-
The Michigan Daily-Sunday, A
Page 2-Sunday, April 15, 1979-The Michigan Daily
R AMBLINGS/sue warner
Heller's 'Good as Gold': It i
IT DOESN'T take long to catch on
to the subtle ways of making life as
a history student easier. As an eager
freshman, my eyes repeatedly passed
over the Thomas Locke essay accom-
panying the European History 102 text
and lecture. I read all of essay number
18, and, when finished, had absolutely
no clue as to what Mr. Locke was
saying. Resigned to my stupidity, I
went to discussion anyway and listened,
with delight, as the TA said, in two con-
cise sentences, what Locke had expen-
ded nearly 15 pages trying to say.
The next week I made a half-hearted
attempt at Hobbes, to no avail. But why
bother, when the TA would explain.
everything anyway? The rest of the
term I made no attempt to do any
reading. I did alright, learned
something about Locke and Hobbes,
and ventured forward in my haphazard
career as a history major.
It's not that I don't like history. In
fact, I enjoy the subject a great deal.
It's just that I don't like unnecessary
work.
I did slave over my French and
Biology that first term, but history was
a breeze once my system had evolved.
In the following years the organization
has grown to the point where more time
has been devoted to the study of
studying history, than to actually
studying history. After accumulting a
healthy 20-plus credit hour total in
history by my sophomore year, I signed
LSA's little yellow card, committing
myself. And now, on the brink of senior
year, I've settled quite comfortably into
my major. The trauma of freshman
year is behind me, and with a measure
of sage self-assurance, I recall when in
all seriousness I contemplated pre-med,
pre-law, and even transferring into Art
School.
But by now, I have the history system
down: midterm, final, and a couple of
ten-pagers. Toss in some facts, dates,
and something of an argument, and
that will usually suffice. A typo-free
essay, properly footnoted under the
rules of Strunk and White, should go the
distance. No trophies, of course, but I
get by.
Exams are, an all-out, free-for-all of
facts. I've learned that no term, no
matter how insignificant, shall go un-
defined, even if the reader has logged
over 30 years in academia and hardly
needs me to explain the definition of
postindustrial society. But it's
definitions they want, and that's sort of
what they get. Besides definitions, no
history exam would be complete
without the three sacred tenets of
vaguary: political, economic, and
social "effects." Everything has
political, economic, and social effects,
and, what's more, political changes
have economic effects, and vice versa.
The scanty web of facts can cluster and
mesh in endless combinations.
B BUT THE TRADE secrets are
certainly not mine alone. An
entire subcommunity of history majors
flourishes in an attempt to outsmart the
department. There is a sort of bond
among us-the pre-law brown-nosers,
the border-line revolutionaries near the
back of the room, and even those few
who actually intend to become
professional historians. We can, by
now, toss out authors' names with some
sense of who's revisionist and who's
tradition-bound. We've all absorbed the
must-reads, or at least the book covers,
to acquaint ourselves briefly with the
Schlesingers and the Nevineses. - ,
And there is a familiarity, too, with
what sits behind those doors-thsose
decaled names on frosted glass which
line the third and fourth floors of Haven
Hall and assorted cubicles of MLB. I
know who's Twentieth Century, who's
Marxist, who's lazy, hip, ahd who's
famous, or thinks he is.
Yet despite the superficial
familiarity, I know I've missed
something. There's still a sense of
distance when I make semi-annual
visits to Haven Hall in search of exten-
sions. In one night I stay up and ham-
mer out a ten-pager, including
"reading" and "research." The basic
requirements are met, and there are
words typed on pages, but still, there's
a loss in not doing what I know I should,
or could.
I get over it, though, and before I can
pay my library fines from the last
"research" paper it's time to watch the
sunrise again. I meander through the
stacks of the Grad Library's kelly
green Five South, where all the history
sits massed under the call number 'E'. I
load my arms and say it will be dif-
ferent this time ...
And there on Five South I will sit this
week, gearing up for my 467 final,
skimming the books I should have been
reading carefully all term, poring over
borrowed notes on the lectures I slept
through. Too soon, the blue book will
open. And without fear, and without
facts, I will muster my skills as a
history major, and wing it.
GOOD AS GOLD
By Joseph Heller
Simon and Schuster,
$12.95, 445 pp.
By Anne Eva Ricks
sundalymagazine lMBOSEIE CPUZZLE
mimi . . I.
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El mir
A. Political philosophy presently
in the dumps
B. Mental derangement:conveyance
of property to another
C. Certain ethnic fare
(2 words)
D. Plausibly
E. Morbid state of mind, with
no real cause
F. Artificial person created by low
G. Adulterous spouse
(2 words)
.H. Crazy; daft
I. Woven as a double cloth
(Camp.)
