American Perspective; 9 & 10; The Capri Letters; Images of America

Okay. OK? Hello, quote, oh, would some power the gifted gifts to see ourselves as either see us?

It would for many a blunder, freest, and foolish notion. Well, as you know, this is from Robert Burns, and as you also know, it's from poem called Two Allows on Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church. This is the ninth program of American perspective. We've been talking about books about the American and Europe and the impact of Europe upon him. We've talked about Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Fawn, Hawthorne's attenuated Puritan ism, was so baffled by the complications of original and just run of the male sin, and in Rome that he finally said in puzzlement, we go all wrong by two strenuous a resolution to go all right.

Which is really something, I think, for a man who really felt that a sculptor who was any good should first learn how to sculpt a high hat in a morning coat. We talked about the strenuous idle knocking of Mark Twain. In fact, Mark Twain has become a symbol for a particular type of American abroad. I read just the other day in article by Malcolm Muggerage, a real name, on the American in England, and he writes Americans when they land in England, as it were fall onto the bosom of Mark Twain, or of Henry James, pine noisily for Kansas City, or I think Chelsea's cute. We've talked about Henry James Daisy Miller in the portrait of a lady, two versions really of the same kind of new American woman in the world. One is a comedy in which the heroine dies, and the other is a tragedy in which she lives. And for all his novels and essays on the subject, James never really resolved the problem of a new civilization, in conflict with an old.

We've talked about Sinclair Lewis, who in Doddsworth looked at the whole transatlantic adventure in rough and ready materialistic terms, and gave us two sides of the American coin in Sam and Fran Doddsworth. Last time, we observed F. Scott Fitzgerald in Tinder's The Night, letting his tragedy play out against a European background, though the real conflict was not between cultures, but within one, the American. Doddsworth was published in 1929, Tinder is The Night in 1934, since then, depression and war I should think would have considerably complicated our views of things European, and certainly made the necessity of having an image of Asia more important. Now, I'd like to talk about these things some time, but right now I want to say a few things, not about the American image in Europe, but about the European image, sorry, of America.

What does the European, or any foreigner, for that matter, think of the United States, what is the picture in his mind, and where does he get this picture, whatever it is? As you know, it's a prime assumption of what goes on here that we get much of our picture of other cultures from fiction, from the novel, from the short story rather than from more directly factual material. I mean, I think there's something to be said for the idea that the fictional picture is frequently somewhat stronger than one's buildup from anthropological or sociological information. I mean, I think our picture of the organization, man, is probably more dependent on cash, McCall, or the man in the great flannel suit, or even the Lincoln Lords than it is on the actual study by William H. White of the organization, man. But you know, it would be fatuous to say that this is the whole story. Other countries get a picture of what we are like from a number of sources. Now, for instance, they get an image of the United States from tourists, and there are

plenty of them, this year, about 2 million Americans will leave the North American continent, and in Europe they will spend more money than Europe will get from the sale of all its automobiles in the United States. As a matter of fact, they will spend almost 25 percent more money. But the trouble with the tourist is an image creator, I think, is that a tourist is a tourist with the faults and virtues of a tourist rather than of his own nationality. And as far as the image he creates, it seems to me it all depends upon who is looking. Now, for instance, what about this? He wears his shirt outside his pants, his wife has carelessly thrown her mink stole in the back of the car. They roam the continent as if they owned it. One only the best to complain when they get less. They apply the same terrifying zeal to vacationing that they do to working. The American?

Not at all. He's Joseph Wechsberg in the New York Times talking about the German. Or what about this one? Sure of the superiority of his way of life, he profess his condescending sympathy for the native. He finds that these people know nothing about comfort or sanitary conditions, that they are lazy and because of this poor, he has more or less consciously the feeling that if a really efficient and methodical race is owned naturally, improve the place it would be a country to live in. But while waiting, the Navy population will just have to be put up with for what it is. The Navy population finds him rather irritating. The American? No, as the Frenchman in Spain, I got the article from a Paris newspaper. Or one more, quote, you recognize him from afar. He makes a vivid spot in the picture, sorry. He is always and everywhere the same, carrying with him in his costume and his busy autonomy, that indefinable expression of not considering anything away from home worth making

a toilet for. The unanimity with which these people abroad undress is indeed something surprising and say what we will, it seems to me in a certain way to be a sort of proof of that element of the still untamed and barbarous which some observers profess to find in the national character. Is this the American abroad? No. The Englishman abroad from one of Henry James' Parisian letters written May 13, 1876. Instantly I took that letter from Adeline's edition, published by the New York University Press. Europe gets its image from American GIs abroad. But I think the GI too is a special case. I mean, to a great extent, he lives in isolation. And then, you know, there are always also the consequences of the paradox of the uniform. The uniform identifies you, but it also makes you anonymous. So I think the picture is not really representing.

