My Dear Maxine,

     Here is the other piece about a most fascinating 
relationship--about which I'll confess  I had "no clue"...

     Since Simone de Beauvoir was all the rage when I was an undergrad 
(and, by the way, contrary to the assertions of our legal opposition, my 
attendance at both U.C. Berkeley and SUNY at Buffalo, 1972-1978, are 
part of officially documented records in this latest subjection of 
myself to "jeopardy," as even the Asst. D.A. at the revocation hearing 
was forced to acknowledge, along with my assertion that my employment at 
both the California Alumni Association (verifiable through Russ Schoch, 
who still says Hello to me at the RSF, etc.) and the Athletic Study 
Center (verifiable through Margaret Wellons, now volunteering at your 
Dept. of English) had been deliberately omitted on the "official" 
document entered as evidence by the D.A.'s office)...Since "that woman," 
as critics called her (Simone de Beauvoir), was very much the center of 
controversy I did indeed read much of her--though the feeling that comes 
to mind most from that period (Amy Linn) is what a lukewarm relationship 
existed between her and Jean Paul Sartre...

     Anyway, the point is a matter I remembered during a conversation 
with my friend Sean over coffee after the sham in small claims Monday: 
at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where it seemed the entire 
Daily Cal staff had been accepted that year Amy was there (1979-80), the 
quiet debate topic among the women--according to Amy--towards graduation 
time was Do I or Don't I? That is, when the interviewing editors and 
other media reps broadly hint that a little "appreciation" in the form 
of sex (oral or otherwise) would go a long way towards being hired in 
that extremely competitive field, as a woman, What do you do?  The firm 
consensus among the women in Amy's circle, the more subtly feminist, was 
that you "begged off" the question by treating the gaffe like a joke 
(and only mentioned the matter among one's inner circle, to prevent 
being "blackballed")...

    Such is what I told Sean, along with the "disappointment" I 
expressed over why Patricia Ireland et al "just don't get it..." Private 
affairs are just that, but one in a CEO type of position is literally 
dictating "policy," company, public or otherwise...And " confere" my 
situation as described in "Baptism," in which I'm still being 
extra-legally "punished" as an "adulterer" for my affairs of the heart 
with Claudia Donsberger--despite ole Wendell Taylor assuring me over the 
phone from Monterey the very first weekend Claudia and I made love that 
they indeed had an "open marriage" (I'd expressed skepticism to a very 
enticing Claudia) and that he was one of his "girlfirends," ala their 
weekly excursion to "Steve and Sally's" swing house off Monte Vista and 
El Dorado in Oakland)...Too, how 'bout that "civil interdiction" illegal 
per se confiscation as a DEA agent that clever ole Wendell pulled off 
through my Aunt Margaret and Uncle Al English in Novato--only "pattern 
of racketeering" cheating me out of a million-plus dollars (not exactly 
"chump change," if you dig what I mean). Wonder why Patrick and Terence 
Hallinan's Democratic friends are "strangely" so silent on that one? 

    But then, as the stated objective of us all during those halycon 
years was to become the "next Woodward and Bernstein," and,  as in fact 
none of us have--the sign of success now among journalistic types being 
a daytime talk TV show dumbing down to the Lowest Common 
Denominator--well I suppose that speaking of Times of Olde is a futile 
endeavor..(By the way, I've attempted to contact Guy D. Garcia, my Arts 
Editor at the Daily Cal and Amy's friend at Columbia, to find out What 
in the world happened?...The night that his girlfriend, Anne Troutman, 
and I almost made love still stands out in my mind--she'd heard that Amy 
and I had very "hot" lovemaking sessions when I showed up to visit her 
and Anne was very much interested in me--she was sitting in a chair, 
sipping tea, with one leg draped seductively over the armrest, her 
silken pants letting me see every soft hair on her cunt, and talking to 
me of Celtic matters like the Tarot.  The foregone conclusion was that 
we were going to make love in Guy's absence.  But, because of my ongoing 
though difficult relationship with  Amy and my friendship with Guy, I 
chose to let the moment pass--causing her a bit of consternation but, 
ever since (or so I hear) to have for me a measure of respect...Ah the 
"mish-takes" one makes when young and foolish... 

