opened it
and heard two of his shouts crying--"where are the brothers Kennedy? We want
the brothers Kennedy," He replied that they were likely to come tomorrow, perhaps
in the afternoon, shut the door, and returned.

15.

"I was just asking whether everyone here had that patience enough to listen to a rather long anecdote," Oswald miling "Shall I go agead, August?"

Oswald began at August's nod and made August wish that again
(use THIS?/ that it had been possible to use his recording machine, axx a wish several
or Oswald's stories had inspired in him, too late, alas, although Oswald was
one of the few who would speak in the same manner when unconscious that a recording
was being made of what he said: the last story, one of the most delightful had
(more) been the story of the first two ironclad ships of the Italian Navy. This
was a very very different stroy.

"This story", said Oswald, in a tone which made August remember
that Oswald was that rare being, a cynical optimist, "is a beautiful
story, a good story, and it is also a true story!" In addition, I may as well
add that it is a purely American story, one which could not have occurred--
and I assure you it does occur--in any country by America or in
time other than the tentieth century. It might be called
també in history other than the tenth century. It might be called
Father and Son, or You Never Can Tell, or, Anything May Happen In America,
Good Bad, or Astonishing and Imprableable. I first met Paul Smith under circumstances
which at the time seemed very strange to me, when a freshman and a new come at
the dormitory of赋如如如如 the university. Late in the evening of my first
weekend a college man whom was how I thought of myself with much pride,
unaware then that I would never get out of college!) I knocked at the door
of the only friend I had made at that time, (Bert Spira, a medical student
who was older than most of us and seemed very at the age of twenty five to those
of us who were sixteen, seventeen or at most eighteen years of age. News
opened his door and asked me come and join the party with that faint smile
upon his face which I did not yet know was a sign that he was in an extremely
malicious state: and I saw across the room, on the broad window seat, spraling
backward, a lean cadaverous intense freshman. This was Paul Smith. Lewis was
holding a medical textbook in his hand and making believe that he was instructing
Paul Smith on how the positions a woman naturally adopted when making love,
something like, i.

his fiction was trivial and limited because it dealt with expatriates, dilettantes, and idlers who could afford the luxury of disillusion: it was the fiction of the lost generation, as Hemingway himself had acknowledged; and hence it was not the fiction which could be regarded as important by a generation which—not want to be lost, but was resolved to determine the future, and create a society in which there were no more wars or depressions.

In *Death In The Afternoon*, in one of the interludes in which Hemingway discusses the art of writing with an imaginary old lady, he still possesses sufficient conviction to say: "Let those who want, save the world ... the great thing is to last and get your work and see and hear and learn and write; and write when there is something you know." Yet the last phrase is implicit acknowledgement of the demand that literature be determined by social consciousness, and a tacit attempt to condemn it as requiring the author to write about something he did not know.

In April 1933, soon after *Death In The Afternoon* appeared, the extent to which Hemingway was troubled is clearly more acute, in *The Gambler The Nun And The Radio*, one of the stories in *Winner Take Nothing*. The leading character is Mr. Frazer, a writer, and he says at the conclusion of the story: "Religion is the opium of the people....Yes, and music is the opium of the people. Old mount to-the-head (one of Mr. Frazer's contemptuous references to Karl Marx) hadn't thought of that. And now economics is the opium of the people; along with patriotism the opium of the people in Italy and Germany". Mr. Frazer adds drink, sexual intercourse and ambition to this list of opiums "along with a belief in any new form of government. What you wanted was the minimum of government ... bread is the opium of the people....Education is an opium of the people... Why should the people be operated on with an anesthetic?... What do you want to do with the people? (...)(But)...Revolution, Mr. Frazer, is no opium. Tevolution is a catharsis which can only be prolonged by tyranny."

23.

"How much would it pay?" newman asked Willaimso'Neil.

