by Gore Vidal
Alma is still here, as the song goes, while the son, Clark, works at a Colorado ski resort, owned by his great-uncle. Clark has gone through the usual schools and done the usual drugs and had the usual run-of-the-mill sex available to a movie star’s child. Now he must find himself—if there is a self to find—in a partially pristine Colorado rapidly being undone by ski resorts and the greenhouse effect.
Except for Alma, who knew from the beginning that she was unique in her beauty and sweet self-love, none of Updike’s protagonists has any idea of what to do with himself during the seventy years or so that he must mark time in this vale of tears before translation to sunbeam-hood in Jesus’ sky-condo. Happily, if tragically, true meaning comes to Clark in Colorado.
Updike, nothing if not up-to-date, re-creates the celebrated slaughter at Waco, Texas, where the charismatic David Koresh and many of his worshipers were wiped out in their compound by federal agents. In Updike’s fiction, a similar messiah and his worshipers withdraw to Colorado in order to live in Christian fellowship until the final trump, due any day now. An attractive girl leads Clark to the Lower Branch Temple and to Jesse, a Vietnam veteran who is now a “high-ranch messiah.” As a novelist, Updike often relies on the wearisome trick of someone asking a new character to tell us about himself. Within the rustic temple, skeptical Clark and primitive Scripture-soaked Jesse tell us about themselves. Clark: “Yeah, well. What was I going to say? Something. I don’t want to bore you.” Jesse: “You will never find Jesse bored. Never, by a recital of the truth. Weary, yes, and sore-laden with the sorrows of mankind, but never bored.” A good thing, too, considering the level of the dialogue. Jesse fulminates with biblical quotes from the likes of Ezekiel, while Clark wimps on and on about the emptiness of gilded life in the Three B’s.
The actual events at Waco revealed, terribly, what a paranoid federal apparatus, forever alert to any infraction of its stern prohibitions, was capable of when challenged head-on by nonconformists. How, I wondered, will Updike, a born reactionary, deal with the state’s conception of itself as ultimate arbiter of everything, no matter how absurd? Even “the good child” must be appalled by the slaughter of Jesse and his fellow believers by a mindless authority.
Since we shall witness all this through Clark’s eyes, Updike has made him even more passive than his usual protagonists. Too much acid in the Vipers Lounge? Clark does have a scene with Uncle Danny, who explains the real world to him in terms that the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal might think twice about publishing. Danny: “Vietnam was a hard call…. But somebody always has to fight.” (In the case of Vietnam, somebody proved to be poor white and black males.) “You and I walk down the street safe, if we do, because a cop around the corner has a gun. The kids today say the state is organized violence and they’re right. But it matters who’s doing the organizing…Joe Stalin…or our bumbling American pols. I’ll take the pols every time.” Thus, straw villain undoes straw hero; neither, of course, relevant to the issue, but Updike–Danny (true empathy may have been achieved at last) is now in full swing: “The kids today…grow long hair…smoke pot and shit on poor Tricky Dicky” only because of “the willingness of somebody else to do their fighting for them. What you can’t protect gets taken away….” Hobbesian world out there. Danny does admit that we got nothing out of Vietnam, not even “thanks”—one wonders from whom he thinks gratitude ought to come. But, no matter. Danny hates Communism. Hates Ho Chi Minh. Hates those “Hollywood fatcats and bleeding hearts” who oppose the many wars. Even so, “I try to be dispassionate about it. But I love this crazy, wasteful, self-hating country in spite of myself.” It would seem that Updike–Danny has not got the point. The people of the country don’t hate the country, only what has been done to it by those who profit from hot and cold wars and, in the process, bring to civilian governance a murderous military mentality, witness Waco.
How does Clark take all this? “To Clark, Uncle Danny seemed a treasure, a man from space who was somehow his own….” Clark has not known many employees of the CIA, for whom this sort of bombast is the order of the day. That order flows not only through the pages of The Wall Street Journal but throughout most of the press, where Hume’s Opinion is shaped by the disinformation of a hundred wealthy tax-exempt American foundations such as Olin, Smith-Richardson, Bradley, Scaife and Pew, not to mention all the Christian coalitions grinding out a worldview of Us against Them, the Us an ever-smaller group of propertied Americans and the Them the rest of the world.
