may perform
opposed actions together, in a single fresh respiration, I am against
action; for continual contradiction, for affirmation also, I am neither for
nor against and I do not explain for I hate good sense .. . There is a
literature which does not reach the voracious mass. The work of creators,
sprung from a real necessity on the part of the author, and for himself.
Consciousness of a supreme egotism where the stars waste away . . . Each
page must explode, either with the profoundly serious and heavy, the
whirlwind, dizziness, the new, the eternal, with the overwhelming hoax, with
an enthusiasm for principles or with the mode of typography. On the one hand
a staggering fleeing world, affianced to the jingle-bells of the infernal
gamut, on the other hand: new beings..." Thirty-two years later and I am
still saying Yes! Yes, Monsieur Antipyrine! Yes,Monsieur Tristan Bustanoby
Tzara! Yes, Monsieur Max Ernst Geburt! Yes! Monsieur Rene Crevel, now that
you are dead by suicide, yes, the world is crazy, you were right. Yes,
Monsieur Blaise Cendrars, you were right to kill. Was it the day of the
Armistice that you brought out your little book -J'ai tue? Yes, "keep on my
lads, humanity..." Yes, Jacques Vache, quite right - "Art ought to be
something funny and a trifle boring." Yes, my dear dead Vache, how right you
were and how funny and how boring the touching and tender and true: "It is
of the essence of symbols to be symbolic." Say it again, from the other
world! Have you a megaphone up there? Have you found all the arms and legs
that were blown off during the melee? Can you put them together again? Do
you remember the meeting at Nantes in 1916 with Andre Breton? Did you
celebrate the birth of hysteria together? Had he told you, Breton, that
there was only the marvellous and nothing but the marvellous and that the
marvellous is always marvellous - and isn't it marvellous to hear it again,
even though your ears are stopped? I want to include here, before passing
on, a little portrait of you by Emile Bouvier for the benefit of my Brooklyn
friends who may not have recognized me then but who will now, I am sure...
". . . he was not all crazy, and could explain his conduct when
occasion required. His actions, none the less, were as disconcerting as
Jarry's worst eccentricities. For example, he was barely out of hospital
when he hired himself out as a stevedore, and he thereafter passed his
afternoons in unloading coal on the quays along the Loire. In the evening,
on the other hand he would make the rounds of the cafes and cinemas, dressed
in the height of fashion and with many variations of costume. What was more,
in time of war, he would strut forth sometimes in the uniform of a
lieutenant of Hussars, sometimes in that of an English officer, of an
aviator or of a surgeon. In civil life, he was quite as free and easy,
thinking nothing of introducing Breton under the name of Andre Salmon, while
he took unto himself, but quite without vanity, the most wonderful titles
and adventures. He never said good morning nor good evening nor good-bye,
and never took any notice of letters, except those from his mother, when he
had to ask for money. He did not recognize his best friends from one day to
another..."
Do you recognize me, lads? Just a Brooklyn boy communicating with the
red-haired albinos of the Zuni region. Making ready, with feet on the desk,
to write "strong works, works forever incomprehensible", as my dead comrades
were promising. These "strong works" - would you recognize them if you saw
them? Do you know that of the millions who were killed not one death was
necessary to produce "the strong work"? New beings, yes! We have need of new
beings still. We can do without the telephone, without the automobile,
without the high-class bombers - but we can't do without new beings. If
Atlantis was submerged beneath the sea, if the Sphinx and the Pyramids
remain an eternal riddle, it is because there were no more new beings being
born. Stop the machine a moment! Plash back! Flash back to 1914, to the
Kaiser sitting on his horse. Keep him sitting there a moment with his
withered arm clutching the bridle rein. Look at his moustache! Look at his
haughty air of pride and arrogance! Look at his cannon-fodder lined up in
strictest discipline, all ready to obey the word, to get shot, to get
disembowelled, to be burned in quicklime. Hold it a moment, now, and look at
the other side: the defenders of our great and glorious civilization, the
men who will war to end war. Change their clothes, change uniforms, change
horses, change flags, change terrain. My, is that the Kaiser I see on a
white horse? Are those the terrible Huns? And where is Big Bertha? Oh, I see
-1 thought it was pointing towards Notre Dame? Humanity, me lads, humanity
always marching in the van . . . And the strong works we were speaking of?
