Prose (60 page)

She admits the hard work: “I never knew anyone who had a passion for words who had as much difficulty in saying things as I do and I know I'm trying.” In spite of her wish to be clear and simple, this last phrase brings up the question that always baffles us with great artists of Miss Moore's kind: the supremely original, nevertheless unpretentious, small-scale ones: Klee, Bissier, or Webern, for example. Just how deep does their self-consciousness go? I certainly can not measure it, and there is always the perfectly agreeable possibility that I am being teased a little on purpose. Lately I have heard one or two poets and critics sound upset because they don't think that the poem about Yul Brynner is as good as, say,
The Pangolin.
How solemn can one get? Surely by now Miss Moore is entitled to write any old way, any new way, she wants to.

It is nice to think that the correspondence with the Ford Company will outlast the Ford. Imagine an examination for future English scholars, based on the First Ford Epistle: “I have seen and admired Thunderbird as a Ford designation. It would be hard to match; but let me, the coming week, talk with my brother who would bring ardor and imagination to bear on the quest.”

1. Give the derivation of the word Thunderbird.

2. Describe how the custom developed, in the mid-twentieth century, of asking famous poets to christen the
automobile.

Miss Moore says of animals and athletes: “they look their best when caring least.” She says, “I had no ambition to be a writer” and I believe her implicitly. This is her greatest secret and her greatest lesson for us now, when ambition comes first, publicity-seeking second, and writing third. Think of Miss Moore's years at the Branch Public Library; go to the tortoise, thou hare!

Another lesson we can learn from Miss Moore—if I may relish a moral or two myself—is in how to lead the city-life. Besieged by “culture,” bewildered as to what we should like and shouldn't like, timid TV watchers or brave non-TV watchers, spending so much time and energy in criticising and comparing likes and dislikes—Miss Moore shows us how it is possible to preserve one's own pure taste and go one's own sweet way. We carp and are niggardly, but she can find a moment of lucidity in Eisenhower, and admire the Duke of Windsor's prose.

She says she didn't use to care for the word “poetry” and refused to use it for her “observations,” but that now she minds it less. She does not say why, but I believe that one reason why she minds it less is that she herself has done so much to elevate the associations with the word “poetry” since those 1920's when she began to publish. She once told me (I hope I have the story right) that in the days of the suffragette parades she climbed to the top of a mail box during a demonstration. Whatever Miss Moore contributed to the cause of Votes for Women, how much more recklessly, bravely, and generously has she contributed to—let us use the word—poetry.

I should like to add a few complaints about this Viking Reader, complaints that really amount to why isn't there more of it? I like the series of Viking Portables (some of which are called Readers, as well) much better. They are chunky books, semi-limp (I think it is called), pleasant to hold or carry or read in bed, the same size as my old original reader, only thicker (perhaps I think all readers should be that size), and they run to 600 or 700 pages. Think how much Miss Moore would go into one of them. And the price is (or was; maybe it has gone up) $2.00, instead of $6.95. I know I shall never understand publishers—but why shouldn't Miss Moore be given in full, and why shouldn't she be Portable too? Where, oh where are:
The Hero, The Jerboa,
The Plumet Basilisk,
the Frigate Pelican,
Peter,
the gorgeously beautiful
An Octopus?

And also I don't like a bright orange jacket for someone whose great-great-grandfather came from Merrian Square, Dublin.

1962

Flannery O'Connor: 1925–1964

I never met Flannery O'Connor, but we had been exchanging occasional letters for the last eight years or so. She invited me to visit her at “Andalusia” in Milledgeville, and how deeply I regret now that I never did. The closest I got to it was once when a freighter I was traveling on to South America put into Savannah for overnight. Wandering through those dusty, fusty little squares, I suddenly realized I was in Flannery O'Connor country and thought perhaps I could get to see her. I put in a telephone call from the booth in the lobby of the largest hotel; I remember that while I waited I studied a display of pecans and of boxes of “Miss Sadie's Bourbon Balls” on the candy and cigar counter just outside the booth. Quite soon a very collected, very southern voice answered and immediately invited me to “come on over.” Alas, the bus connections didn't work out so that I could get back to my freighter in time to sail.