Europe gets its image of the United States from the news, or at least from the headlines, from McCarthy, from unleashing Chiang Kai-shek, from Suez, and the missiles. The ones that don't go off make more noise than the ones that do. Europe gets its image of the United States from the fairs we are represented at abroad. Brussels in 58, Moscow in Sakholnicki Park last year. Sometimes this isn't so good. Max Franco wrote in the New York Times, the United States has seen in Sakholnicki Park is a nation obsessed with comfort and the gadgetry of comfort with gay color and sound with fun and a good time. Europe gets part of its picture of the United States by seeing with its own eyes. But it's been a little tough since the war. There's been a great scarcity of first-hand knowledge. You perhaps remember that it wasn't until 1957 that England let its tourists abroad take

any money with them, and then it was $275. The amount has increased some sense, as you also know that the Fulbright Commission does what it can to bring distinguished writers, diplomats, and so forth to this country. To look around it hopes that they are the image makers for their countries and it hopes that they are sympathetic image makers, but the program can hardly be called large scale. Europe gets its picture of the United States from the movies, personally I think we hear too much of this. I believe India makes more films in a year than this Hollywood and I understand Japan makes almost as many, but the fact remains that 50% of all the films shown in France are American, 60% of those shown in Britain are American, 70% of those shown in Italy are American, 90% of those shown in Ireland are American. Personally I doubt if our films create a seriously destructive picture of the United States as many Americans seem to believe, but at least one national magazine is pretty concerned

with this idea, this is from a national magazine, this is from the movie column. A foreign critics tend to regard Hollywood movies as literal reflections of the American way of life, and the significance is they can find in trifles or a caution. This Jean-Dutour, film critic for the Conservative Paris Weekly Crossroads, has found in the suburban bedroom, farce, rally round the flag boys called the burning brunette in France, conclusive evidence of the complete debasement of the American male. He points out for example at Joan Woodward whom he took for an average American housewife, I've seen anything wrong with that, is busy with suburban committee meetings and other activities that in France anyway should have been occupying her husband Paul Newman. And that Newman, when confronted by the seductive Joan Collins, feels obliged to defend these virtue instead of grabbing her, quote, no French husband, due to a quote, even a

paragon of conjugal fidelity would have resisted her for more than 30 seconds. Dutour goes on, the movie is one of those documents that the United States produces from time to time that give the alert spectator a frightful picture of their morality and of their way of life, alert spectator Dutour concludes. It is an important work because it consecrates the curious fact of incalculable ethnological significance, the exchange of sexes in America. The women have become the men and the men have become the women. Well, I don't really believe this for a minute, but it is true that foreign commentators occasionally mention this kind of thing. What are you supposed for instance they would do with a film like anniversary walls, which is in its own way is infinitely more, well I should say, offensive than what we claim to find offensive in movies from France or Italy, for instance.

Europe also gets part of its image of the United States from television. Last fall there were about nine hours of U.S. television on Britain's large commercial channel, Channel 9 in England. The American items were wagon train, highway patrol, Annie Oakley, Mickey Mouse, Popeye, I love Lucy, private secretary, O.S. S. and I have about 15 others here, but that gives us the ten most popular. Now I don't for a minute think this is necessarily to be deplored. My own observation of English television is that the programs produced for mass production are about the same, give or take a little as the programs produced for a mass audience in the United States. An interesting thing just to leave Europe for a second is that the popularity of these programs goes clear around the world. For instance among the most popular programs in Japan are Superman, Lassie, the Adventures

of Rintin and the Lone Ranger, and you'll notice something about that in Japan, as elsewhere in the world, the formula for success seems to be to have a child or an animal a star. Of course if you can have a child an animal a co-stars, the road to popularity is assured. But Europe's image or anybody else's image of the United States it seems to me also comes from literature, for better or for worse, it comes from literature. I read just the other day an article by Andre Moore-Wann which he said, the average American knows the French Revolution through Dickens and Dumont. The average Frenchman knows the Civil War through Gone with the Wind. There's nothing to choose between them. Well, I think a rather spectacular example of the power of fiction to produce an image appears in Harold R. Isaac's book, about a year old now I think, scratches on our mind

