Thomas Wolfe, page 512
Behold the gem-strung towns and cities of the good, green East, flung like star-dust through the field of night. That spreading constellation to the north is called Chicago, and that giant wink that blazes in the moon is the pendant lake that it is built upon. Beyond, close-set and dense as a clenched fist, are all the jeweled cities of the eastern seaboard. There’s Boston, ringed with the bracelet of its shining little towns, and all the lights that sparkle on the rocky indentations of New England. Here, southward and a little to the west, and yet still coasted to the sea, is our intensest ray, the splintered firmament of the towered island of Manhattan. Round about her, sown thick as grain, is the glitter of a hundred towns and cities. The long chain of lights there is the necklace of Long Island and the Jersey shore. Southward and inland, by a foot or two, behold the duller glare of Philadelphia. Southward farther still, the twin constellations—Baltimore and Washington. Westward, but still within the borders of the good, green East, that nighttime glow and smolder of hell-fire is Pittsburgh. Here, St. Louis, hot and humid in the cornfield belly of the land, and bedded on the mid-length coil and fringes of the snake. There at the snake’s mouth, southward six hundred miles or so, you see the jeweled crescent of old New Orleans. Here, west and south again, you see the gemmy glitter of the cities on the Texas border.
Turn, now, seeker, on your resting stool atop the Rocky Mountains, and look another thousand miles or so across moon-blazing fiend-worlds of the Painted Desert and beyond Sierra’s ridge. That magic congeries of lights there to the west, ringed like a studded belt around the magic setting of its lovely harbor, is the fabled town of San Francisco. Below it, Los Angeles and all the cities of the California shore. A thousand miles to north and west, the sparkling towns of Oregon and Washington.
Observe the whole of it, survey it as you might survey a field. Make it your garden, seeker, or your backyard patch. Be at ease in it. It’s your oyster—yours to open if you will. Don’t be frightened, it’s not so big now, when your footstool is the Rocky Mountains. Reach out and dip a hatful of water from Lake Michigan. Drink it—we’ve tried it—you’ll not find it bad. Take your shoes off and work your toes down in the river oozes of the Mississippi bottom—it’s very refreshing on a hot night in the summertime. Help yourself to a bunch of Concord grapes up there in northern New York State—they’re getting good now. Or raid that watermelon patch down there in Georgia. Or, if you like, you can try the Rockyfords here at your elbow, in Colorado. Just make yourself at home, refresh yourself, get the feel of things, adjust your sights, and get the scale. It’s your pasture now, and it’s not so big—only three thousand miles from east to west, only two thousand miles from north to south—but all between, where ten thousand points of light prick out the cities, towns, and villages, there, seeker, you will find us burning in the night.
Here, as you pass through the brutal sprawl, the twenty miles of rails and rickets, of the South Chicago slums—here, in an unpainted shack, is a Negro boy, and, seeker, he is burning in the night. Behind him is a memory of the cotton fields, the flat and mournful pineland barrens of the lost and buried South, and at the fringes of the pine another nigger shack, with mammy and eleven little niggers. Farther still behind, the slave-driver’s whip, the slave ship, and, far off, the jungle dirge of Africa. And before him what? A roped-in ring, a blaze of lights, across from him a white champion; the bell, the opening, and all around the vast sea-roaring of the crowd. Then the lightning feint and stroke, the black panther’s paw—the hot, rotating presses, and the rivers of sheeted print! O seeker, where is the slave ship now?
Or there, in the clay-baked piedmont of the South, that lean and tan-faced boy who sprawls there in the creaking chair among admiring cronies before the open doorways of the fire department, and tells them how he pitched the team to shut-out victory today. What visions burn, what dreams possess him, seeker of the night? The packed stands of the stadium, the bleachers sweltering with their unshaded hordes, the faultless velvet of the diamond, unlike the clay-baked outfields down in Georgia. The mounting roar of eighty thousand voices and Gehrig coming up to bat, the boy himself upon the pitching mound, the lean face steady as a hound’s; then the nod, the signal, and the windup, the rawhide arm that snaps and crackles like a whip, the small white bullet of the blazing ball, its loud report in the oiled pocket of the catcher’s mitt, the umpire’s thumb jerked upward, the clean strike.