Where are the strong works? Call up the Western Union and dispatch a
messenger fleet of foot - not a cripple or an octogenarian, but a young one!
Ask him to find the great work and bring it back. We need it. We have a
brand new museum ready waiting to house it - and cellophane and the Dewey
Decimal system to file it. All we need is the name of the author. Even if he
has no name, even if it is anonymous work, we won't kick. Even if it has a
little mustard gas in it we won't mind. Bring it back dead or alive -
there's a $25,000 reward for the man who fetches it.
And if they tell you that these things had to be, that things could not
have happened otherwise, that France did her best and Germany her best and
that little Liberia and little Ecuador and all the other allies also did
their best, and that since the war everybody has been doing his best to
patch things up or to forget, tell them that their best is not good enough,
that we don't want to hear any more this logic of "doing the best one can",
tell them we don't want the best of a bad bargain, we don't believe in
bargains good or bad, nor in war memorials. We don't want to hear about the
logic of events - or any kind of logic. "Je ne parle pas logique," said
Montherlant, "je parle generosite." I don't think you heard it very well,
since it was in French. I'll repeat it for you, in the Queen's own language;
"I'm not talking logic, I'm talking generosity." That's bad English, as the
Queen herself might speak it, but it's clear. Generosity - do you hear? You
never practise it, any of you, either in peace or in war. You don't know the
meaning of the word. You think to supply guns and ammunition to the winning
side is generosity; you think sending Red Cross nurses to the front, or the
Salvation Army, is generosity. You think a bonus twenty years too late is
generosity; you think a little pension and a wheel chair is generosity; you
think if you give a man his old job back it's generosity. You don't know
what the fucking war means, you bastards! To be generous is to say Yes
before the man even opens his mouth. To say Yes you have to first be a
Surrealist or a Dadaist, because you have understood what it means to say
No. You can even say Yes and No at the same time, provided you do more than
is expected of you. Be a stevedore in the day time and a Beau Brummel in the
night-time. Wear any uniform so long as it's not yours. When you write your
mother ask her to cough up a little dough so that you may have a clean rag
to wipe your ass with. Don't be disturbed if you see your neighbour going
after his wife with a knife: he probably has good reason to go after her,
and if he kills her you may be sure he has the satisfaction of knowing why
he did it. If you're trying to improve your mind, stop it I There's no
improving the mind. Look at your heart and gizzard - the brain is in the
heart.
Ah yes, if I had known then that these birds existed -Cendrars, Vache,
Grosz, Ernst, Apollinaire - if I had known that then, if I had known that in
their own way they were thinking exactly the same things as I was, I think
I'd have blown up. Yes, I think I'd have gone off like a bomb. But I was
ignorant. Ignorant of the fact that almost fifty years previously a crazy
Jew in South America had given birth to such startlingly marvellous phrases
as "doubt's duck with the vermouth lips" or "I have seen a fig eat an
onager" - that about the same time a Frenchman, who was only a boy, was
saying: "Find flowers that are chairs" . . . "my hunger is the black air's
bits" . . . "his heart, amber and spunk". Maybe at the same time, or
thereabouts, while Jarry was saying "in eating the sound of moths", and
Apollinaire repeating after him "near a gentleman swallowing himself", and
Breton murmuring softly "night's pedals move uninterruptedly", perhaps "in
the air beautiful and black" which the lone Jew had found under the Southern
Cross another man, also lonely and exiled and of Spanish origin, was
preparing to put down on paper these memorable words: "I seek, all in all,
to console myself for my exile, for my exile from eternity, for that
unearthing (destierro) which I am fond of referring to as my unheavening ...
