I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BILLY BRAGG-Talking to the Taxman About Poetry (1986).

I’ve liked Billy for ages now.  I’ve seen him live a few times, and I’ve always loved that his accent is so prominent when he sings.  Over the years he has become somewhat less overtly political, but he is still a man of issues and causes.

This is Billy Bragg’s second full length.  He was still primarily a man with a voice and a guitar at this stage.  His melodies are strong, and since there’s no other instrumentation, all that’s left to talk about is the lyrics.

“Greetings to the New Brunette” is an adorable love song, followed closely by the anti-marriage “The Marriage”: “If I share my bed with you Must I also share my life Love is just a moment of giving And marriage is when we admit our parents were right.” (which doesn’t quite jibe with Sophia, but it’s close.

But really what you come to Billy Bragg for is the politics.  LIke in “Ideology”:  The voices of the people Are falling on deaf ears Our politicians all become careerists They must declare their interests  But not their company cars  Is there more to a seat in parliament  Then sitting on your arse.”

He also covers a public domain song which I wondered how well it would fit here.  “There is Power in a Union” seems like it’s saying the right thing, but some of the characters here would disagree about the end: There is power in a factory, power in the land Power in the hands of a worker But it all amounts to nothing if together we don’t stand There is power in a Union.”

This album also features the great track, “Help Save the Youth of America.”

Over the years Billy would expand his sound (he even worked with Wilco on two discs), but he always sings for the people.

[READ: Week of July 2, 2010] Letters of Insurgents [Fourth Letters]

As I’ve been going along in the story, I began to wonder if the two letter writers were going to be rehashing the same arguments in each letter.  I had confidence in Perlman that the story would be interesting (it sure had been so far), but I couldn’t imagine how he would keep it original, especially since Yarostan was in jail for so long–he has no information except secondhand.

This week’s reading gave two examples of how he’d do it:  Jasna comes to visit Yarostan and she updates everyone about what had happened to all of their fellow workers, and Sophia reveals a horrible situation in which she hits rock bottom–a real physical bottom, not a philosophical one.

The first thing that Jasna says (and all this is via Yarostan of course) is that she can’t believe that Sophia and Luisa were in jail for only two days [I’m saying this right now…this idea that no one knows why they were in jail for just two days is a majorly recurring thread of these letters, and boy I hope we find out why from someone by the end!  Even in Sophia’s letter later, she reveals, “I can’t answer [the two days question] because I don’t know. I vaguely remember that the police apologized to us. Perhaps they told us that our arrest had been a ‘mistake'” (241)]. No one begrudges her that she was in for just two days, but they want to know how come!

Jasna herself spent a whole year in prison without even knowing why, and of course, Yarostan was in for four that first time.

But after that initial question, Yarostan launches into Sophia again (and frankly I’m starting to feel badly for her now).  She may have rejected Ron and Luisa, he argues, but she was still hanging around with a bunch of opportunists.  And those journalists that she spent so much time with were nothing like the workers twenty years ago–he’s actually offended by the comparison.

In fact, looking back to twenty years ago, when Sophia feels her life began is precisely when Yarostan feels his life derailed.  In fact, thanks to his encounters with Manuel and Zdenek, he realized  “I was heading towards my destruction as a human being.  I am ashamed of the fact that I once took part in that type of activity” (191).

Yarosatn has just accepted the invitation from the carton factory workers to resume his old job at the factory.  He basically could have had any job there, but he decided to go back to his old position (but on a newer machine)  thinking it would help remind him of his times twenty years ago.  His first paycheck was twice as large as Mirna’s (even though she’d been working at her job for thirteen years!

The strike that had excited Yarostan so much last time ended with a compromise: the workers could elect a union representative, but they could not have a rotating rep.  But just to show that the fire is not out of Yarostan, he told them that “a partial victory was actually a defeat because compromising with the manager meant recognizing the legitimacy and authority of the management” (192).

Some of the workers agreed but they argued that “in conditions of the present ferment, when much more would become possible, it was necessary to proceed with caution since otherwise we might cause the field of possibilities to close prematurely” (192).  Yarostan says no.  He “argued that caution was the first step toward defeat and expressed the view that the manager should have been ousted along with the union representative” (192).  But despite this attitude, Yarostan feels a mixture of daring and caution.