Or there again, in the East-Side Ghetto of Manhattan, two blocks away from the East River, a block away from the gas-house district and its thuggery, there in the swarming tenement, shut in his sweltering cell, breathing the sun-baked air through opened window at the fire escape, celled there away into a little semblance of privacy and solitude from all the brawling and vociferous life and argument of his family and the seething hive around him, the gaunt boy sits and pores upon his book. In shirt-sleeves, bent above his table to meet the hard glare of a naked bulb, he sits with weak eyes squinting painfully through his thick-lens glasses. And for what? For what this agony of concentration? For what this hell of effort? For what this intense withdrawal from the poverty and squalor of dirty brick and rusty fire escapes, from the raucous cries and violence and never-ending noise? For what? Because, brother, he is burning in the night. He sees the class, the lecture room, the shining apparatus of gigantic laboratories, the open field of scholarship and pure research, certain knowledge, and the world distinction of an Einstein name.
So, then, to every man his chance—to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining golden opportunity—to every man the right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him—this, seeker, is the promise of America.
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THE HOLLOW MEN
[Esquire, October 1940]
How often have we read the paper in America! How often have we seen it blocked against our doors! Little route-boys fold and block it, so to throw it—and so we find it and unfold it, crackling and ink-laden, at our doors. Sometimes we find it tossed there lightly with a flat plop: sometimes we find it thrown with a solid, whizzing whack against the clapboards (clapboards here, most often, in America): sometimes servants find just freshly folded sheets laid neatly down in doorways, and take them to the table for their masters. No matter how it got there, we always find it.
How we do love the paper in America! How we do love the paper, all!
Why do we love the paper in America? Why do we love the paper, all?
Mad masters, I will tell ye why.
Because the paper is “the news” here in America, and we love the smell of news. We love the smell of news that’s “fit to print.” We also love the smell of news not fit to print. We love, besides, the smell of facts that news is made of. Therefore we love the paper because the news is so fit-printable—so unprintable—and so fact-printable.
Is the news, then, like America? No it’s not.
The news is not America, nor is America the news—the news is in America. It is a kind of light at morning, and at evening, and at midnight in America. It is a kind of growth and record and excrescence of our life. It is not good enough—it does not tell our story—yet it is the news.
Take the following, for instance:
An unidentified man fell or jumped yesterday at noon from the twelfth story of the Admiral Francis Drake Hotel in Brooklyn. The man, who was about thirty-five years old, registered at the hotel about a week ago, according to the police, as C. Green. Police are of the opinion that this was an assumed name. Pending identification, the body is being held at the King’s County Morgue.
This, then, is news. Is it the whole story, Admiral Drake? No! Yet we do not supply the whole story—we who have known all the lights and weathers of America.
Well, then, it’s news, and it happened in your own hotel, brave Admiral Drake, so, of course, you’ll want to know what happened.
“An unidentified man”—well, then, this man was an American. “About thirty-five years old” with “an assumed name”—well, then, call him C. Green, as he called himself ironically in the hotel register. C. Green, the unidentified American, “fell or jumped,” then, “yesterday at noon . . . in Brooklyn”—worth six lines of print in today’s Times—one of seven thousand who died yesterday upon this continent—one of three hundred and fifty who died yesterday in this very city (see dense, close columns of obituaries, page 15: begin with “Aaronson,” so through the alphabet to “Zorn”). C. Green came here “a week ago”—
And came from where? From the deep South, or the Mississippi Valley, or the Middle West? From Minneapolis, Bridgeport, Boston, or a little town in Old Catawba? From Scranton, Toledo, St. Louis, or the desert whiteness of Los Angeles? From the pine barrens of the Atlantic coastal plain, or from the Pacific shore?
And so—was what, brave Admiral Drake? In what way an American? In what way different from the men you knew, old Drake?
When the ships bore home again and Cape St. Vincent blazed in Spaniard’s eye—or when old Drake was returning with his men, beating coastwise from strange seas abreast, past the Scilly Isles toward the slant of evening fields, chalk cliffs, the harbor’s arms, the town’s sweet cluster and the spire—where was Green?