At present, I think that the best way of writing this novel is to tell how
it should be written. It is the novel of the novel, the creation of
creation. Or God of God, Deus de Deo." Had I known he was going to add this,
this which follows, I would surely have gone off like a bomb... "By being
crazy is understood losing one's reason. Reason, but not the truth, for
there are madmen who speak truths while others keep silent. . ." Speaking of
these things, speaking of the war and the war dead, I cannot refrain from
mentioning that some twenty years later I ran across this in French by a
Frenchman. 0 miracles of miracles! "Il faut le dire, il y a des cadavres que
je ne respecte qu'a moitie" Yes, yes, and again yes! O, let us do some rash
things - for the sheer pleasure of it! Let us do something live and
magnificent, even if destructive! Said the mad cobbler: "All things are
generated oat of the grand mystery, and proceed out of one degree into
another. Whatever goes forward in its degree, the same receives no
abominate."
Everywhere in all times the same ovarian world announcing itself. Yet
also, parallel with these announcements, these prophecies, the gynecological
manifestoes, parallel and contemporaneous with them new totem poles, new
taboos, new war dances. While into the air so black and beautiful the
brothers of man, the poets, the diggers of the future, were spitting their
magic lines, in this same time, 0 profound and perplexing riddle, other men
were saying: "Won't you please come and take a job in our ammunition
factory. We promise you the highest wages, the most sanitary and hygienic
conditions. The work is so easy that even a child could do it" And if you
had a sister, a wife, a mother, an aunt, as long as she could manipulate her
hands, as long as she could prove that she had no bad habits, you were
invited to bring her or them along to the ammunition works. If you were shy
of soiling your hands they would explain to you very gently and
intelligently just how these delicate mechanisms operated, what they did
when they exploded, and why you must not waste even your garbage because...
et ipso facto e pluribus unum. The thing that impressed me, going the rounds
in search of work, was not so much that they made me vomit every day
(assuming I had been lucky enough to put something into my guts), but that
they always demanded to know if you were of good habits, if you were steady,
if you were sober, if you were industrious, if you had ever worked before
and if not why not. Even the garbage, which I had gotten the job of
collecting for the municipality, was precious to them, the killers. Standing
knee-deep in the muck, the lowest of the low, a coolie, an outcast, still I
was part of the death racket. I tried reading the Inferno at night, but it
was in English and English is no language for a catholic work. "Whatever
enters in itself into its selfhood, viz. into its own lubet.. ." Lubet! If I
had had a word like that to conjure with then, how peacefully I might have
gone about my garbage collecting! How sweet, in the night, when Dante is out
of reach and the hands smell of muck and slime, to take unto oneself this
word which in the Dutch means "lust" and in Latin 'lubitum" or the divine
beneplacitum. Standing knee-deep in the garbage I said one day what Meister
Eckhart is reported to have said long ago: "I truly have need of God, but
God has need of me too." There was a job waiting for me in the
slaughterhouse, a nice little job of sorting entrails, but I couldn't raise
the fare to get to Chicago. I remained in Brooklyn, in my own palace of
entrails, and turned round and round on the plinth of the labyrinth. I
remained at home seeking the "germinal vesicle", "the dragon castle on the
floor of the sea", "the Heavenly Harp", "the field of the square inch", "the
house of the square foot", "the dark pass", "the space of former Heaven". I
remained locked in, a prisoner of Forculus, god of the door, of Cardea, god
of the hinge, and of Limentius, god of the threshold. I spoke only with
their sisters, the three goddesses called Fear, Pallor and Fever. I saw no
"Asian luxury", as had St. Augustine, or as he imagined he had. Nor did I
see "the two twins born, so near together, that the second held the first by
the heel". But I saw a street called Myrtle Avenue, which runs from Borough
Hall to Fresh Pond Road, and down this street no saint ever walked (else it
would have crumbled), down this street no miracle ever passed, nor any poet,
nor any species of human genius, nor did any flower ever grow there, nor did
the sun strike it squarely, nor did the rain ever wash it. For the genuine
Inferno which I had to postpone for twenty years I give you Myrtle Avenue,
one of the innumerable bridlepaths ridden by iron monsters which lead to the
heart of America's emptiness. If you have only seen Essen or Manchester or
Chicago or Levallois-Perret or Glasgow or Hoboken or Canarsie or Bayonne you
have seen nothing of the magnificent emptiness of progress and
enlightenment. Dear reader, you must see Myrtle Avenue before you die, if
only to realize how far into the future Dante saw. You must believe me that
on this street, neither in the houses which line it, nor the cobblestones
which pave it, nor the elevated structure which cuts it atwain, neither in
any creature that bears a name and lives thereon, neither in any animal,
bird or insect passing through it to slaughter or already slaughtered, is
there hope of "lubet", "sublimate" or "abominate". It is a street not of
sorrow, for sorrow would be human and recognizable, but of sheer emptiness:
it is emptier than the most extinct volcano, emptier than a vacuum, emptier
than the word God in the mouth of an unbeliever.
