586
WRIGHT MORRIS
sense of
deja
vu.
Not so much in what he sees, as in what he feels.
A
sense of having been here before- and indeed he has. Mass culture–
that unwieldy offspring of which Americans are the
iII
at ease parents–
is here in its promising, school-tie phase. No one has ever heard of
Richard Halliburton. No one wants to hear about Lindbergh. That
is
for the birds. The taste is
popular
taste. Two or three times a day my
neighbor's cockeyed daughter plays a rock and roll version of
Ave Maria,
much enjoyed by everybody in the neighborhood. Once a day she plays
and sings a version of
the tweeest.
Is she too
far out?
Quite the contrary.
She is in the swing. She has no interest in a taste of her own-what she
wants is
the
taste.
A few days ago Frank Sinatra gave a charity concert in Paris–
the reporter for the Paris
Herald
described him as the Caruso of our
time. Not in jest. As reporters sometimes are, he was right.
Our
time.
Our
time now times the globe. The revolution we hardly knew we were
fighting, whose meaning stilI escapes us, has been won without melting
plowshares into swords. The melting down that matters has been
in
matters of taste. Popular taste is the taste that is popular. Here
in
Venice, this fallout summer, Americans float on the Grand Canal
listening to a tenor evoke the Italian past. Tourists and natives alike
would rather that he sang
Ciao! Ciao! Bambina.
Soon he will.
That the gondola tour, like the tunnel of Love, will terminate at
an express stop on the subway is a sensation that even Venetians may
have. One is both in and out of this world. The
.vaporetto
snorts and
coughs as it pulls in for a landing, where several natives sit discussing
the atomic bomb. The weather, that is.
La bomba atomica
being the
cause of it. There was no spring in Venice, all May it was November,
and now in July there are hot and cold spells. Like a patient with a
fever. That is what it is like. It can only be explained by
la bomba
atomica.
The weather, too, this summer, has a made-in-USA air, and the
air may show a certain touch of pollution, linking Venice, life and death,
to the rest of the world. Increasingly, we shall all be tourists here
together, some on the European plan, some on the American plan,
some without any plan except to try and last it out. That will not be
easy, with the rising prices, but by saving green stamps and eating
instant potatoes-by being
echt
American, that is, it may work. We're
the people, after all, who taught the world how to shoot the works.
Wright Morris
