Happy to oblige.
Jim
No. They postponed the hearing in order to “gather more information.” What information?
OFFICE OF SENATOR STROM THURMOND
217 RUSSELL SENATE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515
November 23, 2002
Dear Percival and James,
A little bird tells me you two are not working as expeditiously as you might.
WHOA now! I’m not saying you are unindustrious, Perkal and Jimby. Far from it. I am saying that you are confused by two things:
1. The paucity of the material I’ve sent you.
2. Despite everything, some lingering distrust.
As a result, I am conjuring up a picture of you two sitting in your racing cars, revving up at higher and higher speeds, but not able to see that flag that says “Go” or even to make out the track.
I can handle #1 and send more (see below).
As for #2, well, pufferbellies, I think I can only hope you will grant me the trust I am granting you. Let’s be clear about this. I am granting it. Grant it in return. Do not dissemble. Let’s curl pinkies on this: spit and swear.
Has the Senator seen this material? Yes and no. Have we talked in detail about it? Yes and no.
No in the vulgar sense of two separate and distinct corporeal presences getting together over brandy and flapping their lips. Yes in the meaningful (the only meaningful) sense of things in which essences leave the calm chamber of the imagination, holding in their arms the agency of the sublime. In other words, this is the Senator, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, Senior Republican and Senior Senator, and Senior Lawgiver.
If that doesn’t convince you, I despair. Or, rather, I would despair, were despair in my blood.
Belief, gentlemen, belief!
So—here are some more materials, giving what I now regard as the full picture. The first represents the tiny, but undeniably present, number of African Americans who urged unspeakable violence. I’ll give that first and then tell you about the second. The first is from an Address to the U.S. Congress in 1896 from “The National Association of Colored Men,” a fortunately and significantly short-lived group of radicals (I use the word advisedly) from the North who were furious at and jealous of Booker T. Washington and sought to gain notoriety by advocating violence. (You will not fail to see the parallels to such later groups as The Black Panthers, the followers of Malcolm X; as well as individuals like Cassius Clay, Reggie Jackson, and Al Sharpton.)
“We mark the opening of the militant period of our race in this country…. We hail and accept the burdens of the new time without fear and without favor.…That time [for militant action] we conceive to be now. Our calm, deliberate advice is for every member of the race henceforth to employ every weapon of every kind of warfare legitimately and courageously in the demand for every right.”
I gather one of you is a literary type, or both of you? Which one? The black one? Anyhow, it doesn’t take a literary scholar to see at work in this passage the sort of rhetoric Communists used a little later. Words like “calm,” “deliberate,” “legitimately” try to mask a howl to “every” Negro man, woman, and child to use “every weapon of every kind of warfare” any way they wanted. Any thuggery, murder, looting, raping would be, you see, “calm” and “legitimate.”
The next is from the much misunderstood W.E.B. DuBois. Here Dr. DuBois writes a Negro schoolgirl and reveals attitudes toward racial advancement that I am proud to say (and DuBois would be too) anticipate the Senator’s own. The letter is dated 1905, written when the Senator was only 4, so it is remarkably anticipatory. Now, DuBois was sometimes unable to resist in his oratory a certain self-indulgent and undisciplined rhetorical flair, but here he speaks his heart.
“I wonder if you will let a stranger say a word to you about yourself? I have heard that you are a young woman of some ability but that you are neglecting your school work because you have become hopeless of trying to do anything in the world. I am very sorry for this. How any human being whose wonderful fortune it is to live in the 20th century should under ordinarily fair advantages despair of life is almost unbelievable. And if in addition to this that person is, as I am, of Negro lineage with all the hopes and yearnings of hundreds of millions of human souls dependent in some degree on her striving, then her bitterness amounts to crime.
“There are in the U.S. today tens of thousands of colored girls who would be happy beyond measure to have the chance of educating themselves that you are neglecting. If you train yourself as you easily can, there are wonderful chances of usefulness before you: you can join the ranks of 15,000 Negro women teachers, of hundreds of nurses and physicians, of the growing number of clerks and stenographers, and above all of the host of homemakers. Ignorance is a cure for nothing. Get the very best training possible & the doors of opportunity will fly open before you as they are flying before thousands of your fellows. On the other hand every time a colored person neglects an opportunity, it makes it more difficult for others of the race to get such an opportunity. Do you want to cut off the chances of the boys and girls of tomorrow?”
Just copying that makes my heart sing.
There’s a character in Dickens, one Dick Swiveller, who says to a friend, “Why should an uncle and nephew peg away at one another, when all might be bliss and concord? Why not jine hands and fergit it?”
Substitute for “uncle and nephew,” “Bunny, Perkal, and Jimby,” and you see the application. All might be bliss and concord. All will be bliss and concord.
Here’s my hand—jine it!
Ever,
Barton
James R. Kincaid
University of Southern California
University Park Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90089
November 24, 2002
Dear Juniper,
Percival and I have read your letter with deep concern and sympathy. We are protected from Barton’s flesh and jump suits by distance, and he has not yet sent any pictures, though I suppose that’s next; but we can have compassion for anyone who has to spend weekends with him, cooking and playing Parcheesi. (What sorts of things did you cook?)