"What are you talking about?" Thomas inquired of his broth
er: struck/by what he was used to, as a matter of daily experience.
Newman's jumping mind --a mind which also jumped i to everyone's
else's, ind, when the whim took him or the seductions of Satan
brought forth the enfant terrible, the Katzenjammer Kid.

"It pays quite well",

The writing of advertising copy, ", answered

William O'Neil for Neman, --he had been won over to the way the two
spoke thought, as he remarked to himself, when he spoke to someone
Oxobian,
with a strong British or 'uternn accent (even as he mocked them
in his mind, the Southern ggl or the 'mshlih gentlemen: Naying: "They
always talked like this."" It pays very well, still as the depression
gets worse, after the first threemonths, when it isclear, as it
would be, I am sure, for both of you, that all the skills and
reliability/--"
a minimum dependability/

"We don't need anu money", said Thomas, before William
O'Neil had come to the salary. "You ought to continue your answer,"
Newman,"

"I would like to continue anue ann conclude it, said
if you annMr. O'Neil, are sure that I am boring your pans
Nonwaanpr
not apiercing bore// privates bore...." he did not pause for
off//
reassurane..." everything" you said, Mr. )'Neil, hears perfect witness
of the evil of our age, It is ggninowhich we have everything
and hene we have nothering: thepossession of great wealth brings
red apples: not Eden but Wall
the stock market crash ann the
epression: The freedom which made
possible bauses not love but promischity--it is, by the way,
that is really round the corner

Sidney did not hear from Monroe for three days, during which period he moved through dark distressing recesses of actionless immobility and unspecified fear. On the second night, as a desperate resort, he called Monroe's mother, and alarmed her for she had been sure that Monroe was in Fairfield and she too had not heard from him--for more than a week, though Monroe as a dutiful son wrote her every other day of the week. Finally, on the morning of the fourth day, Sidney received a long apologetic much qualified very elaborate intricately complicated not entirely coherent but nevertheless--perhaps because Sidney's interest was so intense--understandable letter from Monroe. It was, that is to say, understandable after Sidney, standing in the hall of the rooming house and skimming it quickly for something concrete, had gone through it three times. At each reading he felt that a bigger ax was striking blows upon his head with greater and greater force, as at each reading he gained a fuller apprehension of what had happened during the long painful interval since Sidney had last seen Monroe finishing his luxurious meal with innocent pleasure at the Versailles three days before.

After two hours of painful careful hopeful (against the absence of all reason for hope) scrutiny, Sidney made out what had happened during the days of Monroe's silent absence. Monroe's letter was long as well as difficult and Sidney read it again and again, seated in the armchair near his window, looking up in wonder at the late summer sky and looking at the opaque blue as if he were asking if it were possible that such things as Monroe's letter recounted could occur in this more or less reasonable world in which day followed night, effect followed cause, and a certain amount of ordinary sense was for the most part active and available in the behavior of human beings.

He rehearsed the succession of events in order of time, as if thus to confer upon them a rationality of order which they certainly did not

# AN AMERICAN DREAM

## The Nun's Prayer

The trip by train from/country to the city was a journey
from the future to the past. So you say: and you are truthful if
truth is made by God as sincerity; but is this sincere truth equal to
the truth of anger and the truth of pain? This is what Lawrence Adam
asked himself and this is the way in which he mocked himself as he
sought the comfort of the customary in the unfamiliar green plush
seat of the coach.

The train choked, convulsed, jolted and lurched as it
began to go away from the little hooded station, aged as its benches,
grey as scattered gravel, wooden and squat as a hydrant.