J. Radio frequency second from
the highest range of
the radio spectrum
17 42 133 53 73 83 182 110 174 154
13 52 121 63 87 91 105 161 175 147
24 55 126 136 111 169 196
4 28 40 56 209 183 162 199
2 15 30 37 200 59 69 76 127 138 166 177
16 45 70 71 86 98 108 135 146 167 176
32 36 96 57 85 90 100 114 134 145 153 168
180
41 11 66 112 211
1 179 105 197 178 58
46 78 84 107 115 150 202 124 193
M. Period of interruption
of electric current
N. "Penny wise, pound-'
-old adage
0. Of a system that encourages
dependence on "experts"
and "professionals"
P. Insulting; offending
Q. Carries again
R. Personage; reputation
S. Ameliorotions
T. Separates; withdraws
U. Title of Woody Allen film
V. Capacity for knowledge
W. Part of the psyche
79 207 10 31 123 132 148 113
5 164 21 29 43 143
68 93 137 88 185 104 26
_ _- -_ - _- _ _- _ -_ -_ -__ -
6 27 50 171 80 99 117 159 186 194 191
20 142 170 119 125 195 109 44 94 187
14 151 25 97 38 172 204
35 188 118 39 130 203 210 155 173
34 18 48 64 75 82 95 152 103 116 139 165
47 72 62 102 122 131 190 157 205 198
74 181 8 141 51 189 208
BY
STEPHEN J.
POZSGAI
Copyright 1979
INSTRUCTIONS
Guess the words defined at the
left and write them in over
their numbered dashes. Then,
transfer each letter to the cor-
responding numbered square
in the grid above. The letters
printed in the upper-right-hand
corners of the squares indi-
cate from whatsclue-word a
particular square's letter
comes from. The grid, when
filled in, should read as a
quotation from a published
work. The darkened squares
are the spaces between words.
Some words may carry over
to the next line. Meanwhile,
the first letter of each guessed
word at the left, reading down,
forms an acrostic, giving the
author's name and the title of -
the work from which the quote
is extracted. As words and
phrases begin to form in the
grid, you can work back and
forth from clues to grid until
the puzzle is complete.
Answer to last week's puzzle:
"He supplied no finished
work of art to be admired but
not touched by his successors.
He created an imaginative
framework for them, and'
specific theories to serve ... in
a most every serious attempt
to consolidate and extend his
understanding. It is' Einstein 's
universe."
(Nigel) Calder,
Eisnstein's Universe
(This week's Acrostic answer
is on Page 8)
JOSEPH HELLER'S latest novel is
alternately acerbic, hilarious,
and offensive. It's reminiscent of Por-
tnoy's Complaint at 40, told from the
point-of-view of Catch-22's Yossarian.
Ludicrous events are juxtaposed with
serious musings, sexual fantasies with
divorce proceedings, and sweeping
denunciations of America with manic
highs. Bruce Gold, a successful middle-
aged academic, hates his family, frien-
ds, and work. He is bored, depressed,
and disillusioned, and the people
around him reciprocate his feeling: His
physician abuses him with a "weird
and perhaps depraved" humor; his
lover describes Gold's lovemaking
techniques as "middle-aged"; his
father introduces him as "the brother
of my son Sid";and even the narrator
describes him as rapacious and
mediocre.
Gold is the victim of the midlife
crisis, a classic example of a modern
urban man unble to cope with his life:
He was losing his taste for
mankind. There was not much he
did like. He liked money, goods,
honors . . . Certainly nothing
proceeded according to desire. In
the long run, failure was the only
thing that worked predictably.
Gold hates the minority Americans at
the bottom, hates his own hypocrisy
when mouthing accepted liberal
academic politics, and hates those at
the top, as well: "The American
economic system was barbarous,
resulting, naturally, in barbarism and
entrenched imbecility on all levels of
culture."
Good As Gold focuses loosely on two
themes, as it follows Gold's rise to the
top. Gold is interested in "The Jewish
Experience in America" as a potential
book, and gathers information from
friends and relatives, as well as
examining his own life for source
material. The other theme is Gold's
parodoxical attempt to escape "the
Jewish experience," by conniving for a
position in Washington. He originally
entered academicsto "escape his
tamily, by whom he felt both suf-
focated and unappreciated"; by going
to Washington, he will insure his
family's rejection.
Gold's anti-Semitism is most strongly
evident in his attitude towards women:
he wants to leave his "pudgy, dark,
Jewish wife" in New York for his
Washington fantasy, which he
describes to a friend:
'Blond girls, blond, Lieberman,
the blondest you ever saw. All of
them beautiful. The daughters of
millionaire oil barons and
newspaper publishers . . . All are
nineteen or twenty-three and will
never grow older. They love Jews.
And they don't have enough of us to
go around. They think that we 're
brilliant, dynamic and creative, in-
stead of just jumpy, nervous and
neurotic.'
Of course, this being the novel that it
is, Gold immediately meets and beds
the tremendously wealthy, immensely
tall, blond nymphomanic daughter of
the powerful Hugh Biddle Conover; he
has absolutely no trouble leaving his
A nne Eva Ricks is a senior in
the Honors English prog(a ,., .
dumpy wife. Never, in these egocentric
masturbatory fantasies written by
aging male authors, are the concerns of
the feminine libido considered; Gold
describes himself as "having a
scrawny chest and sinewy, hairy legs
and arms," but this doesn't deter the
sexual interest of Andrea Biddle
Conover. She is the complete
fulfillment of Gold's adolescent fan-
tasies-acquiescent and awed, osten-
sibly schooled at Smith and possessor of
a doctoral degree, her conversation
rambling on inanely, mostly about
sex. The only polysyllabic word in
her vocabulary is "pornographic"; she
remains utterly unthreatening in-
tellectually or sexually, and is abun-
dantly grateful simply for his presence,
reiterating that he need never call
again (though she experiences
paroxysms of joy when he does).
