The Great American Novel (54 page)

(
Laughter. Scattered applause.
)

CHAIRMAN
: Now, just a minute—

SMITTY
:   —uncalled for, unchecked, uncoherent, unconditional—

CHAIRMAN
: Counsel, I think you had better advise your client—

SMITTY
:   —unconnected, unconscionable, unconstrained—

CHAIRMAN
: It is you, sir, who is unconstrained. I think you are describing yourself. Now—

SMITTY
:   —uncontrollable, uncurbed, undecipherable, undefinable—

CHAIRMAN
(
pounding gavel
): Now, you will have to stop or you will leave the witness stand. And you will leave the witness stand because you are in contempt. And if you are just trying to force me to put you in contempt, you won't have to try much harder. You won't have to get to the end of the alphabet to go to jail, you know.

SMITTY
:   —undesirable, undiluted, undisguised, undreamt-of, unearthly, unequaled, unfaltering, unfathomable, unforgettable—

CHAIRMAN
: Officers, take this man away from the stand.

(
Applause and boos as witness is approached by federal marshals.
)

SMITTY
:   —unreality, Mr. Chairman, for sheer ununununun-
reality,
I cannot think of anything to compare with what has transpired at these hearings.

CHAIRMAN
: Is that all you wanted to tell us?

SMITTY
(
being led from the stand by two marshals
): That ain't exactly no thin'.

CHAIRMAN
: But surely as a writer, Mr. Smith, you know the old saying that truth is stranger than fiction.

SMITTY
: So are falsehoods, Mr. Chairman. Truth is stranger than fiction, but stranger still are lies.

(
Applause and boos as he is led out of the room.
)

For his defiance Smitty was held in contempt of the Committee and was sentenced to a year in the federal penitentiary at Lewisburg; he was paroled after six months, but never again did his by-line appear in an American newspaper.

*   *   *

November 1944.
General Douglas D. Oakhart runs as a write-in candidate for President of the United States. Receives one-tenth of one per cent of the popular vote.

February 1945.
HUAC concludes investigation of all Patriot League teams; calls for federal grand jury to investigate baseball.

March 1945.
Twenty-three more Communists expelled from Patriot League, bringing total (exclusive of owners) to seventy-two. General Oakhart regretfully suspends league operations until end of war when returning veterans will restore P. League play to “peacetime caliber.”

August 1945.
Destruction of Fairsmith Stadium in Hiroshima.

October 1945.
Publication of
Communism Strikes Out,
by Douglas D. Oakhart (Stand Up and Fight Press, Tri-City, Mass.).

January 1946.
First contingent of P. League ex-G.I.s proclaim themselves “free agents.” Refuse to honor reserve clause of contracts drawn with “Communist-dominated” teams. Backed by American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. Frank Mazuma promises to carry case to Supreme Court.

March 1946.
Gil Gamesh disappears from Tri-City editorial office of Angela Trust weekly national newsletter,
Stand Up and Fight!
Revenge by Communists feared. Mrs. Trust offers hundred thousand dollar reward for information pertaining to Gamesh's whereabouts.

April 1946.
Angela Whittling Trust, in surprise preseason move, releases “loyal” Tycoon players from contracts, signaling demise of Patriot League. Says of third major league, “Better dead than Red.” Mazuma labels act “mad,” promises to fight to restore league “integrity.” Publication of
Switch-Hitter, or I Led Two Lives,
by John Baal (Stand Up and Fight Press, Tri-City).

September 1946.
War Department dismisses four who engineered lease of Mundy Park from Ruppert franchise. Department of Justice reconvenes grand jury investigating baseball.

March 1947.
Wreckers begin demolition of Mundy Park for exclusive harborside luxury apartments. Port Ruppert City Council votes unanimously to change city name by January 1948; contest announced for name appropriate to “new era of expansion and prosperity.”

April 1947.
Aceldama, Asylum, Independence (Va.), Kakoola, and Terra Incognita follow Port Ruppert example, to be rechristened by '48. Frank Mazuma courtroom heart attack victim; survivors drop legal actions instituted by embittered entrepreneur named by P. League as Soviet spy. “Our family,” says Doubloon Mazuma from wheelchair, “has suffered enough from this savage national pastime.”

