Jasovic opened it and read it quickly.
I, Rick Johnson, hereby resign from the doctoral program in anthropology and from the Yale Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. I am grateful for your having admitted me and have greatly enjoyed and benefitted from the program. However, I have concluded that I must leave because my current plans are not consistent with the requirements of the program.
Thank you again for your tutelage.
Jasovic’s brow furrowed as he completed reading it.
“It’s his letter of resignation from the program,” he said, his lips pursing.
Jones and Lasington remained silent.
“You don’t have an obligation to anyone in this room to continue in the program,” Jasovic said sternly, “but you do have an obligation to the person who applied for admission to Yale and was denied because we offered that spot to you.”
“Yes, but I also have an obligation to the group I studied. I’m sorry that we have come to this place.”
“Me, too,” said Jasovic.
Rick shook hands with each of them before he left. Lasington wished him well with the novel and his future endeavors. Rick appreciated his kindness.
Well, at least the Committee meeting is over. Take a good look at the university, damn it, because you’re out of here. I love this place, but they didn’t buy my suggestion of the environmental study at all so that’s that. Toward the end, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned the novel because it’s so far beyond the bounds of what anthropologists write that it was sure to set them off, which it did. Doesn’t matter though. I was sunk by that point anyway. Presenting my letter of resignation was the toughest thing I’ve ever done, even tougher than doing the fieldwork.
I had the chance of a lifetime and now that’s over. No referring to myself as a Ph.D. and no teaching at a decent university. What Jones had told me when I began the program was right, “Once you complete doing what we tell you to do, your way will be made.” No way is made now. I’m in a lower orbit. I’m only a prospective novelist and every yoyo’s got a manuscript to hawk. Damn it to hell. At least I protected Euromamo privacy…and I think I’m right in doing it.
I wish I could think about something else, but I can’t turn off my mind. I just threw away my doctorate for the privacy of some group stuck far back in the rain forest…but it was not “some group”; it was the Euromamo and many of them are my friends. After living with them, I understand their need for privacy and I understand how a dissertation about them might destroy it. Letting outside society know about them for my personal benefit is petty and self-centered if it wrecks the peaceful existence of an entire group who, after all, only want to live in their own way without being overwhelmed by our culture. I made the right decision…but it hurts.
….
It’s nice to be back in my room…even if I do have to move out soon. It makes me feel good to see my status vest and family status disc. That’s it. Head up. Press forward. I’ll leave my book bag here and walk to Paper Clips with a field journal to get an estimate on the copying. It’ll burn off some energy. I’ll stick the privacy disc in my pocket to remind me why in the hell-ucination I got to this point.
….
This walk is easier than it was before my year in the rainforest. I’m in better shape, I guess. There’s Paper Clips. Damn big sign outside, like it’s shouting at me.
….
It’ll cost more to copy the journals than I’d anticipated, but I’ll manage it. I’ve got to get them copied so I can write the novel. That’s my focus since I’ve blown my chance for a doctorate. I’m going to make damn sure that I write it, come hell or high water. I don’t even have supplies to begin it but, I’ll tell you, I’m going to buy what I need right now so I can get started. Otherwise, time will pass and I’ll end up with nothing for what I’ve just kissed away.
Paper. Against the far wall. Six reams of three-hole punched paper and four ribbons for my typewriter ought to get me into it. Binders to hold the chapters as I write them. Aisle six. Two bottles of ink for my Albatross. It’s going to get a workout over the next year. The basic supplies are in my cart. Oh, and a new bound journal for writing down my thoughts as they occur to me during writing. I’ve grown to like journals to record my thoughts. Cash register is up front. Big store.
Got to write the novel. I’m not going to get distracted or lose my will. I’ll complete it, damn it. Better yet, I’ll start it right now. I’ll stay in this store until I’ve written the first sentence. There’s the Customer Service counter and it’ll work for writing. No one’s there so I won’t be disturbed. Rip open a ream of paper and get a few sheets and my Albatross. I’ll put my privacy disc on the counter for comfort and inspiration.
Now, how should I begin? Where’s my starting point? In medios res. Start in the middle and flash back. That’s it. I’m on the river. Hot sun.
Rick’s brow furrowed with thought as he wrote the first sentence: “ Rick wiped his finger across his sweaty brow, causing a drop to trickle into his eye.”
The more I’m let alone and not worried the better I can function.