I said I did not know a word of French then, and it is true, but I was
just on the brink of making a great discovery, a discovery which would
compensate for the emptiness of Myrtle Avenue and the whole American
continent. I had almost reached the shore of that great French ocean which
goes by the name of Elie Faure, an ocean which the French themselves had
hardly navigated and which they had mistaken, it seems, for an inland sea.
Reading him even in such a withered language as English has become, I could
see that this man who had described the glory of the human race on his cuff
was Father Zeus of Atlantis, whom I had been searching for. An ocean I
called him, but he was also a world symphony. He was the first musician the
French have produced; he was exalted and controlled, an anomaly, a Gallic
Beethoven, a great physician of the soul, a giant lightning-rod. He was also
a sunflower turning with the sun, always drinking in the light, always
radiant and blazing with vitality. He was neither an optimist nor a
pessimist, any more than one can say that the ocean is beneficient or
malevolent. He was a believer in the human race. He added a cubit to the
race, by giving it back its dignity, its strength, its need of creation. He
saw everything as creation, as solar joy. He didn't record it in orderly
fashion, he recorded it musically. He was indifferent to the fact that the
French have a tin ear - he was orchestrating for the whole world
simultaneously. What was my amazement then, when some years later I arrived
in France, to find that there were no monuments erected to him, no streets
named after him. Worse, during eight whole years I never once beard a
Frenchman mention his name. He had to die in order to be put in the pantheon
of French deities - and how sickly must they look, his deific
contemporaries, in the presence of this radiant sun! If he had not been a
physician, and thus permitted to earn a livelihood, what might not have
happened to him! Perhaps another able hand for the garbage trucks! The man
who made the Egyptian frescoes come alive in all their flaming colours, this
man could just as well have starved to death for all the public cared. But
he was an ocean and the critics drowned in this ocean, and the editors and
the publishers and the public too. It will take aeons for him to dry up, to
evaporate. It will take about as long as for the French to acquire a musical
ear.
If there had been no music I would have gone to the madhouse like
Nijinsky. (It was just about this time that they discovered that Nijinsky
was mad.) He had been found giving his money away to the poor - always a bad
sign! My mind was filled with wonderful treasures, my taste was sharp and
exigent, my muscles were in excellent condition, my appetite was strong, my
wind sound. I had nothing to do except to improve myself, and I was going
crazy with the improvements I made every day. Even if there were a job for
me to fill I couldn't accept it, because what I needed was not work but a
life more abundant. I couldn't waste time being a teacher, a lawyer, a
physician, a politician or anything else that society had to offer. It was
easier to accept menial jobs because it left my mind free. After I was fired
from the garbage trucks I remember taking up with an Evangelist who seemed
to have great confidence in me. I was a sort of usher, collector and private
secretary. He brought to my attention the whole world of Indian philosophy.
Evenings when I was free I would meet with my friends at the home of Ed
Bauries who lived in an aristocratic section of Brooklyn. Ed Bauries was an
eccentric pianist who couldn't read a note. He had a bosom pal called George
Neumiller with whom he often played duets. Of the dozen or so who
congregated at Ed Bauries' home nearly every one of us could play the piano.
