=mq Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, September 29, 1974 BOQI K S VICTIMS OF SUCCESS The story of two writers and a flaw in the American Dream SELF-DEFENSE Freedom from fear: Guide against rape ROSS & TOM: Two American Tragedies by John Leggett. New York: Simon & Schuster, 434 pages, $10. By DON KUBIT "In America, success is the calling card of the under- taker." -Karl Shapiro .CCASIONALLY, the Ameri- can Dream comes true. It did for Ross Lockridge and Tom Heggen, two young writers whose first novels were popu- lar successes, making b o t h men rich and famous. With the publication of Rain- tree County by Lockridge, and the Broadway adaptation of . Heggen's Mister Roberts, t h e dream seemed complete. Yet, as we learn in Ross & Tom, a biography of these two men by John Leggett, their liv- es were tragedies. Within aI year of their accomplishments both men had committed sui- cide. Success had transformed the dream into a nightmare. Bene- ficiaries of the dream, the two men also became its victims. THE CHIEF proponents of the American Dream are the young. The quest for fame and fortune is fed by their ener- gies. The visionis, at times, a stimulus; at times, a pan- acea. But despite its elixirs, t h e American Dream is not with- out its faults. If success comes too quickly and shines too brightly, the dreamer may be caught off-guard, unprepared, and the return to reality can often be fatal. After their initial success, both Ross and Tom found their energies drained. Unable to write, self-doubt prevailed; they began to question the value of what theyJ lished. WANTIN could ond-novel- ma once writer in himself." Besides there were success br sures inva quired to w more emin ing. The a impossible. Ross &7 two men When the did their I shared the Midwestern gett stress had already accomp- It took Ross five years to write Raintree County, p 1 u s two more years of editing in G TO write, neither order to satisfy first the Book- I overcome that se- of-the-Month committee and block - the dilem- then the MGM people, who pro- described as "the mised a lucrative contract if competition w i t h the book could be translated in- to a movie. this internal conflict, Through the ordeal, R o s s the problems which scrimped and saved, feeding his rings. Outside pres- family on the meager earnings ded the solitude, re- of an English professor at a vrite, diversions were small college and spending ent and more appeal- summers in cramped inexpen- ct of writing became sive quarters to buy writing time. Tom is a portrait of He had high hopes for the who lived to write. novel, but after seven years writing stopped, so his spirit was broken. The cri- ives. Although t h e y ginal enthusiasm of bettering e same middle-class Joyce's Ulysses had palled. For n background, Leg- Ross, there became "some- es the differences in thing finite and irrevocable in AGAINST Medea and son. N e w Straus and $2.25. RAPE by Andrea Kathleen Thomp- Y o r k: Farrar, Giroux, 152 pp., ville, New York. But bis wise- planned another play, but trus- cracking nature often got him trations convinced him it was into trouble with the m,)re se- Logan, not him, who had made; date fathers of the most wvle- the play successful. Tom be- ly-read magazine in the world. lieved he could only write After Pearl Harbor, T o m again, in collaboration w i t h, joined the Navy. The long, bor- Logan, who was already b u s y Occasionally, the American dream comes true. It did for Ross Lockridge and Tom Heggen . . . yet within a year of their accomplishments both men had committed suicide. S:"';? e:f..4 " J..x'!; YY ', ."" .: ."rrEE W # ;.;#EWrrE' {:'{.^""::. ,,."%Y i: My::rii: ':"'r{ ":{';{ ing hours on a non-combat ship preparing South Pacific. I served as a basis for M i 3 t e r Meanwhile, Heggen's personal Roberts. Despite some negative life declined. Thrust into the reaction to the realistic, bawdy hectic life of New York, he language of the sailors, t h e could not find the stability he book became an instant success. had once had in Minneapolis. Romantic interests failed and he ATTRACTED to the theater, turned to more booze and pills, Tom worked first with until he was found by a clean- Max Schulman and finally Josh ing woman drowned in a bath- Logan to put Mister Roberts tub, his body filled with barbit- on the stage. With Henry Fonda urates. in the lead role, it became a Ross & Tom is a book that Broadway smash. Soon he was will interest anyone who hast receiving a weekly check of already written or thought he $1,200. It was more money than might want to write - a num- he had ever seen before, and ber which must include 90 perI proved to be more money than cent of the American popula- he knew what to do with. As tion. Although Leggett's writ- new money tends to do in the ing seems cliche-ridden at pockets of someone used to times, overall, Ross & Torn barely getting by, it led to ex- may be the best biography in cess. a ear withplenty of candi- By REBECCA WARNER x "WOMEN ARE always inf someone else's territory," state Andrea Medea and Kath- leen Thompson in their intro ductory chapter. "Every day of their lives, women learn to ac-! cept the fact that their freedom is limited in a way that a man's' is not." In Against Rape, Medea andt Thompson provide an arsenal1 of psychological, intellectual and physical weapons with which women can arm themselves against rape, free themselves! from the attitudes that inhibit self-defense, and prepare for, sexual assault, which, they point out, is something females have a good chance of experiencing.' For women with unresolved feelings about men, sexism, and; rape, the two women's incisivej prose can evoke old pain and1 dredge up anger we'd like to forget. The hurts are worth' bearing, though. The insights Against Rape offers into our1 fear and our anger are as prac-I tical as they are revealing. Rape, Medea and Thompson: explain, is the natural out-: growth of a society which re-, gards women not as full hu- mans, but rather as proper; y. The schism between the images' of "woman as someone else's sexual property" and "woman as mine"-wife, girlfriend, sis- ter, mother-create two major rape myths. The first is that the rapist is a psychopath, someone preternaturally ugly, who hides in dark alleys foam- ing at the mouth and waitimig >' for victims to fall into his