“NEW, man, in the groove.”
“The groove of moneyed records.”
“The unusual green of American agriculture.”
Raul’s lanky body twisted. “Oh, very good, Alec, very good. Deserves a Kewpie doll.”
Richard gave Raul a look. Raul fell back into his seat. “A good day. I am suddenly very pleased by everything.”
“Oh, really?” Alec said, looking at him.
“Alec, you’re becoming awfully impatient. Have I not so far exhibited infinite kindness toward you?”
Richard leaned forward, turning the radio up. “Quiet, the news.”
Raul smiled. Alec looked at Richard, disgusted. “What the fuck you want to listen to the news for?”
“I want to hear the war news.”
“As if you expect to hear the truth,” Alec said. “Come on, there’s no point to listening to the news.”
“It isn’t good to isolate yourself. People who do…”
“Isolate yourself!” Raul cried. “Oh, God!”
“Richard, what bullshit is this?” Alec said. “What cunt gave you that idea?”
“Stephie doesn’t believe that at all. She doesn’t care just like you two.”
“You see that, Raul. He’s classing us with his cunt. Listen, Richard, it was an expression, I didn’t mean it literally. I could just as easily have said — what penis gave you that idea?”
“Gentlemen,” Raul said, striking another pose, “I would find it warming to my being and soul if we dropped obscenity for the moment and returned to the point. The danger in listening to the news is that one might eventually become oblivious to it.”
“I knew my instinctive scorn had an ideology behind it. Thank you, Raul.”
“A pleasure. Now, Richard, give me a reason why one should listen to the news. I admit there are special cases, but why make it a habit, eh?”
“Okay. Say you run into that bastard Rubens, what do you say if…”
“I think you’re a truly fine painter, sir.”
“No, no,” Alec said, “he’s talking about a senior.”
“I thought it was a nice, uh, a cute little joke, you know? I suspect he’s an articulate conservative.”
“Yes,” Richard said. “And he’ll throw the latest twisted bits of news he’s gotten together, and what do you say to him, if you don’t know the truth?”
Raul closed his eyes. He spoke as if reciting a speech. “First of all, I don’t know what you’re doing speaking to him, but assuming you’ve gotten yourself into that vomitlike situation, you don’t argue over particulars. If he’s telling you about the latest atrocities of the Vietcong, not only can you throw hundreds of American atrocities at him, you tell him it’s an imperialist war and that America will tell any lie, and the Vietcong will do anything to (1) maintain that oppression, (2) get rid of it.
“Your problem,” Raul went on, “is that you still have faith, some shred of faith, in America. I want the system overthrown, all our present conflicts lost. All my arguments boil down to an attack of capitalism, and I have all the information I need for that. Too much, in fact.” Raul sighed. “Why, Richard, have you dragged me into discussing politics? God damn you, why? I have a headache already.”
“Well, that way of arguing is just unreasonable. If you’re doing it on a debating team…”
“God, man, when I’m talking about the Vietnam War, I’m not looking for any medals.”
Alec snorted. “That’s a silly thing to say, Richard. You’re trying to convince the man the war is inhuman, and you’re worried about whether you’re presenting your arguments clearly, so you’ll get enough points to get first prize in debating.”
“About the only value,” Raul said, “in being on a debating team — besides having the capacity to make the most fascinating topic unbearably boring — is that it counts as extracurricular credit. And the only value that has is that it might get you into a prestigious college.”
Richard’s face twisted slightly. “Is there something wrong in that? You think there’s no value in a college like Harvard?”
“Sure there’s a value in Harvard. For a lawyer, it’s the best way of getting into big-time law firms. It gives you all the in one needs to be as corrupt as possible in this world. In business, architecture, all the major moneymaking professions. For politicians, it’s perfect — the sublime poetry of the American Ideal. If you want to be thirty-eight and still working on your thesis, and still be supported by the college…man, for academicians, it’s heaven. All right, so obviously there’s a value in all this. For anyone who wants it. It certainly isn’t a learning value. You want to make money, Richard — go to the Ivy League colleges. You want to learn — hike around Europe for a year; go to the country and read. Live any way you can, but not easily.”
“Wait a minute, Raul,” Alec said. “I agree nearly everyone uses colleges for that purpose. But take Carnegie.”
“What’s Carnegie?”
“It’s the best drama college in the country.”
“I say that to everyone about Cabot. It’s number one on the East Coast. Which means very little, considering the level of schools on the East Coast.”
“No, no, Carnegie’s a good school. Seriously. But the point is, you can’t gain any entrance into acting by going to it, so I’m going just to learn.”
“That’s probably true. But I bet the value of it will be the fact that you’ll be able to act for four years. The experience will teach you, not the teachers, or the courses. Unless they have an amazing director, which is unlikely. I mean, how many amazing directors are there in the theater? If any college gave me a grant to read and write for four years, I’d take it, but that has nothing to do with how good the college is.”
Richard, visibly shaken, as if someone were chipping away at the foundation of his being, said, “But you need someone to guide you through all that study.”
“Why? Do you consider yourself incompetent?”
“No, man, I don’t. But I couldn’t have read Moby Dick and understood it without…”
“What? The help of the footnotes in the edition you read it in? Oh, man, let me tell you something about symbolism — for it to be valid in a novel, it has to be unconsciously done by the novelist, or it has to be done by analogy. If a writer feels an analogy between a biblical figure, and it’s done with some hint of the sublime, then it’s valid. Keats pointed that out. First of all, it has to be like a letter of D. H. Lawrence’s I once read. He reread the first draft of Sons and Lovers and discovered that he had unconsciously written symbolism into it. So he went back and heightened it. Same thing happened with Moby Dick. After Melville had written the first fifteen chapters, he discovered the possibilities in what he had already written. All right, so we assume that, to be good, it has to be written unconsciously. Then it follows that it has to be read unconsciously. I read that fucking edition of Moby Dick, and it just became one big-time hunt for symbolism.”
“Your whole thesis,” Raul continued, “the basis of Western education in literature, rests on the idea that the genius who wrote the novel can’t tell you his meaning, but it has to be filtered down through the lesser mind of an English teacher. Well, I’m telling you, if ol’ Mel can’t give it to ya, ya might as well give up.”
Richard, conspicuously silent during Raul’s harangue, slowed the car.
“Is that the girls?” Raul asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s drop the conversation.”
Richard said angrily, “Oh, that’s great. You talk but nobody can answer you.”
“You can answer me later, it’s not that important. I have to maintain my fortress of silence. Remember I’m just a fourteen-year-old schmuck friend of Alec’s.”