When he saw her he went to her and took her handbag and opened it and looked inside. Of course it contained her I.C.B.Y. contest knife with her name and number engraved in gold.
“Wouldn’t the Insur have been enough for you?” he asked her.
“Dear, it wouldn’t have meant anything. You know it wouldn’t have.”
He handed the bag back to her and said, “Christ, what have they done to us?”
“There’s no need to be blasphemous,” Melanie said.
I think it is of particular significance that “It Could Be You” was written by an Australian newsman, and that it first appeared in the United States in the pages of Short Story International.
I had somehow thought (or hoped?) that the terrifying—and terrifyingly recognizable—trends projected here were an exclusively American version of the world’s agony. I don’t know if I find more reassurance or despair in the author’s account of the sources of his story:
“(1) An Australian television show in which people’s misfortunes were paraded before audiences of grim, grey old ladies. ... (2) The fact that eleven million Australians support no less than twenty-five Government-run lotteries a week, tickets costing from a half dollar to about seven dollars each, with prizes from $12,000 to $200,000. ... (3) People whose disregard for a death or two a day has long been conditioned by the road accident toll, which was around 2,000 dead and 60,000 injured in the early 1960’s.”
Well, then, our sins are not exclusively our own; but neither is our sense of sin—nor our awareness of danger. And increasingly, there is evidence that neither “they” nor “we” any longer expect to resolve our problems inside the cultural or political isolation of those national sovereignties which have become ruinously overspecialized in today’s world—not because the outlook or behavior of national governments is narrower or more provincial than it used to be (quite the (opposite) but because technology and communications have so altered global realities that the very concept of “national sovereignty” is now too narrow, localized, overspecialized.
I think there is a growing awareness of the true decadence of, not just political, but social, cultural, and (rather more obviously) literary, artistic, and scientific customs and usages as well. If our awareness of decadence itself is subjective (and perhaps intuitive), it is reassuring to find indications that we reach just as instinctively for what is viable and (in the purest sense of the word) virtuous.
Among the most congenial of these portents has been the appearance of a magazine like Short Story International. I find myself equally pleased that the publishers of this new venture have put it in the hands of an editor of fine literary discernment and that they have put on the cover, by way of a symbol, a picture of Telstar.
A BENEFACTOR OF HUMANITY
James T. Farrell
The other day Ignatius Bulganov Worthington peacefully and happily became non est. Known as Worthy Worthington, he was a great man, a great American, and a great benefactor of mankind. He died a billionaire five times over and was buried with many honors and mourned by all men. The flags of the city and nation hung at half-mast; the President issued a eulogy of regret; Congress held a memorial session and disbanded for the day; the National Association of Manufacturers sent a floral wreath, as did three kings, six dukes, two dictators, over two thousand police chiefs and every book, magazine and newspaper published in the world, including the Soviet Union, Madagascar, Borneo, and Pleasantville, New York.
The funeral services were attended by thousands: These were described on a national radio hookup, televised around the world, and Worthy Worthington machines ground out newspaper obsequies, testimonials, regrets, eulogies, laments and obituary notices which were nationally and almost universally described as worthy of the great Worthington.
Not a child lives in America who hasn’t heard of the great name of this now deceased greatness. His life, his example, and his contribution to the wealth, security, peace of mind and happiness of this country and of mankind can never be praised too much, valued too highly, or forgotten. As long as mankind inhabits this planet the worthy name of Worthington will be remembered, reverenced, and revered.
Young Ignatius Bulganov went to a little red country schoolhouse hard by a Baptist church in the land where the tall corn grows the tallest. He was not a promising pupil. He couldn’t read; he did not know how to write; and every time he added up a sum, his addition was different from that of his teacher and from the Stone Mills Arithmetic, which was used as a textbook. He was known as the dunce. He never was graduated.
Unarmed, unprepared, but eager, he set out for the great city of New York and there began the story of his great career and of his achievements and contributions. He got a job as a stock boy in a publishing house. Proud of his job, he did it well. He got to love books. He liked the covers on them, the smell of them. He liked to pile them on shelves and then to unpile them. He liked to lift them and to look at them in piles on the stockroom floor and the shelves. He liked to wrap them up and to unwrap them. He liked to do everything he could with them, except read them.
He lived alone at the Young Men’s Christian Association and every night he dreamed about books. He made shelves for his room and filled these with books. Every night he looked at his books, touched them, felt them, counted them, and rearranged them. His fellow inmates of the Y.M.C.A. gave him the nickname of “the Book Lover,” and he was proud of that. In later years, when he had become great, rich, famous and honored, this was remembered and a book was even published under the title of “Worthy Worthington, the Book Lover.”
But just as he loved books, he hated authors. Every time he saw an author, he remembered how as a boy in a little red country schoolhouse hard by a Baptist church in the land where the tall corn is tallest, he used to be switched, birched, and in plain language, whipped, because of his inability to read books. Some author had written those sentences that he had been lambasted for because he couldn’t read them.
But when he worked as a stock boy for a publishing house in New York, he came to see authors and in a sense to know them. The girls in the office all liked the authors and not him. And being normal and healthy, he wanted the girls to like him. The girls sometimes swooned about the masculine authors who came to the office, but they only called him Ignatz. And then, he soon learned that authors were not like he was. They didn’t live at the Y.M.C.A. They were always causing trouble and getting into trouble.
One author got his boss, the owner of the firm, arrested because of a book he wrote. Another author was always getting drunk. And if an author wasn’t getting drunk or causing the police to hand a warrant to the boss, then he was getting divorced. The authors who came to the office just weren’t like Ignatius Bulganov or like the people he had known in the land where the tall corn is tall corn. They were always coming and going and never staying put and they disrupted the whole work of the office. So more and more, I.B. disliked authors.
And he came to understand and learn that other people didn’t particularly like them, either. He heard complaints in the office about this author and that one. The girls complained. The editors complained. The owners of the firm yelled bloody murder about them. The wives of the owners complained. And the business manager, the bookkeeper and the salesmen didn’t merely complain—they screamed.