Life in the West (25 page)

‘Internally, these machines are elaborate. Its circuits and sub-assemblies are very elaborate, resembling the kind of thing in a Saturn rocket. This technology is a different sort of war game, aimed at nothing less then enslavement of the masses when they escape from their work of the day. We appreciate their beauty as of that of the deadly pitcher plant or rafflesia. They are worthy of a serious study as metafiction or socioeconomic artform.’

Krawstadt continued. Manufacturers’ names punctuated his talk like a roll call of the illustrious dead. Burrows Automatics, Hardings, Rock-Ola, Gottlieb, Genco, Bally, Williams, Chicago Coin. The Hall was silent, the delegates slumped back in their chairs or sprawled forward over the green baize. Some smoked cigarettes, taking a long while over the gestures of flipping the box, tamping the tobacco, flicking the lighter into action, performing the first inhalation; others doodled with frowning concentration. Some stared at the speaker, some at the ceiling, some into a mysterious beyond.

The paper concluded with Krawstadt pointing out that growing political awareness would perceive that pinball machines were analogues of the capitalist system in decline. Beneath a bright veneer of religion or mythology or sex was merely a cold solenoid-operated system set up by cosmopolitan forces against which no one could win, designed to keep the working classes enslaved.

When Frenza called for questions, Albert Russell Cantania stood up. This representative of the USA was still in his twenties; his book
Form Behind Formula
had already made him powerful in academic circles. He was compactly built, with a lock of hair that drooped over his tanned face. He brushed the hair from his forehead as he started to speak.

‘I guess our colleague Krawstadt who has just spoken knows his subject pretty well. Maybe he even has a connoisseur’s love of pinball. But I wondered during the time he was talking if he ever got round to slipping a quarter into one of those machines and playing, just for the hell of it. Maybe his politics wouldn’t let him, the way puritan morality stops a lot of other killjoys from playing.’

There was a stir in the conference chamber. Those sprawling tended to sit up, those sitting up to sprawl.

‘In my time, I’ve played a lot of pinball, the way I’ve played a lot of poker. I must have dropped a whole lot of dollars on pinball, like I have on poker. More on poker. But there is one factor our colleague neglected to mention. You play voluntarily, because you want to play. There’s no state or federal law saying a man has to play pinball; no one sticks a gun in your back. Another factor, okay, you put a coin in, but you get enjoyment in return. Why not mention enjoyment? Enjoyment is what you get out of pinball machines.

‘Pinball machines need skill, they need a quick eye. Exercise of skill and speed yields enjoyment. There’s no law against enjoyment either, not where I come from.

‘All this talk of exploitation is crazy. You want something, you pay for it; you don’t want it, you don’t pay. That principle is so basic, and goes back so far beyond the Neolithic revolution in agriculture, that it has nothing to do with politics or morals. I’d say it was a law of nature, human nature. You want a stalk of corn to grow, you plant aseed. No seed, no corn. Everyone ought to get that clear in their heads.

‘I mentioned the pinball-table industry in my book, Form
Behind Formula.
I said then and I’ll say it again now that pinballs obey the law of supply and demand which drives a vast entertainment industry. Look, pinballs are like a pop song or a paperback novel or a movie or a TV programme — anything to which the general public has easy access. Nobody will ever subsidize them the way opera is subsidized, so they depend purely on popular appeal. That’s the basic fact of life — satisfy the public. Happily, in a democracy, there’s a big diverse public which gives a lot of artists a living. Some are better than others, some more limited in appeal, some succeed by fulfilling formulas, some by subtly breaking them.

‘Same with pinball machines. Let me ask Mr Krawstadt why he thinks Bally and Chicago Coin and the others go on turning out so many models if the whole operation is just a big con foisted on the public? Why isn’t there just one standard model which goes on for ever, or maybe gives you an extract from one of Lenin’s longer speeches if you put your quarter in?