After last week’s section about the meaning of words, Yarostan has refined his tone somewhat:

What I mean by “daring” is a readiness to walk into terrain which none of us explored before. What I mean by “caution” is the perception that our ability to approach this terrain grows only to the extent that all those like us approach it with equal daring. We’re reaching for a field of possibilities that can be reached only if we move together as we’ve never moved before (193).

Even though he’s at the same plant and the same position as he was twenty years ago, and there’s been a great deal of tumult in his life, he has no desire to write slogans on signs.  That commitment to abstractions was a “commitment to death.” (193).  And once again he reiterates “I’m not the same person I was twenty years ago, the person you knew” (193).  Later in the letter he argues that Sophia is just the opposite: “During the past twenty years I’ve changed and you haven’t.  You’ve retained the commitments we shared twenty years ago” (201). [What’s interesting to me about this is they both agree with that sentiment.  From the get-go Sophia has said he’s changed.   And yet, they both think that the other one is wicked because of it].  Even though he has no slogans or even the ability to articulate where he wants to go, he feels more alive than ever. Last week he got a job, this week they fired the union rep, who knows what could happen next week!

We will see much more about Yarostan’s hatred of politicians, but he broaches the topic with this salvo:

Politics: that’s the religion of today, that’s the cancer that annihilates every possibility of community and puts an end to every period of ferment. This deformity divides and multiplies precisely during periods of ferment. Because it’s unnatural it outruns our natural development of capacities. It plants itself at all intersections long before we reach them. Political militants are its missionaries. Committed intellectuals are its priests. The state is its church. Like all religions it transforms the human community into a herd. Its agents, the organizers and pedagogues, are the spiritual leaders of flocks of animals (196).

And even though he’s aware of this, the routine of the workers at the factory makes him tense.  They listen to the radio and are excited when politicians throw phrases around.  But they all know that they have been duped before.  And he’s also

convinced that the present ferment carries real possibilities for life. But I’m also aware that every time we take a step we’re surrounded by the ideological birds of prey who feed on our possibilities, fill themselves with concepts of our desires and reenslave us with beautiful combinations of words which seem to depict the world we failed to realize (197).

And it is Zdenek who consolidates this thinking when he says that the problem the workers had was accepting the politicians as their spokespeople.  That’s why the workers rose up triumphantly for just one day.  Because the day after that the union consolidated its power.

But Zdenek is excited because now, a group of workers is moving ahead (albeit slowly) without the assistance from politicians.  Most politicians are discredited: don’t be fooled when the workers applaud politicians’ speeches: “The applause only expresses appreciation for the speaker’s talent as a speaker.  The fact that people applaud doesn’t mean they’re being hypnotized” (198).  [This argument struck me as sounding like it came straight out of a Platonic dialogue.  Although I can’t decide if it was Socrates or one of his interlocuters who would have said it].

Last week I wondered whether Zdenek’s proclamations of workers acting without organization was even feasible, and this time Yarostan wonders as well:

Can we get past the spokesmen, coordinators and organizers who extinguished the earlier struggle? My first impulse is to doubt it. So many people have never before become independent without provoking the concentrated resentment of those who wanted to rule over them.  Such “directionless” and “spontaneous” activity has never before held its own against the blows dealt against it by organizational militants and their infallible leaders (200).

Of course, after all of this, Yarostan reiterates that this excitement is nothing like the “journalism” she engaged in.  In fact,

The type of activity which you chose has much in common with the activity of the politicians who lecture to us on the radio and in the newspapers; it has nothing in common with the actions and apprehensions of the people with whom I work in the carton plant. I resent the fact that you compare the ferment around me with your academic and journalistic activities. I think the two projects are not only different from each other but also hostile to each other: the projects you’ve chosen can only take place if my present project fails (201).

We’ll see Sophia’s reaction to this shortly, but he seems so belligerent about it.  Which to me seems like she has really struck a nerve somehow.

But all of this letter is a prelude to what I found to be the really interesting section.  When Yaristan gets home, he sees Jasna and Yara waiting for him.

It starts with Yara’s excitement about the day: the students all refused to enter their classrooms until the head of discipline resigned (Yara is 11, keep in mind).  The teachers joined in and even the head of the school praised their determination.  The head of discipline was clearly a police agent and was forced out.