We were all between twenty-one and twenty-five at the time; we never brought
any women along and we hardly ever mentioned the subject of women during
these sessions. We had plenty of beer to drink and a whole big house at our
disposal, for it was in the Summer time, when his folks were away, that we
held our gatherings. Though there were a dozen other homes like this which I
could speak of, I mention Ed Bauries' place because it was typical of
something I have never encountered elsewhere in the world. Neither Ed
Bauries himself nor any of his friends suspected the sort of books I was
reading nor the things which were occupying my mind. When I blew in I was
greeted enthusiastically - as a clown. It was expected, of me to start
things going. There were about four pianos scattered throughout the big
house to say nothing of the celesta, the organ, guitars, mandolins, fiddles
and what not. Ed Bauries was a nut, a very affable, sympathetic and generous
one too. The sandwiches were always of the best, the beer plentiful, and if
you wanted to stay the night he could fix you up on a divan just as pretty
as you liked. Coming down the street - a big, wide street, somnolent,
luxurious, a street altogether out of the world - I could hear the tinkle of
the piano in the big parlour on the first floor. The windows were wide open
and as I got into range I could see Al Burger or Connie Grimm sprawling in
their big easy chairs, their feet on the window sill, and big beer mugs in
their hands. Probably George Neumiller was at the piano, improvising, his
shirt peeled off and a big cigar in his mouth. They were talking and
laughing while George fooled around, searching for an opening. Soon as he
hit a theme he would call for Ed and Ed would sit beside him, studying it
out in his unprofessional way, then suddenly pouncing on the keys and giving
tit for tat. Maybe when I'd walk in somebody would be trying to stand on his
hands in the next room - there were three big rooms on the first floor which
opened one on to the other and back of them was a garden, an enormous
garden, with flowers, fruit trees, grape vines, statues, fountains an<f
everything. Sometimes when it was too hot they brought the celesta or the
little organ into the garden (and a keg of beer, naturally) and we'd sit
around in the dark laughing and singing - until the neighbours forced us to
stop. Sometimes the music was going on all through the house at once, on
every floor. It was really crazy then, intoxicating, and if there had been
women around it would have spoiled it. Sometimes it was like watching an
endurance contest - Ed Bauries and George Neumiller at the grand piano, each
trying to wear the other out, changing places without stopping, crossing
hands, sometimes felling away to plain chopsticks, sometimes going like a
Wurlitzer. And always something to laugh about all the time. Nobody asked
what you did, what you thought about, and so forth. When you arrived at Ed
Bauries' place you checked your identification marks. Nobody gave a fuck
what size hat you wore or how much you paid for it. It was entertainment
from the word go - and the sandwiches and the drinks were on the house. And
when things got going, three or four pianos at once, the celesta, the organ,
the mandolins, the guitars, beer running through the halls, the mantelpieces
full of sandwiches and cigars, a breeze coming through from the garden,
George Neumiller stripped to the waist and modulating like a fiend, it was
better than any show I've ever seen put on and it didn't cost a cent. In
fact, with the dressing and undressing that went on, I always came away with
a little extra change and a pocketful of good cigars. I never saw any of
them between time - only Monday nights throughout the Summer, when Ed held
open house.
Standing in the garden listening to the din I could scarcely believe
that it was the same city. And if I had ever opened my trap and exposed my
guts it would have been all over. Not one of these bozos amounted to
anything, as the world reckons. They were just good eggs, children, fellows
who liked music and who liked a good time. They liked it so much that
sometimes we had to call the ambulance. Like the night Al Burger twisted his
knee while showing us one of his stunts. Everybody so happy, so full of
music, so lit up, that it took him an hour to persuade us he was really
hurt. We try to carry him to a hospital but it's too far away and besides,
it's such a good joke, that we drop him now and then and that makes him yell
like a maniac. So finally we telephone for help from a police box, and the
ambulance comes and the patrol wagon too. They take Al to the hospital and
the rest of us to the hoose-gow. And on the way we sing at the top of our
lungs. And after we're bailed out we're still feeling good and the cops are
feeling good too, and so we all adjourn to the basement where there's a
cracked piano and we go on singing and playing. All this is like some period
B.C. in history which ends not because there's a war but because even a
joint like Ed Bauries' is not immune to the poison seeping in from the
periphery. Because every street is becoming Myrtle Avenue, because emptiness
is filling the whole continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Because,
after a certain time, you can't enter a single house throughout the length
and breadth of the land and find a man standing on his hands singing. It
just ain't done any more. And there ain't two pianos going at once anywhere,
nor are there two men anywhere willing to play all night just for the fun of
it. Two men who can play like Ed Bauries and George Neumiller are hired by
the radio or the movies and only a thimbleful of their talent is used and
the rest is thrown into the garbage can. Nobody knows, judging from public
spectacles, what talent is disposable in the great American continent. Later
on, and that's why I used to sit around on doorsteps in Tin Pan Alley, I
would while away the afternoons listening to the professionals mugging it
out. That was good too, but it was different. There was no fun in it, it was
a perpetual rehearsal to bring in dollars and cents. Any man in America who
had an ounce of humour in him was saving it up to put himself across. There
were some wonderful nuts among them too, men I'll never forget, men who left
no name behind them, and they were the best we produced. I remember an
anonymous performer on the Keith circuit who was probably the craziest man
in America, and perhaps he got fifty dollars a week for it. Three times a
day, every day in the week, he came out and held the audience spell-bound.