‘The answer, the simple answer, is that people like playing pinball, they enjoy it, and they demand variety. They like their playtables and backflashes big and bright and brassy. They play while consuming a beer, and in a capitalist society they generally have a spare dollar in their pocket they can lay out on entertainment.

‘One further point before I sit down. As I understand it, we are here to further the objectives of the Society for Popular Aesthetics — with which I heartily concur, by the way — in raising the cultural estimation of mass art, or future culture, or whatever you want to call it. The sort of attitude we are fighting against is the elitist one which declares that a best-selling paperback is
ipso facto
lousy, a song millions sing is
ipso facto
lousy, a movie that turns a profit is
ipso facto
lousy. The corollary of that attitude says that the novel scarcely anyone reads, the song nobody wants to sing, the movie people stay away from in droves, has to have something special which makes it real art. We fight such pernicious attitudes.

‘How is it any different for Krawstadt or whoever to point to all these enjoyable things and say they are merely market devices to put the boot in on the proletariat? All this Leftist crap we’re getting handed is just as damned much an enemy of enjoyment as the old structure of aesthetics we’re trying to kick out. For God’s sake, leave politics out of this and get down to proper scholarship, proper appreciation. Else we’ll make ourselves a laughing stock.’

He sat down.

Gianni Frenza, who had been conferring in whispers with d’Exiteuil, leant towards the microphone and was interpreted as saying, ‘Well, there we have from Dr Cantania an enjoyable expression of typical hard-hitting. Who will like to reply to him?’

Carlo Morabito immediately rose, folding his arms tightly across his chest.

‘I will speak in my English and can be translated. I like just to make complaint about the racialist streak in the paper of Dr Krawstadt. When he speaks of cosmopolitanism, he is speaking secretly of the Jews. The whole paper is of course a veiled attack on Jews, against which communist nations have always been hostile, with the honourable exception of maybe Yugoslavia. Delegates should be aware when they are getting poison.’

He sat down again.

‘Perhaps Herr Krawstadt would care to amplify after such remarks,’ Frenza’s interpreter said.

Krawstadt rose, scratching his chin and lower lip.

‘These interjections are to cause a confusion in the advisement I need from other delegates. This is a new field, and, as with popular arts, sociology is combined with it. I hear in my ear the familiar cry of the Right that their political beliefs are not political at all but a part of nature. But if I look at a privileged gentlemen’s park in America or England or my own country, what’s there is for me not just vegetables but I see the exploitive system of privilege behind it. Viewpoints are entirely different.

‘With the pinball, the same applies. How is it like a paperback or an LP? It waits brightly painted for when a man is a bit drunk to take his money, like a prostitute. Is prostitution also part of American “entertainments industry” also? At least in the socialist countries prostitution and exploitation of women is abolished, and the sport and games is free of betting and gambling. Pinball is gambling without sport.

‘One thing I agree with the other speaker. Let’s leave out the politics and get proper scholarship.’

He sat down, to nods of approval round the table.

Squire rose.

‘Just a point of fact. Two points. First, prostitution may be ruthlessly repressed, like so much else in socialist countries, yet it still exists. I have been solicited by prostitutes myself in the heart of Moscow. To that I have little or no objection; I’m a big boy; my objection is to being told afterwards that I was
not
solicited. It is that sort of barefaced lie, among other things, which gives communism such a bad name. The end justifies the means always, doesn’t it?

‘Then that bit about sport. Directly Moscow was chosen as the site of the Olympic Games in 1980, all residential and what we in the West would call private building was halted. The whole ramshackle building industry was forced to work on the stadia and accommodation for the Olympics.

‘If you were having a dacha built — no matter in whatsoever state of completion you were left, the builders walked off one morning and left you standing there. Thus the rulers of the country drop the Muscovites in a condition of discomfort or misery to suit their political ends. Don’t tell me there are no politics in sport or art except what is introduced by the Right. It’s another totalitarian lie.’

