Writings from the New Yorker 1925-1976 (12 page)

Q—
News accounts from Moscow this morning say the space dog is behaving quietly and happily. Do you believe it?

A—
Of course not. There's a contradiction in terms right there. If the bitch was happy, she wouldn't be quiet, she'd be carrying on. The Russians are a bunch of soberpusses; they don't know what clowning means. They ring a bell when it's time for a dog to eat. You never had to ring a bell for me, Buster.

(This was quite true. But I felt that I would learn nothing if Fred's ghost started reminiscing, and I tried hard to keep the interview on the track.)

Q—
The Russians picked a laika to occupy the space capsule. Do you think a dachshund would have been a wiser choice?

A—
Certainly. But a dachshund has better things to do. When a car drives in the yard, there are four wheels, all of them crying to be smelled. The secrets I used to unlock in the old days when that fish truck drove in! Brother! If a dog is going to unlock any secrets, don't send him into space, let him smell what's going on right at home.

Q—
The fame of the Russian dog is based on the fact that it has travelled farther from the earth than any other living creature. Do you feel that this is a good reason for eminence?

A—
I don't know about fame. But the way things are shaping up on earth, the farther away anybody can get from it these days, the better.

Q—
Dog lovers all over the world are deeply concerned about the use of a dog in space experiments. What is your reaction?

A—
Dog lovers are the silliest group of people to be found anywhere. They're even crazier than physicists. You should hear the sessions we have in Hell on the subject of dog lovers! If they ever put a man in one of those capsules for a ride out yonder, I hope it's a dog lover.

(Fred's shade thinned slightly and undulated, as though he was racked with inner mirth.)

Q—
This satellite with a dog aboard is a very serious thing for all of us. It may be critical. All sorts of secrets may be unlocked. Do you believe that man at last may learn the secret of the sun?

A—
No chance. Men have had hundreds of thousands of years to learn the secret of the sun, which is so simple every dog knows it. A dog knows enough to go lie down in the sun when he feels lazy. Does a man lie down in the sun? No, he blasts a dog off, with instruments to find out his blood pressure. You will note, too, that a dog never makes the mistake of lying in the hot sun right after a heavy meal. A dog lies in the sun early in the day, after a light breakfast, when the muscles need massaging by the gentle heat and the spirit craves the companionship of warmth, when the flies crawl on the warm, painted surfaces and the bugs crawl, and the day settles into its solemn stride, and the little bantam hen steals away into the blackberry bushes. That is the whole secret of the sun—to receive it willingly. What more is there to unlock? I find I miss the sun: Hell's heat is rather unsettling, like air-conditioning. I should have lain around more while I was on earth.

Q—
Thank you for your remarks. One more question. Do you feel that humans can adapt to space?

A—
My experience with humans, unfortunately, was largely confined to my experience with you. But even that limited association taught me that humans have no capacity for adapting themselves to anything at all. Furthermore, they have no
intention
of adapting themselves. Human beings are motivated by a deeply rooted desire to change their environment and make
it
adapt to them. Men won't adapt to space, space will adapt to men—and that'll be a mess, too. If you ever get to the moon, you will unquestionably begin raising the devil with the moon. Speaking of that, I was up around the house the other evening and I see you are remodelling your back kitchen—knocking a wall out, building new counters with a harder surface, and installing a washing machine instead of those old set tubs. Still at it, eh, Buster? Well, it's been amusing seeing you again.

Q—
One more question, please, Fred. The dog in the capsule has caused great apprehension all over the civilized world. Is this apprehension justified?

A—
Yes. The presence anywhere at all of an inquisitive man is cause for alarm. A dog's curiosity is wholesome; it is essentially selfish and purposeful and therefore harmless. It relates to the chase or to some priceless bit of local havoc, like my experiments in your barnyard with the legs of living sheep. A man's curiosity, on the other hand, is untinged with immediate mischief; it is pure and therefore very dangerous. The excuse you men give is that you must continually add to the store of human knowledge—a store that already resembles a supermarket and is beginning to hypnotize the customers. Can you imagine a laika sending up a Russian in order to measure the heartbeat of a man? It's inconceivable. No dog would fritter away his time on earth with such tiresome tricks. A dog's curiosity leads him into pretty country and toward predictable trouble, such as a porcupine quill in the nose. Man's curiosity has led finally to outer space where rabbits are as scarce as gravity. Well, you fellows can have outer space. You may eventually get a quill in the nose from some hedgehog of your own manufacture, but I don't envy you the chase. So long, old Master! Dream your fevered dreams!

9

The Academic Life

NO CRACKPOTS?

