The Great American Novel

by Philip Roth

  And what do you do about it? You take it. You try not to hear. You pretend it isn’t happening. You shrug your shoulders and tell yourself, “It’s fate.” You say, “What difference does it make, no skin off my nose,” and other such philosophical remarks. No wonder they laugh. A team not of baseball players, but philosophers! Stoics and fatalists instead of hitters and fielders! Of course they laugh. Gentlemen, I laugh! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hear me, Mundys? I am laughing, at you. Along with the rest of America! At your resignation! At your fatalism! At your jellyfish philosophy of life! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

  SECOND DAY BACK

  Welcome, Mundys, to another in our spring lecture series on Hatred and Loathing. Before I begin I have to tell you that you surely did outdo yourselves yesterday on the playing field in being laughable. What a wonderful comedy show that was! A regular Hellzapoppin’! I near wet my pants watching you standing out there on the field with your heads hanging like the old tried and true victims you are, while those high school lads (or were they lasses?) scored those eight runs in the first inning. What got you down so, “men”? I figured you were going to go out there and really start hating and loathing your enemies and oppressors, and instead you were the jellyfish and cowards and vermin of old, if not more so. Maybe you are ready for our second lecture then, entitled “How To Hate, and Whom.”

  Boys, it’s easy. Just think of all the things you haven’t got that other people have. Shall I name a few just to get you going? The obvious first. Other people have all their limbs. Other people have all their hair. Other people have all their teeth and twenty-twenty vision in both eyes. Other people have admiration, luck, fun, something to look forward to. Other people—and this may come as a surprise—have something to be proud of: self-respect, love, riches, peace of mind, friends—why, other people have sirloin for breakfast, champagne for lunch, and dancing girls for dinner. And more!

  Now you may ask, “Okay, I ain’t got none of that and they got all of that—where’s the hatred come in?” Mundys, that you can ask such a question is the measure of just how ruthlessly oppressed you have been. Don’t you understand, boys? It isn’t fair! It isn’t just! It isn’t right! Why should those who have have and those who have not have not? For what reason do they have everything and you nothing? In the name of what and whom? It makes my blood boil just talking about it! I feel the hatred for those haves coursing through my veins just thinking about all that you boys live without that other people have more of than they know what to do with! Brains! Strength! Self-confidence! Courage! Fortitude! Wit! Charm! Good looks! Perfect health! Wisdom! Why, even Common Sense! Oh, I could go on forever naming the things that other people have in excess, but that you Mundys haven’t a trace of, singly, or taken all together. Talk about being deprived! My cowards, my jellyfish, my fools, you have absolutely nothing to recommend you—and on top of that, you haven’t even got a home! A home, such as every little birdie has in a tree, such as every little mole has in the ground, such as every major league team in creation has, excepting you! Talentless, witless, luckless, and as if all that wasn’t unfair and unjust enough, homeless too!

  And you ask me, “But what’s there to hate about, Gil?” They robbed you of your home! They drove you out like dogs! and you say, “Hey, where’s the hatred come in?”

  THIRD DAY BACK

  Fellas, we had to cut it short yesterday so you could go out there and get your asses whipped by the naval station team, with the result that I did not get around to telling you whom to hate for having deprived you of just about everything a baseball team could want. Let me make it easy for you. Just so you don’t go wrong—being new as you are to this great adventure of loathing—why don’t you begin by hating your fellow man across the board? That way you won’t grow confused. If you see a guy in a Mundy uniform, he’s all right, but everybody who is not in the Ruppert scarlet and gray, you are to hate, loathe, despise, vilify, threaten, curse, slander, betray, mock, deceive, revile, and have nothing further to do with. Is that clear? All mankind except those in the scarlet and gray. Any questions?

  Nickname, did I happen to hear you say “Why?” Because they live off your misery, Damur! Because the nightmare that is your life at second base gives them pleasure! Your errors are their solace, your strike-outs their consolation. Mundys, don’t you get it yet? You bear their blame! You suffer in their stead! The worse your luck, the better for them—the greater your misery, the happier they will be! Look, haven’t you heard? Do I have to tell you everything? THE RUPPERT MUNDYS ARE THE OFFICIAL SCAPEGOATS OF THE U.S.A.!

