LETTERS: 1984: 37-40
37.
January 27, 1984
Dear R.K.
Singh,
After
several day’s delay and considerable thought, I decided to take your suggestion
to write Dr. V. Rai about my black literature manuscript. I would have no objection, in fact would
welcome it, if Dr Misra is able to have my book published at Allied
Publishers. My only frustration, as I
told you, was having so much time pass with no report on his negotiations. I am writing Dr. Rai today telling him this. I would not do anything to interfere with a
bona fide offer for publication, if Misra is able to get one.
You had
every right, after reading the last paragraph of my last letter, to intercede
in my behalf, yet on reflection, I
realize that to withdraw the manuscript—if Misra does succeed in getting a
favorable reception—would cancel out my own effort to have the manuscript
Xeroxed and sent to Misra in the first place.
If he can get a publisher for it, that is what I intended.
Please do
not continue to press me to review your book.
I will be happy to have a copy if you
send it, but I cannot review it. Reviewing is an art that should be
practiced from strength, and I have no strength as a reviewer. Nor any prestige or claim to authority when
it comes to judging Sri Aurobindo. I
realize this more and more as I read what you write about him.
I never had
reviews for my books except rarely—one for ORCHARD PARK AND ISTANBUL in the
Buffalo newspaper, and another in a review at the University; none at all for
YOU TOO, VD, and THE DERVISHES; and two for TWO CONTINENTS. None in influential publications. My
feeling is that if ever my work achieves sufficient substance to merit
wide recognition, it may get it. Or may
not. There is a lot of luck in such
matters. But my main job is to promote
my writing by writing. Let the reviews come
as they may from people who have enough
interest to do the reviewing without
prompting from me. I have been
surprised, always, and of course
delighted to get recognition, like your thesis, which came as a great
surprise when I heard what you were engaged in.
I was flattered and pleased, but I would never have suggested to Pandeya
that he encourage one of his graduate students to write a thesis on my poetry.
Speaking of Dr. Pandeya, you haven’t mentioned him in
your letter. Was he there when you visited
Varanasi? The last you wrote me was
disturbing, how his students had repudiated him and his chairmanship was in
danger of being revoked. That seems such
a miscarriage of justice, for from all that I know of him, he is one of the
best teachers and most thorough scholars I met when I was in India. And I considered him my good friend. Yet,
except for your unhappy news, I have heard nothing from him in three years.
I continue
to write anti-Reagan, and hope there is chance that he will not succeed in being re-elected, but many Americans like him for
his militarism, believing that he is making the US strong and respected as a
great Power. After being an Independent
for 50 years, I am now on the Bennington County Democratic Committee, working
to defeat Reagan, but I do not underestimate his cleverness and the greed and
skill of his cronies.
Yours,
Lyle Glazier
38.
April
16, 1984
Dear R.K.
Singh,
I have had a
letter from your publisher that two
copies of your book are being sent me. I
will read them with interest, and if there is somewhere I can review, I
will. I have just renewed my
subscription to BOSTON REVIEW, thinking
that perhaps that magazine would be interested in your work. I have no doubt of the excellence of your
interpretation. If the copies come by overseas nonairmail it may be some time
before I see them. It is a good
book. You must be happy at the thought
of its being in print. I hope your
reviews will reflect your long and serious efforts, giving you the credit you
deserve. And, as I say, I will do what I
can for you here.
As for your
own reviewing, I think you are doing just right. You learn by reviewing, particularly as a
young scholar this is important. Only
old fogeys like me can reach a point where they can afford to be choosy, not
wishing to get up another new subject in order to review it. But in your case, I do feel different,
because, for one thing, you have been educating me on SAVITRI for a long time,
and took the trouble to send me a copy of the epic.
I become
more and more disturbed at the thought of what may have happened to Dr.
Pandeya, an intelligent and humane scholar if ever I knew one. I cannot comprehend what has happened. I do
not ever hear from him now, although I have written to him a number of times, only last February
to recommend a colleague of mine who was traveling from Buffalo to Banaras to
read poetry there. He wrote that he was
unable to find Dr. Pandeya. Let me ask
you this. When I was at Sana’a University teaching American literature, Dr.
