AMERICAN LITERATURE
1865-PRESENT
INS TRUCTOR-PR O VI D
ED
R EA
DINGS
LOIBNER-WAITKUS American Literature 1865-Present • Instructor-provided Readings • Loibner-Waitkus • PAGE 1
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There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. –Annie Dillard
All of the true things I’m about to tell you are shameless lies. –Kurt Vonnegut
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
“I Don’t Know How You’re Livin’” by Lucinda Willams....................................7 “Same Drugs” by Chance the Rapper.....................................................................9 “The Gilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston....................................................11 “Harlem” by Langston Hughes.............................................................................17 “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut...............................................................18 “The First Amendment” by Kurt Vonnegut.........................................................22 The Bill of Rights......................................................................................................28 “Footnote to Howl” by Allen Ginsberg................................................................30 Author’s Note to 1st Edition of For the Time Being by Annie Dillard................31
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I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU’RE LIVIN’
by Lucinda Williams
I cared for you, Dared to do What I was never prepared to do. I’ve talked you down, Driven you around, All but followed you underground. I’ve defended you, Commended you. I’ve seen it through to the end with you. I’ve supported you, Encouraged you, Comforted and consoled you. I don’t know how your livin’. I don’t know where you are, And you may not be willing To open up the door. If you should ever wonder, You shouldn’t have to ask ‘Cause I hope you know, brother, I’ve always got your back. I’ve paid for you. I’ve borrowed for you. I’ve planned all my tomorrows for you. I’ve believed in you. I grieved with you. I’ve rolled my sleeves for you. I’ve fed you. I’ve clothed you. I’ve loved you and stood up for you. I’ve sided with you. I cried for you. I put my knees aside for you.
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And I don’t know how your livin’, And I don’t know where you are, And you may not be willing To open up the door. And if you should ever wonder, Well, you shouldn’t have to ask ‘Cause I hope you know, brother, I’ve always got your back. I’ve always got your back. 2001
SOURCE: Williams, Lucinda. “I Don’t Know How You’re Livin’.” Blessed, Lost Highway, 2001.
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SAME DRUGS
by Chance the Rapper
We don’t do the same drugs no more. We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs, Do the same drugs no more. ‘Cause she don’t do the same drugs no more. We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs, Do the same drugs no more. When did you change? Wendy, you’ve aged. I thought you’d never grow up. I thought you’d never— Window closed. Wendy got old. I was too late. I was too late, A shadow of what I once was. ‘Cause we don’t do the same drugs no more. We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs, Do the same drugs no more. She don’t laugh the same way no more. We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs, Do the same drugs no more. Where did you go? Why would you stay? You must have lost your marbles. You always were so forgetful. In a hurry, Don’t wait up. I was too late. I was too late, A shadow of what I once was. ‘Cause we don’t, We don’t do what we say we’re gonna. You were always perfect, And I was only practice. Don’t you miss the days, stranger? Don’t you miss the days? Don’t you miss the danger?
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We don’t do the same drugs no more. We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs, Do the same drugs no more. We don’t do the same drugs no more. We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs, Do the same drugs no more. We don’t do the, we don’t do the same drugs. Turn it around. I remember when— This age of pathetics. Don’t forget the happy thoughts. All you need is happy thoughts, The past tense, past bed time, Way back then when everything we read was real, And everything we said rhymed. Wide eyed kids being kids, Why did you stop? What did you do to your hair? Where did you go to end up right back here? When did you start to forget how to fly? It’s so natural, Just like Juicy Fruit, Works like a magic trick. Please give me half of that. Don’t you color out. Don’t you bleed on out. Oh, Stay in the line. Stay in the line, Dandelion. It’s so natural, Just like Juicy Fruit, Works like a magic trick. Please give me half of that. Don’t you color out. Don’t you bleed on out. Oh, Stay in the line. Stay in the line, Dandelion. 2016
SOURCE: Beach, Brian, et al.. “Same Drugs.” Coloring Book, performed by Chance the Rapper, Apple Music, 2016.
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THE GILDED SIX-BITS
I
by Zora Neale Hurston
It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement that looked to the payroll of the G. and G. Fertilizer works for its support. But there was something happy about the place. The front yard was parted in the middle by a sidewalk from gate to doorstep, a sidewalk edged on either side by quart bottles driven neck down into the ground on a slant. A mess of homey flowers planted without a plan but blooming cheerily from their helter-skelter places. The fence and house were whitewashed. The porch and steps scrubbed white. The front door stood open to the sunshine so that the floor of the front room could finish drying after its weekly scouring. It was Saturday. Everything clean from the front gate to the privy house. Yard raked so that the strokes of the rake would make a pattern. Fresh newspaper cut in fancy edge on the kitchen shelves. Missie May was bathing herself in the galvanized washtub in the bedroom. Her dark-brown skin glistened under the soapsuds that skittered down from her washrag. Her stiff young breasts thrust forward aggressively, like broad-based cones with the tips lacquered in black. She heard men’s voices in the distance and glanced at the dollar clock on the dresser. “Humph! Ah’m way behind time t’day! Joe gointer be heah ‘fore Ah git mah clothes on if Ah don’t make haste.” She grabbed the clean meal sack at hand and dried herself hurriedly and began to dress. But before she could tie her slippers, there came the ring of singing metal on wood. Nine times. Missie May grinned with delight. She had not seen the big tall man come stealing in the gate and creep up the walk grinning happily at the joyful mischief he was about to commit. But she knew that it was her husband throwing silver dollars in the door for her to pick up and pile beside her plate at dinner. It was this way every Saturday afternoon. The nine dollars hurled into the open door, he scurried to a hiding place behind the Cape jasmine bush and waited. Missie May promptly appeared at the door in
