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nature of irrationality. What is all this doubt and revolt in America
really all about?"
To warm applause the Ambassador sat down, and requested the
Americans to respond directly to his remarks. The conference cochair–
man, the stylish French editor and writer
J. J.
Servan-Schreiber, who
traveled around the campus all week with three sexy secretaries and a
limousine, looked around the room. All through the conference he called
on people who were not prepared. A few minutes before, one of his
pretties was whispering to him to call on Willie Morris, the editor of
Harpers.
(Morris said later: "The only reason I came was that they
kept calling me up and saying Bob Manning was corning.") Morris
had alertly read her lips and swiftly exited to the bar, presumably to
work on the marvelous comic diary he was keeping of the week. So
Servan-Schreiber called on the sociologist and author Edward Shils.
Shils began by complaining, in a compound of self-indulgent wit and
resentment, about not being recognized earlier. Later in his eccentric,
free-associating monologue, he would refuse to yield the floor. Since the
conference managers could not supply a transcript of Shils' comments,
and I cannot write as fast as he can talk, I was able to take note
intermittently. What follows are only random icebergs of his thinking:
"I do not see this anguish you are talking about. But I am not a
member of an underground church. . . . There is a loss of confidence
among the third-class clergymen who dominate the American ecclesi–
astical system. They are feeble. They are no good.... I can't exhaust
my views in less than five hours. I'm a left-over from a past period,
so I have notes on something else. . . . Johnson got his wind up be–
cause the West Side kibbutz was attacking
him....
The WASPS have
abdicated. Who have taken their place? Ants. Fleas. . . . There are all
these
urchins in the streets enjoying themselves intimidating cowardly
middle-class people. . . . The police have always been rough. What's
this
stuff about the Chicago police? So they beat up 800 young people.
When I was young the police were really brutal. . . . The police are
far more permissive now. Even soft...."
When the chairman tried to call a halt to his monologue, Shils
objected, saying "You got me into this."
"Many of the non-Americans don't understand what you're saying,"
Servan-Schreiber explained.
"Many of the Americans don't either," replied the professor.
There followed another half hour of academic push-up exercises,
none of which even remotely satisfied the Indonesian's plea for reality
and
relevance. Then to climax the afternoon session, the chairman called