As the train lurched and jolted forward, Lawrence Adam looked from the window, his gaze blind as an ancient bust. The city was the past; and as he returned to the city, he was departing from his selfhood he had come to know in the country and returning to the self he had suffered and known in the city during the years of young manhood and during adolescence. He had lived now for more than five years in the country and overnight, as he slept, he had often been awakened by the recurrent dream, so full of anxiety and dread, that he was once again as he had been when he had lived in the city: he had been aware to the point of hallucination of how he appeared to both himself to behave in the eyes of other human beings. And when, waking from the fearful dream, he found himself in the Bedhouse bedroom alone, he knew that it was necessary to wake to return to the present and to be of the past, of the sense he had had in the past, and in the recurrent dream, that he was in a theatre, on a stage, and a full house of faces stared at him under the blaze of lights with never a curtain and ever ambiguous applause.

14. The Nun's Prayer

looked extremely handsome, or at least a half-witted child, or a helpless cripple, or insane but beautiful girl, or worst by far the ordinary simple being who seeks only the sanctuary and asylum of minority or the fool. The plenitude of the genes may very well be unpredictable: a generation of admirable and the noble may come at last to a sandy fan, culminated in a cunning and treacherous girl, a cruel soldier, obsessed with power, a politician and a demagogue blind to all but opportunism, so that what was in the parents an exalted and scared joy, kindling ecstacy like a midsummer night of music, begot hatred, drunken anger, diseased fantasy, moved only in viciousness, fulfilled only in continual renewal, exercises of absolute brutality of destruction¹.

This is a veritable ecstacy of denunciation of meanness: whether I praise or condemn myself, or praise mankind and condemn myself for expecting far more of reality than it has ever made possible, since it has realized so much that is true, good, beautiful and--I must stop before the drunkenness of formulation becomes uncontrollable so that I will be able to control myself when I come to the expensive and fashionable Hotel Prayr where I meet the traveller who has come to see and consult me, sending for me with so much kindness out of so much pain. Slower: ...silence is better than--going in to the self-intoxication which I have not known since--since when? Shall I slow myself by questioning what I say? No: by forcing myself to apprehend what I see, passing and flowing outside the train, moving with awkwardness, tentativeness in this car of the train. To question is more difficult, yet more likely to renew the flood of historical emotion in the face of what is unanswerable.

There are few middle class suburbs outside the train window now: the poor districts in drear dominion are more and more frequent

TBK

Lady, in the name of the Absolute,

I

I spit on you!

The age of the Apocalypse has begun. The hour of Armageddon is at hand. Space is tolling, the stars are tinkling...

During the first year of their pilgrimage, as they called it, the brothers Kennedy, as they insisted on calling themselves, half-in mockery and wholly in megalamaical earnestness, would have made far more progress--a word they detested in principle--toward the successful fulfillment of their pilgrimage, had it not been for the practice of a habit which was an absentminded form of behavior, however unlikely it may seem, (the one who was not prosyltyzing) the habit of which one or the other brother had of making love to the Pope of the distinguished man they were visiting and seeking to persuade him to lend his name and as much more as he found possible to the irxprofound and first urgent purpose of their pilgrimage, which was to reach its cliax when the brothers Kennedy were granted an audience by the Pope in the Vatican; and ultimate climax, the fulfillment of all their efforts, would come when the Pope, on Christmas Eve or at Easter, perhaps (the brothers Kennedy felt that these details were better left to His Holiness, who had after all the counsel of the entire college of cardinals to aid him.) broadcast over all the great radio stations, from all the great capitals of the world (from Rome, Paris, Jerusalem, New York, Madrid, Berlin, the seventh city of Christendom, the capital of the glad tidings, the tidings which would be a crux and which would alone avert the death towards which Western civilization had been moving headlong, like Satan in a taxi,

since the 3rd of August 1914 and ( )

June 28th 1914

of October 1929. His Holiness was going to announce to the world that as a vicar of God he had been instructed to call for a new age and a new order among human beings, one in which the true Christian saw that the time had come for all just men and every just society to be an unambiguous embodiment of democratic socialism: every other polity, although just ified during the past when mankind secured the means of li velihood under

less abundant other economic

systems and other material and physical conditions, was no longer justified in the least and the true believer in the one and only

8.

find that we can't agree--agree is into the right word --with the
the doctrines of our Church in some important *temportant*matters. In
fact, we were arguing about one of them just now, just before you
came along and gave us a lift--"

"Don't let me stop you", said William O'Neil, "You know,
this kind of driving gets deadly monotonous and I don't like to
listen to the radio so early in the morning it's almost like
reading a detective story instead of going to work--"

Thomas, impressed by the reference to reading, looked toward Newman who squeezed his eyes shut to say that it would be follish to accept the suggestion and resume the argument.