mock alarm. “Who dat chunkin’ money in mah do’way?” she demanded. No answer from the yard. She leaped off the porch and began to search the shrubbery. She peeped under the porch and hung over the gate to look up and down the road. While she did this, the man behind the jasmine darted to the china berry tree. She spied him and gave chase. “Nobody ain’t gointer be chunkin’ money at me and Ah not do ‘em nothin’,” she shouted in mock anger. He ran around the house with Missie May at his heels. She overtook him at the kitchen door. He ran inside but could not close it after him before she crowded in and locked with him in a rough-andtumble. For several minutes the two were a furious mass of male and female energy. Shouting, laughing, twisting, turning, tussling, tickling each other in the ribs; Missie May clutching onto Joe and Joe trying, but not too hard, to get away. “Missie May, take yo’ hand out mah pocket!” Joe shouted out between laughs. “Ah ain’t, Joe, not lessen you gwine gimme whateve’ it is good you got in yo’ pocket. Turn it go, Joe, do Ah’ll tear yo’ clothes.” “Go on tear ‘em. You de one dat pushes de needles round heah. Move yo’ hand, Missie May.” “Lemme git dat paper sak out yo’ pocket. Ah bet it’s candy kisses.” “Tain’t. Move yo’ hand. Woman ain’t got no business in a man’s clothes nohow. Go way.” Missie May gouged way down and gave an upward jerk and triumphed. “Unhhunh! Ah got it! It ‘tis so candy kisses. Ah knowed you had somethin’ for me in yo’ clothes. Now Ah got to see whut’s in every pocket you got.” Joe smiled indulgently and let his wife go through all of his pockets and take out the things that he had hidden for her to find. She bore off the chewing gum, the cake of sweet soap, the pocket handkerchief as if she had wrested them from him, as if they had not been bought for the sake of this friendly battle. “Whew! dat play-fight done got me all warmed up!” Joe exclaimed. “Got me some water in de kit-
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tle?” “Yo’ water is on de fire and yo’ clean things is cross de bed. Hurry up and wash yo’self and git changed so we kin eat. Ah’m hongry.” As Missie said this, she bore the steaming kettle into the bedroom. “You ain’t hongry, sugar,” Joe contradicted her. “Youse jes’ a little empty. Ah’m de one whut’s hongry. Ah could eat up camp meetin’, back off ‘ssociation, and drink Jurdan dry. Have it on de table when Ah git out de tub.” “Don’t you mess wid mah business, man. You git in yo’ clothes. Ah’m a real wife, not no dress and breath. Ah might not look lak one, but if you burn me, you won’t git a thing but wife ashes.” Joe splashed in the bedroom and Missie May fanned around in the kitchen. A fresh red-and-white checked cloth on the table. Big pitcher of buttermilk beaded with pale drops of butter from the churn. Hot fried mullet, crackling bread, ham hock atop a mound of string beans and new potatoes, and perched on the windowsill a pone of spicy potato pudding. Very little talk during the meal but that little consisted of banter that pretended to deny affection but in reality flaunted it. Like when Missie May reached for a second helping of the tater pone. Joe snatched it out of her reach. After Missie May had made two or three unsuccessful grabs at the pan, she begged, “Aw, Joe, gimme some mo’ dat tater pone.” “Nope, sweetenin’ is for us menfolks. Y’all pritty lil frail eels don’t need nothin’ lak dis. You too sweet already.” “Please, Joe.” “Naw, naw. Ah don’t want you to git no sweeter than whut you is already. We goin’ down de road a lil piece t’night so you go put on yo’ Sunday-go-tomeetin’ things.” Missie May looked at her husband to see if he was playing some prank. “Sho nuff, Joe?” “Yeah. We goin’ to de ice cream parlor.” “Where de ice cream parlor at, Joe?” “A new man done come heah from Chicago and he done got a place and took and opened it up for a ice cream parlor, and bein’, as it’s real swell, Ah wants you to be one de first ladies to walk in dere and have some set down.” “Do Jesus, Ah ain’t knowed nothin’ bout it. Who de man done it?”
“Mister Otis D. Slemmons, of spots and places—Memphis, Chicago, Jacksonville, Philadelphia and so on.” “Dat heavyset man wid his mouth full of gold teeths?” “Yeah. Where did you see ‘im at?” “Ah went down to de sto’ tuh git a box of lye and Ah seen ‘im standin’ on de corner talkin’ to some of de mens, and Ah come on back and went to scrubbin’ de floor, and he passed and tipped his hat whilst Ah was scourin’ de steps. Ah thought Ah never seen him befo’.” Joe smiled pleasantly. “Yeah, he’s up-to-date. He got de finest clothes Ah ever seen on a colored man’s back.” “Aw, he don’t look no better in his clothes than you do in yourn. He got a puzzlegut on ‘im and he so chuckleheaded he got a pone behind his neck.” Joe looked down at his own abdomen and said wistfully: “Wisht Ah had a build on me lak he got. He ain’t puzzlegutted, honey. He jes’ got a corperation. Dat make ‘m look lak a rich white man. All rich mens is got some belly on ‘em.” “Ah seen de pitchers of Henry Ford and he’s a spare-built man and Rockefeller look lak he ain’t got but one gut. But Ford and Rockefeller and dis Slemmons and all de rest kin be as many-gutted as dey please, Ah’s satisfied wid you jes’ lak you is, baby. God took pattern after a pine tree and built you noble. Youse a pritty man, and if Ah knowed any way to make you mo’ pritty still Ah’d take and do it.” Joe reached over gently and toyed with Missie May’s ear. “You jes’ say dat cause you love me, but Ah know Ah can’t hold no light to Otis D. Slemmons. Ah ain’t never been nowhere and Ah ain’t got nothin’ but you.” Missie May got on his lap and kissed him and he kissed back in kind. Then he went on. “All de womens is crazy ‘bout ‘im everywhere he go.” “How you know dat, Joe?” “He tole us so hisself.” “Dat don’t make it so. His mouf is cut crossways, ain’t it? Well, he kin lie jes’ lak anybody else.” “Good Lawd, Missie! You womens sho is hard to sense into things. He’s got a five-dollar gold piece for a stickpin and he got a ten-dollar gold piece on his watch chain and his mouf is jes’ crammed full of gold teeths. Sho wisht it wuz mine. And whut make it so cool, he got money ‘cumulated. And womens give it all to ‘im.”
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“Ah don’t see whut de womens see on ‘im. Ah wouldn’t give ‘im a wink if de sheriff wuz after ‘im.” “Well, he tole us how de white womens in Chicago give ‘im all dat gold money. So he don’t ‘low nobody to touch it at all. Not even put day finger on it. Dey told ‘im not to. You kin make ‘miration at it, but don’t tetch it.” “Whyn’t he stay up dere where dey so crazy ‘bout ‘im?” “Ah reckon dey done made ‘im vast-rich and he wants to travel some. He says dey wouldn’t leave ‘im hit a lick of work. He got mo’ lady people crazy ‘bout him than he kin shake a stick at.” “Joe, Ah hates to see you so dumb. Dat stray nigger jes’ tell y’all anything and y’all b’lieve it.” “Go ‘head on now, honey, and put on yo’ clothes. He talkin’ ‘bout his pritty womens—Ah want ‘im to see mine.” Missie May went off to dress and Joe spent the time trying to make his stomach punch out like Slemmons’ middle. He tried the rolling swagger of the stranger, but found that his tall bone-andmuscle stride fitted ill with it. He just had time to drop back into his seat before Missie May came in dressed to go. On the way home that night Joe was exultant. “Didn’t Ah say ole Otis was swell? Can’t he talk Chicago talk? Wuzn’t dat funny whut he said when great big fat ole Ida Armstrong come in? He asted me, ‘Who is dat broad wid de forte shake?’ Dat’s a new word. Us always thought forty was a set of figgers but he showed us where it means a whole heap of things. Sometimes he don’t say forty, he jes’ say thirty-eight and two and dat mean de same thing. Know whut he told me when Ah wuz payin’ for our ice cream? He say, ‘Ah have to hand it to you, Joe. Dat wife of yours is jes’ thirty-eight and two. Yessuh, she’s forte!’ Ain’t he killin’?” “He’ll do in case of a rush. But he sho is got uh heap uh gold on ‘im. Dat’s de first time Ah ever seed gold money. It lookted good on him sho nuff, but it’d look a whole heap better on you.” “Who, me? Missie May, youse crazy! Where would a po’ man lak me git gold money from?” Missie May was silent for a minute, then she said, “Us might find some goin’ long de road some time. Us could.” “Who would be losin’ gold money round heah? We ain’t even seen none dese white folks wearin’ no gold money on dey watch chain. You must be fig-