Jasna then begins her story.  Her story recounts a lot of the missing information from Yarostan’s story, both about the factory itself and what happened after.

I’m cribbing from the Insurgent Summer Timeline to give context for this (thank you guys):

1936 – “The Revolution”
1941-44 – Nazi Occupation
1944 – The Rebellion / The Barricades
1948/49 – The General Strike, The Carton Factory Takeover
1953-1957 – Yarostan is released from prison for the first time
1965-1968 – Yarostan is released from prison for the second time

Jasna gives some personal history before getting to her working history.  She was a very apolitical child.  Her parents earned enough to buy a tiny house (where she lives to this day) and went to work every day.  One day her father brought home a man from work who was homeless.  The authorities soon came and arrested her father for harboring a Jew, and she never saw him again.  A year later her mother “died in an accident” (which Jasna knew was suicide).  Jasna has been terrified of authority ever since (which explains why she was so afraid to support Yara in her demonstration).

Jasna has been working at the factory since before the war.  She had always liked Mr Zagad and felt bad that he was the target of the attack [I wonder if we’ll hear anything about him later?].  Titus Zabrab was hired shortly after that and he regaled them with his adventures abroad.  His experience of resistance was violent which is why he always wanted to create an armed resistance.

Luisa came soon afterwards, although Jasna didn’t like her because she was too smart.  Yara questions her:

“Did you say you liked him because he was smart but you disliked her because she was smart?”
Jasna laughed. “You caught me, didn’t you?” (203).

The truth is she was jealous of Luisa because of her intelligence and she seemed to be bonding with Titus.  [Yara’s comment in one of the first instances where we see women stand up for each other as women, or more to the point where women are defended against unfair criticism].

When the resistance happened, Titus tried to get her to join, but she was too afraid and literally did nothing during the resistance.  She was afraid of being dragged out by the police.  And when the resistance was over she went back to work.  Many workers were killed and that’s when they hired all of those folks: Yaristan, Vera Neis, Adrian Povrshan, Claude Tamnich, Marc Glavni.

Yarostan reminds her that Marc was hired three years  later, and she accepts that was possibly true.  She was very satisfied working there, with those people.  Everyone was thoughtful and interesting.  And Jan was always warm and nice to her.  She also loved Vera and Adrian, thining they were very funny.  Claude, not so much, he was an ox and was even dumber than Jasna herself.  But she believed that those years were very important and that none of them would ever work in a factory again.

Yarostan says that he is again at the factory and Luisa has been at one in her new country for years. Jasna’s not surprised about Luisa because she was more of the instigator–she wasn’t transformed by what happened, she was a transformer.  And Yarostan was the most transformed by her.

Vera was also changed, but it was more like she felt provoked by Luisa to compete with her.  And so she tried to learn more and more so she could be the center of attention.  And Adrian was her straight man (he has always worshiped her).

Marc was affected too, even though he was inept he acted like he knew more than anyone else about the workers.  And yet Luisa seemed to admire him.

I was surprised she didn’t see through him. He was nothing but a conceited boy trying desperately to prove that he was better than the rest of us. He may have been intelligent, but since it was I who ran behind him repairing what he had ruined, I wasn’t impressed by his abilities   and Jan was hired right after the resistance. They worked together for three wonderful years (207).

Even Claude was affected by her, but he was affected in his own way: he wanted to liquidate the bosses, even Mr Zagad.  He made their fun seem like a prelude to the horrible.

Jan had been unaffected by Luisa; neither had Titus.  Jan was opposed to Luisa from the get go and even accused her of lying.  He felt that no one should have gone back to the factory except to throw out all the machinery.  Of course, following Jan would have led to an earlier arrest for everyone.

Speaking of their arrest, it turns out that hey were arrested because their signs were different from the official opposition.  They had made their own signs: replacing the word ‘state’ with the word ‘workers’ and ‘party’ with ‘union.’  The other women in prison with Jasna laughed when she told them this, because she was clearly too dumb to realize what these signs meant. Jasna even to this day doesn’t know why some of the group argued over the importance of the wording, but Yarostan and Luisa were insistent upon the wording they chose.