  And who made you scapegoats, boys? Was it writ in the stars, Specs? God’s will, Tuminikar? Well, that’s what they tell the peasants, all right, when those poor bastards don’t happen to like their lot anymore. That’s what they tell the slaves, when they happen to look up from their shackles and ask, “Hey, what the hell is goin’ on around here?” Sorry, sorry, nothing to be done for you downtrodden today. God’s will. He wants it this way, with you on the bottom and us on the top. Back to work now—we’ll tell you if and when there’s to be any change with those chains …

  Mundys, it isn’t God that put you on the road! It isn’t fate, and it isn’t nothing, either. It is your fellow man! Who made you scapegoats, Mundys? The United States government and the brothers M.! The country whose flag you salute, the owners whose names you bear! That’s who joined forces to rob you of honor and dignity and home! The state and the owners! Your country and your bosses!

  * * *

  It did not come easy at first, but that’s what spring training is for, Gil told them, getting that old unused venom running again, getting out there first thing in the morning to start in working on those old weaknesses of character, like ingrained habits of courtesy and that old bugaboo, the milk of human kindness. Get that gee-whiz out of your voice, Damur—this is no high school dance! Cut out that grinning, Rama, nothing is funny about hate! Snarl, Heket, snarl at your oppressor—he lives off your old age! I want to hear some hatred in there when you shout “Hate!”

  Ah, but it was hard. How could you go around insulting some player on the other team when you knew he was better than you by far! How expect to frighten somebody with your bark or your bite who had you pegged for a busher long ago—somebody who in fact frightened you. No, it just wouldn’t work. Besides, it wasn’t that the other players always teased and kidded them—sometimes they were downright amiable, even sympathetic with the Mundys for having to be Mundys. Why, if they went around hating everybody, they were going to wind up losing what few friends they still had left in the league.

  “You have no friends! You have only enemies! Their smiles oppress you as much as their sneers! You don’t want their sympathy—you want their blood!”

  Oh, but it was so hard. How do you go about hating and loathing those crowds you’ve been working so hard to placate and appease? How can you possibly hate all those people who you don’t even know? Christ, when you come down to it, they’re just people, like you and me.

  “No, they are not! They are your tormentors! They imprison you by their ridicule! You are in bondage to their contempt! You are shackled by their smirks and their smart-ass remarks! There is no such thing as ‘people just like you and me’ if you are Ruppert Mundys! There are the oppressed and the oppressors! The Mundys and the rest of mankind—or mancruel, to be precise!”

  Oh, but it was hard spreading that hatred around the way Gil wanted. Hate the Mundy brothers too? Hell, they didn’t even know what they looked like. How can you hate somebody you wouldn’t even recognize if he sat down next to you on the trolley car? And they don’t even travel on trolleys—those guys travel in limousines! These are important people, these are powerful men!

  “And they sold you down the river, boys, kicked you and your pitiful asses out of the inn, just like Jesus and his Mom! That’s what important people do. That’s how they get to be important.”

  But, b
ut we’re their team, they pay the wages—their father was the Glorious Mundy who is back in Port Ruppert buried in deep center field. Their name is our name. How can we hate our own name, if you know what we mean?

  “Because their name isn’t Mundy anymore. It’s Muny, good old-fashioned dough! They have maligned the name—mangled it beyond repair! You are the true Mundys, boys, and not because it was the name of your robber-baron father, either! No, because it is short for Mundane! Meaning common, meaning ordinary—meaning the man in the street who’s fed up to here with the Muny brothers and their ilk dancing the rhumba down in Rio while the ordinary Joe toils without honor and without reward! The Mundane, who do the dirty work of this world, their noses to the ground or the grounder, their tails to the whip, while the Mundy boys stash it away in Fort Knox! Their name your name? Their team your team? Says who!”

  Oh, but it was hard, hardest of all hating the U.S. of A. Why, if it wasn’t for our country ’tis of thee, there wouldn’t even be baseball to begin with!

  “Or homeless baseball teams! Look,” cried Gamesh, “what the hell good is a country to you anyway, if there is no place in it you can call your own!”

  Oh, it was hard, but as it turned out in the end, not that hard. By the time the ’44 season had begun, they had trampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. Their hatred knew no bounds.