He didn't have an act - he just improvised. He never repeated his jokes or
his stunts. He gave himself prodigally, and I don't think he was a hot fiend
either. He was one of those guys who are born in the corncrakes and the
energy and the joy in him was so fierce that nothing could contain it. He
could play any instrument and dance any step and he could invent a story on
the spot and string it out till the bell rang. He was not only satisfied to
do his own act but he would help the others out. He would stand in the wings
and wait for the right moment to break into the other guy's act. He was the
whole show and it was a show that contained more therapy than the whole
arsenal of modem science. They ought to have paid a man like this the wages
which the President of the United States receives. They ought to sack the
President of the United States and the whole Supreme Court and set up a man
like this as ruler. This man could cure any disease on the calendar. He was
the kind of guy, moreover, as would do it for nothing, if you asked him to.
This is the type of man which empties the insane asylums. He doesn't propose
a cure - he makes everybody crazy. Between this solution and a perpetual
state of war, which is civilization, there is only one other way out - and
that is the road we will all take eventually because everything else is
doomed to failure. The type that represents this one and only way bears a
head with six faces and eight eyes, the head is a revolving lighthouse, and
instead of a triple crown at the top, as there might well be, there is a
hole which ventilates what few brains there are. There is very little brain,
as I say, because there is very little baggage to carry about, because
living in full consciousness, the grey matter passes off into light. This is
the only type of man one can place above the comedian; he neither laughs nor
weeps, he is beyond suffering. We don't recognize him yet because he
is too dose to us, right under the skin, as a matter of fact. When the
comedian catches us in the guts this man, whose name might be God, I
suppose, if he had to use a name, speaks up. When the whole human race is
rocking with laughter, laughing so hard that it hurts, I mean, everybody
then has his foot on the path. In that moment everybody can just as well be
God as anything else. In that moment you have the annihilation of dual,
triple, quadruple and multiple consciousness, which is what makes the grey
matter coil up in dead folds at the top of the skull. At that moment you can
really feel the hole in the top of the head; you know that you once had an
eye there and that this eye was capable of taking in everything at once. The
eye is gone now, but when you laugh until the tears flow and your belly
aches, you are really opening the skylight andventilating the brains. Nobody
can persuade you at that moment to take a gun and kill your enemy; neither
can anybody persuade you to open a fat tome containing the metaphysical
truths of the world and read it. If you know what freedom means, absolute
freedom and not a relative freedom, then you must recognize that this is the
nearest to it you will ever get. If I am against the condition of the world
it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more. I
don't say that God is one grand laugh: I say that you've got to laugh hard
before you can get anywhere near God. My whole aim in life is to get near to
God, that is, to get nearer to myself. That's why it doesn't matter to me
what road I take. But music is very important. Music is a tonic for the
pineal gland. Music isn't Bach or Beethoven; music is the can-opener of the
soul. It makes you terribly quiet inside, makes you aware that there's a
roof to your being.