published by John Day, the subtitle of the book is American Images of China and India. Now, Isaac's set out to find out what the American image of China and India were by interviewing 181 Americans occupying comparatively important positions in our society, educators, legislators, missionaries, businessmen, and so on. Many had had more or less intimate contact over a period of years with China, some didn't. And out of their experiences and memories, Isaac tries to build up their image of China, of the 181 interviewees, sorry, of the 181 interviewees, 69 mentioned Pearl Buck as a major source of their own impressions of China and the impressions were of a wonderfully

attractive people. No single book, apparently, about China has had a greater impact than her famous novel, The Good Earth, and I suppose it was for this that she got the Nobel Prize. It could almost be said, as Isaac's, that for a whole generation of Americans, she created Exapropto, the Chinese, in the same sense that Dickens created for so many of us, the people who lived in the squalid slums of Victorian England. The Good Earth, as you know, is a novel about a Chinese peasant and his wife, who have a pretty tough struggle against adversity and the cruelies of men and the angers of nature. Came out in 1931, it was a bestseller from the start. The publishers claim that in all editions, it sold over two million copies. And then in 1937, it appeared as a film, it was a remarkable and powerful and successful film.

It was seen by 23 million Americans and by 42 million other people throughout the world. Together then, the book and the film, and it takes the two of them, I guess, the Good Earth replaced the fantasy image of China and the Chinese held by most Americans with a somewhat more realistic picture of what China was like and a more intimate and appealing picture of the Chinese people himself, perhaps it's time to do something like this again. Indeed, the Good Earth accomplished the tremendous task of providing faceless faces for the faceless mass. And having said that, I would auto-point out too, as far as Europe is concerned, that literary influences have certainly reversed direction on the Atlantic over the last 40 years. For some time, European writers have worked strongly under the influence of American writers, not entirely, but it used to be, not at all, so it's something.

And a major indication of the truth of this fact is that American literature is now being taught in British universities. This year, King's College London has a lectureship in American literature. The University of Manchester has had a lectureship for three years, nodding him now has a course in American studies, which I can hardly imagine does not include the study of American literature. And this year, leads, for the first time, has a full professorship in American literature. Of course, these are all red, brick, and white tile universities, it's true that we have not yet established a professorship or a continuing professorship at Oxbridge. Now, all the image-seeking devices I have so far mentioned appear in a book that I have been reading lately, as others see us, the United States, through foreign eyes, edited

by France and Joseph, and published by the Princeton University Press. Contributors to this book come from 20 countries around the world, including such distinguished commentators as Dennis Brogan of England, Raimo and Roma, France, and Luigi Barzini, Jr., of Italy. They have written of their own and their country's views of the United States. Now, although I'm not going into what the non-European writers think today, the truth is that the writers are from all over the world, the Philippines, Indonesia, and so on. Mr. Joseph, the editor, gives all of these writers a good deal of freedom, but he asks them, you know, by the bias they go along to answer three questions. In what respects, sorry, in what respects, that's right.

As your stay in the United States changed your former ideas about the United States and its people. Second, how does your present view of the United States and its people compare with that held in your country by the population in general and by its main social and intellectual groups? And three, what in your opinion can the people of your country and the United States learn from each other? My other see us as a fine book, every contributor is competent, most are brilliant. And I gather that apparently most wrote their contributions in English because only a few of the articles is the name of a translator appended. All the contributors I've spent some time in the United States, some many years over a long period of years, as much as 35 years. It's not consecutive for 35 years, but on and off over a long period. In general, they are sympathetic to us, but they are also sharply critical. No, I can't go very far and in a few minutes, but several things about as other see

us seem to me very striking. And I'm under the illusion that in a way they footnote some of the things that have been said earlier in the series. For one thing, it is amazing. It is incredible. How long facts and information seem to survive after they have ceased to be so? We laugh when we hear that the Russians are still quoting Dickens to illustrate London economic conditions, but it's not so funny when I noticed that present-day readers of John Dispassus 1919 of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath of Hemingway's The Sun also rises and of Caldwell's tobacco road frequently takes such works as actually representative of American life today. Now, I wouldn't want to be understood, I don't mean for a minute that the contributors themselves have feel this way, but they frequently refer to large sections of the population in their own countries who seem to feel this way.