Clark would now be ripe for neo-conhood, but for the fact that he was never a con or anything at all until he drifted into Jesse’s orbit, already set on a collision course with the U.S. government, which allows no group the pleasure of defiance even in the name of the One in whose Image we were fashioned. Jesse has been stockpiling weapons for “The Day of Reckoning.” Lovingly, Updike lists the arsenal. Clark suddenly realizes that here, at last, is the perfect orgasm, something well worth dying for. “The gun was surprising: provocative like a woman, both lighter and heavier than he would have thought.” The ultimate love story of a boy and his gun, “ready to become a magic wand.” Disappointingly, at the end, Updike is too patriotic or too timid to allow federal law-enforcement officers to destroy the temple along with the men, women, and children that Jesse has attracted to him. Colorado State Troopers do Caesar’s work, unlike Waco, where Caesar himself did the deed.
At the end, Clark turns on Jesse and betrays him. In order to save the children from the Conflagration, Clark “shot the false prophet twice.” Although Clark himself perishes, he dies a hero, who saved as many lives as he could from the false prophet whom he had, for no coherent reason, briefly served. Finally, world television validates Clark’s life and end. Who could ask for anything more?
Stendhal’s view that politics in a work of art is like a pistol shot at a concert is true, but what is one to do in the case of a political work that deals almost exclusively with true patriot versus nonpatriot who dares criticize the common patria? I quoted at length from Updike’s Self-Consciousness in order to establish what human material this inhuman novel is based on. I have also tried to exercise empathy, tried to feel, as President Clinton likes to say, the author’s pain. Actually, to find reactionary writing similar to Updike’s, one must turn back to John Dos Passos’s Midcentury, or to John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent. But Updike, unlike his predecessor Johns, has taken to heart every far-out far-right piety currently being fed us.
Also, despite what Updike must have thought of as a great leap up the social ladder from Shillington obscurity to “Eliotic” Harvard and then on to a glossy magazine, he has now, Antaeus-like, started to touch base with that immutable Dutch-German earth on which his ladder stood. Recent American wars and defeats have so demoralized our good child that he has now come to hate that Enlightenment which was all that, as a polity, we ever had. He is symptomatic, then, of a falling back, of a loss of nerve; indeed, a loss of honor. He invokes phantom political majorities, righteous masses. Time to turn to Herzen on the subject: “The masses are indifferent to individual freedom, liberty of speech; the masses love authority. They are still blinded by the arrogant glitter of power, they are offended by those who stand alone…they want a social government to rule for their benefit, and not against it. But to govern themselves doesn’t enter their heads.”
Updike’s work is more and more representative of that polarizing within a state where Authority grows ever more brutal and malign while its hired hands in the media grow ever more excited as the holy war of the few against the many heats up. In this most delicate of times, Updike has “builded” his own small, crude altar in order to propitiate—or to invoke?—“the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword.”
The Times Literary Supplement
April 26, 1996
PASSAGE TO EGYPT
“Are you German, sir?” A small, dark youth stepped from behind a palm tree into the full light of the setting sun which turned scarlet the
white shirt and albino red the black eyes. He had been watching me watch the sun set across the Nile, now blood-red and still except for sailboats tacking in a hot, slow breeze. I told him that I was American but was used to being mistaken for a German: in this year of the mid-century, Germans are everywhere, and to Arab eyes we all look alike. He showed only a moment’s disappointment.
“I have many German friends,” he said. “Two German friends. West German friends. Perhaps you know them?” He pulled a notebook out of his pocket and read off two names. Then, not waiting for an answer, all in a rush, he told me that he was a teacher of Arabic grammar, that he was going to Germany, West Germany (he emphasized the West significantly), to write a book. What sort of book? A book about West Germany. The theme? He responded with some irritation: “A Book About West Germany.” That was what the book would be about. He was a poet. His name was Ahmed. “Welcome,” he said, “welcome!” His crooked face broke into a smile. “Welcome to Luxor!” He invited me to his house for mint tea.
