Page 12-Sunday, April 9, 1978-The Michigan Daily
st. james
(Continued from Page 9)
money for that (a sex act) then you
must hate men."
"The other reason is that they think if
you know men that well, you must hate
them," she added, laughing.
According to St. James, between ten
and twenty percent of prostitutes are
lesbians-the same pecentage
estimated for society as a whole. She
later addressed another myth about
prostitutes-their image as
freewheeling and immoral floozies. St.
James describes most hookers as being
"traditional and square," the antithesis
of the media-inspired image.
Citing the prohibition of alcohol as an
example, St. James cautioned against
setting up a middle man system to
regulate prostitution.
"I wouldn't want to see the
prostitutes made into civil servants.
That's what I fear would happen if we
left it up to men to devise the
regulations. That's why it's so impor-
tant to get this going as a priority
issue," she warned.
After her appearance at East Quad,
she talked about her past and her
motivations in a private interview.
After being arrested several years
ago for turning a trick, a charge which
she contests, St James decided to
speak out and take the first step in
legitimizing pr-ositution.
"I thought about giving up my
privacy for two years. I considered all
the various aspects-the disadvantages
and so forth-and I decided that it was
necessary for me to come out. Nobody
else was going to do it.
"I waited and waited but nobody else
was going to say anything. I felt I had to
say something. I realized that the result
would be that I would have people who
wanted to know all aspects of my life,
but I had nothing to lose."
S HE SPOKE with an intensity that
didn't quite mask her exhaustion.
Talking carefully, she would-
suddenly be caught by the spark of a
thought and launch into a flurry of ideas
interspersed with a probing glance or
delighted chuckle.
St. James cultivates a gruff and
gregarious image, and her Ann Arbor
appearance enhanced the myth. During
her stay in town she presided over a
Hooker's Masquerade Ball at the
Michigan League, decked out in a black
suit and bushy mustache. St. James
played the game-alternating
toughness with clever charm, perfectly
comfortable in the public eye.-
Yet her view of herself is rather dif-
ferent.
"I was always a very private person,
-even though I was a public woman,"
she related. "I still get a lot of privacy.
I'm alone a lot on the road. I get my
room to myself for the most part. I'm
alone on the airplane. I don't have any
social life but I can't stand going to
N
"The act itself is not
against the law.. . it's the
woman taking the money
-that's the issue.
that I think are necessary. Any person
in politics has to make that decision,"
she declared.
This assessment sounded a bit more
realistic. A private woman living a
public role, lauded by some yet denoun-
ced by many others-St. James fills a
brutally demanding yet exciting
positon.
"I don't think I could live in the
stagnant world- again," she reflected,
"in an isolated situation like a
housewife. I could never live like that."
functions where I have to eat lunch, eat
dinner, do this, drink that. I avoid those
kinds of meetings.... In public life, you
don't really have to give up your
privacy."
For a number of reasons, I was not
completely convinced. The kind of pri-
vacy one gleans in scattered moments
in hotel rooms did not sound alluring.
St. James touched on the subject once
more in the course of the interview.
"I was willing to give up my privacy
in order to effect some social changes
haldeman
(Continued from Page 11)
from the adopted persona during ex-
treme emergencies, and even then "Ot-
to" is all "Prime Operator"-a
ruthlessly efficient machine with the
knowledge of how to immobilize or kill
a man in a 1,000 different ways. By the
riverworld
(Continued from Page 10)
depletion, like natural resources, of
new ideas. Those not familiar with
science fiction may yawn: ideas, per
se, are not the stuff of literature, but
rather people and the quality of writing
about them. Science fiction, however,
has accurately been called the
literature of ideas-so much so that in-
ferior writing which presents fresh
ideas can limp (or even stride) to suc-
cess in science fiction, though it cannot
survive elsewhere.
FORTUNATELY, the writing in The
Dark Design is far from inferior.
There is a good deal of action in the
Riverworld series, and Farmer is at his
best in writing the action scenes. His
exposition is clear and evocative
without frills or purple prose. When ac-
tion is all that Farmer puts into a work,
however (as in the progressively wor-
sening books of his World of Tiers
series), the results can be choppy,
aimless, and eventually boring.
But The Dark Design offers more.
