244
PARTISAN REVIEW
this was part of the original planning, or a result of an article on my
poems by Robert Wilson, which had just appeared in the weekly art
section of the
Datly Caltfornian .
This resulted in calls both to Wilson
and the English department in an attempt to locate me (the caller
was the SLA's Angela Lonsford under her pseudonym) . But Ling
too was busy. Norman Mallory, whom we had stopped off with on
the way back from Death Valley, received a note enclosing a return
postcard , which would bring him the usual over-antennaed green
hornet FBI car, drawn guns, and such prurient questions as "Were
they cozy? " followed by months of phone clicking.
i
am
sorry i can't tell you who i
am
or what i'm doing. if you
can get this to robin or know where i can get in touch with
him just mail this postcard so i'll know. it's very important.
i love you and remember our days together warmly and
am
sorry i have to stay so mysterious.
love
your sister
Then came the Hearst kidnapping. From the actressing of the
break-in, the white voice on the apartment intercom, I realized that
it was Ling; that in the new revolution what was evidently required
was a B.A. in Dramatic Art . Some of the rest , too, I liked. Whatever
the foul-ups in the food distribution system devised by the Hearsts , it
at least proved that there were a great many desperately poor people
willing to hazard eight hours, on line and much shame for a ten dollar
frozen food hand-out. But the blistering savagery of 'the shootout–
was a good deal more than I had reckoned on. Instead, I had expected
her to be caught and put in jail, there to blossom forth in the
feminist forefront for which her prison social work had amply
prepared her. But the police didn't want a trial-spread the con–
tagion?-and instead took the cowardly solution of surrounding Ling
and her friends and before a horrified TV audience shooting 165,000
rounds into their Watts cellar. Charred corpses don't speak.
