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Gatekeepers
 Gatekeepers
The Emergence of World Literature
and the 1960s

William Marling

1
 1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers
the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education
by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University
Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

© William Marling 2016

First Edition published in 2016

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction
rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form

and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data

Names: Marling, William, 1951– author.
Title: Gatekeepers : the emergence of world literature and the 1960s /
William Marling.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015037616 | ISBN 9780190274146 (cloth) |
ISBN 9780190274153 (updf) | ISBN 9780190274160 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Literature—20th century—History and criticism.
Classification: LCC PN511 .M28 2016 | DDC 809—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015037616

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Sheridan, USA
For Raili
 { Contents }

Acknowledgments ix
Permissions xi
Introduction: Gatekeeping and World Literature 1
1. Gabriel García Márquez: Gatekeepers and Prise de Position 12
2. Charles Bukowski and the Entrepreneurs of World Literature 44
3. Paul Auster: “Bootstrapping” and Foreign “Exile” 74
4. Haruki Murakami: The Prizes, Process, and Production
of World Literature 115
Conclusion: Writers, Gatekeepers, Publishing, and History 143

Notes 167
References 199
Index 209
 { Acknowledgments }

My wife Raili led me to many of these ideas, then critiqued and proofread my
prose. I owe her incalculable thanks. My colleagues Cristian Gomez, Takao
Hagiwara, Marie Lathers, and Enno Lohmeyer checked my translations and
gave me insights. Anne Luyat has been an inspiration for nearly twenty years:
she introduced me to many of my sources and texts. My MA student Jason
Barrone, whose thesis on Haruki Murakami I have drawn on, had insights
into that author that were stimulating. My graduate students in “Translation:
Theory and Practice,” particularly Danielle Nielsen and Anne Ryan, whose
research on Gabriel García Márquez and Michiko Kakutani I have used, were
very helpful. Christine Le Bœuf, Hubert Nyssen, Douglas Messerli, Triin
Tael, and Peeter Sauter graciously consented to interviews. My reviewers at
Oxford gave me sage advice, so I hope not to disappoint them or my editor
Brendan O’Neill, who believed in this book when it was still rough. Finally I
could not have written this book without the kindness and diligence of many
research librarians at Northwestern University, University of California-​Los
Angeles, University of California-​San Diego, the New York Public Library,
and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
 { Permissions }

Letters of Charles Bukowski to Carl Weissner, and of Carl Weissner to Charles

Bukowski, quoted by permission of the Special Collections Department,
Charles Deering Research Library, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

Quotations from the manuscripts of Paul Auster by permission of The

Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature,
The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.

Paul Auster Papers, 1963–​1995 (bulk 1972–​mid-​1995).

Notebook [n.d.]. Box 11.
“Francis Ponge: A Memoir.” Box 1.
“Prolusion” (1969). Box 1.
“Jabès.” Box 11.

Quotations from the papers of Douglas Messerli and Paul Blackburn quoted
by permission of the Special Collections Department, Research Library,
University of California at San Diego, San Diego, CA and Douglas Messerli.
Gatekeepers
 Introduction
Gatekeeping and World Literature

Writers do not get published without help—​often a great deal of help—​from

other people. The older, romantic notion of authorship, of isolated genius,
has been chipped away by studies showing that collaboration, copyright law,
and changes in media have contributed much to literary invention.1 Friends,
family, editors, agents, lawyers, bookstore owners, other artists, patrons,
partners, and publishers play an important role in the creative process.
Even rivals may help by pushing writers toward new aesthetic paths or by
re-​dimensioning the creative field or its rules, the doxa as Pierre Bourdieu
termed them. We see the value of such aid when we look at writers around
us, who are helped by numerous people, not to mention tenure and grants,
prizes, and sinecures.
But we have yet to extend this understanding to World Literature, where
publication and success are much more difficult. Outside of the United
States there are few tenured positions for MFAs (Masters of Fine Arts),
fewer foundations, agents, or patrons, and small reading circuits. In order
to reach foreign readers, it is essential for writers of World Literature to be
discovered, translated, promoted, and reviewed. How does one become a
writer of World Literature? Do writers even conceive of such a thing? One
might reply that writers have to achieve success in a home culture or lan-
guage before this possibility even arises and that commerce then takes care
of the rest. But as I will show in the following chapters, local failure is not
limiting and local success guarantees little. Success in World Literature is
about gatekeeping.
To judge from the poverty of scholarship about the gatekeepers, one
might think they were beneath notice, as if their practices were too obvi-
ous, or simply small favors to authors, sometimes even self-​i nterested. 2 But
if we now understand that creativity occurs in concentric circles of nurture,
then nowhere is this flowering more intriguing, I will argue, than in writing
2Introduction

