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.Comeback, Man.Take a bath, get the greasy smell of wops out of your clothesand come on home to the goddamndest climate, the sweetest air, theloveliest women, the coolest breezes, the best prose in all these UnitedStates.(Fante 1991, 228)For the next two decades, Fante continued to urge McWilliams to returnto Los Angeles.In 1965, after McWilliams referred to New York approv-ingly in the pages of the Nation, Fante objected, It s okay for you to say onpaper that you re glad you went to that scabrous place where you now186 A MERI CAN P ROP HET dwell, but I tell you that your place in time and history today is LA and TheWest (Fante 1991, 288).McWilliams found New York agreeable enough, however, especiallyafter he and Iris secured a two-bedroom apartment at Broadway and West115th Street.Located across the street from Columbia University, theirbuilding was close to leafy Riverside Park and only one block from the116th Street subway stop that connected McWilliams to his downtownof9 ce.Furthermore, their spacious apartment was rent-controlled asigni9 cant boon given their modest means.Although the 115th Street apart-ment would become their permanent residence, McWilliams seemed toregard that fact as more or less accidental.Had they known that they werestaying in New York, he later observed, they probably would have settled inthe suburbs.For years, too, he and Iris considered returning to their hilltophouse on Alvarado Street.The move to West 115th Street completed the arcthat he had started in his teens from isolated natural splendor to the enor-mous village of Los Angeles to high-density, vertical living in New York.Although he never became part of any particular literary, political, orsocial scene in New York, McWilliams attended some meetings of aninformal group of writers and publishing people calling itself TheObservers. The group had approached Kirchwey with an offer to supplythe Nation with occasional reports on blacklisting and censorship.The par-ticipants included Arthur Miller, whose play The Crucible would recreatethe Salem witch trials on Broadway in 1953; William Shirer, who had wit-nessed and would document the history of Nazi Germany in The Rise andFall of the Third Reich (1960); journalist Edgar Snow, author of Red Starover China (1938); Merle Miller, president of the Authors Guild of Amer-ica and board member of the ACLU; and Matthew Josephson, whose biog-raphy of Sidney Hillman appeared in 1952.Miller and Josephson also con-tributed to McWilliams s special issue on civil liberties that same year.Themeetings, which often turned into late-night bull sessions, were usuallyheld at the Greenwich Village apartment of Jack Goodman of Simon &Schuster.The Observers disbanded, however, after Goodman was sum-moned to Washington and questioned about the speci9 cs of theirexchanges.Someone had passed along detailed information from themeetings to federal of9 cials.Years later, McWilliams wrote that he wouldlike to learn the identity of the stool pigeon responsible for ending thoselively sessions (ECM, 148).The Vile Decade 187 From his perch in Malibu, Fante had a slightly different view of thecrackdown that preoccupied The Observers.When the CUAC hearingswere televised in Los Angeles, Fante described them to McWilliams as ahideously fascinating show. He focused on the reactions that the testi-mony of Ellenore Abowitz drew from Fante s fellow patrons, many of themservicemen, in a Western Avenue bar.Born in Fresno her maiden namewas Bogigian Abowitz was a labor activist and EPIC alumna who joinedthe Communist Party in Los Angeles in the mid-1930s (Healey and Isser-man 1990, 77).McWilliams had known her at least since 1940, when heand Fante attended the Conference for Democratic Action in Fresno(Fante 1991, 322).Later, she began to appear frequently in his diary, oftenin the company of her close friend Robert Kenny, who served as her lawyerduring the hearings.A typical entry places her at a CSO dinner for EdwardRoybal in 1950, where McWilliams was on the program.Afterward, he,Abowitz, and Kenny stayed for drinks and then repaired to McWilliams shouse for a nightcap.For Fante, watching Abowitz s testimony was acutely painful because[the bar patrons] hated the sight of her, of her Jewishness, and the balefulirony [of] her features.It was a very cruel business (1991, 229).WhenHUAC investigated the screenwriters guild, however, he did not regard thehearings as completely baseless.Fante had witnessed 9 rsthand the maneu-vering by Communists within the guild, and he was reluctant to concedethat all of his colleagues were victims.He explained his views in a letter toMcWilliams.It is not easy for me to say that the Committee was merely witch-hunt-ing, because I think the investigation did reveal the Communist stran-gle-hold on the guild, the ef9 cient methods of a few well-organized guysto direct policy, their great skill at parliamentary procedure, and theirin9 nite patience in an organization composed of notoriously impatientguys.Nor is it so easy to say that, come the time for liquidations, theywould shed a human tear for anyone who failed to agree with their wayof running the show.If the tables were turned, if those accused werepermitted to make accusations and mete out punishment, how manywould say, go and sin no more? (229)He also wondered about the Communists ability to screen out writerswhose ideologies were incompatible with their own.188 A MERI CA N P ROP HET I noted too that of the 175 or so names brought to light, 95% were work-ing writers.This is an interesting 9 gure, for, day in and day out, about200 writers are regularly employed in this town.Is the implication tooremote that, unless you carry a party card, you can t work? I offer this notas a fact, but only for your consideration.