A mild way, I would say this is a cultural lag, and it results in this kind of thing. I'm not going to identify the country here, maybe I won't need to, but in one country where this kind of thing is particularly prevalent, from 1939 to 1952, the official curriculum for the bachelor's degree included the following description under the third-year history course. Name in the course, the United States of North America, description. The materialistic and inferior spirit of American civilization, lack of fundamental principles and moral unity, immoral financial practices, their unjust aggression against Spain and the Hispanic American countries, Nicaragua, Haiti, moral superiority of Hispanic America over North America. 1939 to 1952, I mean, it's fine thing to get images from Europe, but what are you going to do with someone who thinks that the Postman always rings twice as a social document?

In article after article, the significance of literature, of fiction in creating the image comes up. Dennis Brogan, you know, practically the dean of foreign commentators upon the United States, I'm sure you're familiar with his fine book, The American Character, for instance, says that Jack London's The Iron Hill, which, as you know, suggested a few bitter things about American democracy, anyway, Brogan says that this book had a very important influence upon an iron beven, the very able British labor leader. And Brogan specifically mentions some of the image makers of 1925, it does if I'd find a page. Some of the most savage critics of American life, like Dreiser, were read and admired in England

before they really established themselves in America. The dead culture, this is in quotes of Boston, was condemned either in the terms of Mr. Elliott's early poems, or in the wave of bitter hostility that swept all Europe after the execution of Sackling, Vinsetti, and found popular expression in Upton Sinclair's Boston. Sinclair Lewis was widely read, and the term, Babbitt, passed into the language. Mr. Joe, that's C. E. M. Joe, the English popular philosopher, called his anti-American die tribe, the Babbitt, Warren, and then Jacques Fremont of Switzerland also comments, this is very brief, I could have written it out, I guess, criticism of American civilization frequently enough expressed is often based on the books of American novelist. Not so very long ago, Babbitt stood for the whole of America. Today it is from the knowledge of Faulkner, or perhaps a place of Tennessee Williams that the reading public tends to build its picture of American life. Well, I'm all for saying that art should stand on its own legs, but I should say that

from all this it would seem that the one thing, the one charge against the United States that should be removed by the fact that Europeans are reading these very critical books by American authors is the one that we are complacent and that we do not worry about ourselves. The other thing is that almost without exception the contributors find that their attitude toward the United States changed after they visited it. This is a crashing cliche, I'm sure, I mean what could be more obvious, but what's rather interesting I think is how the change took place. For example, direct experience in the United States emphasizes certain economic considerations of which one is not unaware, but which there is a tendency from a distance to underestimate.

The hostility of the French workment toward American capitalism, quote, American capitalism stems to a large extent from ignorance and ideological prejudices. Maybe it is the non-privileged class, the workers who profit most from American style capitalism. A high standard of living changes their lot much more than that of the privilege. The middle class in the United States lives no better than the middle class of an average of an averagely developed European country and in certain respects it has a more difficult existence and although the benefits of American wealth are less unequally distributed than many French leftists think. For many Americans, particularly for the young people, life is not so easy as is often imagined. In the United States as everywhere else one must work and work hard. And Julian Mariahs of Spain makes a comment which I have heard other Europeans make. Ordinarily it is feared that life in the United States will be hectic and it turns out

rather that it is calm. People speak of the crowds and actually the great danger that continually threatens his loneliness. There is the myth of the country's noise but in two years I did not hear a radio in an adjoining house and not infrequently I cock my ear avidly to catch the sound of footsteps in the street. This is a pretty common observation. And there are some subjects which nearly all the contributors bring up indicating that whatever their actual significance, I mean their truth I should say, they are an important part of what makes the American image to other people. Most for instance comment upon the GI as demonstrating both the merits and the defects of America. The funny thing is in general they deplore the adolescence of the GI. Since most GIs are adolescent I don't find this particularly objectionable.

And they also talk a good deal about the general isolation of American military personnel abroad. As a matter of fact a recent encounter magazine has a long article on this subject. But the picture of the GI is really not destructive at all. Everyone sees prohibition as a pious disaster. But then doesn't everyone hear too. All are puzzled by the presence of so much prejudice in a democracy and so are we. All mention McCarthy. And all also mention a great many cliches. But cliches are not I think they all add up to a perspective of America. This is N-E-T National Educational Television.