that travels across languages and cultures to find new readers. Yet the peo-
ple who facilitate this, their motives, and the processes they employ have
gone mostly unexamined. “It took Max Brod twenty years and enormous
effort to force Kafka on the world’s awareness,” writes Milan Kundera. 3
But the phrases that scholars use to describe Brod’s gatekeeping—​“ lifelong
devoted friend,” “refused to follow the writer’s instructions”—​do not illu-
minate his tactics or his motives: in fact they recur to the romantic drama
of authorship.
The fact that Johann Wolfgang Goethe coined the phrase “World Literature”
(Weltliteratur) would not be known to us except for one of his gatekeepers,
Johann Eckermann. He was part of what Germans call the Sichtungsapparat,
which is akin to a sifting mechanism. This etymology suggests that gatekeep-
ing is a filtering process, and it anticipates mechanistic explanations like
those provided by communications theory, which I try to avoid here.4 In this
book I am interested in something very different—​agency. I mean scouts and
literary entrepreneurs, some of whom are translators. I mean small publish-
ers and agents. I ask, “What about the Brods and Eckermanns?” Modern
World Literature authors need them, often in foreign countries, as well as
foreign publishers and foreign reviewers. How are they discovered, how does
this process develop? To what extent does it depend on individual agency
as opposed to a/​historic forces? What is its sociology? Who makes World
Literature circulate and how?
Fifty years ago the answers to such questions would have fallen under the
purview of the sociology of literature, but that field ossified in the process
of negotiating with Marxism, structuralism, and subsequent theoretical
developments. György Lukács and Lucien Goldmann could be seen as para-
digmatic of the decline, their brilliant early instincts and insights becom-
ing blinkered by ideology.5 Analyses based on neo-​Marxian and dependency
(center/​periphery) models that were popular in the 1960s and 1970s could
not begin to capture the complexity of transnational literary or economic
systems emerging at the same time, so the field was eclipsed. On its other
flank, the sociology of literature thought itself to be in battle against both the
Frankfurt School and New Criticism.6 More recent work by Wendy Griswold
and Manuel Castells suggests paths and explanations that I have found sug-
gestive, building as they do on the foundational work of Gerald Graff, John
Guillory, Mark McGurl, and others in historicizing the institutionalization of
literature. James F. English covered the field’s old and new problems in a spe-
cial issue of New Literary History in 2010.7 But as English’s work suggests, it is
the turn to Pierre Bourdieu that has offered the most hope. This study adds to
Bourdieu the resources of interaction ritual theory, translation theory, pros-
pect theory, and behavioral economics, not to mention new opportunities in
archival research.
Introduction 3

Scope of the Study

The questions that I asked two paragraphs back are large, so I have limited
myself to a small set of test cases. Since my task is to illuminate gatekeeping,
rather than World Literature itself, I have not taken up such giants as Salman
Rushdie, J. M. Coetzee, Doris Lessing, etc. I have just four authors. Two of
them are Americans, who had the advantage of great domestic gatekeep-
ing, and two are foreign writers who were less advantaged but who gained
American audiences. This may seem Amero-​centric, but it has two great
advantages. First, it places the Anglo-​American publishing industry, which
John Thompson, Albert Greco, and others have shown to be the engine of
world publishing, at the center of World Literature.8 The English-​speaking
market produces and consumes the most World Literature, so an under-
standing of its gatekeeping is critical. Second, this market has extraordi-
nary archival and statistical resources, ranging from university archives of
authors’ letters to their agents and translators to detailed publishing industry
analyses. I have used these resources extensively; with them, we will be able to
trace the evolution of gatekeeping in World Literature between 1960 and 2010.
This is a big payoff, not possible if I focused on more writers in less depth. So
I will offer fewer, but deeper, ethnographies.
As for the question, “What is World Literature?” I rely on David Damrosch’s
answer in What is World Literature? Literature that is translated, circulates
beyond its original culture or borders, and attains added value in its travel
is World Literature. Does World Literature replace comparative literature?
I wait for the profession to settle that question. My interest is specifically in
the social–​cultural field of World Literature in the 1960s, and in how the posi-
tions taken by writers in that era build for them a new cultural capital that is
used to cross borders. I suggest that if we answer these questions about gate-
keeping, then we can approach the more abstract inquiries about nationality,
genre, gender, and flows to and from cultures and nations. As this bottom-​
up method may hint, I think that there was something particular about the
1960s, its history and technology, which I take up in my conclusion.

