Robert Coover - Public Burning

But if the Rosenbergs are absent this morning, they are not missed. No one is missed here. Or recognized either. For curiously, these same slabs which bring pilgrims together each morning in meditation and wonder, creating a fund of common tropes and expectations, also somehow isolate them. The demand made by these tablets on the faithful is quite literally monumental, and they often experience the illusion suffered by mystics throughout the ages: the Spirit, annunciating reality, displaces it, and the tangible world dissolves even as it is being proclaimed. Thus, one may need to read here tomorrow what momentous events were transpiring just behind the slab one stood before today. People press themselves against the Father’s Day advertisements and crisis tabulations, fail to notice the people leaping out of buildings, girls being raped on subway platforms, the colliding traffic. They vibrate before the reported joy of the Rosenbergs at news of their stay and the editorial on moustaches (Julie’s has been shaved off), but cannot see the crowds gathering outside the Supreme Court building, the writing on the subway walls: OBJECTIFICATION IS THE PRACTICE OF ALIENATION!

Ah, this strange eventful History, witness of the times, the light of truth and a tissue of crimes, the true poetry, distillation of Rumour, mockery of human affairs, chart and compass, this whimsical prophet with his face turned backwards, reciting the manners, the pursuits, the peoples, and the battles of the race. “Aghast I stood,” Pope once said, though ignorant of The New York Times , “a monument of woe!” RAIL LABOR CHIEFS / ATTACK EMPLOYERS. Greeks Repulse 3,000. MARIE IS REJECTED / AS FRENCH PREMIER. Rhee Rebuffs Eisenhower. PARAKEET ELUDES JAY. POLO GROUNDERS / TRIP REDLEGS. REDS ACCUSE US. Double Jeopardy. F.B.I, ENTERS CASE. Eternal Son and Patrol Triumph . DAVID AND GOLIATH: A miracle of fit and flattery. Remember, too, that in Hitler’s Germany it started by burning books in the streets…and ended by burning people in the ovens of Buchenwald . ‘Wishful Thinking’ Seen. SOVIET GUNS / CALM SECTOR…

Then an Atomic Thriller

This is a story about what might have happened if the Russians had planned to set off an atomic bomb at the Coronation Naval Review that took place at Spithead last Monday….

Spithead, Goliath, Frankenstein, Eternal Son: as always, it is names that provide resonance to the experience of the daily pilgrimage. Guilmartin, Frauenglass, Finerty, and Krock. Kirk. Ike. Braque. Bortz, Bricker, and Bobo Olson. If anything on these slabs is sacred, it is these names. It’s an ancient maxim of the tribe: If you violate the name, you violate the man. Even if he is dead. In the old days, before The New York Times , if you wished to destroy a man, you inscribed his name on a pot and smashed it. Or stuck a clay image with a pin. Now you attach his name to a sin and print it. Such an act is beyond mere insult or information, it is a magical disturbance of History. It is a holy act and an act of defilement at the same time. It may bring peace and prosperity, it may result in madness and disaster. Is Alger Hiss a Communist? Is Joe McCarthy a Fascist? Is Justice Douglas a Traitor? Is Richard Nixon a Farting Quacker who dreamt of selling his pajamas at Coney Island? What matters is: where are such questions being asked? The great experience of the twentieth century has been to accept the objective reality of time and thus of process — history does not repeat, the universe is not changeless, masses dissolve and slide through the fingers, there are no precognitions — and out in that flow all such assertions may be true, false, inconsequential, or all at the same time. Such things are said every day, and no marvels ensue. But The New York Times transforms this time-process into something hard and — momentarily anyway — durable: it is as if these slabs, these great stone tablets, were being hurled out into the timestream, causing the river evermore to eddy and swirl around them. And thus the danger. Envoûtements have been known to destroy the priests who practiced them: the keepers of The New York Times , though fascinated by the possibilities, are cautious, and they do not stray often into this dreadful domain. Ike’s hard-on is not here this morning. Instead, they report that Dutch Schoch is hopeful. Universal-International wants Ruth Roman to share the adventuresome life with James Stewart in “The Far Country.” Timothy J. Doody has entered bankruptcy proceedings. The President had breakfast with Bridges, Dirksen, Magnuson, and Dodge. RHEE IS ASSAILED BY HAMMAR-SKJOLD. They hie to the world where the commonplace unfolds, the place of freedom and property and ease and security, the land of the more or less likely. They celebrate the names — Sinclair Weeks! Virgil Trucks! Bojangles Robinson and Jabbo Jablonski! — but they avoid the sorcery, the terrible center, the edgeless edge. Louis Appelbaum will be buried today. Okay. And Barfield, Bluhm, and Carrie Batt. BERKMAN — Joseph. You are always with us. Jeremiah Troup. Teresa Love, Eva Roller, and Kathryn Ripberger. Sacred stuff, to be sure, but ritualized. QUICK START FOR MISS SWIFT. Catch Ma Perkins at 1:15 . No breakaway wildness, no terrible conjurations, just the easy knell of names in mild parade. General Withers Burress. Coach Callow. Nero. Ifu-de. MISS BAREA LAMB / BECOMES FIANCEE. Marie Trotzky. Corliss Lamont and Licurgo Costa. Leo Tolstoy. Walt Dropo. Sugarfoot.

