Letters

It would not have worked at Berkeley or Buffalo; not even at College Park across the Bay. To give my pink-necks their due, it would not likely have worked here either, had Drew Mack been on campus, and had Ambrose not further disarmed the skeptical by instructing them to be skeptical; to suspect him of being planted by the F.B.I., or the C.I.A., or at least the administration; and to hoot down any attempt by Todd Andrews (who volunteered to act as the acting president’s spokesman) to reply to their harangues. But the chief strategy — Ambrose’s, not Prinz’s, who somehow made it clear to the students that he didn’t care one way or the other how the scene ended — was the grand diversion of cameraman, audio and lighting technicians and equipment, interruptions to reposition, rephotograph, rerecord, reconsider; Prinz’s vertiginous insistence that these repositionings and such be themselves photographed, not to falsify “on the ultimate level, you know” the cinéma vérité; Ambrose’s sudden inspired order to a young woman shouting obscenities, “Now! Now! Take off your clothes!” and to a dazed campus cop, “Now you pretend to arrest her!” and to the students who then pummelled the cop, “Cut! Cut! That’s great! Let the camera close in on her now!” Whilst Prinz hand-signalled quite different instructions to his crew, and the second camera filmed him so doing. “Now you decide we’re co-opting you!” cries Ambrose. “Somebody ask whether there’s even any film in the fucking cameras! Easy, those mothers are expensive. Now you chant ‘Off the media! Off the media!’ while we retreat! Tomorrow in Ocean City, south end of the boardwalk, got that? South boardwalk, by the funhouse! ‘Off the flicks! Off the flicks!’ “

Et cetera, until half the kids are laughing, most of the rest too confused to get their indignation organised, and the handful who try to storm Schott’s office easily stopped in the corridors, out of view, by the main body of campus police, who then usher them out a rear door, lock the building for the night, and patrol its vicinity till today.

When, I daresay — tomorrow too if the weather holds fine — my lover, the author turned actor, will have improvised, may be even now improvising, “the Funhouse Scene” at Ocean City, with his nondirective director, his cast of ex-activist amateurs, and his professional (if not expert) co-star…

But here my pen falters, and not only from writer’s cramp. A tiny—yes, jealousy—keeps me from sleep, though it’s now the first hour of, ah, the 11th. Of that painful American invention, Mother’s Day. I return now, for comfort and solace, to your hapless virgin poet Eben Cooke and his too-familiar mentor Henry Burlingame III, wearily wondering whether your novel is not some enormous coded reply-in-advance to these letters. What turns lie ahead in its plot? In mine? What have you in store for your exhausted

G.?

M: Lady Amherst to the Author. Three miracles in three days. Ambrose’s adventures with the film company. The Fourth Stage of their affair begins.

24 L Street

Dorset Heights, Maryland 21612

Saturday, 17 May 1969

Dear J.,

Mirabile, mirabile, mirabile dictu! Three miracles in three days! The plot of our lives as turned and returned as a baroque novel’s!

1. Mr A. B. Cook VI — to the entire astonishment of our ad hoc nominating committee and the great but discreetly concealed delight of two-thirds of its membership (i.e., myself and Ms Wright of the French Dept: a far cry from dear “Juliette,” but worlds away withal from Harry Carter: “Mr Wrong”) — thanked us by letter three days ago for the honour of our invitation… and declined!

Declined, John! Oh, that I were after all a writer, or had had Reggie Prinz’s cameras, to catch forever Harry Carter’s crestfall when I read that letter aloud! Which he must then inspect with his own eyes, hold to the light, examine the blank verso of, the signature, the return address, the postmark and cancelled stamp on the envelope (CHAUTAUGUA MD, spelled with a g where yours is q’d; and an American Legion commemorative), as if looking for some clue that the laureate’s no was a cyphered yes, or that I’d forged the letter. Ms Wright at last crisply opined that, given the lateness of the season, we had better propose Mr Mensch’s name at once to President Schott, and hope our colleague would not follow your and Cook’s example.