"As it happens, Mr. O'Neil", said Thomas, "the subject of our argument was a rather delicate one, and it was also theological. You probably would not think it particularly interesting and you might be shocked--"

"I might be bored", said William O'Neil, "and I might be shocked, but I think it is hardly likely that I would be both bored and shocked, so fire away unless you feel particularly uncomfortable about discussing the subject in a stranger's presence--"

"We were arguing about birth control", said Thomas with the utmost dege of /gaggerly tentativeness/," the Church's attitude toward birth control: New man here was defending the doctrine of the Church and I was criticizing quite severely--

"And quite foolishly," added Newman, "with quite gratuitous personal remarks the immediately obvious, certain that any Latin phrase would seem peculiar to most human beings encountered on a state highway in California, in 1932."

"Suppose you make it a kind of debate", said William O'Neil, "just like in political campaigns: each of you try to convince me and when we stop for luncheon" (he glanced at the watch

9.

on his wrist, "we can regga the disputation as closed and If you wull
forgive me for what may be presumption, the winner will be the one
who persuades me. I know almost nothing at all about the question
of birth control, save that everyone in my own community practices
it, whether or not they are Catholics: so I have not preconception
which ought to
or prejudice make me a fairly good referee."

"You have just mentioned prejudice and preconception".

Said Thomas, "the very fact that you yourself practice contraception".

"I said my friends, not my wife and myself--", said REAPPLICATION.

William O'Neil, "but you're right: no one cares particularly
enge ged in evil practices: but I am com -
to admit that he is practising

given
partively innocent in that I have never spoken the matter any thought
DURING TWELVE YEARS OF MARRIAGE. SO FAR FROM MY MOTHER
not once since I was married twelve years ago."

"Morality for other people", said Newman sharply, You
don't care what others do or are told to do, as long as you
may follow your own inclinations... BUT OTHERS' CHOICE TO BE (SUPERVISED)?

"If you like", said William O'Neil with genuine good
nature, "I suppose that in the last analysis your charact-ization
of my attitude toward the social order is quite accu-mate: I can
only say what you will think worse than nothing, that if I have
sinned, it is the sin of unawreness, . The problem never presented
itself to my wife or myself, nor I should say, with some certainty,
has it PROBABLE to
to any of our friends in the community in which we live."

"That's no excuse", said Newman sternly, "and for
the first time William O'Neil became aware of how young the two
brothers
were and felt annoyed also for the first time. -> AND THE CHARM OF IT
FROM DOWN

"Maybe we better talk about something else", said Thomas
quickly, his remark was directed at Newman, but the driver answered.

William O'Neil

"O no", said XANATHAN, "The littler you've said is exte
tremely interesting. Please don't stop. But perhaps you"; he nodded
toward Thomas, XANATHAN gave me a quick rundown of previous

The MacCormick brothers were devoted to a conception and a purpose so important, so ambitious and so comprehensive that other human beings, at times, became unclear, incoherent, or self-conscious and embarrassed when they encountered the MacCormick brothers and heard what their plan was. Their aim was simple and overwhelming, whether or not one thought the realization of the aim reasonable, desirable, possible, practical, or on the other hand opposed them and supposed their plan was the crack, utopian, dream of two excited and possibly deranged young men. To one of the first of those whom they approached on their sacred mission their plan seemed to be that of two lunatics who were supported by the boundless optimism of early manhood and supported also -- to an equal extent, or to a greater extent -- by an inherited income.