As for the outline, the general idea seems fine to me. I’m not quite sure we want to separate “Cultural History” from “The People,” as if The People didn’t figure in culture. And do we want Strom writing on black cuisine? That seems odd, doesn’t it? I mean, many of the things in Part III seem better suited to almost any other author.
Also, don’t we want “blacks and literature” under cultural history? That, after all, was what Barton suggested to us.
I have a few other suggestions, but we can work these out later and fit them in—or not. I do like your idea, Jim.
Strom on blacks in literature
Strom on blacks in the waste disposal profession
Strom on blacks and penis size
Strom on blacks and their fondness for rape
Strom on famous black scientists
Strom on diseases caused by blacks
Strom on ebonics
Again, no matter what you say, I DO thank you.
Best,
P
March 9, 2003
Dear Juniper,
So nice talking to you, dearie. To hear that your job is so much better makes me glow, though I wonder if you’re not shifting it into the sunlight to keep me from worrying. Anyhow, the pay is good; and as for the St. Patrick’s Day party, well, you’ve had experience fending off Martin before. I worry about you, but here’s some advice: just keep your body sideways to his. That way he can’t do any real damage. Do you know Mother once told me exactly that? I was about 13, and I swear I didn’t know what she was talking about. I still don’t. I wonder if she knew.
I wanted to ask you a terrible favor, Juney. You remember my friend Septic? The one who has had such a hard time of it, such a time as you and I will probably never even have to glimpse. But that’s just the point: our unwillingness to take a look, much less a sympathetic look, at the world of Septic is an evasion that, however understandable, is also too easy for us. By looking away, we allow this horrible world to roll along, grinding up bodies and lives, especially the bodies and lives of the weak and innocent.
Septic, as you know, took on her name—it is her only name—as a form of protest, an ironic reversal, she calls it. I think myself, without her authorization, that the name is used a bit as “Queer” or “Black” are—throwing it in our faces. But anyhow, Septic has somehow remained gentle-hearted through it all.
She’s written a kind of novel/essay. I think you might call it a fictional polemic. It is very experimental in its form. I think it’s important. Excuse me for taking so long to get to the subject of her work, which is a grind-your-nose-in-it look at the worlds of prostitutes and pimps. It’s very provocative in its ideas on prostitution, sex in general, money, and class issues. The novel, appropriately (well, I hope so), is entitled CLASS ASS.
Yes, Septic has been both a pimp and a prostitute; has both sold and taken drugs; has acted in and directed porn (adult and child); has committed robbery, assault (several times), burglary, arson, and, though in a botched way (it makes the one comic part of the book), counterfeiting. That’s just it: she fits none of the stereotypes. Maybe nobody does.
The book is a little long and wants editing. I can hear you screaming. But I think you might have something like Jack Abbott here. Septic seems to me absolutely authentic and dear.
How would you feel about (a) looking at it and (b) meeting her? You think I put in (b) knowing you would reject that and thus making it harder for you to say no twice. Why, Juniper! Would I do a thing like that?
Much love,
Sis
SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
March 10, 2003
Dear Barton,
The past is very cruel, humiliating. But you know, Barton, I sometimes wonder if it’s the past that’s at fault or our memory and the way we tell ourselves stories about the past. You know what I mean? For me, the past is really pretty malleable, and I can dredge up from it stories for all occasions and moods. It’s not, for me, a matter of lying (though I’m sure I fill up my quota there) but of finding ways to tell a tale or run a movie in my head that makes the past fit what I want. I don’t do this consciously; it just works out like that.
My own favorite literary character, Humbert Humbert, puts it this way: “When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions, and so forth, I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytical faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past.” (I don’t have this memorized. I’ve been reading LOLITA as fall-asleep material.)
Anyhow, Barton, I wonder if your memories of your own past and the desolation you see there doesn’t say more about now than about then? You unconsciously form the past to fit the present. Don’t you think so?
But look at it this way. First of all, you do have friends. I am your friend, and Kincaid and Everett, I know, think very highly of you. Senator Thurmond, this temporary rupture aside, is also your friend, I am sure. And there are others too, of course. The thing is this, Barton: you are in politics, surely the most unstable and wretchedly selfish endeavor known to man. Friendships are probably impossible to form there. Any person possessed of sensitivity and depth of thought would find the whole environment harrowing, empty. It’s the place, Barton, not you. Anyone who fits there would never have acted to save my job, could not have written that letter you then sent me.
You’ll excuse me being so aggressively intrusive. Of course I know little about Washington and the political life. Still, I’ll bet I am not wrong. Put yourself in any other area and you would not only shine but gather around you many friends eager to share your energy and luminosity.
Count on me to say nothing to K and E about the shortlived misunderstanding there. You’re right: it would just throw them off the track. We’ll go on just as we have been, and that way things will progress as fast as they can.
By the way, my impression is that K and E are really pretty enterprising fellows. I may be wrong, but my guess is—I’m a regular fortune-teller tonight—that they’ve been working hard and will probably spring something on you when you least expect it.