  SECRET SPRING TRAINING REPORT ON COMMUNIST INFILTRATION OF PATRIOT LEAGUE

  Excerpts from Memorandum prepared by Gil Gamesh, Manager of the Ruppert Mundys and Chief Investigator, Patriot League Internal Security Affairs Division, for General Douglas D. Oakhart, President of Patriot League, and Mrs. Angela Whittling Trust, Presidential Adviser for Internal Security Affairs, submitted 4/17/44:

  1. Summary. It is now clear that (a) Communist infiltration of the Patriot League is far more extensive than our most pessimistic preseason estimates; and (b) that the Ruppert Mundys, as had been hypothesized, occupy a pivotal position in the Communist plans for the subversion of the Patriot League. The clarification of (a) has been achieved by (c) continuous surveillance of Ruppert Mundy activities throughout spring training and (d) an analysis of same. Clarification of (b) has been achieved by way of (a) (c) and (a) (d), with equal emphasis given to each. Current trends, unless reversed before conclusion of ’44 season, will lead to a Communist-controlled league, with complete dissolution to follow, from all indications, during ’45 season, so as to coincide with Communist takeovers in Europe and Asia at conclusion of international hostilities. The situation is very disturbing, as will be reflected in the following percentages, based on the evidence supplied by (c) and (d):

  2. Analysis of percentages (charts attached) …

  3. Communists detected

  a. Communist espionage agents

  (1) O.K. Ockatur (P). As reported earlier, Ockatur is in actuality Captain Smerdyakov, formerly a tank officer in the Leningrad Military Unit of the Red Army, now affiliated with the Main Intelligence Directorate of GRU of the Armed Forces General Staff. Because of the blinding of Bob Yamm his reputation is currently at a low ebb in Moscow, where the latest official explanation of that act is that it was committed solely out of personal animosity, in direct defiance of orders. Ockatur argues that he acted in direct compliance with orders and accuses his enemies of attempting to ruin him with a charge of “incurable dwarfism.” It would appear from all this that Stalin, in the Russian phrase, has already begun “turning the little fellow on his head in the earth,” and that sooner or later he will be liquidated, perhaps by being beaned by a Communist pitcher during his turn at bat. We must be prepared for this eventuality.

  (2) Hothead Ptah (C). Ptah is none other than Major Stavrogin, the infamous “One-Legged Man,” probably the most admired agent provocateur ever to be graduated from SHIT.

  b. Communist Party members

  (1) Frenchy Astarte (SS). Astarte was an active member of the Communist Party in Canada, Latin America, and the Far East before entering the United States under the guise of an infielder. He is fluent in six languages, though pretends to understand nothing but French. On instruction from Moscow Astarte dropped the pop fly in the last of the ninth of the last game of the ’42 season, the error that cost the Mundys a tie for seventh, and set the stage for the expulsion from Port Ruppert.

  (2) Big John Baal (1B). Trained in the jungles of Central America by local Communist insurrectionists; highly motivated. Cell leader of Mundys, certainly one of the top two or three party members in the league.

  (3) Chico Mecoatl (P). Roots in Mexican insurgency movement. Two brothers, three sisters, six cousins, and two stepfathers jailed in Mexico for political activities. Noises he makes while pitching may be code signals.

  (4) Deacon Demeter (P). “The Red Deacon,” liaison between party members in organized baseball and party members infiltrating organized religion. Top Southern “white trash” Communist in U.S.

  e. Fellow travelers

  (1) Jolly Cholly Tuminikar (P)

  (2) Nickname Damur (2B)

  (3) Specs Skirnir (RF)

  (4) Carl Khovaki (UT)

  (5) Applejack Terminus (UT)

  (6) Mule Mokos (UT)

  4. The Isaac Ellis Development

  a. Background and summary; or, “From Surmise to Certainty.” It has long been suspected by the Presidential Adviser and the Chief Investigator of the Internal Security Affairs Division of the Patriot League that the owner of the Tri-City Greenbacks, Abraham Ellis, and his wife, Sarah Ellis, were, like so many of their co-religionists, either “tools” of the Communists, party members, or fellow travelers. It has now been established with maximal certainty that the entire Ellis family comprises the key intelligence and secret police unit in all of organized baseball.

