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PARTISAN REVIEW
simply the rotten inheritance of this American family , but perhaps
the buried promise of America itself- the possibilities of our coun–
try, once so pure and exceptional, whose abandoned innocence keeps
surfacing to plague us.
Or consider another American example, a work by Arthur
Kopit called
End of the World (With Symposium to Follow).
This black
comedy is written in the style of a film noir , and concerns a play–
wright approached by a mysterious stranger who wants to commis–
sion a play about doom. The playwright responds to this curious
commission like a private eye hired to find a murderer, and in the
course of the action investigates a number of witnesses with knowl–
edge of our nuclear strategy.
What the playwright discovers is that our nuclear policy is
crazy, and what is more,
everybody knows it, including its architects.
The
policy is a "closed loop system": assured destruction and flexible
response both lead to the same result; there's no way out unless you
break the system itself. It is an Escher box- an illusion of reality.
Though it looks feasible, it won't work, but because it looks
workable, people can't stop working on it. The playwright concludes
that writing such a play is impossible and abandons the project,
along with all hope.
His final speech is the metaphor, and I would like to quote it at
length. "My son had just been born," he says . "We'd brought him
home. He was what, five days old I guess." (pause) "And then one
day my wife went out ... And I was alone with him. And I picked
up this living thing, and started walking around our living room. We
lived on a high floor. We overlooked the river, the Hudson . And
I .. . looked down at this creature, this tiny thing, and I realized
... I realized I had never had anyone completely in my power
before." (pause) "And I realized he was completely innocent. And he
looked up at me . And whatever he could see, he could see only in in–
nocence. And he was in my power. And I'd never known what that
meant, never had felt anything remotely like that before. And I saw
I was standing near a window. And it was open.
It
was but a few feet
away. And I thought I could drop him out. How easy to drop him
out. And I went towards that window, because I couldn't believe this
thought had come into my head, where it had come from, not one
part of me felt anything for this boy but love, not one part, my wife
and I had planned, we were both in love, there was no resentment,
no anger, nothing dark in me toward him at all, no one could ever
have been more in love with his child than I ... and I was thinking,