gerin’ Mister Packard or Mister Cadillac goin’ pass through heah.” “You don’t know whut been lost ‘round heah. Maybe somebody way back in memorial times lost they gold money and went on off and it ain’t never been found. And then if we wuz to find it, you could wear some ‘thout havin’ no gang of womens lak dat Slemmons say he got.” Joe laughed and hugged her. “Don’t be so wishful ‘bout me. Ah’m satisfied de way Ah is. So long as Ah be yo’ husband. Ah don’t keer ‘bout nothin’ else. Ah’d ruther all de other womens in de world to be dead than for you to have de toothache. Less we go to bed and git our night rest.” It was Saturday night once more before Joe could parade his wife in Slemmons’ ice cream parlor again. He worked the night shift and Saturday was his only night off. Every other evening around six o’clock he left home, and dying dawn saw him hustling home around the lake, where the challenging sun flung a flaming sword from east to west across the trembling water. That was the best part of life—going home to Missie May. Their whitewashed house, the mock battle on Saturday, the dinner and ice cream parlor afterwards, church on Sunday nights when Missie out-dressed any woman in town—all, everything, was right. One night around eleven the acid ran out at the G. and G. The foreman knocked off the crew and let the steam die down. As Joe rounded the lake on his way home, a lean moon rode the lake in a silver boat. If anybody had asked Joe about the moon on the lake, he would have said he hadn’t paid it any attention. But he saw it with his feelings. It made him yearn painfully for Missie. Creation obsessed him. He thought about children. They had been married more than a year now. They had money put away. They ought to be making little feet for shoes. A little boy child would be about right. He saw a dim light in the bedroom and decided to come in through the kitchen door. He could wash the fertilizer dust off himself before presenting himself to Missie May. It would be nice for her not to know that he was there until he slipped into his place in bed and hugged her back. She always liked that. He eased the kitchen door open slowly and silently, but when he went to set his dinner bucket on the table he bumped it into a pile of dishes, and
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something crashed to the floor. He heard his wife gasp in fright and hurried to reassure her. “Iss me, honey. Don’t git skeered.” There was a quick, large movement in the bedroom. A rustle, a thud, and a stealthy silence. The light went out. What? Robbers? Murderers? Some varmint attacking his helpless wife, perhaps. He struck a match, threw himself on guard and stepped over the door-sill into the bedroom. The great belt on the wheel of Time slipped and eternity stood still. By the match light he could see the man’s legs fighting with his breeches in his frantic desire to get them on. He had both chance and time to kill the intruder in his helpless condition—half in and half out of his pants—but he was too weak to take action. The shapeless enemies of humanity that live in the hours of Time had waylaid Joe. He was assaulted in his weakness. Like Samson awakening after his haircut. So he just opened his mouth and laughed. The match went out and he struck another and lit the lamp. A howling wind raced across his heart, but underneath its fury he heard his wife sobbing and Slemmons pleading for his life. Offering to buy it with all that he had. “Please, suh, don’t kill me. Sixty-two dollars at de sto’. Gold money.” Joe just stood. Slemmons looked at the window, but it was screened. Joe stood out like a roughbacked mountain between him and the door. Barring him from escape, from sunrise, from life. He considered a surprise attack upon the big clown that stood there laughing like a chessy cat. But before his fist could travel an inch, Joe’s own rushed out to crush him like a battering ram. Then Joe stood over him. “Git into yo’ damn rags, Slemmons, and dat quick.” Slemmons scrambled to his feet and into his vest and coat. As he grabbed his hat, Joe’s fury overrode his intentions and he grabbed at Slemmons with his left hand and struck at him with his right. The right landed. The left grazed the front of his vest. Slemmons was knocked a somersault into the kitchen and fled through the open door. Joe found himself alone with Missie May, with the golden watch charm clutched in his left fist. A short bit of broken chain dangled between his fingers. Missie May was sobbing. Wails of weeping without words. Joe stood, and after a while he found
out that he had something in his hand. And then he stood and felt without thinking and without seeing with his natural eyes. Missie May kept on crying and Joe kept on feeling so much, and not knowing what to do with all his feelings, he put Slemmons’ watch charm in his pants pocket and took a good laugh and went to bed. “Missie May, whut you cryin’ for?” “Cause Ah love you so hard and Ah know you don’t love me no mo’.” Joe sank his face into the pillow for a spell, then he said huskily, “You don’t know de feelings of dat yet, Missie May.” “Oh Joe, honey, he said he wuz gointer give me dat gold money and he jes’ kept on after me—” Joe was very still and silent for a long time. Then he said, “Well, don’t cry no mo’, Missie May. Ah got yo’ gold piece for you.” The hours went past on their rusty ankles. Joe still and quiet on one bed rail and Missie May wrung dry of sobs on the other. Finally the sun’s tide crept upon the shore of night and drowned all its hours. Missie May with her face stiff and streaked towards the window saw the dawn come into her yard. It was day. Nothing more. Joe wouldn’t be coming home as usual. No need to fling open the front door and sweep off the porch, making it nice for Joe. Never no more breakfast to cook; no more washing and starching of Joe’s jumper-jackets and pants. No more nothing. So why get up? With this strange man in her bed, she felt embarrassed to get up and dress. She decided to wait till he had dressed and gone. Then she would get up, dress quickly and be gone forever beyond reach of Joe’s looks and laughs. But he never moved. Red light turned to yellow, then white. From beyond the no-man’s land between them came a voice. A strange voice that yesterday had been Joe’s. “Missie May, ain’t you gonna fix me no breakfus’?” She sprang out of bed. “Yeah, Joe. Ah didn’t reckon you wuz hongry.” No need to die today. Joe needed her for a few more minutes anyhow. Soon there was a roaring fire in the cook stove. Water bucket full and two chickens killed. Joe loved fried chicken and rice. She didn’t deserve a thing and good Joe was letting her cook him some breakfast. She rushed hot biscuits to the table as Joe took