As we turned from the bank of the Nile, a long, haunting cry sounded across the water. I had heard this same exotic cry for several evenings, and I was certain that it must be of ancient origin, a hymn perhaps to Ikhnaton’s falling sun. I asked Ahmed what this lovely aria meant. He listened a moment and then said, “It’s this man on the other side who says: will the ferryboat please pick him up?” So much for magic.
Ahmed led the way through narrow streets to the primary school where he taught. It was a handsome modern building, much like its counterparts in Scarsdale or Darien. He took me inside. “You must see what the children make themselves. Their beautiful arts.” On the entrance-hall table their beautiful arts were exhibited: clay figures, carved wood, needlework, all surrounding a foot-long enlargement in clay of the bilharzia, a parasite which is carried by snails in the irrigation ditches; once it invades the human bloodstream, lungs and liver are attacked and the victim wastes away; some ninety percent of the fellahin suffer from bilharzia. “Beautiful?” he asked. “Beautiful,” I said.
On the wall hung the exhibit’s masterpiece, a larger than life-size portrait of Nasser, painted in colors recalling Lazarus on the fourth day. A somewhat more talented drawing next to it showed students marching with banners in a street. I asked Ahmed to translate the words on the banners. “Our heads for Nasser,” he said with satisfaction. I asked him if Nasser was popular with the young. He looked at me as though I had questioned the next day’s sunrise. Of course Nasser was loved. Had I ever been in Egypt before? Yes, during the winter of 1948, in the time of the bad fat King. Had things improved? I told him honestly that they had indeed. Cairo had changed from a nineteenth-century French provincial capital surrounded by a casbah to a glittering modern city, only partially surrounded by a casbah. He asked me what I was doing in Egypt, and I told him I was a tourist, not mentioning that I had an appointment to interview Nasser the following week for an American magazine.
Ahmed’s house is a large one, four stories high; here he lives with some twenty members of his family. The parlor is a square room with a high ceiling from which hangs a single unshaded light bulb. Two broken beds serve as sofas. I sat on one of the beds while Ahmed, somewhat nervously, ordered mint tea from a sister who never emerged from the dark hall. Then I learned that his father was also a teacher, and that an uncle worked in Nasser’s office; obviously a prosperous family by Luxor standards.
I was offered the ceremonial cigarette. I refused; he lit up. He was sorry his father was not there to meet me. But then again, puffing his cigarette, he was glad, for it is disrespectful to smoke in front of one’s father. Only recently the father had come unexpectedly into the parlor. “I was smoking a cigarette and when he came in, oh! I bit it hard, like this, and have to swallow it down! Oh, I was sick!” We chuckled at his memory.
When the mint tea arrived (passed to us on a tray from the dark hall, only bare arms visible), Ahmed suggested we sit outside where it was cool. Moonlight blazed through a wooden trellis covered with blossoming wisteria. We sat on stiff wooden chairs. He switched on a light momentarily to show me a photograph of the girl he was to marry. She was pretty and plump and could easily have been the editor of the yearbook in any American high school. He turned off the light. “We modern now. No more arranged marriages. Love is everything. Love is why we marry. Love is all.” He repeated this several times, with a sharp intake of breath after each statement. It was very contagious, and I soon found myself doing it. Then he said, “Welcome,” and I said, “Thank you.”
Ahmed apologized for the unseasonable heat. This was the hottest spring in years, as I had discovered that day in the Valley of the Kings where the temperature had been over a hundred and the blaze of sun on white limestone blinding. “After June, Luxor is impossible!” he said proudly. “We all go who can go. If I stay too long, I turn dark as a black in the sun.” Interestingly enough, there is racial discrimination in Egypt. “The blacks” are second-class citizens: laborers, servants, minor government functionaries. They are the lowest level of Egyptian society in every way except one: there are no Negro beggars. That is an Arab monopoly. Almsgivers are blessed by the Koran, if not by Nasser, who has tried to discourage the vast, well-organized hordes of beggars.
