Eric Mottram's rendez-vous with Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes, Richard Rive in Harlem and more on Ralph Ellison.
Says EM: " But you as a Negro does not impress me ! We are all black, don't forget."

AIR-LETTER
Mottram, Dept...of English, New York University,
Washington Square, NewYork,
New York 10003
To : Mr. T. Wignesan, 36, Mimosa Street, London N.W. 8
Re-addressed to: 6, Gloucester Place, London N.W.1
March 4, 1966

Dear Wignesan,

Your Peace News piece [on the "sit in" on "Saved" I was asked to cover] seems a breakthrough in many ways -- style and propositions and at least making it with a magazine again. (Personally, Tom McGrath [ PN's literary Editor] has my undying hatred for not returning my Burroughs article [Part One of EM's The Algebra of Need, pp. 13 to 113, which I retrieved for EM later on] after repeated letters begging him to: it's a dirty trick, if ever).

Re [Ralph] Ellison, his new essays in Shadow and Act are first rate and recently he read part of a new novel on telly, so he is thriving. It is difficult for him because he is attacked by his own people for not being militant -- meaning he doesn't march or physically show his protesting spirit -- and he doesn't make speeches or rants about this, that and the other latest move on one side or the other. He simply generates intelligence. Liberator [underlined] meanwhile deifies Malcolm [Malcolm-X whom I interviewed over an hour at Malaya Hall while I was the British-owned (Singapore) Straits Times Press Group's man in London just two weeks before his assassination] -- a long article in the anniversary number messianizing him, and references to He and Him and to 'Audubon' as if it were Golgotha. They disrecommended the Autobiography [underlined] because it dwelt too much on his early life, which doesn't actually yield to Christlike images....The same magazine reflects black nationals' opinion by putting down Leroi Jones as a recently-joined Village intellezctual who does not yet speak to Us, the militant Muslim galvanizers of Harlem and other ghetto militants.

I had dinner in Harlem with Arna Bontemps, Langston Hughes and the Sth African novelist, Richard Rive (have you read his novel ? I'm afraid I hadn't -- rather embarassing), the other night and regained my nerve a little from my last disastrous visit. But sitting waiting for the party to arrive (I was early) in a black Harlem restaurant is no pleasure, I may say. Rive seems a decent fellow and pretty shrewd about his country -- he may be in England shortly -- perhaps you could meet him through me (I am not suggesting you actually condescend to use my name.)

Why I should laugh, as you suggest, at your tramping through London looking for digs, I can't imagine. What do you take me for? I was sorry to hear of the eviction [from 28, Cheniston Gardens, London W.8] and can only hope the new place is working out.
But you as a Negro does not impress me ! We are all black, don't forget.
My silence, by the way, was that I closed down recently in order to get that damned Pelican out of the way. It had been hanging over my head damoclesianly for two years. But now, after a gruelling period of sweats, it is more or less done and Malcolm Bradbury and I have only the dribs and drabs to think about, borderlines and all that. What a relief. But now I feel freer, with that and the Arthur Miller article for Stratford Studies behind me.

I am now working on a BBC thing on McCluhan : and this I want to expand into a critique of him, Kahn, Wiener and Fuller -- these men fascinate me , and will make an obverse side for my power thinkings. These latter shape up nicely, thank you. I delivered some to kids at a liberal arts college in Vermont the other day: they really dug what I was saying, really came on with good questions and additions and understood how I must have a subplot (as McCluhan told me) about love and passivity, as power forms.

As Allen [Ginsberg] embraced me through his black hairs last night, I remembered what he teaches and what I have used of his way of life to reconsider values of power. He had just arrived from Kansas and from a long tour lasting since last July, with Peter Orlovsky and the insane brother, Julius. He had come to collect the mail from Ted Wilentz's, and I was there having dinner. Allen chanted a new song and showed us his bus, with fridge, oven, watertank and all mod cons in which he travels about these days, recording his poems into a magnificent taperecorder -- he'd just made one as he came into the city and now played it back to us : a magnificent improvisatory ode. The scene will now begin in earnest, I'm assured.

Vermont I also enjoyed for the huge mountains and snows. The wilderness gave me anti-human feeling I had only once had before : in the jungles of central Malaya. Which reminds me : I see from the New Statesman that Evans is leaving his chair at Kuala Lumpur -- did you know where he is going now ? I'd be most intrigued to know if he's at last leaving that country.

Well, the rest is that it is March, and I have just committed myself to the Queen Mary for September and the homeward voyage. It's hardly credible that over five months of my time has rushed away. It seems yesterday I arrived in those ghastly tropical heats of September 1965, and today it is misty and springlike. Which means summer is nearing. I have worked all winter and now I want to get out into the country a little before I go up to Buffalo in July.

All the best.
Eric

(c) T. Wignesan, Paris: 1966-2023 [First pub. in Poetrysoup.com]