This is N-E-T National Educational Television.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Hello. This is American perspective. Last time I talked about the ways in which Europeans get their image of the United States and specifically I talked about a recent book of essays published by Princeton University

Press called as Other Seous. Now I want to continue the theme but this time I want to drop on fiction for illustration. I'm going back to Italy again. I really do know that there are other countries in Europe. It just so happens that the books I've picked seem to be mostly about Italy. Here's a rather scrawny young American woman explaining how she happened to be picked up by a handsome young Neapolitan. Oh Harry you know how these Italians are. They're so sure of themselves. They look one in the eyes and if they see a reply, a smile of sympathy and a woman's eyes, they think they've been authorized, even invited to continue. But we who don't consider our personal feeling so important and don't believe that we have to follow our instincts so unhesitating ly and aren't used to confusing sincerity with innocence. We're taken by surprise.

And here's a young American art historian describing the people on Capri. He's just arrived. He's taking his first look. At Capri there lived hundreds of idlers of every kind, vice and nationality. People different from one another and each variable in himself but all similar and constant in one irimidial defect. They're physical and moral impotence. Poor half-spent creatures who finding no spark of life in themselves anymore, busy themselves with the affairs of others, even if those others are as dead as they. Seen from outside their actions appeared lively, sufficiently so at least to feed the last embers in their lives, curiosity and gossip. Now these remarks, as you know, if you've followed this series, could have been made and certainly similar ones have been made by Ralph Waldo Emerson, maybe by Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Fran or Sam Doddsworth, or even

by Dick Diver by the time he was drunkenly fighting taxi cab drivers in Rome. By some matter of fact, they weren't. And they were written by Mariel Soldati, an Italian novelist, film director and television performer. He's now in his early fifties, but when he was a young man, he spent two years in the United States on a fellowship at Columbia and he traveled around the United States. About this experience, he wrote a book, America, Prima Amara, but so far as I know, this book is not available in English. His comments in English about us appear in the novel, The Cap Reletters, published in the United States by Alfred Knop in 1956, but the book had already won the premium Strega in Italy in 1954.

Unfriendly critics of Soldati say that all his novels read like film scripts, but none of his novels have ever been made into a film. As a matter of fact, however, Soldati has directed and made into films, the works of writers, more distinguished than himself, for instance, Alberto Moravia. Now, talking about the Cap Reletters is not going to be very easy because, among other things, it's a thriller and it's a kind of a mystery story and it would obviously be unfair to Mr. Soldati and Mr. Knop and besides, it might be rather expensive to tell the whole business. And besides, I think the retelling of plots is essentially a bore, it's not essential to the points I want to make. But in spite of this, I'd like to try talking about the Cap Reletters and in spite also of the

fact that when it first appeared in the United States, it received a mixed critical reception. Now, by mixed critical reception, I don't mean that no one liked it. It was, in fact, the book of the Week in the Saturday Review of Literature. The Cap Reletters is not the best novel I've ever read, but it's certainly not the worst. It's continuously interesting and it makes the number of points about the international experience, which I think, well, for one thing, I've always thought they were so so I'm glad to see them brought up and I think it's important to have them made. It is interestingly ironic on at least three levels and the translator, Archibald Kolkuhun, has managed to make the Americans in the translation, actually speak idiomatic English. In the literary situation by Malcolm Cowley, incidentally, I heavily depended sometimes upon Malcolm Cowley for ideas, not so much in this discussion, but anyway, in a chapter in the literary situation,

Cowley is discussing the different kinds of novels that young American writers have written since the Second World War and among them is this. There is the novel about Puritans abroad. Some well-educated young Americans are traveling in Italy, Spain, or one of the Arab countries. They come in contact with peasants or Bedouins, who, by their fakooned vitality and readiness for action, reveal the essential bloodlessness of the travelers. The novel takes one of two turns. Either the Americans are morally ruined by trying to imitate the peasants or else, in memory of Ian Forster's a room with the view, the hero and heroine are redeemed into their natural passion itself. This is a comment by an American writer about American novels, but as a matter of fact, it's a pretty good description of the Capri letters. Of course, the Capri letters was written by an Italian. Our Americans are

