HERE AND THERE
63
is
out; at the moment Tories and Liberals say they will not harry him,
but the disgust of the rank and file Tory is a different matter from the
gentlemanly resignation of his leaders, and the pressure will tell one day.
It
is
not to be expected that Labour will be forgiven its blunders as the
Tories were; but they may be fewer and less disastrous. Certainly the
element of the ludicrous which has marked British government since
Suez will disappear. We may be in for a somewhat grim couple of years,
but we shall learn
to
be less tolerant of injustice, less content to think that
cruelty is illusory, readier to accept that proceedings are, in some things,
necessary. And so, after all, and with weeks of doubt behind, one is glad
to be back.
Frank Kermode
NEW YORK
New York is almost itself again: the World's Fair is gone till
spring. Cabbies, waiters, doormen, shopgirls can forget the monster act
engendered by months of tip-divvying, wooden-nickel-checking, finger–
counting, and other tricks. Savagery and revenge mothered greater in–
ventions than necessity ever could- new triangulations to catch noise at
its loudest, draughts at their windiest, movement at its schizziest: the
maitre d's way of getting even for the out-.of-town voice calling out
loudly, "And remember, captain, we're used to the best."
The Fair began with a disastrous confusion of word and inaction
by Bronx and Brooklyn chapters of CORE- a threat to stall three
thousand cars on various roads leading to the big show. A few days
before the opening, demonstrators blocked a tollbooth at Triborough
Bridge. An Italian laborer came out of his car swinging a wrench,
swearing he'd kill anybody who kept him away from w.ork. The CORE
stall-in never did materialize: it did, however, produce resentment
with no concomitant sympathy, or saving dramatic helicopter view of a