   Have to get back to work on a "set aside" brief for Judge Greenberg 
to be filed on Friday--plenty of legal grounds exist, especially the 
principle that a criminal prosecution is the sole forum for 
determination of guilt or innocence on criminal charges, and that a 
probation revocation hearing is conducted only to determine whether 
conditions of probation relating to a prior imposed and yet suspended 
punishment have been violated--requiring the judge to put into "full 
legal force" the previous judgement.  In other words, the D.A.'s request 
to have me barred from U.C. Berkeley was an illegal per se move that 
Judge Greenberg should not have "entertained," as I was never 
"convicted" of any fresh criminal charges that would allow new 
impostions upon my "liberty."

    Will email the *new* Chancellor, Mr. Berdahl, though our old friend 
Joyce de Vries as well...I would have done so earlier, but I'm 
"sickened" at the way good, kind-hearted people like your colleague Bob 
Hass (and his dear wife, Brenda Hillman) are harassed, threatened and 
intimidated to the point where he was embarrassed to say Hello to me 
outside Black Oak Books on Sunday afternoon...

love,
tom

>Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1998 00:38:31 -0700
>To: <raudra9@hotmail.com>
>From: elisa vandernoot <elisav@wiesenthal.com> (by way of Jack Kolb 
<KOLB@ucla.edu>) (by way of Jack Kolb <KOLB@ucla.edu>)
>Subject: Nelson's touch
>
>The Scotsman
>8 August 1998
>
>Nelson's touch
>
>Imagine a kittenish Simone de Beauvoir? Then read her love letters, 
says Ali
>Smith
>
>Beloved Chicago Man: Letters to Nelson Algren 1947-64
>By Simone de Beauvoir,=20
>Gollancz, L25
>
>Lust for life: Simone de Beauvoir and Nelson Algren. Her letters to him
>bring the intellectual ferment of Paris in the Fifties vividly to life 
as
>well as tracing their passionate 17-year love affair
>
>In February of 1947 when she was 39, the French existentialist writer 
Simone
>de Beauvoir was in the United States on a lecture tour, and on the 
advice of
>a friend tentatively called up Chicago underground novelist Nelson 
Algren.
>He showed her the "underside" of the city; they drank in some Polish 
bars,
>and she wrote to him from the train out of Chicago, telling him how 
sorry
>she was that they couldn't spend more time together: "I'll try to write 
in
>English. So, excuse my grammar, and if I do not use the words in the 
right
>meaning, try to understand ; I have thought I liked you; I think you 
felt
>it, though we spoke so little; I'll sure not forget
>these two days we spent in Chicago. I mean I'll not forget you. S. de=
> Beauvoir."
>
>By May de Beauvoir was signing off like this: "Now I'll always be with 
you.
>In the sad streets of Chicago, under the Elevated, in the lonely room, 
I'll
>be with you, my beloved one, as a loving wife with her beloved husband; 
It
>was not a dream; it is a wonderful true story which is only beginning; 
I
>love you. There is no more to say. You take me in your arms and I cling 
to
>you and I kiss you as I kissed you. Your Simone."
>
>Beloved Chicago Man is the collection of de Beauvoir's letters, in an
>English that litters them with charming mistakes and keeps them
>refreshingly, sometimes constrainedly simple, to her American lover 
Algren.
>
>This is a huge, sometimes dreary, more times wonderful book, stretching 
from
>the formal start of this unlikely, fated complicity between the good 
girl
>and the bad boy through the chequered years of rare meetings in each 
other's
>countries, attractions to others, anger at each other's demands, all 
the way
>to Algren's hurt silence that signalled the end of their "international
>love" in 1964, after she published her version of their affair in both 
The
>Mandarins and Force of Circumstance.
>
>The wonder lies in its treasure-hoard of detail of de Beauvoir's 
writing
>process when she was working on her major books, and detail which 
brings
>these particular years of her politics, her country, and the lives of 
her
>existentialist "family" in Paris (based around her friendship and
>collaboration with Jean-Paul Sartre) completely and surprisingly to 
life,
>with all the vital roughness and spontaneity of a bar-room brawl. 
Somewhere
>shadowed at the back of it all, though, is the almost-untold story of 
Algren
>himself, whose voice we literally hear only twice in nearly 600 pages,
>having to glean the rest from her replies and from short footnotes. 
This
>story - of his poverty, his sudden fame with the National Book award 
and
>Pulitzer prize-winning, gun-running innercity novel, The Man with the 
Golden
>Arm, and his descent into poverty again - runs concurrently alongside, 
and a
>whole impossible Atlantic ocean away from de Beauvoir's own story of
>emerging fame, success and wealth.
>
>The book is maddeningly un-cross-referenced, maddeningly one-sided. 
It's a
>French bestseller, absolutely about France in the post-war years, 
shadowed,
>as with Algren's story, by another story, that of the relationship 