When, in red-oak thickets at the break of day, coon-skinned, the huntsmen of the wilderness lay for bear, heard arrows rattling in the laurel leaves, the bullet’s whining plunk, and waited with cocked musket by the tree—where was Green?
Or when, with strong faces turning toward the setting sun, hawk-eyed and Indian-visaged men bore gunstocks on the western trails and sternly heard the fierce war whoops around the Painted Buttes—where, then, was Green?
Was never there with Drake’s men in the evening when the sails stood in from the Americas! Was never there beneath the Spaniard’s swarthy eye at Vincent’s Cape. Was never there in the red-oak thicket in the morning! Was never there to hear the war-cries round the Painted Buttes!
No, no. He was no voyager of unknown seas, no pioneer of western trails. He was life’s little man . . . life’s nameless cipher, life’s manswarm atom, life’s American—and now he lies disjected and exploded on a street in Brooklyn!
He was a dweller in mean streets, was Green, a man-mote in the jungle of the city, a resident of grimy steel and stone, a stunned spectator of enormous salmon-colored towers, hued palely in the morning. He was a waker in bleak streets at morning, an alarm-clock watcher, saying, “Jesus, I’ll be late!”—a fellow who took short cuts through the corner lot, behind the advertising signs; a fellow used to concrete horrors of hot day and blazing noon; a man accustomed to the tormented hodgepodge of our architecture—used to broken pavements, ash cans, shabby store fronts, dull green paint, the elevated structure, grinding traffic, noise, and streets be-tortured with a thousand bleak and dismal signs. He was accustomed to the gas tanks going out of town, he was an atom of machinery in an endless flow, going, stopping, going to the winking of the lights; he tore down concrete roads on Sundays, past the hot-dog stands and filling stations; he would return at darkness; hunger lured him to the winking splendor of the chop-suey signs; and midnight found him in The Coffee Pot, to prowl above a mug of coffee, tear a coffee-cake in fragments, and wear away the slow gray ash of time and boredom with other men in gray hats and with skins of tallow-gray, at Joe the Greek’s.
C. Green could read (which Drake could not), but not too accurately; could write, too (which the Spaniard couldn’t), but not too well. C. Green had trouble over certain words, spelled them out above the coffee mug at midnight, with a furrowed brow, slow-shaping lips, and “Jesus!” when news stunned him—for he read the news. Preferred the news “hot,” straight from the shoulder—socko!—biff!—straight off the griddle, with lots of mustard, shapely legs, roadside wrecks and mutilated bodies, gangster’s molls and gunmen’s hideouts, tallow faces of the night that bluntly stare at flashlight lenses—this and talk of “heart-balm,” “love-thief,” “sex-hijacker”—all of this liked Green.
Yes, Green liked the news—and now, a bit of news himself (six lines of print in the Times), has been disjected and exploded on a Brooklyn pavement!
Behold him, Admiral Drake! Observe the scene now! Listen to the people! Here’s something strange as the Armadas, the gold-laden cargoes of the bearded Spaniards, the vision of unfound Americas!
What do you see here, Admiral Drake?
Well, first a building—your own hotel—a great block of masonry, grimy-white, fourteen stories tall, stamped in an unvarying pattern with many windows. Sheeted glass below, the store front piled with medicines and toilet articles, perfumes, cosmetics, health contrivances. Within, a soda fountain, Admiral Drake. The men in white with monkey caps, soda jerkers sullen with perpetual overdriven irritation. Beneath the counter, pools of sloppy water, filth, and unwashed dishes. Across the counter, women with fat, rouged lips consuming ice cream sodas and pimento sandwiches.
Outside upon the concrete sidewalk lies the form of our exploded friend, C. Green. A crowd has gathered round—taxi drivers, passers-by, hangers-on about the subway station, people working in the neighborhood, and the police. No one has dared to touch the exploded Green as yet—they stand there in a rapt and fascinated circle, looking at him.
Not much to look at, either, Admiral Drake; not even those who trod your gory decks would call the sight a pretty one. Our friend has landed on his head—“taken a nose dive,” as we say—and smashed his brains out at the iron base of the second lamp post from the corner.