You seem like a nice young man, and I think I can help. Percival asked me to write to you, as he is less skilled than I at such things. Perhaps I should say that he is simply less experienced. He does not extend to his students the same degree of personal warmth that I radiate almost against my will. I extend warmth to my students and they feel it. (I know this from student evaluations.) The mind is only a small part of the whole person, Juniper. I am sure you know that, having encountered at NYU professors you took to. (Probably some like Percival too.) My students do come to me for help. I find that most student problems have to do with (a) parents, (b) roommates, (c) sex. The last is by far the most prevalent topic of concern to students these days, and in other days too. It just doesn’t go away, and I try to help. Percival says my students talk to me about sex because I steer them in that direction. But you’ll notice his students don’t talk to him at all, except to complain about grades. Grades, you observed, are not on my list at all.
Parents, I find, are ill-equipped to deal with the problems of comely youth. Obviously. They are themselves a problem. I try to get my students to detach themselves from parents, without at all interfering. It’s simply a part of growing up, and I am happy to play a useful role in a natural process. You may have tried consulting with your own parents about Wilkes. Were they of any help? You see my point.
As for Wilkes, do not see him again. Here is the direct advice part. I have decided that both Snell and Wilkes are unreliables. Do not lean on them. Tell Wilkes that Snell has ordered you not to interfere in the proper flow of information, that dating a client is forbidden, that you are so attracted to him (Wilkes) you need to withdraw for your own sanity, that you are moving in with Sister and adopting a child together, that you have but three weeks to live, that you are entering rehab for prescription pain killer
abuse, that you are Roman Catholic and can’t bring yourself to sin like that any more. Anything!
Don’t tell anyone you have cut it off with Wilkes. If he complains to Snell, tell Snell that Wilkes is obsessed with him (Snell) and really wants to see him, not you. You are seeing Wilkes, you say, on a regular basis, just as ordered. Tell Snell Wilkes is just using you to get at the boss, that all he ever talks about is “Martin this” and “Martin that.” That’ll satisfy Snell’s ego and convince him you are indeed seeing Wilkes. Of course there’s a chance Snell will go after Wilkes himself, but, believe me, if he does, your name will never come up between them. It’ll be Parcheesi passion all the way.
Get it out of your head that Wilkes has hypnotic or Sven-gali-like powers. What it is, Juniper, is that you are a nice young man and simply need somebody to talk to. You have dilemmas, of course, but who doesn’t? That they are sexual dilemmas, by and large, should not make you feel ashamed.
I know I am far away but I am here.
Very glad I could help you.
Sincerely,
Jim
November 24, 2002
Dear Reba,
Your letter has upset me a lot. You don’t just meddle but ask personal and insulting questions.
What you and Wilkes do is nothing to me. I just don’t care.
Sincerely,
Juniper
November 24, 2002
Dear Reba,
I mailed a letter to you about 2 hours ago. If ever a letter got lost in the mail or somehow destroyed, I hope it was that one. It was a monstrous letter. Please throw it away.
Your letter caught me off guard in a variety of ways. Maybe I should say it slipped by a lot of my guards. But that is no excuse. I did a shameful thing.
When I play through all my memories of you and me, Reba, I somehow can’t find a one that doesn’t make me ashamed of myself. Was I ever kind to you, even as a little kid? I hope so, since you have been nothing but kind to me. When I read the part of your letter where you ask about Wilkes and me and then start worrying about me and then you ask me not to be mad about you “meddling”—I can’t tell you how shocked I was. I don’t know why, but all of a sudden it came on me like a swarm of yellow jackets that I had spent so much time being embarrassed by your attention to me, your good humor and social inventiveness, when I was the embarrassment, always.
Let me say it out loud, Reba, no matter how bad it sounds. I was ashamed of you, Reba. I thought I was better than you and didn’t want anybody to know you were my sister. That is so awful, I don’t know how I can say it. But it was much worse to be it and do it. I know I am hurting you, but I also know you have realized all that and remained, despite all the hurt and humiliation, not only loyal to me but loving.
Reba, please forgive me. You are a thousand times the better person.
I promise you that I will be a good brother to you and honor your fine qualities and try to give you someone you can rely on. I do need help. I’ll tell you about it later in this letter or in another.
But please tell me about yourself. Naturally (unnaturally), I know almost nothing about even the outer details of your life. I am sure you have a million friends, that you are busy working and partying and volunteering in the lousiest neighborhoods. Please tell me.
As for me, I am trying to make good decisions in a maze of confusion, much of it brought on by people around me but much of it inside me too. I was lucky to get a wonderful job, or at least a job I wanted really bad (and didn’t deserve) with a terrific publishing house. That part’s good, and I keep reminding myself of it. But my boss is insecure, a lunatic, and, in his paranoid and frightened way, eager to have sex with me. He’s a man. You can’t believe, Reba, what narrow escapes I’ve had—and only partial escapes, sex not really being the issue even. I’ll give you details later, but I want to get on to other things.
