E. Doctorow - The Book of Daniel

“Great,” the photographer says, and shoots.

“Up against the wall!” one of the friends calls out. Artie slips his headband over his eyes and stands with his arms stiffly at his sides. His girl sticks a cigarette between his lips.

“Great,” the photographer says, and shoots kneeling, standing, close up, and across the room.

The wall is interesting. It is completely covered with a collage of pictures, movie stills, posters, and real objects. Babe Ruth running around the bases, Marlon Brando on his bike, Shirley Temple in her dancing shoes, FDR, a bikini sprayed with gold paint, Marilyn Monroe on her calendar, Mickey Mouse, Gilbert Stuart’s Washington with a mustache penciled on, a real American Legion cap, Fred Allen in front of a microphone, pinch-mouthed Susan B. Anthony, Paul Robeson, Sammy Baugh throwing a jump pass, Calvin Coolidge in Indian feathers, a World War One dogfight, a chain gang working on the road, an antique doll, a girl making it with a donkey, browned book jackets of Gone with the Wind and One World by Wendell Willkie, a diaphragm sprayed with silver paint, a cluster of cigarette butts, a Death of a Salesman poster, a young Elvis, a black man hanging from a tree, a white man selling apples for 5 cents—

“It’s marvelous!” the reporter says.

“You hear that?” Sternlicht says to his girl. It develops that she is the artist.

The reporter is really impressed. “You’re fantastic! How long did it take to do this?”

Sternlicht’s girl says, “Well, actually I haven’t finished yet. I go on a, y’know, collecting binge, and when I have a lot of stuff I plaster it up there. There’s stuff underneath you can’t even see anymore. I’m thinking of covering, y’know, everything, the whole house. See?” She has picked up a handful of clippings and pictures from a table in the corner. She lets them drift out of her hands, through her fingers, and they flutter and swoop all over the place. Everyone laughs.

“You’re very casual about your work,” the reporter says, “but I think it shows immense talent. Have you ever had formal study?”

“Well see,” the girl looks at Sternlicht and starts to laugh, “actually if anyone deserves credit for my art it’s Mr. Magruder.”

Sternlicht breaks up.

“Mr. Magruder is our landlord, and that’s how I, y’know, started. Just to cover some holes in the wall. Paper is very good insulation.”

Sternlicht drops to the mattress, pulls the girl down into his lap and they laugh and hug each other. The photographer shoots.

“She’s not shittin’,” Sternlicht says. “You know how cold it gets here in the winter? All revolutions begin with tenants. All revolution begins with tenants freezing their asses off in the winter.”

“It’s marvelous,” the reporter insists, gazing at the wall. “It should have a name. What do you call it?”

Artie Sternlicht and his girl look into each other’s eyes. They answer in unison, and their friends chime in: “EVERYTHING THAT CAME BEFORE IS ALL THE SAME!”

The reporter looks at the photographer, and you know she has her lead now, the piece is writing itself. Everyone gets happy.

STERNLICHT RAPPING

He talks fast in a gravel voice that breaks appealingly on punch lines. He jumps around as he raps, gesturing, acting out his words.

“Like you said the movement couldn’t afford us. OK. I went to this coalition meeting uptown to plan for the Convention next year? And these are good kids, New Left kids who know the score. And you should hear them spin out this shit: Participatory democracy. Co-optation. Restructure. Counter-institutional. Man, those aren’t words. Those are substitutes for being alive. I got up and I said, ‘What the fuck are you all talking about. What is this with resolutions and committees? What kind of shit is this, man? I mean you don’t need the establishment to co-opt you, man. You are co-opting yourself. You see this chair? This is a chair, man.’ And I break this fucking chair to splinters — I smash it to the floor and I stomp on it and I really make a mess of the goddamn chair. And all the while I’m shouting, ‘See Sternlicht break the chair! I’m breaking this chair!’ And I hold up the pieces. ‘Let’s fuck. Let’s fight. Let’s blow up the Pentagon! A revolutionary is someone who makes the revolution. If you want to sit here and beat your meat, all right, but don’t call it revolution.’ Well, I started a riot! It was a gas! Everyone was mad as hell and that meeting came alive. You’ve got to put down anything that’s less than revolution. You put down theorizing about it, dreaming about it, waiting for it, preparing for it, demonstrating for it. All that is less than being it and therefore not it, and therefore never will be it. A revolution happens. It’s a happening! It’s a change on the earth. It’s a new animal. A new consciousness! It’s me! I am Revolution!”

“But even Fidel has a plan,” the reporter says. This remark is greeted with absolute silence. Sternlicht looks over at his friends sitting in the corner. One, a fat kid with a bushy beard, says, “That’s right, Mr. Sternlicht, what do you say to that?” They all laugh. The journalist flushes red.

“No, listen,” Artie says holding up his hands. “It’s a legitimate question. OK. Like in Cuba they find out what their revolution is by working it. They’re a bunch of crazy spies who try it first and then see what it is. If something’s no good they change it. But say Fidel has a plan. The lesson is not that our revolution must be like Fidel’s. The lesson is that it must be our own revolution. Dig? I’m gonna answer your question. Your question is tactical. Fidel bounced his revolution off some fifth-rate spic gangster and the United Fruit Company. But we are in revolution from this—” He points at the collage. “Corporate liberalism, and George Washington and the fag peace movement, and big money and hardware systems, and astronauts. We are in revolution from something with a pretty fair momentum of its own. And you’re not going to bring it down by going into the hills with some rifles. OK? The only people in the U.S. who know they’re slaves are the black people. The spade kids today don’t have to be organized. I mean they are born with absolutely no tolerance for shit, they are born willing to die. And the white dropout children, the derelict kids, the whole hippie thing, the free store, is a runaway slave movement. It really is. So maybe they know it. But the rest — the kids who go to school for careers and the blue-collar sellouts and all the suburban hustlers in the land who make the hustle system work, who carry it on their backs and think they’re its beneficiaries — I mean it’s a doublethink system, it is not ordinary repression, right? My country knees you in the neck and you think you’re standing upright. It presses your face in the muck and you think you’re looking at the sky. I mean you cannot make connections between what you do and why they hate you in Chile. You are hung up on identity crises. You think you are a good guy. You’re not prejudiced. You believe in making money honestly. You believe in free speech. You have allergies. You have strokes. You have mortgages. Your lungs are garbage pails. Your eyes go blind with the architecture. You think the white folks are learning. You think the black folks are lifting themselves up. YOU THINK THERE’S PROGRESS. YOU THINK YOUR CHILDREN HAVE IT BETTER. YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING IT FOR YOUR CHILDREN!”

“Hey Sternlicht, shut the fuck up!”

“Hey Artie, blow it out your ass!”

“Sternlicht sucks!”

The voices come from the street. Sternlicht rushes to the window and climbs out on the fire escape. He raises his fist and jumps up on the railing. “EVERYONE IN THIS BLOCK IS UNDER ARREST!” There is laughter from outside. The people in the room crowd onto the fire escape. Badinage between the friends one flight up and the friends on the sidewalk. Avenue B is humming. Cars come through the narrow street, people are out in the hot night. Two blocks away is the park at Tompkins Square and from it emanates a pulse of energy composed of music and shouting and the heat of many people. The world came to America down Avenue B. The bar across the street is crowded and Daniel can see through its window the old polished wood and tarnished mirrors, and the light of the TV screen. He suddenly sees the Lower East Side with Sternlicht’s vision: It is a hatchery, a fish and wildlife preserve. It seems created for him. With the poor people of this earth I want to share my fate.