NIGHT AT COLUMBIA
225
would have been clean and shaven too - he was at Hunter, I've in–
quired about that. And anyway, there's nothing dirty about a
checked shirt or a lumberjacket and blue jeans, they're standard uni–
form in the best nursery schools. Ginsberg has his pride, as do his
friends.
And how do I look to the "beats," I ask myself after that experi–
ence with the seats, and not only I but the other wives I was with?
We had pulled aside the tattered old velvet rope which marked off
the section held for faculty, actually it was trailing on the floor, and
moved into the seats Dupee's wife Andy had saved for us by strewing
coats on them; there was a big grey overcoat she couldn't identify:
she stood holding it up in the air murmuring wistfully, "Whose is
this?" - until the young people in the row in back of us took ac–
count of us and answered sternly,
((Those
seats are reserved for fac–
ulty."
If
I have trouble unraveling undergraduates from "beats,"
neither do the wives of the Columbia English department wear their
distinction with any certainty.
But Dupee's distinction, that's something else again: what could
I have been worrying about, when had Dupee ever failed to meet the
occasion, or missed a right style? I don't suppose one could witness a
better performance than his on Thursday evening; its rightness was
apparent the moment he walked onto the stage, his troupe in tow and
himself just close enough and just enough removed to indicate the
balance in which he held the situation. Had there been a hint of be–
trayal in his deportment, of either himself or his guests - naturally, he
had made them his guests - the whole evening might have been dif–
ferent: for instance, a few minutes later when the overflow attendance
outside the door began to bang and shout for admission, might not
the audience have caught the contagion and become unruly too? Or
would Ginsberg have stayed with his picture of himself as poet serious
and triumphant instead of succumbing to what must have been the
greatest temptation to spoil his opportunity? "The last time I was
in
this theater," Dupee began quietly, "it was also to hear a poet read his
works. That was T. S. Eliot." A slight alteration of inflection, from
irony to mockery, from condescension to contempt, and it might well
have been a signal for near-riot, boos and catcalls and whistlings; the
evening would have been lost to the "beats," Dupee and Columbia
would have been defeated. Dupee transformed a circus into a class-