The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and
disasters, because these things wake one up and one gets very familiar and
intimate with them and finally they become tame again ... no, it is more
like being in a hotel room in Hoboken let us say, and just enough money in
one's pocket for another meal. You are in a city that you never expect to be
in again and you have only to pass the night in your hotel room, but it
takes all the courage and pluck you possess to stay in that room. There must
be a good reason why certain cities, certain places, inspire such loathing
and dread. There must be some kind of perpetual murder going on in these
places. The people are of the same race as you, they go about their business
as people do anywhere, they build the same sort of house, no better, no
worse, they have the same system of education, the same currency, the same
newspapers - and yet they are absolutely different from the other people you
know, and the whole atmosphere is different, and the rhythm is different and
the tension is different. It's almost like looking at yourself in another
incarnation. You know, with a most disturbing certitude, that what governs
life is not money, not politics, not religion, not training, not race, not
language, not customs, but something else, something you're trying to
throtde all the time and which is really throttling you, because otherwise
you wouldn't be terrified all of a sudden and wonder how you were going to
escape. Some cities you don't even have to pass a night in - just an hour or
two is enough to unnerve you. I think of Bayonne that way. I came on it in
the night with a few addresses that had been given me. I had a briefcase
under my arm with a prospectus of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I was
supposed to go under cover of dark and sell the bloody encyclopaedia to some
poor devils who wanted to improve themselves. If I had been dropped off at
Helsingfors I couldn't have felt more ill at ease than walking the streets
of Bayonne. It wasn't an American city to me. It wasn't a city at all, but a
huge octopus wriggling in the dark. The first door I came to looked so
forbidding I didn't even bother to knock; I went like that to several
addresses before I could summon the courage to knock. The first face I took
a look at frightened the shit out of me. I don't mean timidity or
embarrassment - I mean fear. It was the face of a hod-carrier, an ignorant
mick who would as lief fell you with an axe as spit in your eye. I pretended
I had the wrong name and hurried on to the next address. Each time the door
opened I saw another monster. And then I came at last to a poor simp who
really wanted to improve himself and that broke me down. I felt truly
ashamed of myself, of my country, my race, my epoch. I had a devil of a time
persuading him not to buy the damned encyclopaedia. He asked me innocently
what then had brought me to his home - and without a minute's hesitation I
told him an astounding lie, a lie which was later to prove a great truth. I
told him I was only pretending to sell the encyclopaedia in order to meet
people and write about them. That interested him enormously, even more than
the encyclopaedia. He wanted to know what I would write about him, if I
could say. It's taken me twenty years to answer that question, but here it
is. If you would still like to know, John Doe of the City of Bayonne, this
is it... I owe you a great deal because after that lie I told you I left
your house and I tore up the prospectus furnished me by the Encyclopaedia
Britannica and I threw it in the gutter. I said to myself I will never again
go to people under false pretences even if it is to give them the Holy
Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am
going home now and I will sit down and really write about people. And if
anybody knocks at my door to sell me something
I will invite him in and say "why are you doing this?" And if he says
it is because he has to make a living I will oner him what money I have and
beg him once again to think what he is doing. I want to prevent as many men
as possible from pretending that they have to do this or that because they
must earn a living. It is not true. One can starve to death - it is much
better. Every man who voluntarily starves to death throws another cog into
the automatic process. I would rather see a man take a gun and kill his
neighbour, in order to get the food he needs, than keep up the automatic
process by pretending that he has to cam a living. That's what I want to
say, Mr. John Doe.
I pass on. Not the stabbing horror of disaster and calamity, I say, but
the automatic throwback, the stark panorama of the soul's atavistic
struggle. A bridge in North Carolina, near the Tennessee border. Coming out
of lush tobacco fields, low cabins everywhere and the smell of fresh wood
burning. The day passed in a thick lake of waving green. Hardly a soul in
sight. Then suddenly a clearing and I'm over a big gulch spanned by a
rickety wooden bridge. This is the end of the world! How in God's name I got
here and why I'm here I don't know. How am I going to eat? And if I ate the
biggest meal imaginable I would still be sad, frightfully sad. I don't know
where to go from here. This bridge is the end, the end of me, the end of my
known world. This bridge is insanity; there is no reason why it should stand
there and no reason why people should cross it. I refuse to budge another
step, I balk at crossing that crazy bridge. Nearby is a low wall which I lie
against trying to think what to do and where to go. I realize quietly what a
terribly civilized person I am - the need I have for people, conversation,
books, theatre, music, cafes, drinks, and so forth. It's terrible to be
civilized, because when you come to the end of the world you have nothing to
support the terror of loneliness. To be civilized is to have complicated
needs. And a man, when he is full blown, shouldn't need a thing. All day I
had been moving through tobacco fields, and growing more and more uneasy.