Jasna had been in prison for a year, but when she went home, her house was as she left it.  She returned to the carton plant but, like Yarostan, was told she could not be hired back. She had saved some money so she didn’t even go looking for a job, she just holed up and read and read.

Vera was released almost a year after Jasna.  She showed up at Jasna’s house and they had a tearful reunion.  Vera stayed with her, but unlike Jasna, she was not afraid and immediately went out and enrolled in college and planned to ever work in a factory again.  She dreamed of being a public speaker.

Vera encouraged Jasna to go to school, even though Jasna felt too dumb to go.  But Vera provides this little offensive (to teachers anyway) passage:

One day Vera told me she had learned about a college that was specifically designed for dunces and geese: the college for teachers. She assured me I’d have no trouble being accepted there. She was right. I applied and was accepted. I attended for four years and was no more of a dunce than anyone else. At the end of four years I was a teacher (213).

During her second year of teaching, Vera and Jasna were surprised by a visit from Adrian (who found her easily enough, unlike Yarostan).  He though that he and Vera would get back together but she had (unbeknownst to Adrian) started an affair with Professor Kren.

There’s a lengthy tale about Vera and Proferssor Kren, a politician who drove to and from school in a chauffeur-driven limousine.  Vera fell for the power.  She did post-graduate studies with him.

And then, totally unexpectedly, all three of them were arrested again.  Vera was released after two days of questions.  She doesn’t know why she was arrested, but she was released quickly because a mistake had been made and “such mistakes could take place at any time several times a year!” (215). But the damage had been done.  She was fired and  could not get rehired at her teaching job.

She holed up again, and a few days later was accosted by Claude Tamnich.  She opened the door and he burst in and slapped her face.  He accused her of getting him arrested.  He yelled that she was released so quickly because she ratted him out.  Jasna says the whole thing was a mess but she never turned him in for anything.

Claude got drunk in her house and told her that after a few month sin he began spying on other prisoners.  He then started doing exactly what the state asked, and that ensured his early release.  He was given increasingly important jobs even as a prisoner, and eventually became a prison official or administrator.  He would do anything because he didn’t want to go back top the factory now that Marc was in charge!

Yara jumped in an asked if this was Marc Glavni, the government official (Yara was impressed that they were friends with so many famous people).

Jasna went to see Marc at the factory the very next day. He was cold and seemed not to remember her.  But she was hired back.  She found the job hell this time, it was nothing without her old friends.  And I love the metaphor:

I became what Jan had described: a brainless, mechanical slave. I wasn’t in any way distinguishable from my alarm clock. I went off at the same hour every morning, wound myself up every night and went off again the following morning (217).

Marc had been released after just six months.  He went to the factory to get his job back, but was turned down.  He was able to use Titus as a contact to get his job back.  Marc received more and greater promotions.  He also attended classes at university.  He became plant secretary and eventually General Manger.  Then he got his degree and became Dr Glavni.  And eventually he moved into political office.

While they were at the office together, Jasna decided to ask him for assistance with getting anew teaching job (since he now had real connections) but he refused, with no explanation.  And Jasna walked out.  “It was the only time in my life when I was congratulated for my courage” (218).

Jasna herself did nothing during that time.  Absolutely nothing.  Then Titus visited.  He told her that Vera had been let out of prison (but never stopped by), that Jan had disappeared and that Yarostan was still in prison (and that his family lived nearby).  It was Titus who got Jasna the job teaching at Yara’s school.  And yet Titus was dull and robotlike, all the fight had been drained from him.

Titus also had seen Adrian after his second release.  Titus got him a job in the trade union council. She took the day off work and went to see him in his “office.”  He sat in his dark room all day long with literally nothing to do.  He was waiting to take his exams for advancement.

During Adrian’s second trial (before this exam business) he was accused of trying to implicate Vera Neis and Marc Glavni as spies.  He assumed there was a mix up but when he was released he looked up Vera and saw that she was now Dr Vera Krena.  (Again Yara is impressed by their connections).

Adrian went to see Vera.  He was told by the secretary that she had been having an affair with Krena for years and years.  Clearly Krena had intervened in her quick release.  Adrian wondered why he wasn’t released as well, but it turned out that Vera made him the fall guy, and he took the blame for all of the mistakes, even the mistakes by the police.