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his seat. He ate with his eyes in his plate. No laughter, no banter. “Missie May, you ain’t eatin’ yo’ breakfus’.” “Ah don’t choose none, Ah thank yuh.” His coffee cup was empty. She sprang to refill it. When she turned from the stove and bent to set the cup beside Joe’s plate, she saw the yellow coin on the table between them. She slumped into her seat and wept into her arms. Presently Joe said calmly, “Missie May, you cry too much. Don’t look back lak Lot’s wife and turn to salt.” The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every morning. Water ran downhill and birds nested. Missie knew why she didn’t leave Joe. She couldn’t. She loved him too much, but she could not understand why Joe didn’t leave her. He was polite, even kind at times, but aloof. There were no more Saturday romps. No ringing silver dollars to stack beside her plate. No pockets to rifle. In fact, the yellow coin in his trousers was like a monster hiding in the cave of his pockets to destroy her. She often wondered if he still had it, but nothing could have induced her to ask nor yet to explore his pockets to see for herself. Its shadow was in the house whether or no. One night Joe came home around midnight and complained of pains in the back. He asked Missie to rub him down with liniment. It had been three months since Missie had touched his body and it all seemed strange. But she rubbed him. Grateful for the chance. Before morning youth triumphed and Missie exulted. But the next day, as she joyfully made up their bed, beneath her pillow she found the piece of money with the bit of chain attached. Alone to herself, she looked at the thing with loathing, but look she must. She took it into her hands with trembling and saw first thing that it was no gold piece. It was a gilded half dollar. Then she knew why Slemmons had forbidden anyone to touch his gold. He trusted village eyes at a distance not to recognize his stickpin as a gilded quarter, and his watch charm as a four-bit piece. She was glad at first that Joe had left it there. Perhaps he was through with her punishment. They
were man and wife again. Then another thought came clawing at her. He had come home to buy from her as if she were any woman in the long house. Fifty cents for her love. As if to say that he could pay as well as Slemmons. She slid the coin into his Sunday pants pocket and dressed herself and left his house. Halfway between her house and the quarters she met her husband’s mother, and after a short talk she turned and went back home. Never would she admit defeat to that woman who prayed for it nightly. If she had not the substance of marriage she had the outside show. Joe must leave her. She let him see she didn’t want his old gold four-bits, too. She saw no more of the coin for some time though she knew that Joe could not help finding it in his pocket. But his health kept poor, and he came home at least every ten days to be rubbed. The sun swept around the horizon, trailing its robes of weeks and days. One morning as Joe came in from work, he found Missie May chopping wood. Without a word he took the ax and chopped a huge pile before he stopped. “You ain’t got no business choppin’ wood, and you know it.” “How come? Ah been choppin’ it for de last longest.” “Ah ain’t blind. You makin’ feet for shoes.” “Won’t you be glad to have a lil baby chile, Joe?” “You know dat ‘thout astin’ me.” “Iss gointer be a boy chile and de very spit of you.” “You reckon, Missie May?” “Who else could it look lak?” Joe said nothing, but he thrust his hand deep into his pocket and fingered something there. It was almost six months later Missie May took to bed and Joe went and got his mother to come wait on the house. Missie May was delivered of a fine boy. Her travail was over when Joe come in from work one morning. His mother and the old woman were drinking great bowls of coffee around the fire in the kitchen. The minute Joe came into the room his mother called him aside. “How did Missie May make out?” he asked quickly. “Who, dat gal? She strong as a ox. She gointer have plenty mo’. We done fixed her wid de sugar and lard to sweeten her for de nex’ one.”
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Joe stood silent awhile. “You ain’t ask ‘bout de baby, Joe. You oughter be mighty proud cause he sho is de spittin’ image of yuh, son. Dat’s yourn all right, if you never git another one, dat un is yourn. And you know Ah’m mighty proud too, son, cause Ah never thought well of you marryin’ Missie May cause her ma used tuh fan her foot round right smart and Ah been mighty skeered dat Missie May wuz gointer git misput on her road.” Joe said nothing. He fooled around the house till late in the day, then, just before he went to work, he went and stood at the foot of the bed and asked his wife how she felt. He did this every day during the week. On Saturday he went to Orlando to make his market. It had been a long time since he had done that. Meat and lard, meal and flour, soap and starch. Cans of corn and tomatoes. All the staples. He fooled around town for a while and bought bananas and apples. Way after while he went around to the candy store. “Hello, Joe,” the clerk greeted him. “Ain’t seen you in a long time.” “Nope, Ah ain’t been heah. Been round in spots and places.” “Want some of them molasses kisses you always buy?” “Yessuh.” He threw the gilded half dollar on the counter. “Will dat spend?” “What is it, Joe? Well, I’ll be doggone! A gold-plated four-bit piece. Where’d you git it, Joe?”
“Offen a stray nigger dat come through Eatonville. He had it on his watch chain for a charm— goin’ round making out iss gold money. Ha ha! He had a quarter on his tiepin and it wuz all golded up too. Tryin’ to fool people. Makin’ out he so rich and everything. Ha! Ha! Tryin’ to tole off folkses wives from home.” “How did you git it, Joe? Did he fool you, too?” “Who, me? Naw suh! He ain’t fooled me none. Know whut Ah done? He come round me wid his smart talk. Ah hauled off and knocked ‘im down and took his old four-bits away from ‘im. Gointer buy my wife some good ole lasses kisses wid it. Gimme fifty cents worth of dem candy kisses.” “Fifty cents buys a mighty lot of candy kisses, Joe. Why don’t you split it up and take some chocolate bars, too? They eat good, too.” “Yessuh, dey do, but Ah wants all dat in kisses. Ah got a lil boy chile home now. Tain’t a week old yet, but he kin suck a sugar tit and maybe eat one them kisses hisself.” Joe got his candy and left the store. The clerk turned to the next customer. “Wisht I could be like these darkies. Laughin’ all the time. Nothin’ worries ‘em.” Back in Eatonville, Joe reached his own front door. There was the ring of singing metal on wood. Fifteen times. Missie May couldn’t run to the door, but she crept there as quickly as she could. “Joe Banks, Ah hear you chunkin’ money in mah do’way. You wait till Ah got mah strength back and Ah’m gointer fix you for dat.” 1933
SOURCE: Hurston, Zora Neale. “The Gilded Six-Bits.” The Complete Stories, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2008, pp. 86-98.
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HARLEM
by Langston Hughes What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore— And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over— like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? 1951
SOURCE: Hughes, Langston. “Harlem.” The Norton Introduction to Literature, edited by Carl E. Bain et al., 6th ed., W.W. Norton, 1995, p. 1025.