9/12/42

WE NOTICED
, with some misgivings, that the American Federation of Teachers put out a warning the other day that there would be no “crackpots” admitted to its membership. Only those teachers would be admitted who would be a credit to the Federation and instill in boys and girls an abiding loyalty to the ideals and principles of democracy. But as we understand it, one of the noblest attributes of democracy is that it contains no one who can truthfully say, of two pots, which is the cracked, which is the whole. That is basic. The Federation better welcome all comers, and let pot clink against pot.

 

Education is such a serious matter, we speak of it with trepidation. We remember, with sober and contrite heart, that our educational system was responsible for (among others) the group of citizens who for two years did everything in their power to prove that the war which was going on did not involve us, that nothing was happening abroad which was of any consequence in our lives, that the earth was not round. Those people—millions of them—were all educated in American schools by non-crackpots. They were brought up on American curricula. They damn near did us in. They are ready again to do us in, as soon as an opening presents itself—which will be immediately after hostilities cease. On the basis of the record, it would seem that we need what crackpots we can muster for education in our new world. We need educators who believe that character is more precious than special knowledge, that vision is not just something arrived at through a well-ground lens, and that a child is the most hopeful (and historically the most neglected) property the Republic boasts.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM

2/26/49

WHEN THE PROFESSORS
were dismissed from the University of Washington,
*
the president remarked that allegiance to the Communist Party unfitted a teacher for the search for truth. The argument, it seemed to us, had a certain merit. To pursue truth, one should not be too deeply entrenched in any hole. It is best to have strong curiosity, weak affiliations. But although it's easy to dismiss a professor or make him sign an affidavit, it is not so easy to dismiss the issue of academic freedom, which persists on campuses as the smell of wintergreen oil persists in the locker rooms. In this land, an ousted professor is not an island entire of itself; his death diminishes us all.

There is no question but that colleges and universities these days are under pressure from alumni and trustees to clean house and to provide dynamic instruction in the American way of life. Some institutions (notably Washington University and Olivet College) have already taken steps, others are uneasily going over their lists. Professors, meanwhile, adjust their neck-ties a little more conservatively in the morning, qualify their irregular remarks with a bit more care. The head of one small college announced the other day that his institution was through fooling around with fuzzy ideas and was going to buckle down and teach straight Americanism—which, from his description, sounded as simple as the manual of arms. At Cornell, an alumnus recently advocated that the university install a course in “Our Freedoms”—possibly a laudable idea but one that struck us as being full of dynamite. (The trouble here is with the word “our,” which is too constricting and which would tend to associate a university with a national philosophy, as when the German universities felt the cold hand of the Ministry of Propaganda.) President Eisenhower
*
has come out with a more solid suggestion, and has stated firmly that Columbia, while admiring one idea, will examine all ideas. He seems to us to have the best grasp of where the strength of America lies.

We on this magazine believe in the principle of hiring and firing on the basis of fitness, and we have no opinion as to the fitness or unfitness of the fired professors. We also believe that some of the firings in this country in the last eighteen months have resembled a political purge, rather than a dismissal for individual unfitness, and we think this is bad for everybody. Hollywood fired its writers in a block of ten. The University of Washington stood its professors up in a block of six, fired three for political wrongness, retained three on probation. Regardless of the fitness or unfitness of these men for their jobs, this is not good management; it is nervous management and it suggests pressure. Indirectly, it abets Communism by making millions of highly fit Americans a little cautious, a little fearful of having naughty “thoughts,” a little fearful of believing differently from the next man, a little worried about associating with a group or party or club.

A healthy university in a healthy democracy is a free society in miniature. The pesky nature of democratic life is that it has no comfortable rigidity; it always hangs by a thread, never quite submits to consolidation or solidification, is always being challenged, always being defended. The seeming insubstantiality of this thread is a matter of concern and worry to persons who naturally would prefer a more robust support for the be-loved structure. The thread is particularly worrisome, we think, to men of tidy habits and large affairs, who are accustomed to reinforce themselves at every possible turn and who want to do as much for their alma mater. But they do not always perceive that the elasticity of democracy is its strength—like the web of a spider, which bends but holds. The desire to give the whole thing greater rigidity and a more conventional set of fastenings is almost overwhelming in these times when the strain is great, and it makes professed lovers of liberty propose measures that show little real faith in liberty.

We believe with President Eisenhower that a university can best demonstrate freedom by not closing its doors to antithetical ideas. We believe that teachers should be fired not in blocks of three for political wrongness but in blocks of one for unfitness. A campus is unique. It is above and beyond government. It is on the highest plane of life. Those who live there know the smell of good air, and they always take pains to spell truth with a small “t.” This is its secret strength and its contribution to the web of freedom; this is why the reading room of a college library is the very temple of democracy.