I’ve got to run. I have this neighbor, a very sweet old woman, who has taken it into her head that I love to watch a certain television program. I am ashamed to say I was about to skip the name, just so I wouldn’t look like a dumb-ass. But it’s one of those reality programs, teenagers in a house nagging and niggling. I would have thought they’d be doing drugs and wallowing in the bliss of all that young flesh; but no. They complain about who uses the phone too long, who cleans up, who is defensive, who alludes unkindly to the fat girl’s fatness, as if those things were life. What a waste. And it’s on MTV. My neighbor must be 80, which is what trapped me. You see, I thought it was really commendable that she would find something of interest on MTV, so I talked with her about it. I had never seen the show and am sure I said nothing either way about it, but she misread my blab as addiction to these dreadful teens. Now I must go over every week and watch with her. She fixes elaborate toastie things—toast rounds with various toppings that testify to her highly reckless ingenuity. I’m becoming addicted to the toasties, to Margaret, and (what a thing to admit) the show and the kids on it.
For the truth is I enjoy it all at least as much as she. Two weeks ago I took wine, which we (she) finished before the show was half over, so last week I took two bottles. Who knows? This may be love!
Your friend,
Juniper
FROM THE DESK OF PERCIVAL EVERETT
March 11, 2003
Jim—
I didn’t mean to be critical or sarcastic. I was sincere in my expressions of admiration for your outline and the idea of writing a kind of suggestive, very wide-ranging history rather than a political or social history that would try to cover with some semblance of responsibility some specified ground. This way we can dip a
nd glide and say what we want on a variety of wholly disconnected topics. I can see the top of the bestseller list crooking its finger at us—or giving us the finger.
But we’re one on this. Could you tighten up the outline a little, incorporating the very few serious suggestions I gave you and ignoring the ones offered as jokes, poor jokes.
Don’t be huffy now. You’re always saying we should move forward, and you’ve moved us forward. You’ve stuck your thumb right up our collective ass and given us a timely goose.
P
March 15, 2003
Dear Reba,
Ides of March, and would that I had been stabbed.
Oh dearie sister, Martin’s party turned out to include—as you warned—but one guest, who had to serve as dinner companion, game player, dance partner, and more. At one point, he decided we should go for a swim, so we set out to find an indoor pool at 2 a.m. I was surprised, as you would be too, that there were none that met our roving eyes. Martin decided the fountains outside the New York Hilton would do just fine.
I can say this: though I did not resist everything, I resisted some things. In the first category, the worst was that I put on a gown to dance with him. I have no explanation, beyond mentioning that this was the very first activity he had on his list, and it did seem churlish to start the evening with a refusal. Dinner wasn’t bad either, really, though Martin, who has an immense dining table, sat about six inches from me. I kept thinking how sad it was that he had this big dining table and nobody to share it with.
I did resist (a) any games that involved undressing (the donning of the gown was done in discreet privacy), (b) weeping along with him as he told stories of his youth (though I did get a little misty once), (c) submitting to a massage, (d) letting him “do a lick job” on my toes, (e) playing a game he called “back seat at the drive-in,” (f) joining him in the Hilton fountains. (In plain truth, I did give in on (c) and the first minute or two of (e).)
As for Septic, I take your word that she’s something special. Have you read her stuff? I gather you have, since you say it needs editing. Well, here’s what I’m going to do, though it’s better as yet to say nothing to Septic about it. Her kind of material is not Snell’s department, though he’d love to think he knew her world better than she. (The truth is he’s a lonely man who has had no life and can find nowhere to steer his boat.) It is Vendetti’s. I don’t think I told you that I parted on good terms with him, though he is what he is, whatever that may be. Anyhow, I’ll slip him the word on it without Martin knowing. If you can mail me Septic’s manuscript overnight mail. Please you do it, Reba. The very idea of Septic scares the shit out of me.
You’re the tops.
Love,
Juniper
SIMON & SCHUSTER, INC.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
March 18, 2003
Dear Barton, Percival, and Jim,
As you are all my mutual friends—maybe we should start a barbershop quartet?—I thought I owed you some description of Martin Snell’s early St. Patrick’s Day party and other outstanding events going on here. First, Reba put me on to a friend of hers, one Septic (that’s right—her real and only name) who is writing a book called CLASS ASS on the ins and outs of prostituting and pimping, a Marxist analysis too, I think. I decided to slip it to Vendetti, as Snell would do horrible things with it. Second, the party didn’t have green beer or anything at all Irish. I don’t think he remembered what the occasion for the party was.
That’s the extent of the good news.
The pathetic old bastard, he ended the evening drunk and floundering in the New York Hilton fountain. What nice people there! They helped me get him out and in the car, said it happened a couple of times a month. Maybe it’s Snell that does it a couple of times a month. I should have asked.
I wrote Reba a full account—of me donning a gown in order to dance with him, of several other disgraceful things, comic too, if it all weren’t so sad. But throw somebody like Snell a life preserver and he’ll pull you under, as a character in LUCKY JIM says.