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HARRISON BERGERON
T
The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General. Some things about living still weren’t quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron’s fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away. It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn’t think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn’t think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains. George and Hazel were watching television. There were tears on Hazel’s cheeks, but she’d forgotten for the moment what they were about. On the television screen were ballerinas. A buzzer sounded in George’s head. His thoughts fled in panic, like bandits from a burglar alarm. “That was a real pretty dance, that dance they just did,” said Hazel. “Huh” said George. “That dance—it was nice,” said Hazel. “Yup,” said George. He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good— no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sash-weights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug
by Kurt Vonnegut
in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts. George winced. So did two out of the eight ballerinas. Hazel saw him wince. Having no mental handicap herself, she had to ask George what the latest sound had been. “Sounded like somebody hitting a milk bottle with a ball peen hammer,” said George. “I’d think it would be real interesting, hearing all the different sounds,” said Hazel a little envious. “All the things they think up.” “Um,” said George. “Only, if I was Handicapper General, you know what I would do?” said Hazel. Hazel, as a matter of fact, bore a strong resemblance to the Handicapper General, a woman named Diana Moon Glampers. “If I was Diana Moon Glampers,” said Hazel, “I’d have chimes on Sunday—just chimes. Kind of in honor of religion.” “I could think, if it was just chimes,” said George. “Well—maybe make ‘em real loud,” said Hazel. “I think I’d make a good Handicapper General.” “Good as anybody else,” said George. “Who knows better then I do what normal is?” said Hazel. “Right,” said George. He began to think glimmeringly about his abnormal son who was now in jail, about Harrison, but a twenty-one-gun salute in his head stopped that. “Boy!” said Hazel, “that was a doozy, wasn’t it?” It was such a doozy that George was white and trembling, and tears stood on the rims of his red eyes. Two of of the eight ballerinas had collapsed to the studio floor, were holding their temples. “All of a sudden you look so tired,” said Hazel. “Why don’t you stretch out on the sofa, so’s you can rest your handicap bag on the pillows, honeybunch.” She was referring to the forty-seven pounds of birdshot in a canvas bag, which was padlocked around George’s neck. “Go on and rest the bag for
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a little while,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re not equal to me for a while.” George weighed the bag with his hands. “I don’t mind it,” he said. “I don’t notice it any more. It’s just a part of me.” “You been so tired lately—kind of wore out,” said Hazel. “If there was just some way we could make a little hole in the bottom of the bag, and just take out a few of them lead balls. Just a few.” “Two years in prison and two thousand dollars fine for every ball I took out,” said George. “I don’t call that a bargain.” “If you could just take a few out when you came home from work,” said Hazel. “I mean—you don’t compete with anybody around here. You just set around.” “If I tried to get away with it,” said George, “then other people’d get away with it—and pretty soon we’d be right back to the dark ages again, with everybody competing against everybody else. You wouldn’t like that, would you?” “I’d hate it,” said Hazel. “There you are,” said George. The minute people start cheating on laws, what do you think happens to society?” If Hazel hadn’t been able to come up with an answer to this question, George couldn’t have supplied one. A siren was going off in his head. “Reckon it’d fall all apart,” said Hazel. “What would?” said George blankly. “Society,” said Hazel uncertainly. “Wasn’t that what you just said? “Who knows?” said George. The television program was suddenly interrupted for a news bulletin. It wasn’t clear at first as to what the bulletin was about, since the announcer, like all announcers, had a serious speech impediment. For about half a minute, and in a state of high excitement, the announcer tried to say, “Ladies and Gentlemen—” He finally gave up, handed the bulletin to a ballerina to read. “That’s all right—” Hazel said of the announcer, “he tried. That’s the big thing. He tried to do the best he could with what God gave him. He should get a nice raise for trying so hard.” “Ladies and Gentlemen—” said the ballerina, reading the bulletin. She must have been extraordinarily beautiful, because the mask she wore was hideous. And it was easy to see that she was the
strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred pound men. And she had to apologize at once for her voice, which was a very unfair voice for a woman to use. Her voice was a warm, luminous, timeless melody. “Excuse me—” she said, and she began again, making her voice absolutely uncompetitive. “Harrison Bergeron, age fourteen,” she said in a grackle squawk, “has just escaped from jail, where he was held on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government. He is a genius and an athlete, is under-handicapped, and should be regarded as extremely dangerous.” A police photograph of Harrison Bergeron was flashed on the screen—upside down, then sideways, upside down again, then right side up. The picture showed the full length of Harrison against a background calibrated in feet and inches. He was exactly seven feet tall. The rest of Harrison’s appearance was Halloween and hardware. Nobody had ever born heavier handicaps. He had outgrown hindrances faster than the H-G men could think them up. Instead of a little ear radio for a mental handicap, he wore a tremendous pair of earphones, and spectacles with thick wavy lenses. The spectacles were intended to make him not only half blind, but to give him whanging headaches besides. Scrap metal was hung all over him. Ordinarily, there was a certain symmetry, a military neatness to the handicaps issued to strong people, but Harrison looked like a walking junkyard. In the race of life, Harrison carried three hundred pounds. And to offset his good looks, the H-G men required that he wear at all times a red rubber ball for a nose, keep his eyebrows shaved off, and cover his even white teeth with black caps at snaggle-tooth random. “If you see this boy,” said the ballerina, “do not—I repeat, do not—try to reason with him.” There was the shriek of a door being torn from its hinges. Screams and barking cries of consternation came from the television set. The photograph of Harrison Bergeron on the screen jumped again and again, as though dancing to the tune of an earthquake. George Bergeron correctly identified the earthquake, and well he might have—for many was the time his own home had danced to the same crashing
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tune. “My God—” said George, “that must be Harrison!” The realization was blasted from his mind instantly by the sound of an automobile collision in his head. When George could open his eyes again, the photograph of Harrison was gone. A living, breathing Harrison filled the screen. Clanking, clownish, and huge, Harrison stood— in the center of the studio. The knob of the uprooted studio door was still in his hand. Ballerinas, technicians, musicians, and announcers cowered on their knees before him, expecting to die. “I am the Emperor!” cried Harrison. “Do you hear? I am the Emperor! Everybody must do what I say at once!” He stamped his foot and the studio shook. “Even as I stand here—” he bellowed, “crippled, hobbled, sickened—I am a greater ruler than any man who ever lived! Now watch me become what I can become!” Harrison tore the straps of his handicap harness like wet tissue paper, tore straps guaranteed to support five thousand pounds. Harrison’s scrap-iron handicaps crashed to the floor. Harrison thrust his thumbs under the bar of the padlock that secured his head harness. The bar snapped like celery. Harrison smashed his headphones and spectacles against the wall. He flung away his rubber-ball nose, revealed a man that would have awed Thor, the god of thunder. “I shall now select my Empress!” he said, looking down on the cowering people. “Let the first woman who dares rise to her feet claim her mate and her throne!” A moment passed, and then a ballerina arose, swaying like a willow. Harrison plucked the mental handicap from her ear, snapped off her physical handicaps with marvelous delicacy. Last of all he removed her mask. She was blindingly beautiful. “Now—” said Harrison, taking her hand, “shall we show the people the meaning of the word dance? Music!” he commanded. The musicians scrambled back into their chairs, and Harrison stripped them of their handicaps, too. “Play your best,” he told them, “and I’ll make you
barons and dukes and earls.” The music began. It was normal at first—cheap, silly, false. But Harrison snatched two musicians from their chairs, waved them like batons as he sang the music as he wanted it played. He slammed them back into their chairs. The music began again and was much improved. Harrison and his Empress merely listened to the music for a while—listened gravely, as though synchronizing their heartbeats with it. They shifted their weights to their toes. Harrison placed his big hands on the girls tiny waist, letting her sense the weightlessness that would soon be hers. And then, in an explosion of joy and grace, into the air they sprang! Not only were the laws of the land abandoned, but the law of gravity and the laws of motion as well. They reeled, whirled, swiveled, flounced, capered, gamboled, and spun. They leaped like deer on the moon. The studio ceiling was thirty feet high, but each leap brought the dancers nearer to it. It became their obvious intention to kiss the ceiling. They kissed it. And then, neutralizing gravity with love and pure will, they remained suspended in air inches below the ceiling, and they kissed each other for a long, long time. It was then that Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, came into the studio with a double-barreled ten-gauge shotgun. She fired twice, and the Emperor and the Empress were dead before they hit the floor. Diana Moon Glampers loaded the gun again. She aimed it at the musicians and told them they had ten seconds to get their handicaps back on. It was then that the Bergerons’ television tube burned out. Hazel turned to comment about the blackout to George. But George had gone out into the kitchen for a can of beer. George came back in with the beer, paused while a handicap signal shook him up. And then he sat down again. “You been crying” he said to Hazel. “Yup,” she said. “What about?” he said.