What have I to do with all this tobacco? What am I heading into? People
everywhere are producing crops and goods for other people - and I am like a
ghost sliding between all this unintelligible activity. I want to find some
kind of work, but I don't want to be a part of this thing, this infernal
automatic process. I pass through a town and I look at the newspaper telling
what is happening in that town and its environs. It seems to me that nothing
is happening, that the dock has stopped but that these poor devils are
unaware of it. I have a strong intuition, moreover, that there is murder in
the air. I can smell it. A few days back I passed the imaginary line which
divides the North from the South. I wasn't aware of it until a darkie came
along driving a team; when he gets alongside of me he stands up in his seat
and doffs his hat most respectfully. He had snow-white hair and a face of
great dignity. That made me feel horrible: it made me realize that there are
still slaves. This man had to tip his hat to me -because I was of the white
race. Whereas I should have ripped my hat to him! I should have saluted him
as a survivor of all the vile tortures the white men have inflicted on the
black. I should have tipped my hat first, to let him know that I am not a
part of this system, that I am begging forgiveness for all my white brethren
who are too ignorant and cruel to make an honest overt gesture. To-day I
feel their eyes on me all the time; they watch from behind doors, from
behind trees. All very quiet, very peaceful, seemingly. Nigger never say
nuthin'. Nigger he hum all time- White man think nigger learn his place.
Nigger leam nuthin'. Nigger wait. Nigger watch everything white man do.
Nigger no say nuthin', no sir, no siree. But JUST THE SAME THE nigger IS
KILLING THE WHITE MAN OFF!
Every time the nigger looks at a white man he's putting a dagger
through him. It's not the heat, ifs not the hook worm, it's not the bad
crops that's killing the South off - it's the nigger 1 The nigger is giving
off a poison, whether he means to or not. The South is coked and doped with
nigger poison.
Pass on... Sitting outside a barber shop by the James River. I'll be
here just ten minutes, while I take a load off my feet. There's a hotel and
a few stores opposite me; it all tails off quickly, ends like it began - for
no reason. From the bottom of my soul I pity the poor devils who are born
and die here. There is no earthly reason why this place should exist. There
is no reason why anybody should cross the street and get himself a shave and
haircut, or even a sirloin steak. Men, buy yourselves a gun and kill each
other off! Wipe this street out of my mind for ever - it hasn't an ounce of
meaning in it.
The same day, after nightfall. Still plugging on, digging deeper and
deeper into the South. I'm coming away from a little town by a short road
leading to the highway. Suddenly I hear footsteps behind me and soon a young
man passes me on the trot, breathing heavily and cursing with all his might.
I stand there a moment, wondering what it's all about. I hear another man
coming on the trot; he's an older man and he's carrying a gun. He breathes
fairly easy, and not a word out of his trap. Just as he comes in view the
moon breaks through the clouds and I catch a good look at his face. He's a
man hunter. I stand back as the others come up behind him. I'm trembling
with fear. It's the sheriff, I hear a man say, and he's going to get him.
Horrible. I move on towards the highway waiting to hear the shot that will
end it all. I hear nothing - just this heavy breathing of the young man and
the quick eager steps of the mob following behind the sheriff. Just as I get
near the main road a man steps out of the darkness and comes over to me very
quietly. "Where yer goin', son," he says, quiet like and almost tenderly. I
stammer out something about the next town. "Better stay right here, son," he
says. I didn't say another word. I let him take me back into town and hand
me over like a thief. I lay on the floor with about fifty other blokes. I
had a marvellous sexual dream which ended with the guillotine.
I plug on ... It's just as hard to go back as to go f