GOLD HATES himself, expressing
even his attraction to Andrea in
self-depracatory comparisons: "An-
drea did not seem to mind. . . that her
fair flesh, imbued with a golden tinge,
contrasted with his own swarthier
complexion." He is obsessed with
strives for both the position in
Washington, and the blond wife.
Gold exists in a depressing world in
which he has achieved his goals only to
be disappointed. His academic work,
though lauded by critics, is a tired
rehash of others' creative thought. His
family respects his work, but he
deprecates their judgment. His old
friends from graduate school share his
malaise:
For Gold, Lieberman, and
Pomeroy, there had been sound
reasons for their expectations. But
the real stars had sprung from other
quarters, and before they knew it,
they had been left behind. All had
Henry Kissinger, whom he both
emulates and despises. He sees
Washington as dominted by WASPs,
who use brilliant Jews as "slaves."
Kissinger epitomizes the "non-Jewish
Jew, powerful in Washington, married
to a. tall blond Gentile wife, and a
slave." Gold formulates an insane pic-
ture of Kissinger as depraved and op-
portunistic, precisely what he himself
is becoming. Gold is consumed with
ambition and self-loathing, as he
'Gold's
rejection
of the academic
world, of his family,
of New York, and
of Judaism is ironic,
in that he's not re-
jecting it for any-
thing.'
gotten what the
dissatisfied. Gc
tain a decent ti
York and some
and he had ...
and allfelt like
Gold's rejecti
world, of his fan
of Judaism, is it
rejecting it for
the officials in
witted and unp
nment as a rud
president who I
aides choose to
primary interest
on the furtherenc
Ralph Newsom(
"spokesman" fo
government po
parodied doubles
the work Gold mi
The governmr
spectrum of ant
is nonchalantly
characteristicall
Andrea's father i;
addressing Gob
asking him, "wh
same room with
however, are as
himself, or his 51
you want to knot
perience is, I'll t
to be."
G OLD'S IS A
love, honor
meaning. Newsc
perfect marriag
because, "Well, F
I couldn't see
myself down to
with four childi
woman was my
were my own. C
exist only to fu
higher positions.
Gold into dinner
for government v
a CIA grant.
The wit and
Gold's vicious
casionally hilari
445 pages of hyt
betrayal is depr
was written in
upheaval. I since
Joseph Heller's
love, life, and the
If so, suicide or
alternatives.
political groups
(Continued from Page 3)
strong stand in support of nuclear
energy. "Nuclear energy has a critical
role in developing the world," insists
Marsh. Another major element of the
U.S. Labor Party's policy that might
qualify it as conservative is its stated
desire to make all changes within the
present system.
The Americans for Democratic Ac-
tion will, with a policy that is typically
broad, address issues that could affect
an individual's autonomy. "The overall
goal of the organization," according to
ADA leader Steve Yokich, "is to give
people a great measure of control over
their own life, so that your life isn't con-
trolled by big anything, whether that
means big government or big business,
or even big labor. The goal is to make
sure that each individual has a life in
which all his individual needs are met,
and at the same time there's some
degree of autonomy over that life."
Though the national organization's
A n Arbor chapter was founded only
last November, it has already spon-
sored several activities and concen-
trated on a variety of issues. Yokich
claims that the group is still trying to
"make a name" for' itself, and con-
siders it "one of the prime movers
behind what has been called the
Progressive Caucus, that being the
liberal ring of the Democratic Party
beyond President Carter." The 21-year-
old Yokich, who calls himself a "good
Detroit-area boy," says that he has
always wanted to be President of the
United States. "If I could be
President," he says with a grin,. "that
would be fine."
AT TIMES, a certain animosity
springs up among these groups.
Yokich, for example, -claims
that the ADA is likely to have a much
more vital impact on students than
many of the more liberal groups on
campus. "The socialist groups, I think,
are way out in left field," he says, "I
just don't see any hope for them. The
people are kin
they're all weir
We're all kind
people. The p
organization a
things. I mean, t
school."
RCYB membe
SYL looks for ti
those who may
revolution.
SYL ... their w
question of sumn
experiences in
taking -it furthe
"It's kind of a C
this abstract p
going to voice
sidelines, and vo
wait until peof
them."
"If you look a
ferent groups,"
Richard, "you'll
divisions. The F
See POLE
23 156 54 89 120 128 206 149
K. "Walk Away -"-popular
X. Sanity (2 words)
song from the 60's
1. Being
12 .49 129 101 184
3 65 7 18 33 160
9 22 61 67 77 92 140 144 158 163 192 201