seen through foreign eyes. The translator can make them speak American English, but he can't really naturalize them. So with the Capri letters, we get a perspective of America. We get an idea of what, well, someone from another country thinks about Americans. The scene of the Capri letters is Italy, principally Rome and Capri, although we also go to Paris and we go to the area around New York. The period, the time consumed in the novel, covers from 1944 to 1950. As a matter of fact, the time scheme is worked out pretty well. This subject is, I know an old one, by now I suppose, is a conflict between Puritan morals and pagan sensuality. And now in 1956 or 54, soldotty can be almost clinically explicit about matters, which Hawthorne could only bring in by reference to mythology or legend or Renaissance

history, which everyone knows was very wicked. And of course, Henry James could never bring in such matters at all. We are told that Isabel Archer had a child, but we somehow feel it was probably by Parthenogenesis. The point of view in the novel, well, so dotty presents himself, really uses his own name as the narrator, but as a matter of fact, most of the novel is supposed to be a kind of first draft for a movie scenario written by the principal male character. Capri letters pretty well populated novel, but for our purposes, I think it necessary to mention only five. First, we have Harry and Jane Summers. These are two Americans who meet in Italy. During the Second World War, they get married immediately after the war, spend some time in the United States, but they subsequently

go back to Europe, where Harry works for UNESCO. Now, soldotty goes to some trouble to point out that, in a sense, both Harry and Jane are Europeanized. Harry is an artist story, and he specializes in the 13th century, and he's an expert on cavalini, among others. And besides this, two of his favorite artists are Andrea Del Sarto and Sebastiano Del Piersmbo. Now, these two are, of course, they're after the 13th century, but these two artists live lives that, in some respects, closely parallel, Harry's own life. Of course, his life is somewhat shabbier in theirs, perhaps this seems so, because they were somewhat more distinguished persons. Harry is just an ordinary run of the male person who happens in addition to being an art historian. And Jane had gone to school in Europe, and besides that had visited Europe many times when she was young. They're two children, our name

Duchio and Donatella. There's not much doubt that they are Italianated. And this very fact, I think, lends a kind of pathetic quality to their attempt to abandon American conventions, as well as geography and given names. And the attempt is doomed to failure because their picture, or their Italy, is in their heads. And there's no Italian in the world who could, over the long haul, make this Italy forever real for them. Third character is Dora Corrati, a Roman prostitute from the south of Italy, and the mistress of Harry Summers. And then it's counterpoint Aldo, a handsome young man about Italy, impoverished, Aldo, is Jane's lover. And finally, the fifth character, it's necessary to remember, I think, is Don Rafaeli. He's the chief arranger of things on the Isle of Capric, and

eventually he is its chief administrative officer. Now these five, then, Harry, and Jane, and Dora, and Aldo, and Don Rafaeli. And Abel sold out here to say a good deal about what one European thinks about the Americans, what a European thinks about Europeans, and besides that, to comment on the difference between illusion and reality. So to begin with. So a lot his view of at least one American marriage is a little frightening. When we first meet Harry, he's carrying a bottle of milk. And one has a feeling that this is intended to be symbolic. So Harry, as in his 30s, he still, and this is a brief quote, has a delicate, almost adolescent chin. And Jane isn't, isn't much juicier, really, a riper. She has a small, thin, nervous body, and she is the image of weakness and unhappiness. Now, about the time these two

meet. They also get involved in passionate love affairs, one with an Italian woman, the other with an Italian man. And these affairs seem to be composed in about equal parts of bliss and remorse. One would haul in the word puritanism, but in this particular discussion of the difference between American conscience and Italian fun, one of the characters, and this complicates the story a little, Jane, is a Roman Catholic. Now, from the very beginning, Harry and Jane realize that they are destined, these two Americans, that they are destined to be man and wife. And the principal reason seems to be that sexually they disgust each other, and therefore it's their duty to get married. The only women who have ever attracted Harry are heavy and tall and a little coarse. And Jane is certainly none of these, although she doesn't know about sex. When Jane originally found herself being

attracted to a handsome young Italian man, she was terrified for a number of reasons. For one thing, and this is an interesting sociological fact, I think, during the war, Italian men were forbidden fruit for a reason so complicated that these reasons were never put down the form of a directive, but it's certainly true. This is Solade. Naturally, as with all spontaneous manifestations of a point of view or deep-seated customs of a people or an army, there was no rule for bidding an American girl to be seen in public with an Italian man. There was no need for such a law. There was no crime, but simply a thing that never happened, which was in that which was inconceivable, could never happen. There was no theory behind this. If you had accused any girl in the American forces of