Namely Wilkes. Reba, don’t have anything to do with him. I don’t know if he’s dangerous at all, but he is even loonier than my boss, Martin Snell, and that’s like saying—well, it’s like saying he’s King of the Loons. I have no idea what he is up to, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t either. He sends the most jumbled letters and I had to spend a weekend with him.
Here’s the details. Martin Snell, my boss, is in charge of this project, a book putatively by Strom Thurmond. Now Wilkes has been the contact person for Thurmond, in fact he says he speaks for the Senator, as if he were the Senator. Very suspicious, of course, but he does work for Strom; we’ve checked. He bombards us and the ghost writers (named Everett and Kincaid) with deranged letters and shields us from Thurmond. We aren’t sure that this isn’t really Wilkes’s book, which is one problem. But Mad Martin Snell has staked his job on this project and uses me as a fall guy, dirty-work guy, and office sweetie. He ordered me, Snell did, to get close to Wilkes and try to determine what his game was. What a disaster. First, Wilkes wormed stuff out of me and revealed nothing himself. I felt like Rosencrantz or Guildenstern with Hamlet. Compared to me, they were super sleuths. Then Wilkes insisted on a weekend together, insisted and insisted, and Snell made me go. It turned out to be a weekend of cooking in the room, playing board games, and blah-blah-blah. Odd as hell, but not the end.
So stay away.
But about me, honey. I don’t want you messing with the Wilkes business, but I hope I can talk with you about the job that has me in such a mess. I’ve appealed to Everett and Kincaid for help, but they haven’t had time to answer yet.
I am going to write you soon about my inside problems, problems inside me, I mean. But I’ve gone on too long. Please throw that last letter away and keep this one please.
Forgive me. I won’t stop drawing on your kindness; but if I have so much to ask for, perhaps I can muster up some to give.
Your loving brother,
Juney
November 24, 2002
Dearest Reba,
Just ran down and mailed the letter, came back, sat down, and remembered I had rudely ignored your suggestion of Ritzi. If you still think you wouldn’t be mortified to have me take out a friend, I’d be awfully happy to meet her and ask her out.
One other thing, while I’m talking about how fucked up I am, I shouldn’t hide anything about what a fuck I am. One of the secrets Wilkes got from me, and I can’t honestly say he wormed it out; I just blurted it, was about Mom catching you masturbating and you telling her she ought to try it.
But I love you and promise to do better—and promise not to weigh down your life with three letters a day!
Love,
Your brother
Memo: Snell to McCloud
November 25
McCloud:
Under the guise of an office memo, I transmit to you material that is PERSONAL IN NATURE, HIGHLY.
First, tell me how Wilkes is behaving. I mean, what have you gleaned as regards his motives and plans? I am sure his interests include you, as I am unable to imagine a sensibility that would be immune to your boyishness. (As I told you, one of your appeals, though by no means the only one, is that you could be passing papers, just riding by on your little bicycle with the bell and throwing papers onto porches, your little butt in those cut-off jeans bouncing on the seat, with your shirt riding up and revealing a little skin and just a hint of those cute whitey-tighty undies, the waistband part, so one could make out only the tops of the letters and have to guess at the word (Hanes? Jockey? JC Penny?), just as they would have to guess at how soft your butt might be, what sensations might be imparted by molding and smacking those little cheeks.)
So, what is the story on Barton?
Thanksgiving, of course. I am a hopeless traditionalist as regards Thanksgiving. I put up cut-outs in the window of Pilgrims and the helpful Indians. I play the merry songs of the season. I thank the Lord. I prepare a hell of a turkey “cum gin.” You’ll be there. I won’t mention the costumes, just hint (as with your undies). Priscilla, Squanto, the stern Cotton Mather, the lovely John Alden, Pocahontas, Hester Pryne, the
Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, Edgar Alan Poe. As always, you’ll get to choose the first round.
We need to get cracking on the project. I can’t in conscience bother Kincaid and Everett yet. But what does Wilkes say about the progress? Give me an exact account. And, as they say in bad movies, have it on my desk by 9 in the morning. I am not kidding. This is no movie. This is life, McCloud!
M.S.
Memo: McCloud to Snell
November 25, 2002
Dear Martin,
As for the progress of the book, Wilkes has, candidly, not said a word. You told me to get personal with him, worm my way inside his head. That’s what I am doing. Give me a little time, though, and I’ll be so deep in his head I’ll know everything about his motives and plans.
As for Thanksgiving, Martin, I’d love to. You know that. The costumes sound delightful, as does the food. However, I’m tied up with Wilkes. Following your orders, you know, even on holidays.
I never had a paper route.
Best,
Juniper
SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
November 26, 2002
Dear Barton,
You know without me saying it that I would like nothing better than a weekend with you. I got your message inviting me and I at once promised myself I would do it. All this is plain as day to you, and I won’t insult you or me by insisting on its veracity.
The problem is—you guessed it—my boss and his way of making my attendance at his maniacal private get-togethers unavoidable. I could resign my position, of course, but that is what it would take; and I needn’t tell you that I am not situated in such a way as to make resignation a realistic course.
A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond Page 10