between
>America and Europe in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties. But it's worth 
the
>maddening. Here, for whole moments, is the brilliant de Beauvoir as 
never
>seen before; frivolous and lovesick as a schoolgirl, charmingly on 
holiday
>from herself and grandiosely letting herself gush love clich=E9s to her
>American "honey".
>
>"My own crocodile, my beloved, I love you so much all along these rainy
>days. You know how it is when you are far away. Sometimes the one you 
love
>fades away, it is a sweet song in your ears, a longing in your heart."
>
>There's a certain relief for her, you sense, in letting herself be 
banal.
>Still, it doesn't take long for her to tire of the too-limiting 
commonplaces
>of the love-letter genre - "Nelson, my love, I write to you by the 
light of
>a candlestick, which is very romantic, maybe a little too romantic" - 
and
>soon (unless she's slightly drunk) her exhortations of love are neatly
>compartmentalised into the first and last paragraphs of her long 
letters,
>and their middles filled with her working life, and sharp, sometimes 
acrid,
>sometimes funny portrayals of the people she meets, searing 
observations on
>the books she reads and the writers she knows and the films she sees 
(she
>has an endearing passion for Chaplin), and the many places she visits,
>including Scotland, which she didn't like much, and post-war Berlin, 
her
>descriptions of which are riveting. Soon, too, the frivolous self is 
back
>under control, and dutifully chiding=20
>Algren for his not learning French, for not working hard enough.
>
>"You know, I never really wrote love letters in English. I feel it is 
very
>silly to give so much importance to one's own feelings when the world 
is so
>big and so many things happen: cholera in Egypt, de Gaulle in France, 
to say
>nothing about US. It is silly, but it is a nice bed-story to tell 
myself
>when going to sleep."
>
>One of the more fascinating gifts of the collection is the chance to 
watch
>the astoundingly self-possessed de Beauvoir play at and dodge the 
limits of
>role and gender - these are the years, after all, when she is working 
on her
>major analysis of woman and role, The Second Sex. Her sidelining of her
>sexual self, and her keeping of that frighteningly gendered self at an
>ocean's distance from reality, manages to preserve something pure and
>polarised in her relationship with Algren, so much so that when she's 
about
>to see him, in the flesh again, she's overcome with anxiety
>and nightmare. She tells him, frankly, that he should sleep with other 
women
>since they're at such a distance. She blocks him, and blocks time with 
him,
>citing responsibilities to Sartre, to his work, to her own work, always 
the
>standard of her independence.
>
>But even though these aren't love-letters - not in the usual definition 
-
>the overriding subject of Beloved Chicago Man is, helplessly, love. Her
>relationship with Algren points up her obsession with Sartre even more
>clearly. With relentless objectivity - it must certainly have seemed
>relentless to Algren - she chronicles those around her, the women and 
the
>men, who are pursuing her. Best of all, she tells him thrilling 
fragments of
>doomed American-Parisienne stories: a flower-seller has an argument 
with her
>lover, she throws herself into the Seine while her love stands watching
>blankly; an American boy dives in after her, to save her, and they both
>drown. A handsome American GI is burning to death in a truck; a 
beautiful
>French girl throws herself at the truck to save him. He is saved, 
unharmed,
>thanks her and says goodbye; she dies, of acid burns. "So you have to
>understand (if you want to live a long and happy life) never to take 
anybody
>out of fire or water. I understand very well.
>
>Our lives are to stay apart and yet I love you so much."
>
>Beloved Chicago Man delivers a superbly paradoxical self-portrait of de
>Beauvoir; brave and cowardly, likeable and arch, pioneering and 
prurient,
>superiorly intelligent and gloriously, happily stupid when she chooses. 
Over
>and above human paradox, and years of changed lives and fortunes, she 
seems
>always to have been generous, and - this is the real crux of the thing 
-
>faithful. This has to be the gripping paradox of Beloved Chicago Man, 
the
>vision of the grande dame of 20th century French feminism experimenting 
with
>the notion, albeit at a safe, subversive distance, of
>herself as a wife. Right to the end of their correspondence and to the 
end
>of her life Algren remained her 'beloved unmarried husband'; he gave 
her a
>ring on their first meeting and, as she wrote, "it is the first time I 
ever
>wore a ring and everybody in Paris was very amazed"; In 1986 at the end 
of
>her long and happy life, 25 years after they'd last met and five years 
after
>his death, she was buried, still wearing it.
>
>The Scotsman Publications Ltd
>
>
>


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