I guess that’s true. I’d like to help him, but not at the price he asks anyone to pay. And he doesn’t mean to be so outrageous either. What he wants is a friend or two, but he’s been without them for so long, it’s driven him to a land of loons where he has lost his compass. He is not really dangerous: the moment I give out with any signs of reluctance, his merriment collapses and he begins weeping, or apologizing, or, most commonly, both.
My virtue is intact, in case you were wondering. I’d do a lot to try and help him, but somehow I think fucking him (or whatever would pass for that in his mind) might be a big mistake—for him, probably not for me.
Ah Snell, Ah humanity!
Love,
Juniper
p.s. Vendetti loves the project. I guess that’s good.
James R. Kincaid
University of Southern California
University Park Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90089
March 20, 2003
Dear Barton,
Hope you’re well and not letting the venerable Senator feed off your life’s blood. That’s a joke, naturally, but you know, Barton, I think there’s some truth to the suspicion that the old often feed off the young. I mean, look at the old guys who are coaches or, I suppose, teachers. They drain the young. I mean, why do we chain all the young people in our land to desks hour after hour, until they’re half-wild with boredom and bottled up vim? Partly to discipline them to our needs, I guess, keep them from doing anything disruptive or creative. But also, don’t you think, so we can lap up that energy we allow no other outlet? Where can it go but to the old crumbling bodies before them? So watch out.
But I’m writing about another thing—and hope you are getting along fine with Strom, who must have much in the way of canny conniving to pass along.
What I have here is an outline, reflecting the enthusiasm Percival and I both feel for your idea about making this a cultural and social as well as a political history. What do you think of this? You’ll see it’s divided into 3 parts (but doesn’t have to be).
Part I: Political History
a. Strom on Slavery
b. Strom on the War Between the States
c. Strom on Reconstruction
d. Strom on the KKK
e. Strom on The Dixiecrats
f. Strom on Civil Rights
g. Strom on Washington generally—amusing anecdotes on blacks in politics and non-blacks too
h. Strom on our contemporary world and the blacks in it
Part II: Cultural History
i. Strom on blacks and music—real music, not gangsta rap
j. Strom on blacks and the theater
k. Strom on blacks and the domestic arts (making quilts—shit like that)
l. Strom on blacks and painting
m. Strom on blacks and the dance
n. Strom on blacks in film, television, radio, journalism
o. Strom on black fashion models
p. Strom on blacks and sports
q. Strom on blacks and literature
Part III: Social History
r. Strom on blacks and the family
s. Strom on blacks and the schools—here’s a real strong suit
t. Strom on blacks and public transportation
u. Strom on blacks and food—what they eat and how they cook it
v. Strom on blacks and religion—maybe we should write this for him?
w. Strom on blacks and domestic décor
x. Strom on blacks and dirt farming
y. Strom on blacks and criminality
None of these are, as our miserable fucking Dean says, “carved in stone.” Percival thinks IIIu may not fit the Senator’s agenda. But I say, “Let Barton and the Senator decide.”
Anyhow, you see what we have in mind, following your lead. This will be a broader-ranging and less conventional “history,” allowing the Senator to suggest topics for sh
ort essays, filled with personal experiences and good stories, on items that interest him. After all, what interests him will interest others.
Barton, does it ever occur to you that life passes us by—or that we wade through our lives looking down at the puddles and our galoshes without noticing much else? When you get to my age, such depressing ideas strike you, and I do mean STRIKE. It’s like getting hit with a big paving brick right between your ear and eye. I only had one life and why didn’t I even remark on it as I went through it?
Oh well, philosophy’s for the elite, as a British idiot said about me in a recent essay in the TLS. What she actually said is, “irony is an elitist tool.” Referring to me. What an idiot. She thinks she’s being ever so sympathetic to those who, by her lights, haven’t gotten to a point where irony can be used safely. That is, she’s telling young people they’d better not be ironic. Thus, under the guise of liberal sympathy, she’s the worst kind of conservative, robbing the young of yet another tool. Oh, it makes my semen boil!
I’d love to go on, but I have a class to teach. It’s one of the great pleasures left me—eating the energy of the young.
Devotedly,
Jim
March 24, 2003
Dear Martin,
I wonder if you wouldn’t like to get closer acquainted? We’re not so far apart, and I think by now we have learned to climb those little lumpy hills that can separate those who ought not to be separated.
I haven’t anything sexual in mind, just to ease your palpitating heart. Just social things and dancing. Moonlight movies. Rides in the country. Picnics. Rollerblading.
You’ll be glad to hear that all goes very well with the project, very well indeed. K and E are now really rolling on a new plan for a cultural/social/political history. Much more lively and Strom-like. Won’t be a chronicle of events, you know, but more a set of funny stories and telling anecdotes (or at least anecdotes).
I know you’re busy but I just hoped you’d be interested in my little proposition.
A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond Page 17