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“I forget,” she said. “Something real sad on television.” “What was it?” he said. “It’s all kind of mixed up in my mind,” said Hazel. “Forget sad things,” said George. “I always do,” said Hazel.
“That’s my girl,” said George. He winced. There was the sound of a rivetting gun in his head. “Gee—I could tell that one was a doozy,” said Hazel. “You can say that again,” said George. “Gee—” said Hazel, “I could tell that one was a doozy.” 1961
SOURCE: Vonnegut, Kurt. “Harrison Bergeron.” Welcome to the Monkey House, the special edition, Dial Press, 2014, pp. 7-14.
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THE FIRST AMENDMENT
I
by Kurt Vonnegut
I am a member of what I believe to be the last recognizable generation of full-time, life-time American novelists. We appear to be standing more or less in a row. It was the Great Depression which made us similarly edgy and watchful. It was World War II which lined us up so nicely, whether we were men or women, whether we were ever in uniform or not. It was an era of romantic anarchy in publishing which gave us money and mentors, willy-nilly, when we were young—while we learned our craft. Words printed on pages were still the principal form of long-distance communication and stored information in America when we were young. No more. Nor are there many publishers and editors and agents left who are eager to find some way to get money and other forms of encouragement to young writers who write as clumsily as members of my literary generation did when we started out. The wild and wonderful and expensive guess was made back then that we might acquire some wisdom and learn how to write halfway decently by and by. Writers were needed that much back then. It was an amusing and instructive time for writers—for hundreds of them. Television wrecked the short-story branch of the industry, and now accountants and business school graduates dominate book publishing. They feel that money spent on someone’s first novel is good money down a rat hole. They are right. It almost always is. So, as I say, I think I belong to America’s last generation of novelists. Novelists will come one by one from now on, not in seeming families, and will perhaps write only one or two novels, and let it go at that. Many will have inherited or married money. The most influential of my bunch, in my opinion, is still J. D. Salinger, although he has been silent for years. The most promising was perhaps Edward Lewis Wallant, who died so young. And it is my thinking about the death of James Jones two years ago, who was not all that young, who was almost exactly my age, which accounts for the autumnal mood of this book. There have been other
reminders of my own mortality, to be sure, but the death of Jones is central—perhaps because I see his widow Gloria so often and because he, too, was a self-educated midwesterner, and because he, too, in a major adventure for all of us, which was the Second World War, had been an enlisted man. And let it here be noted that the best-known members of my literary generation, if they wrote about war, almost unanimously despised officers and made heroes of sketchily educated,aggressively unaristocratic enlisted men. • • • James Jones told me one time that his publisher and Ernest Hemingway’s, Charles Scribner’s Sons, had once hoped to get Jones and Hemingway together—so that they could enjoy each other’s company as old warriors. Jones declined, by his own account, because he did not regard Hemingway as a fellow soldier. He said Hemingway in wartime was free to come and go from the fighting as he pleased, and to take time off for a fine meal or woman or whatever. Real soldiers, according to Jones, damn well had to stay where they were told, or go where they were told, and eat swill, and take the worst the enemy had to throw at them day after day, week after week. • • • It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment. Our American heirs may find it incredible, as most foreigners do right now, that a nation would want to enforce as a law something which sounds more like a dream, which reads as follows: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of griev-
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ances.” How could a nation with such a law raise its children in an atmosphere of decency? It couldn’t— it can’t. So the law will surely be repealed soon for the sake of children. And even now my books, along with books by Bernard Malamud and James Dickey and Joseph Heller and many other first-rate patriots, are regularly thrown out of public-school libraries by school board members, who commonly say that they have not actually read the books, but that they have it on good authority that the books are bad for children. • • • My novel Slaughterhouse-Five was actually burned in a furnace by a school janitor in Drake, North Dakota, on instructions from the school committee there, and the school board made public statements about the unwholesomeness of the book. Even by the standards of Queen Victoria, the only offensive line in the entire novel is this: “Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker.” This is spoken by an American antitank gunner to an unarmed American chaplain’s assistant during the Battle of the Bulge in Europe in December 1944, the largest single defeat of American arms (the Confederacy excluded) in history. The chaplain’s assistant had attracted enemy fire. So on November 16, 1973, I wrote as follows to Charles McCarthy of Drake, North Dakota: Dear Mr. McCarthy: I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school. Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I am. I want you to know, too, that my publisher and I have done absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting news from Drake. We are not clapping each other on the back, crowing about all the books we will sell because of the news. We have declined to go on television, have written no fiery letters to editorial pages, have granted no lengthy interviews.
We are angered and sickened and saddened. And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake, who have done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of their children and then in the eyes of the world. Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace? I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of them are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a Purple Heart. I have earned whatever I own by hard work. I have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted with young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools than those of any other living American fiction writer. If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us. After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, “Yes, yes—but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community.” This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad
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citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that. I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your fellow Americans can’t stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own. If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the education of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books—books you hadn’t even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive. Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real. • • • That was seven years ago. There has so far been no reply. At this very moment, as I write in New York City, Slaughterhouse-Five has been banned from school libraries not fifty miles from here. A legal battle begun several years ago rages on. The school board in question has found lawyers eager to attack the First Amendment tooth and nail. There is never a shortage anywhere of lawyers eager to attack the First Amendment, as though it were nothing more than a clause in a lease from a crooked slumlord. At the start of that particular litigation, on March 24th of 1976, I wrote a comment for the OpEd page of the Long Island edition of The New York Times. It went like this: A school board has denounced some books again—out in Levittown this time. One of the books was mine. I hear about un-American nonsense like this twice a year or so. One time out in North Dakota, the books were actually burned in a furnace. I had a laugh. It was such an ignorant, dumb, super-
stitious thing to do. It was so cowardly, too—to make a great show of attacking artifacts. It was like St. George attacking bedspreads and cuckoo clocks. Yes, and St. Georges like that seem to get elected or appointed to school committees all the time. They are actually proud of their illiteracy. They imagine that they are somehow celebrating the bicentennial when they boast, as some did in Levittown, that they hadn’t actually read the books they banned. Such lunks are often the backbone of volunteer fire departments and the United States Infantry and cake sales and so on, and they have been thanked often enough for that. But they have no business supervising the educations of children in a free society. They are just too bloody stupid. Here is how I propose to end book-banning in this country once and for all: Every candidate for school committee should be hooked up to a lie-detector and asked this question: “Have you read a book from start to finish since high school? Or did you even read a book from start to finish in high school?” If the truthful answer is “no,” then the candidate should be told politely that he cannot get on the school committee and blow off his big bazoo about how books make children crazy. Whenever ideas are squashed in this country, literate lovers of the American experiment write careful and intricate explanations of why all ideas must be allowed to live. It is time for them to realize that they are attempting to explain America at its bravest and most optimistic to orangutans. From now on, I intend to limit my discourse with dim-witted Savonarolas to this advice: “Have somebody read the First Amendment to the United States Constitution out loud to you, you God damned fool!” Well—the American Civil Liberties Union or somebody like that will come to the scene of trouble, as they always do. They will explain what is in the Constitution, and to whom it applies. They will win. And there will be millions who are bewildered and heartbroken by the legal victory, who think some things should never be said—especially about religion. They are in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hi ho.