So he went to see Marc.  After initially being denies entrance, he said he was applying for a factory job.  Marc basically acknowledged him and then said he would have to apply at the factory itself.  When Adrian pleaded his case,

Marc, flushed with anger, shouted: ‘You want my help after what you’ve done to me? Couldn’t you have told them you didn’t know me? You’ve put a permanent blot on my name!’ Adrian shouted back. ‘A blot on your name! You lunatic! I’ve just spent six years of my life in prison. What wouldn’t I do to have a mere blot on my name in exchange for those six years!’ Marc didn’t respond.  (224).

Adrian started seeing Vera’s secretary, and when he told her what Vera had done she was indignant!  But this kept him close to Vera.

As for Claude, she has no word, he may be dead.  Jasna concludes:

“Be sure you tell Sophia about the people we knew twenty years ago.  They don’t all deserve the sympathy she expresses for them in her letter” (226).

And then (very casually mentioned), we learn that Yarostan’s daughter Vesna was sick and had died in the hospital.

After Jasna’ story has ended, Yarostan digs at Sophia a little harder.

I would like to think, as Jasna does, that you don’t know what kind of people these are [at the newspaper]. But I think you do know who they are. I think you use language the same way they do: not to unveil and clarify but to mask and obscure.  (227)

Despite this nasty passage, Yarostan tries to end on a pleasant note:

I would genuinely like to carry on this correspondence with you in a spirit of understanding and mutual aid, not only for the sake of our past friendship, but also because communication across such large chasms will have to take place if our meager beginnings are going to continue growing and not be drowned in blood spilled by those of our likes who remain under the spell of their rulers (229).

Despite the trouncing, Sophia writes back and she writes back strong:

So much has happened since I sent you my last letter and most of it has confirmed your statement that you and I live in completely different worlds. I have no idea what place you would occupy in my world and you can’t know what place I’d occupy in yours. It certainly wouldn’t be the place you assign me! (231).

Nevertheless, she spends the bulk of this letter countering his accusations.  I wondered last week why I was quoting more from Yarostan than from Sophia. And it feels that Sophia has been on the defensive quite a lot.  She counters his arguments, but isn’t advancing much in the way of her own ideology.  This letter continues hat trend for quite a while, until the very end when she really unleashes some harsh truths.

But she begins her letter by talking about an older friend named Daman Hepser. He was on the paper with Sophia and helped her get her teaching job. He is currently the only friend she has left aside from her roommates.  Although Yarostans’ letter has caused her to lose some respect for him.

Daman tells Sophia that a general strike is being called to protest the police repression of students on campus.  Sophia was excited at the prospect of a real strike that she could participate in.   She read the flier to her students and promoted the strike to her class at the college.  But she was soundly denounced by her students.  In fact,

the dominant view was that the unions and the government define the aims of a strike. There seems to be a great deal of similarity between a situation where strikes are illegal and a situation where strikes are institutionalized. Here strikes are nominally legal but only those strikes which are called by the unions and sanctioned by the law are legal. In practice this means that any genuine strike, any strike organized by workers themselves with aims which they themselves define is as illegal as it was in your environment for the past twenty years, and is just as savagely repressed. (233).

[I have wondered since the beginning at the very conservative viewpoint, especially circa the 70s.  However, I’m willing to accept that this is a community college with, as she says, students who are there for business and advancement.  But I was glad to see that there was at least the possibility of a strike.]

Sophia’s boss upbraided her for her attitude and this scene unfolded:

“Nothing at all is going to stop you. You’re a dangerous person. You shouldn’t be teaching in a college. You should be undergoing treatment in a hospital.”
His statement, his smugness and his idiotic grin infuriated me. Such people and their cousins in the police are called “pigs” by a small number of radical students; I certainly sympathize with this attempt to call certain people by their proper names.
“Why you bastard!” I shouted. “I’ll show you just how dangerous I am!” I slapped his face twice with all my might.  He didn’t raise his hands to protect himself. Instead he grinned even more stupidly, like
a genuine masochist.
He said, “Everyone can see you’re an extremely violent person. Miss Nachalo.”
One student yelled, “Bravo, champ!” The rest dispersed like zombies (234).

Of course, after all of this excitement, the strike proved to be major let down.  It was more of a hangout, with students sitting on the lawn and simply not going to classes.  Daman even gave a lecture to his students on the stairs.  And his lecture was all Marxist theory.