Pandeya attended my classes. I
illustrated the American imperical method of teaching, insisting that my
students read the poems and stories we were discussing. Every day I began with their criticisms
before branching out from what they said to what I myself had to say. Dr. Pandeya seemed much struck with the
method. Do you think there is a chance
he tried to introduce that method at BHU and his students revolted?
I know that in Turkey it was new for my students to have to read what
was being lectured on. I carried enough
books so that everybody had a copy.
I am sure
that at ISM you have the same problem scholars have all over India, especially
at the smaller institutions. There may be only one library in all India, where,
say all the novels of Thomas Hardy can be found. So the director of a thesis, for example, may
have to travel to that library if he wishes to keep up with his student. Your choice of Aurobindo and of your method
proved to be excellent, because your chief resource was the epic itself. Not
that you didn’t work hard to cover secondary research. But like me, your interest was chiefly in
your own first hand examination of a text.
I doubt if research of that kind will ever go out of style.
Yes, I am
strongly anti-Reagan, for I think he believes that the rest of the world ought
to bow down and worship American business enterprise, and that American ought
chiefly to protect their own interests.
He has no idea that Hindus are people, or Moslems people, or Central
Americans are people in their own right, and deserving of their own privileges
without the assistance of US military force. Right now I am organizing
supporters of Jesse Jackson for our Vermont Caucus. Jackson is interested in people,
people of all ethnic backgrounds, all nationalities, rich and poor,
particularly poor and underprivileged.
The US is not at the mercy of Republicans only. Too
many Democrats support the upper class privileges. We are far from being
democracy except in our political structure, which has the trapping of
democracy without always having the spirit of sharing.
I always
enjoy your poems, and enjoy the two in your last letter.
I understand
#1941 without agreeing with it, except possibly with your privilege of
describing a particular homosexual couple, and understanding that not all
homosexual unions need be sterile.
Though they will not have children, homosexual lovers may be creative,
as, for example, the union of Walt Whitman and Peter Doyle was creative if it produced some of the beautiful
love poems of Whitman. I myself am critical of exclusive homosexuals when they
are only dilettantes, when they produce nothing. But I would not—as you do—measure them on
whether they will get to heaven. I have never yet read a description of Heaven
(Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, Hindu) that makes me want to go to such an
exclusive, prestigious gathering. I like
better the thought of melting back into the soil and becoming part of it.
What
I remember
of
the teenager
who
seduced the
five
year old
in
the double bed
of
the little chamber
at
Gram’s
--eager,
and
afterwards tyrannical
“Don’t
you tell your Gram!”
Was
fear for himself only?
next
spring
he
was gone to his mother,
I
spent hours
traveling
roads
into
woods
hoping
to find anybody
anybody
like him
ten
years
until
I was a teenager,
mind
full of his phallos,
lept
at the thought of him
readying
for him
Yrs.
Lyle
G
39.
July
5, 1984
Dear friend,
R.K. Singh,
I apologize
for not writing sooner. You can’t
imagine how busy I’ve been. I excused myself with the poor excuse that I had
not received the copies of your book promised in a letter from Prakash Book
Depot, dated 3.4.84, and returned to them for more postage. I begin to think they must have sent the
package by sea mail, and that can take forever.
I got
involved in the Jesse Jackson campaign in the presidential election, and
finally became the author of a proposal
by which Vermont became the first state to grant him the delegates he has
earned for the national convention at San Francisco next week. Last summer Mondale and his supporters,
knowing they were the only candidate to have an organization in every state,
persuaded the Democratic National Rules Committee to pass a rule that a
candidate must receive at least 20% of the votes in a state primary in order to
win delegates to the national convention.