Ernest Hemingway
Epilogue 1988
I’ve completed writing this novel in the midst of junk mail, television and radio ads, billboards, movie trailers, and the other noise in our culture. Although I’ve been irritated by these intrusions into my privacy, I plowed forward, driven by a desire to tell this story. Reader, now that you’ve finished it, you know why I was driven: I highly value the lessons I learned from the Euromamo during my fieldwork. In this novel, those lessons are made available to you if you choose to use them. You also know why I have kept the location and identity of the Euromamo secret. Preserving Euromamo privacy became very important to me, important enough to change the course of my life. Finally, I confess to a self-centered reason for writing this novel: it’s a substitute for the dissertation I gave up, even though, as a novel, it’s made up, whereas my dissertation most certainly wouldn’t have been. Yes, I admit to making this up, but that’s the point, isn’t it? I had to do it this way.
What a difference it was to write my field notes in the Euromamo village where I had quiet and privacy! If I put my disc on my door frame, I could work for hours in peace. I didn’t fully understand, until I returned, how much I enjoyed that personal space. In the village, I was also free from our culture’s biggest intruder—advertising—and it was wonderful. My concern with my privacy, and with that of the Euromamo, may strike you as being overblown but, I assure you, it’s not. If anything, I’ve understated it. In any regard, the novel is done and you’re the judge of it.
New Haven, Connecticut
February 1988
Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order, to efficiency of operation, to scientific advancement and the like.
William O. Douglas
Epilogue 2018
Since 1988, when this novel was published, I’ve been pleased with the reception it’s received. Now that it’s republished, it’s fitting to comment on trends in our culture during the last thirty years. Clearly, privacy is even more at risk today than it was then, at risk well beyond what I feared. Closing myself behind the doors of my home is no guarantee of being left alone. The intruders—mostly advertisers—come through my walls over my telephone lines, internet cables, television cables, and satellite transmissions and find me regardless of what I’m doing—writing, eating, shaving, napping, even using the toilet—and shamelessly hawk their stuff, insisting that I buy their shit rather than leaving the decision of what I buy—or don’t buy—to me. In the Church of Science tradition, I kept track for a month of how many products I was interested in out of the multitude advertised on television and found it was no more than one in twenty. For this one in twenty, my peace is assaulted. There is no consumer education in what they do, only intrusive n
oise.
Telemarketers disrupt my peaceful enjoyment of my time on Earth, using a telephone ring to pull me across the room, and for what? So they can badger me to buy their shit. Sometimes I blow a loud whistle in their ears as a way of communicating to them the rudeness of their behavior. We owe them no duty of common courtesy as they’ve breached standards of civil behavior. My loud whistle is not a knee in the groin, but it’s the best I can do over a telephone line. Junk mail is scarcely better. I can’t throw it away at the mailbox or I become liable for littering. I’m obliged to carry it into my house for a quick trip to the trash can, and from there it goes to the landfill. How much better is the Euromamo system of simple postings, available where anyone interested in purchasing items can get information on them. Computers, which hold such promise for larger social purposes, allow us to do some of this, but they bring with them other reprehensible uses that should be curtailed, such as bombarding us with ads, and collecting personal information on us which is sold to advertisers who, in turn, bombard us. Doubtless, it’s only because the reach of computer technology is so much greater than the reach of bullhorns that the latter aren’t used in our society. As you know, the Euromamo prohibit the use of bullhorns for advertising and would doubtless be aghast that we allow these much more intrusive attacks on our privacy via computers.
Of our own volition, we buy clothing that advertises sports teams, universities, clothing manufacturers, cities, brewers, and motor vehicles, thereby turning ourselves into human billboards. Shame on us. How have we been led so far afield that we spend our good money for it, thereby paying businessmen through our purchases for the privilege of advertising their stuff? Odd, indeed. Ultimately, we’re our own enemies in this. We choose to do it, and it’s up to us to save ourselves.
Where’s our private space? Do we have to retreat deep into the rain forest and fend them off from there? Is that far enough away? Where are the blue discs we can display so we may be left in peace? I agree with the Euromamo when they say, “to hell-ucination with advertisers,” all of them.
Lancaster, Pennsylvania
Near the Amish
May 2018
As a final note, I exchange letters annually with John Eel Hunter who’s a distinguished Euromamo elder these days. The group’s privacy remains intact and they remain in control of their culture. He asks that you not use this novel to try to find them.
Biographical Sketch
Rick Johnson was in the anthropology program at Yale in the 1980s, an experience that is the basis for this novel. After finishing the novel, he wrote an ethnographic study based on his fieldwork in South America and placed a single copy of it in Sterling Library. That fact-based study, unlike this novel, was not made up. After its completion, Rick worked in Virginia as a landscaper for the Blue Ridge Parkway, then he moved to the countryside near Lancaster, PA, where he is a small-scale distributor of plant-based medicines and an advocate for internet privacy. He chairs the community committee that repairs, maintains, and otherwise cares for the local library. Several times a day, he gets angry at telemarketers.
The Blue Disc Page 42
