A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond (33 page)

F
ROM THE
D
ESK OF
P
ERCIVAL
E
VERETT

March 11, 2003

Jim—

I didn’t mean to be critical or sarcastic. I was sincere in my expressions of admiration for your outline and the idea of writing a kind of suggestive, very wide-ranging history rather than a political or social history that would try to cover with some semblance of responsibility some specified ground. This way we can dip and glide and say what we want on a variety of wholly disconnected topics. I can see the top of the bestseller list crooking its finger at us—or giving us the finger.

But we’re one on this. Could you tighten up the outline a little, incorporating the very few serious suggestions I gave you and ignoring the ones offered as jokes, poor jokes.

Don’t be huffy now. You’re always saying we should move forward, and you’ve moved us forward. You’ve stuck your thumb right up our collective ass and given us a timely goose.

P

March 15, 2003

Dear Reba,

Ides of March, and would that I had been stabbed.

Oh dearie sister, Martin’s party turned out to include—as you warned—but one guest, who had to serve as dinner companion, game player, dance partner, and more. At one point, he decided we should go for a swim, so we set out to find an indoor pool at 2 a.m. I was surprised, as you would be too, that there were none that met our roving eyes. Martin decided the fountains outside the New York Hilton would do just fine.

I can say this: though I did not resist everything, I resisted some things. In the first category, the worst was that I put on a gown to dance with him. I have no explanation, beyond mentioning that this was the very first activity he had on his list, and it did seem churlish to start the evening with a refusal. Dinner wasn’t bad either, really, though Martin, who has an immense dining table, sat about six inches from me. I kept thinking how sad it was that he had this big dining table and nobody to share it with.

I did resist (a) any games that involved undressing (the donning of the gown was done in discreet privacy), (b) weeping along with him as he told stories of his youth (though I did get a little misty once), (c) submitting to a massage, (d) letting him “do a lick job” on my toes, (e) playing a game he called “back seat at the drive-in,” (f) joining him in the Hilton fountains. (In plain truth, I did give in on (c) and the first minute or two of (e).)

As for Septic, I take your word that she’s something special. Have you read her stuff? I gather you have, since you say it needs editing. Well, here’s what I’m going to do, though it’s better as yet to say nothing to Septic about it. Her kind of material is not Snell’s department, though he’d love to think he knew her world better than she. (The truth is he’s a lonely man who has had no life and can find nowhere to steer his boat.) It is Vendetti’s. I don’t think I told you that I parted on good terms with him, though he is what he is, whatever that may be. Anyhow, I’ll slip him the word on it without Martin knowing. If you can mail me Septic’s manuscript overnight mail. Please you do it, Reba. The very idea of Septic scares the shit out of me.

You’re the tops.

Love,

Juniper

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
, I
NC
.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

March 18, 2003

Dear Barton, Percival, and Jim,

As you are all my mutual friends—maybe we should start a barbershop quartet?—I thought I owed you some description of Martin Snell’s early St. Patrick’s Day party and other outstanding events going on here. First, Reba put me on to a friend of hers, one Septic (that’s right—her real and only name) who is writing a book called CLASS ASS on the ins and outs of prostituting and pimping, a Marxist analysis too, I think. I decided to slip it to Vendetti, as Snell would do horrible things with it. Second, the party didn’t have green beer or anything at all Irish. I don’t think he remembered what the occasion for the party was.

That’s the extent of the good news.

The pathetic old bastard, he ended the evening drunk and floundering in the New York Hilton fountain. What nice people there! They helped me get him out and in the car, said it happened a couple of times a month. Maybe it’s Snell that does it a couple of times a month. I should have asked.

I wrote Reba a full account—of me donning a gown in order to dance with him, of several other disgraceful things, comic too, if it all weren’t so sad. But throw somebody like Snell a life preserver and he’ll pull you under, as a character in LUCKY JIM says.

I guess that’s true. I’d like to help him, but not at the price he asks anyone to pay. And he doesn’t mean to be so outrageous either. What he wants is a friend or two, but he’s been without them for so long, it’s driven him to a land of loons where he has lost his compass. He is not really dangerous: the moment I give out with any signs of reluctance, his merriment collapses and he begins weeping, or apologizing, or, most commonly, both.

My virtue is intact, in case you were wondering. I’d do a lot to try and help him, but somehow I think fucking him (or whatever would pass for that in his mind) might be a big mistake—for him, probably not for me.