Sophia was horrified, not least of which was that he criticized professors as being part of the problem, and he himself was a professor!  But even worse was that she walked out of her class and got herself fired for this rally and he actually gave a regularly scheduled lecture!

Sophia couldn’t believe it, and when she criticized him, he just ignored her.  But Daman blew off her complaints, saying that what he really wanted to do was to have these students create a new newspaper, but not a “student newspaper,” “an organization that organizes itself to publish a workers’ paper” (239).

Sophia is even more appalled, especially since he just argued that the students are not workers.  Daman grew condescending about this: “I didn’t say we were going to write the paper.  The workers themselves are going to write it…The sole task of this paper will be to recognize the existence of the new society and to record the facts of its existence” (240).

Despite this argument, they return to her house together for dinner (Sabina nad Tina do not like him at all).  Sophia translates Yarostan’s letter so that Daman can read it.   While he’s reading it, Sabina reminds Yarostan that he didn’t answer her questions about Manuel.  And she has another question, what was the last name that the police had for Sophia and Luisa…was it Alberts, like Sabina?

During dinner, Daman says he doesn’t know why they asked him to read it.  He gives his opinion:

The entire exposition revives the worn out theory of the backwardness of the working class….  It’s nothing but a rationalization of the prejudices of the petty-bouregoisis writers who don’t know a thing about the revolutionary potential of the working class” (243).

All three women are aghast, but it’s Tina–who has never gone to school and is not intimidated by authority–who calls him on his bullshit: “everything you say sounds like an evasion” (244).

After a heated argument, Daman gets to the heart of the matter: “No factory worker I know could have written anything like this!” (245).  Obviously this leads to an even bigger blowup, with Daman accusing Sophia of being an ignoramus.  Then Tina runs into the street shouting epithets at him long after he’s driven away.

Sophia used this as an example that she could finally see through Daman.  And she sees now that all the old workers that they knew together turned out pretty crummy.  But she resents that he compares the two of them.  She says she is not an opportunist like the others, she can’t be defined by what they did, it “doesn’t mean that I was climbing such a ladder too” (248).

She cites an example of what she did to change things.  While they were working at the student paper, the administration didn’t like that they published an article about a general on campus who kept files on all of the students there.  After they printed the article, they interviewed students to see what they thought about it.  There were many students who agreed with the general’s policies and, of course, a few who were opposed to it.  The paper published all of the responses.  The administration was mad even though they published the positive articles because it kept the story alive. They quickly issued a directive to give the paper back to the students since it had clearly been taken over by radicals .

Sophia and her group decided what to do for their last issue: they put a black border around the whole thing and decided to print a front page article about the “funeral” they were going to stage for the paper.  The funeral was envisioned as an elaborate affair with a coffin that was going to process through the campus, ideally with many students joining in. But the actual funeral was something of a joke with nobody following them and no support.  It turned out that the front page story about the funeral had been replaced by Bess’ article which showed both sides of the administration’s’ decision.  They were undermined.

They reconvened at the office, exhausted.  Finally, Rhea said that they should start their own underground paper.  The men all gathered in the office, while the women sat in the room.  [Here’s another example of women being held back. I wondered if Perlman would address this and it’s nice to see him doing so].  After some time, the men came out and said that they would be starting an underground paper just like Thurston proposed!  The women were not invited because it would be too dangerous for them.

Sopha was enraged, Rhea couldn’t believe her idea had been coopted.  Daman had betrayed them and everything they stood for.  Of all the men, it was only Alec who walked away from the new paper.  Even Lem went with them!  The new paper was to be called Omissions.

Sophia felt adrift, excluded from yet another group that she thought she was a part of.  Sophia and Alec were resigned to their fate, and yet they felt like they needed an act of rebellion.  They decided to crash the general’s lecture and ask him hard-hitting questions where he couldn’t escape.  But when they went to the class, they were anything but anonymous: they dressed differently, they were far less businesslike, and they stood out tremendously.  And so, when Daman finally stood up to accost him, the general just ignored the question like he wasn’t there.  And when the class was over the two of them were threatened by the remaining students.

The “new” student newspaper covered their stunt as “outside agitators disrupt university lecture” and said that the “university had taken vigorous measures to remove from the newspaper staff  ‘all communists, homosexuals, fellow travellers and other outside agitators” (265).