Like gongs in the mind, hinting at echoing infinities, names, names and number: Sarah Dougherty sells the 4-story 1-family dwelling at 825 Carroll Street to Mrs. Rudolphine Dick. General Van Fleet kills a 1950-pound Kodiak bear and the 1952 profit ratio for department stores is the 2nd worst in 19 years. Mangrum Posts 69 . There are big numbers like the $4998732500 foreign aid bill, little numbers like the 5 tons of gravel and dirt that Jimmy Willis is buried under in Lambertsville. The 6–2 record of Vinegar Bend Mizell. The 500 Fingers of Dr. T by Dr. Seuss — You’ve got to see the 480,000-key piano hit an atomic clinker! WITH STEREOPHONIC SOUND! Allison Choate of Apawamis cards a 77, 55 Chinese are ordered out of the country, Eleanor Hortense Almond dies at 103. Volume declines to 1010000 shares on the New York Stock Exchange. The President is visited by 100 schoolchildren, and the Vice President tells Senator Taft: “I broke 100 at Burning Tree Sunday, Bob!” A kind of accountability, but without irrevocable consequence, gently disturbing the timestream on occasions, but never causing it to leap its banks. The Red Sox scored a record 17 runs in one inning, canteloupe is selling at 19 cents for one pound. Even the patterns are usually familiar ones, suggesting cribbage runs, the inflationary spiral, countdowns: Eighth Race: Perón arrests 7 Radicals, a 4-nation chase nets 6 thieves, the French crisis enters its 5th week, Nick Condos was Martha Raye’s 4th husband, and Willi Goettling, leaving 3 dependents, is shot between his 2 eyes by the Russians, losing his 1 life. 37 Down: Zero . NIL.

Despite all this effort at secularity, some communicants are nevertheless disturbed by these litanies, discovering in them hints of the terrible abysses beyond the tablets. The very enormity of the monument, at first thought comforting, begins to smother and overwhelm them. A few duck out. Others withdraw to a familiar corner, content to follow a recognizable time-line or two and keep their heads intact. But many begin to lose control. They twitch, lurch forward, jerk back, rush ahead, cower, circle back, then panic and race recklessly through the sanctuary as though lost in a circus or a ceremonial abattoir. Prince Karl Rudolf Marries . SOME HOPES FOR U.N. / TOO HIGH. Trouble on First Hole. HERE IS WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT (if you really care…): The Goddess Strapless in fine white Push-Button Loading. DULLES’ REMARKS SHARP: Don’t Neglect Slipping FALSE liquid will help you to handle expanding demands as well as to weather adjustments Fair and a little warmer today highest temperature near 23980 entries in McCalls’ dress-your-best Candidate for the worst-dressed woman scattered with black polka dots RED PLOT! “What’s happening? Where am I?” they scream, tearing frantically through the shrine, plowing into other pilgrims, slapping up against the slabs: “Let me out!” But Papagos Sees Need for Speed and CLARK KNEW OF RHEE VIEW, all seams are bound: PHARMACISTS ELECT Michigan Assassin ‘BLIND FATHER OF 1953’ Following Crude Advance with that priceless American Quality —FRESHNESS! 19 COPIES OF THIS successful businessman keeps abreast of FAILLE LASTEX WANTED IN Mr. Divine’s imaginary atomic explosion bathing suit and bra colors *(T-T) TIMES tested! Churchill Voices Shock STEAK FOR FATHER’S DAY Wired for sun it’ll blast space helmets back to Mars and put all the cowboy hats out to pasture HOGS moderately active. HOW DOES THIS AFFECT YOU? Sabers Down. Margaret Truman Passes . “How long has it been…?”