avoiding Italian men because she considered them outcasts, she would have either just laughed or thought, she's silly. Before and since the war, there have been cases of marriages between American girls and Italian young men, particularly if the latter are of good family, but none at all during the war. On the other hand, during the war and since there have been lots of marriages between young American men and Italian girls. Well, this happens to be true. It's kind of appalling, but I remember a few years ago there was a movie called Three Coins in a Fountain. It was sort of the implication through most of the movie that if the American secretary marrying the handsome and brilliant young Italian, that somehow maybe miscegenation was involved. Well, the second reason that Jane is so upset is that Aldo is very handsome and Jane says, I've always felt cold toward handsome men and another thing Aldo wears jewelry. In other words, he decorates his body and she always has hated

jewelry. In fact, she's so upset that when she realizes she's physically attracted Aldo, she decides to get psychoanalyzed. They're being something obviously so normal about this reaction. And so for all these compelling reasons in sold-outies few, these two Americans get married. Harry thinks, for instance, when he first meets Jane, meets her to party. I saw Jane for the first time at a party in a Roman villa, requisitioned by a colonel who was a friend of mine. At once, I felt an extreme tenderness almost pity for. She seemed so small, fragile and nervous, so intelligent and suffering, so much in need of protection. And I felt urged toward her from the beginning by an arid sad since seared yet inevitable feeling, which reminded me of my affection for my mother, there it is, and which had about absurdly a bitter flavor of duty, not the sweet one of love or the intoxicating one of

pleasure. I told myself it was my duty to find her attractive. Well, I suppose I should say that that sold-outy has Harry say that he does not think this is typically American. Well, it's a matter of fact, the only example of this kind of, what is it, blind stubbornness in getting married and seeking the wrong wife? The only example given to us is the American example. So they get married, they go to Niagara Falls on their honeymoon, and Harry becomes a, you know, they're going to perform, they're going to be banal, they're going to be simple. So Harry becomes a college professor. I guess maybe sold-outy thinks this is about as banal as you can get. Anyway, Harry thinks I felt a desire for conformity and nostalgia for bourgeois peace, a yearning for a settled family life, for children and a fixed job, and urged to weakness and cowardice to renunciations of adventure and so on. Well, you see what's happened or what sold-outy, and I think we should keep this

always in mind, what sold-outy wants us to think that what has happened is that rejecting the passion each had felt for a European in another culture. Harry and Jane settled down and behave as they think society wants them to behave. I mean, life becomes for them something that exists for the sake of appearances. It's not to be lived, it's to be endured. And Harry can say to himself, we too became stupid, we too were happy. And this is marriage, or perhaps that should be stressed in another way. And this is marriage? A discussion of it, enable sold-outy to sprinkle a text with some not so bad aphorisms occasionally. Love is like courage, no one can give it to himself. It's a sticky business, this marriage. Jane at one point says to Harry, don't you realize my dear that we are each of us living in the hope that the other will die? Well, so much for sold-outy's story of sacred love,

Romeo's side of the story to be disagreeable about it. So much for that kind of love, which is necessary to maintain the status quo in society, in any society. What about profane love? What about Mercusio's side of the coin of love? Well, the truth is profane love and sold-outy is about like profane love anywhere. It's all added up in Shakespeare's 129th sonnet. And it expresses, and I'm not going to talk about what happens to Jane in it much more. So I say this, it expresses exactly Jane's attitude toward profane love, and partly because she has a much stronger religious feeling than Harry does, and to a certain extent it expresses heries, except Harry's capacity for remorse is limited. He's limited in all ways. 129th sonnet reads, and this will summarize a good deal of the book. The

expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action, until action lust is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame, savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust. Enjoyed no sooner, but despised straight, past reason hunted, and no sooner had past reason hated as a swallowed bait, on purpose laid to make the taker mad. Mad in pursuit and in possession so, had having and in quest to have extreme, a bliss in proof, sorry, a bliss in proof, and proved a very well before a joy proposed behind a dream. All this the world well knows, that none knows well, to shun the heaven that leads men to this world.