I circulated a petition for a rules change in Vermont, writing to every prominent
democrat in the state, and then making a speech at our state convention,
resulting in our changing the rule so that Jackson got 3 out of 17
delegates. A lot of other people worked
for it, so I don’t deserve too much credit, but I am happy with the outcome of
my first year as a Party member, after 50 years of being an Independent. It’s not that I think Jackson should be
President, he has given up hope for that, but I want him to have firm support
for influencing the Convention to a more liberal stand on platform issues, and
for his excursions into international diplomacy. He is doing well. For the first time I begin to hope that there
is a chance Reagan can be defeated.
The second
thing that has taken my time has been trying
to work on my poem AZUBAH NYE, which will now appear in ORIGIN magazine
in early fall. I will try to send you a copy.
I gave a reading last June 21 at
the little schoolhouse in Massachusetts, where the events of the poem took
place. All my relatives were present as
well as other friends I hadn’t seen in
50 years.
Right now I’m
getting prepared to go back to teaching next fall—to teach a course in Richard
Wright, the great Black American novelist, who spent his last years in
Paris. In organizing Bennington
delegates for Jackson, I got acquainted with students at a small college here,
and learned that there were no course
sin Black authors at their school, and offered to give one, and perhaps finish
the book on Wright and Melville I started when I taught a graduate course in
those two authors in Buffalo in summer 1974.
On May 1,
our youngest daughter Alis came back from Jamaica, West Indies, where she had
been teaching since December, and stayed with us while preparing the
introduction to her thesis on problems of teaching English to Creole-speaking
Jamaican children. On last Sunday she
left to return for a year.
She’s 35
years old, still very beautiful, intelligent, but lonely. She wants to find a good man to marry. Men take advantage of her. I’m afraid she
will take chances with one of the handsome dark skinned men who will make
trouble for her. You know, that dark
skin does not trouble me, but poverty can drive a man to take chances in order
to get money from a woman, and loneliness can make a good woman his prey. Neither at fault.
I was really
pleased to have a copy of POETRY TIME with my translation of Baudelaire’s
invocation to the Reader for his book Les
Fleurs du Mal. The editor of a small magazine here has also written about
his interest in having these translations but I am happy to have the sign of an
interest there, also.
It was a
special pleasure to share space in the issue where your good poem appeared, so
that we are collaborators in the magazine.
By now your
news in your April letter is so far back that you will have covered it over
with better news, I hope. It was painful
to read how you had to go through that
arduous time of forced abortion. I hope
that Bulli has fully recovered, and that the children are both now in good
health. I know what it is to have an
unexpected pregnancy, for besides our three daughters, Amy carried one child to
term (born dead) and another into several months before miscarriage. Such things are difficult to endure.
This morning
is the first I have had to begin to clear up a large backlog of letters that
have piled up since April. Yours is one
of the first.
If your book
does not arrive soon, I have thought of looking back over the chapters you sent
me to see whether there is enough there to furnish a clue. I would rather see the whole, of course, before deciding whether I know enough to
review it.
Not one word
from Dr. Pandeya. I fear he has suffered
a great blow. I respect him more than
any other professor I met in India in the time I was there (1970, ’71). I cannot imagine what happened.
Cordial
greetings,
Lyle
Glazier
40.
August
30, 1984
Dear friend
R.K. Singh,
After
wracking my brains for a long time I have come up with a review of sorts,
thanks to your thesis, which for the first time made it possible for me to
follow the thread of the narrative and the theme. I am afraid that you will find my review very simple and innocent of insights. I am not satisfied, but rather surprised that
I was able to get this much done.
I have sent
a copy under separate cover, mailed this morning. As you will see, I felt that Americans would
need a double review of both the epic (and the letters on the epic) and your
thesis. I hope that you won’t be
disappointed and that for you my admiration of your work will come through.
Yesterday I
had an acceptance from a very good critic Donald Hall for the Country
Journal, which liked the lyric
“Sugaring off.” Also I’ve been invited
to State University of New York at Buffalo on October 2 to read my “folk epic”
(as I call it) Azubah Nye. They pay air flight & $200, not great but
good. Donald Hall’s magazine pays $50, enough for me to rent a car while in
Buffalo.
Please write
me what you think about the review.
Yrs.
Lyle
Glazier
