JOYCE CAROL OATES
571
the Homeland and the inevitable inferiority of other nations, races,
religions.
"The Germans really are a master race," Philip says , "-even
when they- or do I mean we?- pretend humility."
Though he has visited Germany many times for professional
purposes he has never, oddly, sought out his distant relatives.
Perhaps in fact he has none; that part of Germany suffered terrible
devastation in the final year of the war. Yes he had relatives in the
German army, yes he had an uncle, a much-honored bomber pilot
who flew hundreds of successful missions before being shot down
over Cologne.... "As late as the fifties I had to contend with a good
deal of family legend, stealthy German boasting," Philip says . "Of
course if hard pressed my father and uncles
would
admit that Hitler
was a madman, the Reich was doomed, the entire mythopoetics of
German-ness was untenable...."
He believes he knows the German soul perfectly, he says, but
by way of his scholarly investigations and interviews primarily: not
(or so he hopes) by way of blood. Historical record is all that one can
finally trust, not intuition, not promptings of the spirit; a people is
its actions, not its ideals; we are (to paraphrase William James) what
we cause others to experience.
He breaks off suddenly as if the subject has become distasteful.
He tells Cecilia, laughing, that there is nothing more disagreeable
than a self-loathing German.
"But do you loathe yourself?" Cecilia asks doubtfully. "And
why do you think of yourself as German rather than American ... ?"
Philip takes her hand, strokes the long slender fingers. His ges–
ture is sudden, surreptitious, though no one is seated in the third
airliner seat and in any case no one knows them. He says lightly:
"My wife would tell you that the secret of my being is self-loathing–
by which she means my German-ness."
A symposium on contemporary philosophical trends was held
that spring at the Peekskill Foundation. No aesthetician partici–
pated ; no specialists in metaphysics or ethics. There were linguists,
logicians, mathematicians, a topologist, a semiotician, and others–
all men- who resisted classification. The chairman of the conference
began by stating, evidently without irony, that since all viable philo–
sophical positions were represented it was not unreasonable to ex–
pect that certain key problems might finally be solved. "Only in the
presence of my colleagues would I confess to such optimism," the
gentleman said, drawing forth appreciative laughter.
The sessions Cecilia attended, however, were consumed in dis-