Ah Snell, Ah humanity!

Love,

Juniper

p.s. Vendetti loves the project. I guess that’s good.

James R. Kincaid
University of Southern California
University Park Campus
Los Angeles, CA 90089

March 20, 2003

Dear Barton,

Hope you’re well and not letting the venerable Senator feed off your life’s blood. That’s a joke, naturally, but you know, Barton, I think there’s some truth to the suspicion that the old often feed off the young. I mean, look at the old guys who are coaches or, I suppose, teachers. They drain the young. I mean, why do we chain all the young people in our land to desks hour after hour, until they’re half-wild with boredom and bottled up vim? Partly to discipline them to our needs, I guess, keep them from doing anything disruptive or creative. But also, don’t you think, so we can lap up that energy we allow no other outlet? Where can it go but to the old crumbling bodies before them? So watch out.

But I’m writing about another thing—and hope you are getting along fine with Strom, who must have much in the way of canny conniving to pass along.

What I have here is an outline, reflecting the enthusiasm Percival and I both feel for your idea about making this a cultural and social as well as a political history. What do you think of this? You’ll see it’s divided into 3 parts (but doesn’t have to be).

Part I: Political History

a. Strom on Slavery

b. Strom on the War Between the States

c. Strom on Reconstruction

d. Strom on the KKK

e. Strom on The Dixiecrats

f. Strom on Civil Rights

g. Strom on Washington generally—amusing anecdotes on blacks in politics and non-blacks too

h. Strom on our contemporary world and the blacks in it

Part II: Cultural History

i. Strom on blacks and music—real music, not gangsta rap

j. Strom on blacks and the theater

k. Strom on blacks and the domestic arts (making quilts—shit like that)

l. Strom on blacks and painting

m. Strom on blacks and the dance

n. Strom on blacks in film, television, radio, journalism

o. Strom on black fashion models

p. Strom on blacks and sports

q. Strom on blacks and literature

Part III: Social History

r. Strom on blacks and the family

s. Strom on blacks and the schools—here’s a real strong suit

t. Strom on blacks and public transportation

u. Strom on blacks and food—what they eat and how they cook it

v. Strom on blacks and religion—maybe we should write this for him?

w. Strom on blacks and domestic décor

x. Strom on blacks and dirt farming

y. Strom on blacks and criminality

None of these are, as our miserable fucking Dean says, “carved in stone.” Percival thinks IIIu may not fit the Senator’s agenda. But I say, “Let Barton and the Senator decide.”

Anyhow, you see what we have in mind, following your lead. This will be a broader-ranging and less conventional “history,” allowing the Senator to suggest topics for short essays, filled with personal experiences and good stories, on items that interest him. After all, what interests him will interest others.

Barton, does it ever occur to you that life passes us by—or that we wade through our lives looking down at the puddles and our galoshes without noticing much else? When you get to my age, such depressing ideas strike you, and I do mean STRIKE. It’s like getting hit with a big paving brick right between your ear and eye. I only had one life and why didn’t I even remark on it as I went through it?

Oh well, philosophy’s for the elite, as a British idiot said about me in a recent essay in the TLS. What she actually said is, “irony is an elitist tool.” Referring to me. What an idiot. She thinks she’s being ever so sympathetic to those who, by her lights, haven’t gotten to a point where irony can be used safely. That is, she’s telling young people they’d better not be ironic. Thus, under the guise of liberal sympathy, she’s the worst kind of conservative, robbing the young of yet another tool. Oh, it makes my semen boil!

I’d love to go on, but I have a class to teach. It’s one of the great pleasures left me—eating the energy of the young.

Devotedly,

Jim

March 24, 2003

Dear Martin,

I wonder if you wouldn’t like to get closer acquainted? We’re not so far apart, and I think by now we have learned to climb those little lumpy hills that can separate those who ought not to be separated.

I haven’t anything sexual in mind, just to ease your palpitating heart. Just social things and dancing. Moonlight movies. Rides in the country. Picnics. Rollerblading.

You’ll be glad to hear that all goes very well with the project, very well indeed. K and E are now really rolling on a new plan for a cultural/social/political history. Much more lively and Strom-like. Won’t be a chronicle of events, you know, but more a set of funny stories and telling anecdotes (or at least anecdotes).