November 1948.
General Oakhart runs for President of the United States on Patriot Party ticket; running mate Bob Yamm. Receives surprising two per cent of popular vote; strongest in California. “Crusade under way,” says General.

May 1949. Pravda
photograph of Moscow May Day celebration reprinted in American papers; hatted figure between Premier Stalin and Minister of State Security Beria identified as Marshal Gilgamesh. Angela Whittling Trust May 2 suicide in underground stadium bunker. May 3, Tri-City councilmen vote to join former P. League towns in search for new name.

June 1952.
Tycoon Park, last remaining P. League stadium in U.S., to make way for multi-billion dollar “Maine to Montevideo” highway.

October 1952.
Oakhart-Yamm seek McCarthy endorsement; share TV platform when Wisconsin Senator raps Stevenson: “If somebody would only smuggle me aboard the Democratic campaign special with a baseball bat in my hand, I'd teach patriotism to little Ad-lie.” Political analysts interpret remark as boost to Patriot Party presidential ticket. Splinter Republicans wave signs, “General E, no! General O, yes!”

November 1952.
Oakhart-Yamm receive 2.3 per cent of popular vote, despite charge by Dems. and Reps. that Oakhart dupe of Soviet agent.

March 1953. Pravda
photograph of Stalin funeral mourners reprinted in American press; hatted figure between Minister of State Beria and First Secretary Malenkov identified as Marshal Gilgamesh.

December 1953.
Lavrenti P. Beria executed in Soviet Union by Stalin's heirs; hatted figure between First Secretary Khrushchev and Minister of Defense Bulganin identified as Marshal Gilgamesh in
Pravda
photo.

March 1954.
Marshal Gilgamesh sentenced to death as “double agent” and executed.
Pravda
carries full confession wherein “enemy of people” admits secret connection to American and National Baseball leagues. Leagues in joint statement label Gamesh confession “a preposterous fraud … typical act of Communist treachery to which no American in his right mind could possibly give credence.” Oakhart calls for full-scale investigation of league presidents Frick and Harridge; McCarthy reported “ready and willing.”

August 1956.
Private plane en route to Patriot Party Convention in Palm Springs disappears without trace; General Douglas D. Oakhart, Bob and Judy Yamm, and aircraft millionaire pilot assumed dead. Communist sabotage suspected.

EPILOGUE

T
HE DRAMA'S DONE
. Why then here does one step forth?—Because one did survive the wreck of the Patriot League. One did survive the madness, the ignorance, the betrayals, the hatred, and the lies! One did survive the Fairsmiths and Oakharts and Trusts and Baals and Mazumas and Gil Gameshes! Survived (somehow!) the writing of this book! O fans, forgive the hubris, but I'm a little in awe of my own fortitude. Rage, we know, can carry a writer a long long way, but O the anguish en route, the loneliness, the exhaustion, the self-doubt. But I will not describe again the scorn and the derision to which I've been subjected (see Prologue); believe me when I say,
they don't let up, they're out there being smug and self-satisfied and stupid every single day!
Charges of lunacy from senile old goats! Literary criticism from philistine physicians! Vile aspersions cast upon my probity, my memory, my dignity, my honor—and by whom? By the fogeys in the TV room watching
The Price Is Right!
O try it, fans, try plying your trade day in and day out with all around you sneering and calling you cracked. Do an old man a favor and see how far you get laying your bricks and selling your salamis, with every passerby crying, “Liar! Madman! Fool!” See how
you
hold up. O fans, it's been no picnic scratching out the truth here at Valhalla.

Or surviving those publishers down in New York. Let me share with you a representative sampling of their prose—and prudence, you might call it, if you were of a generous turn of mind.

Dear Mr. Smith:

I find what I have read of your novel thoroughly objectionable. It is a vicious and sadistic book of the most detestable sort, and your treatment of blacks, Jews, and women, not to mention the physically and mentally handicapped, is offensive in the extreme; in a word, sick.

Dear Mr. Smith:

We find your novel far-fetched and lacking authenticity and are returning it herewith.