  b. J.E.W.; or, “The Ellis Mission.” The Ellis mission appears to be threefold: (J) to contribute by their very presence to undermining faith in the Patriot League; (E) to mastermind ad hoc espionage activities within the league; and (W) to spy on their fellow Communists within the league and transmit all data as to the loyalty, dedication, and competence of agents and party functionaries to the appropriate Kremlin offices. With a foot in both the GRU (Main Intelligence Directorate of the Armed Forces General Staff) and the KBG (Intelligence Service of the Soviet State Security Service, or Secret Police), the Ellises hold the position of highest-ranking Communist agents in the Patriot League, outranking Frank Mazuma (Colonel Chiehikov) and the Chief Investigator of the Internal Security Affairs Division of the Patriot League. Their identity is probably known only to Colonel Raskolnikov himself.

  c. Isaac Ellis; or, “Moscow Makes Her Move.” On April 12, 1944, three days before the opening of the Patriot League season, Isaac Ellis, the seventeen-year-old son of Abraham Ellis, requested an interview with Gil Gamesh in a cafeteria in Tri-City, where the Mundys were playing a final exhibition game against the Greenbacks. There Ellis made the following proposal:

  (1) That he become a Ruppert Mundy “coach” under manager Gil Gamesh

  (2) That he be given complete managerial control over team strategy until the All-Star break

  (3) That during this “trial” period he be permitted to institute the following changes—

  (a) Do away with the sacrifice bunt as an offensive maneuver and the intentional pass as a defensive maneuver

  (b) With a runner or runners on base and less than two outs, rely almost exclusively on the hit-and-run

  (c) Bat the hitters in descending order of run productiveness

  (d) Instead of removing pitchers “randomly and haphazardly” in a game for defensive reasons, rotate for offensive reasons; start with “a relief pitcher” who works approximately two innings, follow with “a starting pitcher” who goes approximately five, and finish up with “a second relief pitcher” who pitches the final two

  (To justify this bizarre and outlandish system, Ellis offered a wealth of spurious statistics and pseudoscientific explanations [see charts attached]; he argued that if instit
uted on opening day, the system would land the Mundys in the first division by the All-Star break and the team would be in contention for the pennant by the season’s end.)

  d. Analysis. It was of course immediately apparent to the Chief Investigator that (J) Isaac Ellis was a Communist agent assigned to spy on Gil Gamesh; (E) that if hired by Gil Gamesh to be a Ruppert Mundy coach he might well be able to act to inhibit the counterespionage activities of Gamesh; but (W) that if he were not hired, it would be immediately apparent to Moscow that Gamesh, by refusing to capitalize on Ellis’s brilliantly destructive scheme, had acted to preserve rather than to undermine the Patriot League—in short, that he had (as indeed he has) resumed his loyalty to his native land.

  When, at the end of June, the Mundys moved up into undisputed possession of fourth place, Roland Agni found himself unable to justify any longer, either to his father or to Manager Gamesh, his refusal to honor his Ruppert contract. Never mind that a day didn’t pass now without a Mundy player being thrown out of a ballgame for cursing the ump or taking a poke at an opposing player; never mind that there were fist fights with fans and rumors of knives in the Mundy dugout; never mind the invective spewed forth from the Mundy bench, the likes of which had never before been heard in big league ball. The point was this: how could he continue to call them the worst team in history when there now appeared to be four teams even worse in the Patriot League alone—and only three that were better! Just what kind of prima donna was he to refuse to play ball on a major league team with a better than .500 average? “What about Walter Johnson, Roland—twenty years with the Senators and only two pennants—and did he complain? Did he run home and refuse to leave his room?” “But it’s a fluke, Daddy!” cried Roland from the bed where he now lay for weeks on end. “I know these fellas—they can’t even field .500!” “Yet,” said his father, peering into the darkened room, “here are today’s official standings, for all to see. Tycoons first. Butchers second. Keepers third. And Mundys fourth, with thirty wins and twenty-nine losses. In ten weeks, they have won almost as many without you as they won with you during an entire season of play.” “But that wasn’t my fault—I won the batting championship of the entire league!” “Yet oddly it didn’t help that team one bit. From the looks of things, it may even be what hindered them. You and your superior ways may well have been what crushed the confidence of that entire team. Oh, son, when will you understand that no man is an island unto himself?”