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• • • Why is it so ordinary for American citizens to show such scorn for the First Amendment? I discussed that some at a fund raiser for the American Civil Liberties Union at Sands Point, New York, out on Long Island, on September 16, 1979. The house where I spoke, incidentally, was said to be the model for Gatsby’s house in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. I saw no reason to doubt the claim. I said this in such a setting: “I will not speak directly to the ejection of my book Slaughterhouse-Five from the school libraries of Island Trees. I have a vested interest. I wrote the book, after all, so why wouldn’t I argue that it is less repulsive than the school board says? “I will speak of Thomas Aquinas instead. I will tell you my dim memories of what he said about the hierarchy of laws on this planet, which was flat at the time. The highest law, he said, was divine law, God’s law. Beneath that was natural law, which I suppose would include thunderstorms, and our right to shield our children from poisonous ideas, and so on. “And the lowest law was human law. “Let me clarify this scheme by comparing its parts to playing cards. Enemies of the Bill of Rights do the same sort of thing all the time, so why shouldn’t we? Divine law, then, is an ace. Natural law is a king. The Bill of Rights is a lousy queen. “The Thomist hierarchy of laws is so far from being ridiculous that I have never met anybody who did not believe in it right down to the marrow of his or her bones. Everybody knows that there are laws with more grandeur than those which are printed in our statute books. The big trouble is that there is so little agreement as to how those grander laws are worded. Theologians can give us hints of the wording, but it takes a dictator to set them down just right—to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. A man who had been a mere corporal in the army did that for Germany and then for all of Europe, you may remember, not long ago. There was nothing he did not know about divine and natural law. He had fistfuls of aces and kings to play. “Meanwhile, over on this side of the Atlantic, we were not playing with a full deck, as they say. Because of our Constitution, the highest card anybody had to play was a lousy queen, contemptible human
law. That remains true today. I myself celebrate that incompleteness, since it has obviously been so good for us. I support the American Civil Liberties Union because it goes to court to insist that our government officials be guided by nothing grander than human law. Every time the circulation of this idea or that one is discouraged by an official in this country, that official is scorning the Constitution, and urging all of us to participate in far grander systems, again: divine or natural law. “Cannot we, as libertarians, hunger for at least a little natural law? Can’t we learn from nature at least, without being burdened by another person’s idea of God? “Certainly. Granola never harmed anybody, nor the birds and bees—not to mention milk. God is unknowable, but nature is explaining herself all the time. What has she told us so far? That blacks are obviously inferior to whites, for one thing, and intended for menial work on white man’s terms. This clear lesson from nature, we should remind ourselves from time to time, allowed Thomas Jefferson to own slaves. Imagine that. “What troubles me most about my lovely country is that its children are seldom taught that American freedom will vanish, if, when they grow up, and in the exercise of their duties as citizens, they insist that our courts and policemen and prisons be guided by divine or natural law. “Most teachers and parents and guardians do not teach this vital lesson because they themselves never learned it, or because they dare not. Why dare they not? People can get into a lot of trouble in this country, and often have to be defended by the American Civil Liberties Union, for laying the groundwork for the lesson, which is this: That no one really understands nature or God. It is my willingness to lay this groundwork, and not sex or violence, which has got my poor book in such trouble in Island Trees—and in Drake, North Dakota, where the book was burned, and in many other communities too numerous to mention. “I have not said that our government is anti-nature and anti-God. I have said that it is non-nature and non-God, for very good reasons that could curl your hair. “Well—all good things must come to an end, they say. So American freedom will come to an end, too, sooner or later. How will it end? As all freedoms end: by the surrender of our destinies to the highest
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laws. “To return to my foolish analogy of playing cards: kings and aces will be played. Nobody else will have anything higher than a queen. “There will be a struggle between those holding kings and aces. The struggle will not end, not that the rest of us will care much by then, until somebody plays the ace of spades. Nothing beats the ace of spades. “I thank you for your attention.” • • • I spoke at Gatsby’s house in the afternoon. When I got back to my own house in New York City, I wrote a letter to a friend in the Soviet Union, Felix Kuznetzov, a distinguished critic and teacher, and an officer in the Union of Writers of the USSR in Moscow. The date on the letter is the same as the date of the Sands Point oration. There was a time when I might have been halfbombed on booze when writing such a letter so late at night, a time when I might have reeked of mustard gas and roses as I punched the keys. But I don’t drink anymore. Never in my life have I written anything for publication while sozzled. But I certainly used to write a lot of letters that way. No more. Be that as it may, I was sober then and am sober now, and Felix Kuznetzov and I had become friends during the previous summer—at an ecumenical meeting in New York City, sponsored by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, of American and Soviet literary persons, about ten to a side. The American delegation was headed by Norman Cousins, and included myself and Edward Albee and Arthur Miller and William Styron and John Updike. All of us had been published in the Soviet Union. I am almost entirely in print over there—with the exception of Mother Night and Jailbird. Few, if any, of the Soviet delegates had had anything published here, and so their work was unknown to us. We Americans were told by the Soviets that we should be embarrassed that their country published so much of our work, and that we published so little of theirs. Our reply was that we would work to get more of them published over here, but that we felt, too, that the USSR could easily have put together a delegation whose works were admired and published here—and that we could easily have put to-
gether a delegation so unfamiliar to them that its members could have been sewer commissioners from Fresno, as far as anybody in the Soviet Union knew. Felix Kuznetzov and I got along very well, at any rate. I had him over to my house, and we sat in my garden out back and talked away the better part of an afternoon. But then, after everybody went home, there was some trouble in the Soviet Union about the publication of an outlaw magazine called Metropole. Most of Metropole’s writers and editors were young, impatient with the strictures placed on their writings by old poops. Nothing in Metropole, incidentally, was nearly as offensive as calling a chaplain’s assistant a “dumb motherfucker.” But the Metropole people were denounced, and the magazine was suppressed, and ways were discussed for making life harder for anyone associated with it. So Albee and Styron and Updike and I sent a cable to the Writers’ Union, saying that we thought it was wrong to penalize writers for what they wrote, no matter what they wrote. Felix Kuznetzov made an official reply on behalf of the union, giving the sense of a large meeting in which distinguished writer after distinguished writer testified that those who wrote for Metropole weren’t really writers, that they were pornographers and other sorts of disturbers of the peace, and so on. He asked that his reply be published in The New York Times, and it was published there. Why not? And I privately wrote to Kuznetzov as follows: Dear Professor Kuznetzov—dear Felix— I thank you for your prompt and frank and thoughtful letter of August 20, and for the supplementary materials which accompanied it. I apologize for not replying in your own beautiful language, and I wish that we both might have employed from the first a more conversational tone in our discussion of the Metropole affair. I will try to recapture the amiable, brotherly mood of our long talk in my garden here about a year ago. You speak of us in your letter as “American authors.” We do not feel especially American in this instance, since we spoke only for ourselves—without consulting with any American institution whatsoever. We are simply “authors” in this case, expressing loyalty to the great and vulnerable family of writers throughout the world. You and all other members