The exciting scenes involve attempts
by several groups to reach a,
mysterious structure at the planet's
north pole (the final explanation may
lie here) by way of boats, airships, and
balloons that have been constructed at
great expense and travail. Historical
characters such as Mark Twain, King.
John (brother of Richard the Lion-
Hearted) and Richard Burton(the ex-
plorer) rub shoulders with fictional
characters in the building, stealing, and
last of his missions Otto is reduced to
spouting: "I'll tear off your head and
beat you to death with it."
The novel itself is composed of three
"Episodes" (linked novellas) and four
"Interviews," which give the reader
glimpses of Otto's original diplomatic
navigation of these vehicles.
Farmer's familiarity with exotic
minor historical characters spices up
the story and enriches the narrative of
the other minor characters. His love of
Edgar Rice Burroughs shows itself in
his Tarzan-like, action-oriented prose
and in his use of concurrent storylines,
told in alternating episodes that end in
cliffhangers.
The only substandard affection in-
volves Peter Frigate, one of the chief
non-historical characters. Frigate, a
science fiction author in his pre-
resurrection days on earth, tends to
discuss his old work. The treatment
sometimes seems coy and self-
indulgent. Even the people who write
soap operas don't show their characters
watching television.
Wait for the science fiction paper-
back as a rule. It's, of course, cheaper
and the wait is not usually long. (In
fact, much of the best science fiction
appears originally in paperback). If
you have not yet read To Your Scat-
tered Bodies _Go or The Fabulous
Riverboat, you may wish-to take your
time reading them. How would you
have felt waiting for Tolkien's The
Return of the King?
In any event there is no excuse to put
off The Dark Design forever. If the final
volume falls in linegwithdthe rest, the
quality of the writing and the scope of
Farmer's ideas will merit his work a
place along with Asimov's Foundation
trilogy or Zelazny's newly completed
Amber series.
intentions and his struggle against his
conditioning. But the-strengths of
Haldeman's work are the plot and ac-
tion scenes.
A11 my sins Remembered is an
exciting adventure from a first-
rate story-teller. Haldeman is very
good at interjecting a future society's
elements unobtrusively into his
stories. He never stops to lecture, and
never needs to. As Dick Geis of Science
Fiction Review says, "he doesn't blink
and he doesn't soft-pedal."
The alien races Otto encounters are
particularly well-conceived and vivid.
The society portrayed in the title
episode could form a fascinating back-
drop for a new novle. Among the
S'Kang of the planet Cinder, the suns
ebbs and flares in long cycles and the
body's life processes slow and
regenerate during -a 50-year 'cold. The
S'Kang have no means of reproduction
and no memory of ever being born.
Haldeman adds a delightful touch to
these immortal beings and their absur-
dist form of logic: the planet's chief
philosopher calls himself "The Keeper
of Useful Sarcasms."
The human bit players who descend
to various levels of despicability and
cause trouble for Otto throughout the
novel are not cardboard figures.
Rather, they cut impressions like flat
steel with razor edges; they are single-
minded, driven tools of Haldeman's
imagination and not the pawnbrokers of
some government.
It is obvious that Haldeman intended
to say something with this book, besides
entertaining us. Perhaps he has suc-
ceeded. Haldeman is echoing the Or-
wellian notion, so devastatingly por-
trayed in 1984, that the "object of power
is power." "That 'me' died," Otto in-
sists at the end of the novel, "when he
signed up for Foreign Service and you
(the Confederacion) pre-empted him
for TBII. . . Otto McGavin died and
was replaced by what I am today, when
I'm not someone else."
Joe Haldeman is threatening to
become a "one-idea writer," for gover-
nmental exploitation of humans has
been a major theme in his last three
books. But he looked quite content at
Ann Arbor's science fiction convention
in January, sitting in a worn jacket and
jeans, sucking on his pipe and watching
the professional panel discussion. He
remains one of the best "hard" science
fiction writers of the day.
sunddyCmagazine
Co-editors
inside:
Patty Montemurri
Tom O'Connell
Books Editor
Brian Blanchard
Cover photo of a reflective Buddha in
Taiwan by Dan Oberdorfer
Hustling for
a living in
Ann Arbor
Margo St. James:
the prostitute's
politician
Books:
science.I
festival
Supplement to The Michigan Daily
Ann Arbor, Michigan-Sunday, April 9, 1978