The next morning the administration subpoenaed Sophia and Alec and had them come to the presidents’ office.  It was a beautiful office and they were treated respectfully.  He even said that he was something of an instigator when he was in school.  The next day they were both expelled.

When the paper printed again, Bess was on the editorial board and it looked exactly the same as Sophia’s version.   She was also disappointed by Omissions.  It was small!  Two letter-sized pages (although Thurston’s column was in fact funny).   Even though she was offended by what they had done, she wanted to help them and still be part of the group.  So she assisted in distributing the paper (but not edit or write for it…so she was still an outsuider).

Omissions proved to be pretty successful, and they distributed it around campus.  It grew so notorious that another university’s students started a paper also called Omissions.  That Omissions was better funded and was much more successful.  It was even talked about on campuses.  And, as such, it is that Omissions which is cited as the origin of the current new movement (Sophia’s Omissions came first, but it was largely forgotten).

One day, while they were distributing Omissions, a large group of students surrounded them, clamoring for the paper.  While they were surrounded, a police car drove up (it was a set up!) and told them that if they were seen on campus “littering” and “trespassing” again, they would be jailed.  And that was the end of Omissions.

It was around this time that Sophia heard about the uprising in Magarna.  She was very interested in it but felt she could not get enough information about it from the local papers.  Then she found out them Lem was going to be in Yarostan’s area for a conference.  She asked him to deliver letters to all her old friends.  (And we know how that turned out).

Sophia then started working on a second novel, one about the staff of the paper.  But then the university informed her that she was to be evicted from her co-op.  The co-op’s board decreed that non-students could not live there (even though non-students certainly did).  She was almost unanimously voted out of the building (Rhea voted against her too as revenge for helping to work on the paper that they stole from her).

Sophia refused to go back to Luisa and cry on her shoulder.  Alternately, she could have moved in with Alec (who found a place quickly) but she didn’t want to cry on his shoulder either, as that would have been worse: “I would automatically have become his ‘burden’ and his ‘responsibility’….   Soon I’d be his wife, and then his ‘old lady'” (276).

Sophia could only turn to Sabina, whom she hadn’t seen in two years.  She went to Debbie Matthews house who told her where Sabina and Jose and some other were living: behind their garage.  Sophia goes to their garage where all kinds of questionable things are happening, but since she was “Ron’s girl” they take her in, no questions asked.  We also learn here that Ron is Tina’s father.  Among the others living there is Tissie, a heroin addict.

Sabina explained that she and Tissie worked in a bar but that she, Sophia, was not to go there.   But later the next day, Tissie dresses up Sophia and takes her to the bar.  She is quickly picked up by a politician or an executive in a chauffeur-driven car.

Sophia thinks fast, and says she needs to go to the drug store.  She hops out of the car, where she quickly sneaks out and runs back to the garage.  Jose was mad that Tissie had brought her there, and told her again “no one here expects you to do any work.  Ron’s girl is our guest” (281).

And once again, Sophia was not a part of a group, she was a”guest, a permanent visitor…an outsider again” (281).

Despite everything that happened to her, Sophia could not sell herself out.  She could not become a prostitute, regardless of what she could have gained monetarily…including her independence.  (She doesn’t fault Sabina for being a prostitute since “she’s always wanted to immerse herself in everything, to try everything out, to live every possible adventure” (282).

But Sophia could not be part of that world…she’s excluded yet again.  She ends her letter by saying she hopes that “you and your friends are now creating the community I sought in every environment down to the underworld, the community I tried to invent in my novel because I never found it in my life” (282).

COMMENTS

I have really come around from disliking Sophia in the beginning to finding her far more sympathetic than Yarostan.  I felt that he was a more reasonable individual, but now he seems far more unsympathetic and downright nasty.  The issue of women in Marxism has always been a sore point, and it’s interesting to see him address this concern, albeit not very thoroughly.

I’m also really surprised at how dark Sophia’s letter went.  It’s amazing to me that she saved that whole prostitution thing for her fourth letter!  After he was being so brutal to her, she had this ace in the hole.

This story continues to surprise me, and I’m enjoying it more and more, especially since it continues to challenge what I think I know about the book.