He sat down. From the seat next to him, d’Exiteuil rose, smiling down on Squire as he said in English,’ Well, a display of Churchillian fireworks from Tom Squire, as we might expect, and the oratory of his usual high standard — the voice of the man who made “Frankenstein Among the Arts”. It is a pleasure on which we can congratulate ourselves that our associations and this conference in particular can accommodate such extreme conservatism as Squire’s and Professor Cantania’s along with more sociologically oriented items. However, the Olympic Games have little to do with pintables, on which subject Herr Krawstadt contributed much to our enlightenment, and so I suggest we move onto the next paper.

‘We must not exercise our prejudices, we must conquer them. I believe with the philosopher Mary Warnock that imagination is important here, and must be applied to our field of study. If we could come to a greater understanding of imagination — which may as likely come through pintables as through anything else — then we should understand a great deal more than we do about prejudice, perception, and such values as aesthetic pleasure. Perhaps we’ll invite contributions on the subject of imagination to
Intergraphic Studies.
Thank you.’

The next paper, on the typography of cartography, passed peacefully, although there was a marked increase in small activities during it, both among the delegates round the table and in the spectators sitting in the gallery at the far end. Indeed, the gallery gradually became crowded, as if by some magical form of communication ordinary passers-by in the street had heard that a political argument was brewing and had come in to see for themselves what was happening. After sitting restlessly for a while, some of them departed, finding that the subject under discussion was totally innocuous; yet still the gallery filled as others took their place. Most visitors looked like students. Among them were some attractive young girls, who regarded the spectacle provided with complete assurance. Many of them gazed at Selina Ajdini thoughtfully for a while.

Ajdini was one of the stillest delegates, although she smoked continuously throughout the meeting. The other delegates shuffled in their places, made eye-signals, took notes, tapped at their headphones, drank mineral water, at a greater rate than was usual.

When the afternoon session was over, Squire rose to go, only to be detained by Vasili Rugorsky, who placed a hand on his arm.

‘Mr Squire, I have great interest in what you say. Like you, I felt no patience with the dogmatic stance of the man from the Bundesrepublik. Can we have a brief chat, do you think?’

‘Of course. Can I buy you a coffee?’

‘That would be kind.’ The massive head nodded.’ In my country, I would buy you a coffee, but you know that when we travel abroad we have to go penniless for the good of our souls.’ He smiled his sidelong smile at Squire. As they walked through the passage, Cantania came up and slapped Squire on the shoulder.

‘Not that I needed support, but thanks anyway for providing additional firepower.’

‘I wasn’t going to let your objection stand alone. All the same, I wish I’d kept my trap shut. It’s not the first time I have been out of step today.’

‘Keep it that way. What have you to fear? Except now Rugorsky’s going to tell you one more time they stopped prostitution in Moscow. Was she any beauty, by the way, the one who tried to pick you up?’

When Cantania had gone, Rugorsky said quietly, ‘I was not going to give you a lecture on prostitution.’

He fell into a frowning silence which Squire did not interrupt. The Russian had intensity of bearing which, coupled with the effort it afforded him to speak English, lent weight even to his silences. He moved through the crowds in the corridors with an impassive step, never impolitely, but never allowing himself to be deflected. Squire walked beside him without feeling it necessary to speak.

‘You see, the papers are quite entertaining if you listen properly,’ said Rugorsky at last. ‘Even when they are of themselves boring or trivial or totally mistaken. In a way, you see, they are what Hamlet said of the players, they are the abstracts and brief chronicles of our time. We must use them as we may.’

‘As you say, we get out of it what we can. Corporately, these men have a deal of power in academic life; by what is decided here, they can make or ruin reputations. The interest behind the boredom is that we are each of us on trial. The other apposite remark Hamlet made about the players was that it’s better to have a bad epitaph after you’re dead than their ill report while you live.’