Silas Timberman by Howard Fast Read Free Book Online Page A

good, very good. Susan Allen was saying, “You certainly are,” to Ike Amsterdam, maintaining that he never spoke of anyone without attacking or defending, and then Spencer returned to his original statement. There were good people. If Amsterdam chose to give the word historical connotations, that was something else. But if you made an inversion of good , and extended it as a principle, where were you then?
    â€œPrecisely where we are,” Amsterdam replied. “Fat, well-fed, well-curried, well-cared-for pedants, performing our mechanical daily routine by rote, housed, fed and clothed by millionaires who tolerate this institution for the technical experts it turns out, and who provide a window dressing of liberal arts to go with the ivy on the phony granite walls. That’s where we are. Obedient and cheerful purveyors of what passes for culture in a world gone insane, passing out a smattering of ignorance to becloud the otherwise undefiled minds of the new herrenvolk .”
    Susan Allen whistled and grinned. Spencer shook his head and returned to his mashed potatoes. “You don’t leave much room for argument,” Brady smiled, and Susan Allen asked,
    â€œHave you ever heard anyone argue with Ike?”
    â€œEveryone argues with me,” Amsterdam snorted. “The fools as well as those with a modicum of common sense. This is the holy age of conformity, and if I should hold one small opinion not registered and stamped with the official seal of approval, I would be met with argument, rancor and fear.”
    â€œIke has made this general,” Susan Allen explained to Silas, “and as a matter of fact, when you walked by, he was holding forth on it. He chose you as his example, and stated that so mild and agreeable a subject as American literature would either be pruned to conform, or else he who taught it would find himself in very hot water. I don’t find it so with the history of art. No one has yet told me who to elevate and who to relegate to the cellar, and I doubt if anyone very much cares. How do you feel about it, Silas?”
    â€œWell—I don’t know. This is a time of stress, I suppose, and a certain amount of give and take has to go by the boards. But that doesn’t mean that anything basic has changed. You can make out a good case, Ike, for the oligarch’s hold on the university, but it seems to me to be a little old hat. You set up a straw man and knock him over, which isn’t quite fair either. Of course the rich support the colleges; everyone knows that and it’s been that way for a long time, but that doesn’t mean they dictate the curriculum or the content of the various courses. Fortunately, I don’t think they give a damn—or would know what to do if they did.”
    â€œYou underestimate them,” Brady put in. “One of the worst mistakes a pedagogue can make, Silas, is to consider that the rich are fools. It’s simply not true.”
    â€œBut what about the other way?” Susan Allen said. “You have all your answers in Russia, where the schools belong to the people, as they put it. Suppose Silas—or I, for that matter, or Ike, or you, Alec—suppose we opened the wrong text, or praised the wrong picture, or claimed that your cosmic rays, Hart, don’t do whatever the comrades prescribe for them—then Silas would find himself in a comfortable and quiet cell, or in Siberia.”
    â€œHow do you know?” Ike Amsterdam demanded.
    â€œIt’s common knowledge, isn’t it? It’s something they’ve gone to no trouble to conceal, it seems to me.”
    Brady said, “Without getting into a long argument about Russia, Sue, isn’t it a hell of a note when we have to justify our own actions by saying it’s worse somewhere else?”
    Silas looked at his watch and then rose. “My time’s up. The great god has asked to see me, and I mustn’t be