Dora, Dora karate, the Roman prostitute, and Harry's mistress, is naturally everything, nothing in the world that Jane is not. She was tall, strong, full-fledged, with round hips and big firm jutting breasts. Her crow-black hair was pulled tight back, smooth and gleaming, on her small well-shaped head. Her eyes were big, pale green and very beautiful, the body of a model and a face just like a cavalini mosaic. I once had an impression anyway, that I'd either met her or seen her somewhere before, and could not remember at the moment just when and where. But a second later, it occurred to me that this impression might be due to her appearance, which was almost aggressively provocative. Well, this combination

of high bust and low status devastates Harry when he comes to know her. From the very first, he's in a quivering turmoil full of timid desperation with an absurd sense of his own unworthiness. That's a quote. You know, he's a kind of an interesting case-book study, a mild case for abnormal psychology. And Dora is a goddess. She's a divinity. She's hakati. She's hecked. In fact, she's the whole county, apparently. She is Harry's Puritan fancy, brought to a wonderfully cooperative life. He worships up the shrine, somewhat compulsively, perhaps, but he worships. Dora becomes an obsession with him in the somewhat easy-going days, that is for the Americans. After the end of the Second World War, he would find that he could he could he could catch a ride back to Rome almost any time from almost any place in Europe just to spend one night

with Dora. And the wonderful thing about Harry's relationship with Dora was that he could manage to have his cake and eat it too. I mean, on the one hand, Dora appeared to him a kind of supreme good, a kind of divinity. But at the same time, he realized that she was a simple, greedy, very vulgar woman. I mean, he could work both sides of the street. He gave her her divinity. He could at the same time sin and be above the person he was sitting with. But lent to her or not, Dora's power over Harry continues. Now, this is not to say that she consciously exercised this power. For in point of fact, though it takes our Puritan-Seder Harry a long time to find it out, Dora, the prostitute is simply a nice, pleasant peasant girl from Apulia. I mean, she's professionally competent and her chosen line of endeavor. But as a matter of fact,

she's also a good cook and a housekeeper. She may, as Harry thinks for a long time, be as provocative as Aphrodite. But what she actually likes to do is cook. And as a matter of fact, she's best at baking cakes. And what she wants, and this is an interesting point, I think, what she wants. And unlike Harry, she really wants is the same bourgeois piece that Harry thinks he wants and can't really stand. I mean, Harry goes around speaking such nonsense as this. The vital instinctive life that was right for me and confirm, conform, sorry, and conform to my deepest instincts. Now, this is certainly the tautology of the seat of the season, also a romantic variant. Dora's vital instinct tells her that she wants to get married and go to America. And as a matter of fact, that's where she ends up in America, married to Harry. She's happy. She's settled down. She's pregnant.

Harry, he's miserable. He's discovered that goddesses have been repealed. He realizes that really the principle difference between Jane and Dora is that Dora weighs more than Jane did. What was so much fun in the Via Marguda is kind of dull on Long Island. Harry is thinking of going to the far west to Mexico, somewhere anywhere where reality will not come in to destroy his illusions, which he has tenderly preserved in Dewey's middle thirties. And that brings up another thing about the novel. This illusion reality theme is treated by Sol Dotty in another and I think significant way. It involves the mystery, even the villainy, that we so often attribute to the strange and different. It is illustrated in the relationship that Jane and Harry summers

have with Don Raphaeli, the caprizy Major Domo. Now when the summers first go to Capri, they are by previous arrangement with Don Raphaeli, a kind of professional provider of villas, servants of whatever you want, met by him. And he always takes very good care of them. He does almost anything they want to do. The only trouble with him is it looks as if he wants to be paid. And then later on, it looks as if Don Raphaeli is trying to blackmail him. And Harry looks at him and he sees in Don Raphaeli all sorts of Mediterranean, chicanery, build into him through centuries of inheritance, and so on. Harry is even willing to pay some blackmail money. He thought he could look into Don Raphaeli's eyes and see this villainy. Well, it turns out that Don Raphaeli doesn't know what Harry is talking about. In fact, it turns out that no one is trying to blackmail Harry. Don Raphaeli

puts on such a demonstration of humanity and humility. That Harry hits the other extreme and he goes away thinking Don Raphaeli is a saint and is sold out. Sold out he points out. Don Raphaeli is no such thing. But Don Raphaeli feels, what are you going to do with people who go around confusing gallantry with criminality? Poor Harry hardly ever made a decision in his life which wasn't made on the premise. He might not have made the right decision. But beginning, to think about it, he made the premise that life is a duty and not supposed to be very pleasant. In fact, much of the cap releder seems to document an old line of Mary McCarthy's. For the European, life is an adventure. For the American, it is a hazard. And that's one perspective of America. Goodbye.

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