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of the Union of Writers surely have the same family feelings. Those of us who sent the cable are so far from being organized that I have no idea what sorts of replies the others may be making to you. As you must know, your response to our cable was printed recently in The New York Times, and perhaps elsewhere. The controversy has attracted little attention. It is a matter of interest, seemingly, only to other writers. Nobody cares much about writers but writers. And, if it weren’t for a few of us like the signers of the cable, I wonder if there would be anybody to care about writers—no matter how much trouble they were in. Should we, too, stop caring? Well—I understand that our cultures are so different that we can never agree about freedom of expression. It is natural that we should disagree, and perhaps even commendable. What you may not know about our own culture is that writers such as those who signed the cable are routinely attacked by fellow citizens as being pornographers or corrupters of children and celebrators of violence and persons of no talent and so on. In my own case, such charges are brought against my works in court several times a year, usually by parents who, for religious or political reasons, do not want their children to read what I have to say. The parents, incidentally, often find their charges supported by the lowest courts. The charges so far have been invariably overthrown in higher courts, those closer to the soul of the Constitution of the United States. Please convey the contents of this letter to my brothers and sisters in the Writers’ Union, as we conveyed your letter to The New York Times. This letter is specifically for you, to do with as you please. I am not sending carbon copies to anyone. It has not even been read by my wife. That homely detail, if brought to the attention of the Writers’ Union, might help its members to
understand what I do not think is at all well understood now: That we are not nationalists, taking part in some cold-war enterprise. We simply care deeply about how things are going for writers here, there, and everywhere. Even when they are declared non-writers, as we have been, we continue to care. • • • Kuznetzov gave me a prompt and likewise private answer. It was gracious and humane. I could assume that we were still friends. He said nothing against his union or his government. Neither did he say anything to discourage me from feeling that writers everywhere, good and bad, were all first cousins—first cousins, at least. And all the argle-bargling that goes on between educated persons in the United States and the Soviet Union is so touching and comical, really, as long as it does not lead to war. It draws its energy, in my opinion, from a desperate wish on both sides that each other’s Utopias should work much better than they do. We want to tinker with theirs, to make it work much better than it does—so that people there, for example, can say whatever they please without fear of punishment. They want to tinker with ours, so that everybody here who wants a job can have one, and so that we don’t have to tolerate the sales of fist-fucking films and snuff films and so on. Neither Utopia now works much better than the Page typesetting machine, in which Mark Twain invested and lost a fortune. That beautiful contraption actually set type just once, when only Twain and the inventor were watching. Twain called all the other investors to see this miracle, but, by the time they got there, the inventor had taken the machine all apart again. It never ran again. Peace. 1981
SOURCE: Vonnegut, Kurt. “The First Amendment.” Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage, Dial Press, 2011, pp. 1-15.
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THE BILL OF RIGHTS
of the United States of America
AMENDMENT I Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
AMENDMENT II A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
AMENDMENT III No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
AMENDMENT IV The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
AMENDMENT V No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall
be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
AMENDMENT VI In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.
AMENDMENT VII In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
AMENDMENT VIII Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
AMENDMENT IX The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
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AMENDMENT X The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. 1791
SOURCE: The Bill of Rights of the United States of America. The Bill of Rights Institute Online, 9 Aug. 2017, http://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/bill-of-rights/.
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FOOTNOTE TO HOWL
by Allen Ginsberg
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy! Everything is holy! everybody’s holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman’s an angel! The bum’s as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy! The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy! Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cassady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels! Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas! Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace peyote pipes & drums! Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets! Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middleclass! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebellion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles! Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria & Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow Holy Istanbul! Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch! Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucinations holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss! Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity! Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul! 1955
SOURCE: Ginsberg, Allen. “Footnote to Howl.” Howl and Other Poems, City Lights Books, 1959, pp. 27-28.
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AUTHOR’S NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION OF FOR THE TIME BEING
T
by Annie Dillard
This is a nonfiction first-person narrative, but it is not intimate, and its narratives keep breaking. Its form is unusual, its scenes are remote, its focus wide, and its tone austere. Its pleasures are almost purely mental. Several subjects recur and resume in each of seven chapters. They are: scenes from a paleontologist’s explorations in the deserts of China, the thinking of the Hasidic Jews of Eastern Europe, a natural history of sand, individual clouds and their moments in time, human birth defects, information about our generation, narrative bits from modern Israel and China, and quizzical encounters with strangers. A trip to Israel and visits to an obstetrical ward
comprise its chief first-person accounts. Another sustained narrative is the paleontologist’s story, and another recurrent setting is China. Teilhard de Chardin and the Baal Shem Tov dominate the thinking about an individual’s place in the buried generations of humans, and in eternity. By the third of fourth chapter the disparate scenes, true stories, facts, and ideas will be growing familiar. Together they make up a complex picture of our world. Does God cause natural calamity? What might be the relationship of the Absolute to a lost schoolgirl in a plaid skirt? Given things as they are, how shall one individual live?
SOURCE: Dillard, Annie. For the Time Being. Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.
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1999
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
I
I hate introducing myself. I often teach at workshops across the country and have to supply them with a short bio for the program, so I am (oddly) more comfortable writing about myself in the third person. I know it will come off as pretentious, but I assure you I am the most self-deprecating and selfaware person you will ever meet. I have four rules I live by: 1. Don’t take yourself too seriously. 2. Never get personally offended. 3. Regret nothing. 4. Invest in quality sunglasses. Here goes with the introduction: A graduate of the University of Texas and Arkansas State University, Allen Loibner-Waitkus has taught at the college level for close to twenty years. Because of his love of learning and his ADHD, he has an educational background in (and has taught) modern American literature; composition and rhetoric; African American literature, philosophy, and studies; logic; photography; graphic design; and journalism. He has won numerous teaching awards, including the Journalism Education
Association’s Friend of Scholastic Journalism Award, the Arkansas Scholastic Press Association’s Walter J. Lemke Award for Exemplary Service to Scholastic Journalism, KARK-TV’s My Favorite Teacher, Pulaski County’s Good Apple Award, Pulaski Technical College’s Faculty Star Award, and Disney’s Creativity in Teaching Award. Loibner-Waitkus teaches at the University of Arkansas–Pulaski Technical College in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and serves as executive director of the Arkansas Scholastic Press Association. He is happily married and the proud father of two pugs: Evie and Castro. A certified personal trainer, health coach, and group-fitness instructor by the American Council on Exercise, he run’s Allen’s Gym Bunnies, which is secretly just a tax write off (Shhhhhh!). He is also a certified volleyball referee, line judge and scorer by the United States Volleyball Association, National Federation of State High School Associations, National Association of Sporting Officials, Professional Association of Volleyball Officials, National Collegiate Athletic Association, and Arkansas Officials Association, which sates his unhealthy need to blow a whistle and memorize complicated hand signals. -ALW
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