Dear Mr. Smith:

Book blew my mind. Great put-down of Estab. Wild and zany black humor à la Bruce & Burroughs. The Yamms are a gas. I'd publish tomorrow if I was in charge here. But the Money Men tell me there's no filthy lucre in far-out novel by unknown ab't mythical baseball team. What can ya' do? Fallen world. I make what inroads I can but they are a CONGLOMERATE and I am just a “Smitty” to them. Anyhoo: let me buy you a lunch if you're ever down from Valhalla. And please let me see your next. Y'r 'umble.

Dear Mr. Smith:

I am returning your manuscript. Several people here found portions of it entertaining, but by and large the book seemed to most of us to strain for its effects and to simplify for the sake of facile satiric comment the complex realities of American political and cultural life.

Dear Mr. Smith:

Too long and a little old-hat. Sorry.

No need to quote from the other twenty-two filed here in my pocket, nor from my replies.

And now? Yet another year has passed—and I and the truth remain buried alive. Around me the other aged endear themselves to the doctor by playing checkers by day and dying by night. Weekly the incoming arrive on canes, the outgoing depart in polyethylene sacks. “Well,” says the nurse to each decrepit newcomer, “I think you're going to like it here, Gramps. We look after you and you look after yourself, and the world outside can just worry about its own problems for a change.” “Oh,” comes the codger's reply, “sounds good to me. No more teachers, no more books.” “That's the spirit,” chirps the slit, and sets him out in the sun to start in drying up for the grave. “Some folks,” she growls, as I hand her a letter to post, “know how to enjoy the old age the good Lord has been kind enough to grant them.” To which
I
reply, “Tampering with the mails is a federal offense. Be sure that goes out tonight.”

Yes, I fire off letter after letter—to Walter Cronkite, to William Buckley, to David Susskind, to Senator Kennedy, to Ralph Nader, to the Human Rights Commission of the UN, to renowned American authors, to Ivy League professors, to columnists, to political cartoonists, to candidates for public office looking for an “issue”; alert to the danger of appearing just another crank to the savvy secretaries of the great, I employ in my correspondence a style as dignified as any an investment banker or a funeral director might use on a prospective client: I am respectful, I am thoughtful, I am restrained. I wrestle insistence into submission; I smother upper case howls in the crib; exclamation points, those bloody daggers, I drive back into my own innards; and I don't alliterate (if I can help it). Yes, I forgo everything and anything smacking of seething, seething all the more so as I do so. And still I never get a serious reply.

The latest and, admittedly, most desperate of my letters follows. Beyond this there seems to me nowhere to go, except to that undiscovered country from which no traveler returns. Needless to say, when my fellows here learned of my letter's destination, my reputation as resident laughingstock soared. “There's the feller I tole you that writes them letters to China,” they inform the local do-gooders who bring us their cakes and cookies once a week. “A real screwball, that one. Imagination up and run away with him, and the two just never come back. Cracked right down the middle, he is.” “Well,” say the good ladies of Valhalla, New York, “I myself feel more pity than contempt for such a person,” whereupon they are informed that that is compassion misspent.

The plight of the artist, fans. Meanwhile, no answer from China as yet. But I will wait. I will wait, and I will wait, and I will wait. And need I tell you what that's like, for a man without the time for waiting, or the temperament?

Valhalla Home for the Aged

Valhalla, New York

January 15, 1973

Chairman Mao Tse-tung

Great Hall of the People

Peking, China

My dear Chairman Mao:

I am sure you are aware of the recent publication in the United States of a great historical novel by the Soviet writer and Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn. As you must know, Mr. Solzhenitsyn was not able to find a publisher for this work in the Soviet Union and subsequently has been vilified and traduced by his fellow Soviet writers for allowing his manuscript to be smuggled out to the West for publication. The reason Mr. Solzhenitsyn is despised in Russia is that his version of Russian history happens not to correspond with the version that is promulgated by the powers-that-be over there. In short, he refuses to accept lies for truth and myth for reality. For this he has been expelled from the Soviet writers' union and designated an enemy of the people by the Russian government. I understand that he lives now in isolation from society, virtually under arrest, in his apartment in Moscow.