SELECTING SCHOOL BOOKS

10/8/49

THE BOARD OF EDUCATION
has twenty-three criteria for selecting textbooks, library books, and magazines for use in the public schools. We learned this by reading a fourteen-page pamphlet published by the Board explaining how it makes its choice. One criterion is: “Is it [the book or magazine] free from subject matter that tends to irreverence for things held sacred?” Another criterion is: “Are both sides of controversial issues presented with fairness?” Another: “Is it free from objectionable slang expressions which will interfere with the building of good language habits?”

These three criteria by themselves are enough to keep a lot of good books from the schools. Irreverence for things held sacred has started many a writer on his way, and will again. An author so little moved by a controversy that he can present both sides fairly is not likely to burn any holes in the paper. We think the way for school children to get both sides of a controversy is to read several books on the subject, not one. In other words, we think the Board should strive for a well-balanced library, not a well-balanced book. The greatest books are heavily slanted, by the nature of greatness.

As for “the building of good language habits,” we have gone carefully through the pamphlet to see what habits, if any, the Board itself has formed. They appear to be the usual ones—the habit of untidiness, the habit of ambiguity, the habit of saying everything the hard way. The clumsy phrase, the impenetrable sentence, the cliché, the misspelled word. The Board has, we gather, no strong convictions about the use of the serial comma, no grip on “that” and “which,” no opinion about whether a textbook is a “text book,” a “text-book,” or a “textbook.” (The score at the end of the fourteenth was “text book” 5, “textbook” 11, “textbook” 5.) It sees nothing comical, or challenging, in the sentence “Materials should be provided for boys and girls who vary greatly in attitudes, abilities, interests, and mental age.” It sees no need for transposition in “Phrases should not be split in captions under pictures.” It sees no bugs in “The number of lines should be most conducive to readability.” And you should excuse the expression “bugs”—a slang word, interfering with the building of good language habits.

We still have high hopes of getting
The New Yorker
accepted in the schools, but our hopes are less high than they were when we picked up the pamphlet. We're bucking some stiff criteria—criteria that are, shall we say, time-tested?

THE LIVING LANGUAGE

2/23/57

BETWEEN BERGEN EVANS
on the television and a man named Ellsworth Barnard
*
in the papers, English usage has become hot news; the rhetorical world is almost as tense, at the moment, as the Middle East. Professor Barnard wrote a piece in the
Times
a while back thumbing his nose at grammar and advising teachers to quit boring their pupils with the problem of “who” and “whom.” The Professor was immediately ambushed by grammarians and purists in great numbers, and their shafts came zinging from behind every tree in the forest. Meanwhile, Bergen Evans and his panelists were stirring up the masses and egging them on to err. Mr. Evans believes that the language is a living thing and we mustn't strangle it by slavish attention to the rules. Winston Cigarettes, of course, backs him to the hilt, as a cigarette should.
*
Our prediction is that along Madison Avenue bad grammar, as an attention-getter, will soon be as popular as mutilation—which started with an eye patch and rapidly spread to arms and legs. As Arthur Godfrey sometimes remarks, in one of his contemplative moments, “Who's sponsoring this mess?”

 

The New Yorker
has been up to its ears in English usage for thirty-two years (thirty-two years this very week) and has tried to dwell harmoniously in the weird, turbulent region between a handful of sober grammarians, who live in, and an army of high-spirited writers, who live wherever they can get a foot-hold. The writer of this paragraph, who also lives in, has seen with his own eyes the nasty chop that is kicked up when the tide of established usage runs against the winds of creation. We have seen heavy, cluttery pieces, with faults clinging to them like barnacles, lifted out of their trouble by the accurate fire of the grammarian (who has the instincts of a machine gunner), and we have also seen the blush removed from a peach by the same fellow's shaving it with an electric razor in the hope of drawing blood. Somewhere in the middle of this mess lies editorial peace and goodness, but, like we say, it's a weird world. Through the turmoil and the whirling waters we have reached a couple of opinions of our own about the language. One is that a schoolchild should be taught grammar—for the same reason that a medical student should study anatomy. Having learned about the exciting mysteries of an English sentence, the child can then go forth and speak and write any damn way he pleases. We knew a countryman once who spoke with wonderful vigor and charm, but ungrammatically. In him the absence of grammar made little difference, because his speech was full of juice. But when a dullard speaks in a slovenly way, his speech suffers not merely from dullness but from ignorance, and his whole life, in a sense, suffers—though he may not feel pain.

 

The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay in the narrow path she helped make, following the contour of the land, but she often profits by staying with it and she would be handicapped if she didn't know where it was and where it led to. Children obviously do not depend for communication on a knowledge of grammar; they rely on their ear, mostly, which is sharp and quick. But we have yet to see the child who hasn't profited from coming face to face with a relative pronoun at an early age, and from reading books, which follow the paths of centuries.