(229)In the same letter, Fante recounted for McWilliams the ironic blessingsthe anti-Communist hearings had visited on his own life and work.In hisview, writer-director Carl Foreman, who had : ed Hollywood for Englandto continue working, wanted to 9 lm Full of Life, the story of a youngCatholic family and their home life, to distance himself from the conse-quences of his political views.Did this Communist buy such a novel because it appealed to his phi-losophy, because he found (all at once) great warmth and tenderness inthe script? Or did he, hearing the howling of wolves coming frombehind the hills, quickly say to himself: this is the kind of material I wantto be caught with, when they catch me? (229 30)The other bidder on Full of Life, King Brothers, had lined up EdwardDmytryk as director.A member of the Hollywood Ten, Dmytryk hadalready served his sentence for contempt in a West Virginia federal prisonbefore repudiating Communism in a signed af9 davit.For Fante,Dmytryk s interest in the picture was further proof of his theory.Dmytryk! The wolves had already torn his britches and taken a bigchunk out of his ass, and he of course is afraid they might come yowl-ing after him again.I can only say that this is the most fortuitous 40thousand a man ever made: two guys pulling and tugging on a priest scassock, both of them trying to prove how nicely the sack-cloth 9 ts.(230)In the end, Fante s interest in character and motive trumped his interestin ideology.For the life of me, I can t understand why they embraced Communism.Where is the charm of this philosophy? Where is the human side of it.Those who recanted, and those who didn t.it s all the same to me:they are no different than Nazis in their grim and moody and vengefulfaith in the future [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Comeback, Man.Take a bath, get the greasy smell of wops out of your clothesand come on home to the goddamndest climate, the sweetest air, theloveliest women, the coolest breezes, the best prose in all these UnitedStates.(Fante 1991, 228)For the next two decades, Fante continued to urge McWilliams to returnto Los Angeles.In 1965, after McWilliams referred to New York approv-ingly in the pages of the Nation, Fante objected, It s okay for you to say onpaper that you re glad you went to that scabrous place where you now186 A MERI CAN P ROP HET dwell, but I tell you that your place in time and history today is LA and TheWest (Fante 1991, 288).McWilliams found New York agreeable enough, however, especiallyafter he and Iris secured a two-bedroom apartment at Broadway and West115th Street.Located across the street from Columbia University, theirbuilding was close to leafy Riverside Park and only one block from the116th Street subway stop that connected McWilliams to his downtownof9 ce.Furthermore, their spacious apartment was rent-controlled asigni9 cant boon given their modest means.Although the 115th Street apart-ment would become their permanent residence, McWilliams seemed toregard that fact as more or less accidental.Had they known that they werestaying in New York, he later observed, they probably would have settled inthe suburbs.For years, too, he and Iris considered returning to their hilltophouse on Alvarado Street.The move to West 115th Street completed the arcthat he had started in his teens from isolated natural splendor to the enor-mous village of Los Angeles to high-density, vertical living in New York.Although he never became part of any particular literary, political, orsocial scene in New York, McWilliams attended some meetings of aninformal group of writers and publishing people calling itself TheObservers. The group had approached Kirchwey with an offer to supplythe Nation with occasional reports on blacklisting and censorship.The par-ticipants included Arthur Miller, whose play The Crucible would recreatethe Salem witch trials on Broadway in 1953; William Shirer, who had wit-nessed and would document the history of Nazi Germany in The Rise andFall of the Third Reich (1960); journalist Edgar Snow, author of Red Starover China (1938); Merle Miller, president of the Authors Guild of Amer-ica and board member of the ACLU; and Matthew Josephson, whose biog-raphy of Sidney Hillman appeared in 1952.Miller and Josephson also con-tributed to McWilliams s special issue on