So here Green lies, on the concrete sidewalk all disjected. No head is left, the head is gone now, head’s exploded; only brains are left. The brains are pink and almost bloodless, Admiral Drake. (There’s not much blood here—we shall tell you why.) But brains exploded are somewhat like pale sausage meat, fresh-ground. Brains are stuck hard to the lamp post, too; there is a certain driven emphasis about them, as if they had been shot hydraulically out of a force-hose against the post.
The head, as we have said, is gone completely; a few fragments of the skull are scattered round—but of the face, the features, forehead—nothing! They have all been blown out, as by some inner explosion. Nothing is left but the back of the skull, which curiously remains, completely hollowed out and vacant, and curved over, like the rounded handle of a walking stick.
The body, five feet eight or nine of it, of middling weight, is lying—we were going to say “face downward”; had we not better say “stomach downward”?—on the sidewalk. And save for a certain indefinable and curiously “disjected” quality, one could scarcely tell that every bone in it is broken. The hands are still spread out, half-folded and half-clenched, with a still-warm and startling eloquence of recent life. (It happened just four minutes ago!)
Well, where’s the blood, then, Drake? You’re used to blood; you’d like to know. Well, you’ve heard of casting bread upon the waters, Drake, and having it return—but never yet, I’ll vow, of casting blood upon the streets—and having it run away—and then come back to you! But here it comes now, down the street now toward C. Green, the lamp post, and the crowd!—a young Italian youth, his black eyes blank with horror, tongue mumbling thickly, arm held firmly by the policeman, suit and shirt all drenched with blood, and face be-spattered with it! A stir of sudden interest in the crowd, sharp nudges, low-toned voices whispering:
“Here he is! Th’ guy that ‘got it’! . . . he was standin’ deh beside the post! Sure, that’s the guy!—talkin’ to anotheh guy—he got it all! That’s the reason you didn’t see more blood—this guy got it!—Sure! The guy just missed him by six inches!—Sure! I’m tellin’ you I saw it, ain’t I! I looked up an’ saw him in the air! He’d a hit this guy but when he saw he was goin’ to hit the lamp post, he put out his hands an’ tried to keep away! That’s the reason that he didn’t hit this guy! . . . But this guy heard him when he hit, an’ turned around—and zowie!—he got it right in his face!”
And another, whispering and nudging, nodding toward the horror-blank, thick-mumbling Italian boy: “Jesus! Look at th’ guy, will yuh! . . . He don’t know yet what happened to him! . . . Sure! He got it all. I tell yuh! An’ when it happened—when he got it—he just stahted runnin’ . . . He don’t know yet what’s happened! . . . That’s what I’m tellin’ yuh—th’ guy just stahted runnin’ when he got it.”
And the Italian youth, thick-mumbling: “. . . Jeez! . . . Wat happened? . . . Jeez! . . . I was standin’ talkin’ to a guy—I heard it hit . . . Jeez! . . . W’at happened anyway? . . . I got it all oveh me! . . . Jeez! . . . I just stahted runnin’. . . Jeez! I’m sick!”
Voices: “Here, take ’im into the drug store! . . . Wash ’im off! . . . That guy needs a shot of liquor! . . . Sure! Take him into the drug stoeh deh! . . . They’ll fix him up!”
The plump young man who runs the newsstand in the corridor, talking to everyone around him, excitedly and indignantly: “. . . Did I see it? Listen! I saw everything! I was coming across the street, I looked up, and saw him in the air! . . . See it? . . . Listen! If someone had taken a big ripe watermelon and dropped it on the street from the fourteenth floor, you’d have some idea what it was like! . . . See it! I’ll tell the world I saw it! I don’t want to see anything like that again!” Then, excitedly, with a kind of hysterical indignation: “Shows no consideration for other people, that’s all I’ve got to say! If a man is going to do a thing like that, why does he pick a place like this—one of the busiest corners in Brooklyn? . . . How did he know he wouldn’t hit someone? Why, if that boy had been standing six inches nearer to the post, he’d have killed him, as sure as you live! . . . And here he does it right in front of all these people who have to look at it! It shows he had no consideration for other people! A man who’d do a thing like that . . . .”