Later she sent me some colored snapshots of herself, some with her peacocks, some of her alone, always on crutches. In these amateur snapshots she looks, in spite of the crutches, younger than her age and very much alive. From Brazil I sent her a cross in a bottle, like a ship in a bottle, crudely carved, with all the instruments of the Passion, the ladder, pliers, dice, etc., in wood, paper, and tinfoil, with the little rooster at the top of the cross. I thought it was the kind of innocent religious grotesquery she might like, and I think she did, because she wrote:

If I were mobile and limber and rich I would come to Brazil at once after one look at this bottle. Did you observe that the rooster has an eyebrow? I particularly like him and the altar cloth a little dirty from the fingers of whoever cut it out.… I am altogether taken with it. It's what I'm born to appreciate.

I feel great remorse now that I hadn't written to her for many months, that I had allowed this friendship to dwindle just when she must have been aware she was dying. Something about her intimidated me a bit: perhaps natural awe before her toughness and courage; perhaps, although death is certain for all, hers seemed a little more certain than usual. She made no show of
not
living in a metropolis, or of being a believer,—she lived with Christian stoicism and wonderful wit and humor that put most of us to shame.

I am very glad to hear that another collection of her stories is to be published soon. I am sure her few books will live on and on in American literature. They are narrow, possibly, but they are clear, hard, vivid, and full of bits of description, phrases, and odd insights that contain more real poetry than a dozen books of poems. Critics who accuse her of exaggeration are quite wrong, I think. I lived in Florida for several years next to a flourishing “Church of God” (both white and black congregation), where every Wednesday night Sister Mary and her husband “spoke in tongues.” After those Wednesday nights, nothing Flannery O'Connor ever wrote could seem at all exaggerated to me.

1964

On the Railroad Named Delight

In the Western Hemisphere a 400th anniversary for a city is a rare event, and so Rio de Janeiro is celebrating its quatercentenary in 1965 off and on all year.

It began at New Year's midnight, or even a few hours before. There had been a superb parade of bands and dancers down the Avenida Getúlia Vargas in the center of the city before—at the stroke of 12 (Rio time)—Pope Paul VI touched a button in the Vatican and illuminated, with a new set of floodlamps, the figure of Christ the Redeemer that overlooks the city from atop Corcovado Mountain. Air Force planes flew overhead, dropping “silver rain” of bits of foil painted with the name of the State Bank.

That was also the night of Yemanjá, Goddess of the Sea, and her worshipers crowded Copacabana and the other beaches. Cabalistic-patterned trenches had been dug at high-water line and thousands of white candles set in them. The sand was strewn with white flowers, mostly lilies, and quantities of “white” alcohol, called
cachaça,
were drunk. Lines of girls and women, all in white, holding hands, and men in white, singly, waded into the surf singing hymns to Yemanjá and throwing their sheaves of flowers out as far as they could.

All together, the city's activities were a completely Cariocan—that is to say, a Rio de Janeiran—mixture: Latin and African, Catholic and pagan; mildly military, with a touch of progress; a bit disorganized, but with a great deal of unexpected beauty.

*   *   *

Now the year's biggest festival—Carnival, the four days preceding Ash Wednesday—has come and gone. As always, the first night, Saturday, was devoted to fancy-dress balls, with the most ostentatious being held at the Municipal Theater. These balls are really costume competitions. No expense is spared, and the winners are invariably dressed in the height of extravagant bad taste.

On Sunday night came the parades of dancers—first, the
frêvos,
in a wild, crouching dance from the north, then the dozens of samba “schools,” each with hundreds of members in green and pink, silver and blue, red and white. In the tradition of Carnival, the parades lasted all night (and it should be remembered that this is the rainy season in Rio), with the best schools saved to the last, bravely dancing down the avenue at sunrise.

