Camping in the Bush

Recently, while rereading Death in the Afternoon, Ernest Hemminway's hymn of joy to ritualistic sadism, I was struck anew with the man's unflagging brutality, and it suddenly dawned on me of whom this writer always reminds me, and perhaps why I could occasionally admire his ability but never come near to liking him as an author.

In a small Oklahoma town there once lived a banker, typical of small town bankers the world over in his profession's brand of greed, shrewd stupidity and gauche self satisfaction. He had trimmed the usual number of windows and orphans, sung the usual number of hymns in church and accumulated the usual insulations against reality and conscience; however, his one possible departure from the trappings of his class was in siring an idiot son. He despised the poor creature, who worshipped the terrible old man, in itself an excellent sign of mental inferiority.

When the boy got as far in school as he could, the banker packed him off to one of his mortgaged-reaped farms and let him earn his keep as a laborer, explaining to any who bothered to ask he was doing the best and kindest thing for the boy.

This story ends rather abruptly one day while the banker was questioning his tenant farmer about some trivial delinquency. The son, seeing the unfamiliar sight of his father's car parked near the barn, mounted a tractor the farmer had recently taught him to drive, and roared joyously toward the car to show his daddy how smart he was growing to be. The old man, seeing the tractor bearing down upon his shiny new Cadillac and the poor idiot at the wheel, leaped out and began waving his arms to steer the boy past his five thousand dollar investment, but the boy, unable to hear, thought his father was wild with joy at his accomplishment. He stepped on the gas.

Horrified, the banker started to get back in the car hoping to drive it out of harm's way, when the tractor struck broadside, catching the old man half way in the door. The banker's ribs were crushed like a walnut shell and the last thing he said was, "Oh, the damned fool sense of it," and died. The tenant farmer insisted he was speaking of the boy's behavior, not his own; but believing in inate honesty, I still think there is room for argument.

It was while finishing Chapter 17 of Mr. Hemingway's book that I recalled the unfortunate banker and his son. The boy was by no means a hopeless case, but because he had been treated as one, he proved to be his tormentor's undoing. Similarly, Mr. Hemingway's ruthless condemnation of the work of not only Gide, Wilde, and Whitman, but "all the mincing gentry" may one day be the key to his own undoing in the minds of his readers. Already the majority of critics, in recounting his accomplishments, end their remarks with some sickly phrase of polite qualification. Perhaps what they really mean to say is simply that the man has no pity for the people he obviously despises. By dismissing such minorities as inconsequential, he automatically dismisses himself as a novelist too.

Fortunately for such scorned minorities, there are other writers (and a few whose professional and artistic statures dwarf even Mr. Heminway's) who dismiss nothing, even after searching examination. Perhaps the best example of this group is Arthur Koestler, best known today as a leading intellectual who dared turn his back on Communism and live to prove his wisdom.

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