“To begin with, I had naturally a very light complexion,” said Ahmed, making a careful point, “like the rest of my family, but one day when I was small the nurse upset boiling milk on me and ever since that day I have been somewhat dark.” I commiserated briefly. Then I tried a new tack. I asked him about his military service. Had he been called up yet? A new decree proposed universal military service, and I thought a discussion of it might get us onto politics. He said that he had not been called up because of a very interesting story. My heart sank, but I leaned forward with an air of sympathetic interest. Suddenly, I realized I was impersonating someone. But who? Then when he began to talk and I to respond with small nods and intakes of breath, I realized that it was E. M. Forster. I was the Forster of A Passage to India and this was Dr. Aziz. Now that I had the range, my fingers imperceptibly lengthened into Forsterian claws; my eyes developed an uncharacteristic twinkle; my upper lip sprouted a ragged gray moustache, while all else turned to tweed.
“When the British attacked us at Suez, I and these boys from our school, we took guns and together we marched from Alexandria to Suez to help our country. We march for many days and nights in the desert. We have no food, no water. Then we find we are lost and we don’t know where we are. Several die. Finally, half dead, we go back to Alexandria and we march in the street to the place where Nasser is. We ask to see him, to cheer him, half dead all of us. But they don’t let us see him. Finally, my uncle hears I am there and he and Nasser come out and, ah, Nasser congratulates us, we are heroes! Then I collapse and am unconscious one month. That is why I have not to do military service.” I was impressed and said so, especially at their getting lost in the desert, which contributed to my developing theory that the Arabs are disaster-prone: they would get lost, or else arrive days late for the wrong battle.
Ahmed told me another story of military service, involving friends. “Each year in the army they have these…these…” We searched jointly—hopelessly—for the right word until E. M. Forster came up with “maneuvers,” which was correct. I could feel my eyes twinkling in the moonlight.
“So these friends of mine are in this maneuvers with guns in the desert and they have orders: shoot to kill. Now one of them was Ibrahim, my friend. Ibrahim goes to this outpost in the dark. They make him stop and ask him for the password and he…” Sharp intake of breath. “He has forgotten the password. So they say, ‘He must be the enemy.’” I asked if this took place in wartime. “No, no, maneuvers. My friend Ibrahim say, ‘Look, I forget. I did know but now I forget the password but you know me, anyway, you know it’s Ibrahim.’ And he’s right. They do know it was Ibrahim. They recognize his voice but since he cannot say the password they shot him.”
I let E. M. Forster slip to the floor
. “Shot him? Dead?”
“Dead,” said my host with melancholy satisfaction. “Oh, they were very sorry because they knew it was Ibrahim, but, you see, he did not know the password, and while he was dying in the tent they took him to, he said it was all right. They were right to kill him.”
I found this story hard to interpret. Did Ahmed approve or disapprove of what was done? He was inscrutable. There was silence. Then he said, “Welcome,” and I said, “Thank you.” And we drank more mint tea in the moonlight.
I tried again to get the subject around to politics. But beyond high praise for everything Nasser has done, he would volunteer nothing. He did point to certain tangible results of the new regime. For one thing, Luxor was now a center of education. There were many new schools. All the children were being educated. In fact he had something interesting to show me. He turned on the lamp and opened a large scrapbook conveniently at hand. It contained photographs of boys and girls, with a scholastic history for each. Money had to be raised to educate them further. It could be done. Each teacher was obliged to solicit funds. “Look what my West German friends have given,” he said, indicating amounts and names. Thus I was had, in a good cause. I paid and walked back to the hotel.
On the way back, I took a shortcut down a residential street. I had walked no more than a few feet when an old man came rushing after me. “Bad street!” he kept repeating. I agreed politely, but continued on my way. After all, the street was well lit. There were few people abroad. A shout from an upstairs window indicated that I should halt. I looked up. The man in the window indicated I was to wait until he came downstairs. I did. He was suspicious. He was from the police. Why was I in that street? I said that I was taking a walk. This made no sense to him. He pointed toward my hotel, which was in a slightly different direction. That was where I was supposed to go. I said yes, but I wanted to continue in this street, I liked to walk. He frowned. Since arrest was imminent, I turned back. At the hotel I asked the concierge why what appeared to be a main street should be forbidden to foreigners. “Oh, ‘they’ might be rude,” he said vaguely. “You know….” I did not know.