Tuesday night brought the
ranchos,
huge allegorical floats, many of them mechanized with revolving wheels, opening flowers and giants with rolling eyes. This year, in honor of the quatercentenary, many depicted real or imaginary scenes from Rio's history.

Through all this no work was done. Public buildings, banks and shops all were closed. Though it is now the fashion for the wealthier and more sophisticated to leave Rio during Carnival, the streets were packed each night. By day, the population recuperated at home. Yet there was remarkably little drunkenness or disorder. This year, the traditional perfume throwers, flasks that shoot a fine jet of scented ether, giving a smart shock and a sensation of icy cold on the skin, were officially banned as dangerous. They had been banned before—with equally little effect.

*   *   *

Visitors to Rio de Janeiro usually exclaim: “What a beautiful city.” But sooner or later, the more thoughtful are likely to say: “No, it's not a beautiful city; it's just the world's most beautiful setting for a city.”

Guanabara Bay is one of the largest landlocked harbors in the world, and many travelers say it is the most beautiful. Sharp granite peaks rise around it almost directly from the water in a series of fantastic shapes that suggested rather simple names to the Portuguese mariners who first came here: Sugar Loaf, Crow's-nest, Rudder, Two Brothers, Hunchback (or Corcovado).

Because the mountains are so close to the ocean the moisture in the sea winds condenses quickly and clouds float unusually low about them. This makes for considerable humidity; fussy people complain that their silver tarnishes quickly and their shoes mildew in the closets. But the dampness also gives a softness to the atmosphere that is one of Rio's charms. Although distant objects are clear they are bathed in a pink or bluish light—dreamy and delicate.

The granite peaks still bear all manner of tropical vegetation. Lianas hang from them, and wild palms wave on their tops—between and over city blocks—with a romantic effect unlike that of any other city.

Beautiful as it is, this setting does not lend itself to city planning. For 400 years, the city has probed slowly between the peaks in every direction—until it has grown like a lopsided starfish.

*   *   *

As in most capital cities (of which Rio was one until the capital was moved to the newly constructed Brasília in 1960), most of the population seems to come from somewhere else. The very poorest Brazilians—those from the north and northeast—have arrived in increasing numbers for 20 years or more. Now they come packed in old buses or in trucks filled with benches called
arraras
(“macaw perches”).

Some find work; some are unemployed. Some move on. But very, very few go home, because city life—wretched as it may be—is still more diverting and satisfying than life in the dead little towns or villages they come from.

These people swell the sad and notorious Rio
favelas
(slums). More ambitious and prosperous people, bright young men seeking university degrees, young bureaucrats and politicians also flock to Rio. Many of the “real” Cariocas themselves are Cariocas from only one or two generations back—when the family left the old
fazenda
(or estate) and moved to the city for good.

Even if São Paulo is now a much bigger and richer city, many intellectuals prefer to live in Rio. It is still at least the intellectual capital of the country. In its extremes of wealth and poverty, it mirrors the inflation brought on by former President Juscelino Kubitschek's breakneck drive for industrialization, and by the graft that flourished under both him and his successor, João Goulart. It is a city that reflects the uncertainties of the entire nation since an army coup last March and April ousted Goulart and installed Marshal Humberto Castelo Branco as President. Finally, after 400 years, it is a city that has grown shabby.

There has been a “Paint Rio” campaign, with photographs in the newspapers of the presidents of paint companies handing gallons of free paint to the mother superiors of orphan asylums. House cleaning is needed badly; even the reputedly glamorous section of Copacabana is full of stained and peeling 10-story apartment houses.

Some parts of the city have new street signs, also badly needed. These light at night, helpfully, because Rio is a very dim city these days, but they bear advertisements as well as street names, and are criticized for being commercial and in bad taste.

In contrast to the general decrepitude, there is the brand-new Flamengo Park, with a new beach, gardens, an outdoor bandstand and dance floor, a marionette theater and rides for children. It is by far the city's best birthday present to its citizens, and although it is only about three-quarters finished, the citizens are embracing it by tens of thousands.