civil liberties that same year.Themeetings, which often turned into late-night bull sessions, were usuallyheld at the Greenwich Village apartment of Jack Goodman of Simon &Schuster.The Observers disbanded, however, after Goodman was sum-moned to Washington and questioned about the speci9 cs of theirexchanges.Someone had passed along detailed information from themeetings to federal of9 cials.Years later, McWilliams wrote that he wouldlike to learn the identity of the stool pigeon responsible for ending thoselively sessions (ECM, 148).The Vile Decade 187 From his perch in Malibu, Fante had a slightly different view of thecrackdown that preoccupied The Observers.When the CUAC hearingswere televised in Los Angeles, Fante described them to McWilliams as ahideously fascinating show. He focused on the reactions that the testi-mony of Ellenore Abowitz drew from Fante s fellow patrons, many of themservicemen, in a Western Avenue bar.Born in Fresno her maiden namewas Bogigian Abowitz was a labor activist and EPIC alumna who joinedthe Communist Party in Los Angeles in the mid-1930s (Healey and Isser-man 1990, 77).McWilliams had known her at least since 1940, when heand Fante attended the Conference for Democratic Action in Fresno(Fante 1991, 322).Later, she began to appear frequently in his diary, oftenin the company of her close friend Robert Kenny, who served as her lawyerduring the hearings.A typical entry places her at a CSO dinner for EdwardRoybal in 1950, where McWilliams was on the program.Afterward, he,Abowitz, and Kenny stayed for drinks and then repaired to McWilliams shouse for a nightcap.For Fante, watching Abowitz s testimony was acutely painful because[the bar patrons] hated the sight of her, of her Jewishness, and the balefulirony [of] her features.It was a very cruel business (1991, 229).WhenHUAC investigated the screenwriters guild, however, he did not regard thehearings as completely baseless.Fante had witnessed 9 rsthand the maneu-vering by Communists within the guild, and he was reluctant to concedethat all of his colleagues were victims.He explained his views in a letter toMcWilliams.It is not easy for me to say that the Committee was merely witch-hunt-ing, because I think the investigation did reveal the Communist stran-gle-hold on the guild, the ef9 cient methods of a few well-organized guysto direct policy, their great skill at parliamentary procedure, and theirin9 nite patience in an organization composed of notoriously impatientguys.Nor is it so easy to say that, come the time for liquidations, theywould shed a human tear for anyone who failed to agree with their wayof running the show.If the tables were turned, if those accused werepermitted to make accusations and mete out punishment, how manywould say, go and sin no more? (229)He also wondered about the Communists ability to screen out writerswhose ideologies were incompatible with their own.188 A MERI CA N P ROP HET I noted too that of the 175 or so names brought to light, 95% were work-ing writers.This is an interesting 9 gure, for, day in and day out, about200 writers are regularly employed in this town.Is the implication tooremote that, unless you carry a party card, you can t work? I offer this notas a fact, but only for your consideration.(229)In the same letter, Fante recounted for McWilliams the ironic blessingsthe anti-Communist hearings had visited on his own life and work.In hisview, writer-director Carl Foreman, who had : ed Hollywood for Englandto continue working, wanted to 9 lm Full of Life, the story of a youngCatholic family and their home life, to distance himself from the conse-quences of his political views.Did this Communist buy such a novel because it appealed to his phi-losophy, because he found (all at once) great warmth and tenderness inthe script? Or did he, hearing the howling of wolves coming frombehind the hills, quickly say to himself: this is the kind of material I wantto be caught with, when they catch me? (229 30)The other bidder on Full of Life, King Brothers, had lined up EdwardDmytryk as director.A member of the Hollywood Ten, Dmytryk hadalready served his sentence for contempt in a West Virginia federal prisonbefore repudiating Communism in a signed af9 davit.For Fante,Dmytryk s interest in the picture was further proof of his theory.Dmytryk! The wolves had already torn his britches and taken a bigchunk out of his ass, and he of course is afraid they might come yowl-ing after him again.I can only say that this is the most fortuitous 40thousand a man ever made: two guys pulling and tugging on a priest scassock, both of them trying to prove how nicely the sack-cloth 9 ts.(230)In the end, Fante s interest in character and motive trumped his interestin ideology.For the life of me, I can t understand why they embraced Communism.Where is the charm of this philosophy? Where is the human side of it.Those who recanted, and those who didn t.it s all the same to me:they are no different than Nazis in their grim and moody and vengefulfaith in the future [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]