Theory

My approach owes much to Pierre Bourdieu, especially The Rules of Art and
Distinction.9 I have combined his ideas with the work of sociologist Randall
Collins on “interaction rituals” and the “Law of Low Numbers” in The
Sociology of Philosophies (1998), a monumental work less known than it should
be in literary studies. Collins’ focus on intellectual filiation is suggestive in an
era of rapid technological change such as the 1960s. He might be seen as the
4Introduction

methodical twin of Bourdieu, patiently amassing thousands of cross-​cultural

examples. Bringing Collins and Damrosch into conversation with Bourdieu
forces a historic specificity onto my corpus but also enlarges its vista.
I want to acknowledge the work of Pascale Casanova and Franco Moretti
and to explain how mine differs. Influenced by Bourdieu, Casanova is the
scholar whose approach comes closest to my own. However she insists that
the “world of letters [is] relatively independent from economic and politi-
cal realms,” and she “proposes a baseline from which we might measure
the newness and modernity of the world of letters.”10 That baseline is Paris,
but as I show in my conclusion the fault lines of translation and World
Literature production no longer cross there but in New York and London.
As for the “republic of spirit,” Edith Wharton already said in 1905 that it
was “a close corporation.”11 Casanova eschews the economic, leaving one
with the feeling of a nostalgic Eurocentrism and the memory that Goethe,
when he warmed to World Literature, also believed the flame would always
be Continental.
I also differ with Franco Moretti and his enthusiasm for over-​arching
theories and world systems. He has embraced grand systems ever since he
prophesied the “end of liberal capitalism” over thirty years ago.12 That not
transpiring, in 2005 he professed to “no longer believe that a single explana-
tory framework may account for the many levels of literary production.” But
his vocabulary of “spatial discontinuity” and “morphological divergence”
reveal his newer outlook to be an idiolect of Darwinism; not people but
“devices and genres” create literature.13

How Do Damrosch, Bourdieu, and Collins Fit Together?

If World Literature, as Damrosch argues, is defined as that which is translated

and circulates, achieving a readership in other cultures, then using Bourdieu
alone would be problematic, since when Bourdieu approaches literature he
deals mostly with the internal dynamics that characterize French culture.
Bourdieu needs an extra-​national aspect; his description of fields needs to be
modified for trans-​cultural commerce, so that one can ask “Who are these
agents that select, translate, and disperse foreign literatures? What’s in it for
them? How can they be described in terms of cultural or symbolic capital?” The
rules of the field—​a word not italicized hereafter but intended in Bourdieu’s
sense—​are its doxa. But the doxa are different for the agents whose very func-
tion is to cross cultural boundaries. We should understand these agents, like
the writers they champion, as acting in a double sensibility.14 For both Collins
and Bourdieu the focus is on authors and the power of their ideas, whereas
gatekeepers are energized by their interaction rituals with authors.15 A double
sensibility is important to the gatekeeper, who has to understand multiple
Introduction 5

cultures. In this doubling, gatekeepers often influence authors by anticipating

attractive positions on the field.
Let’s begin with the fact that even minor gatekeepers are also, accidentally
or purposefully, doubly sensible. This is not something that writers work at.
But gatekeepers acquire, develop, and then exploit a double cultural compe-
tence, a mastery of two sets of cultural information, in the use of which they
become aware of cross-​cultural discrepancies. This discrepant awareness
alerts them to a quality of one culture or literature that “could be valued” in
a second culture or language. The American poet Paul Blackburn, serving as
US agent of his friend Julio Cortázar, discovered that he could charge higher
prices for short stories than for longer works, because Americans just wanted
a taste of Cortázar’s dizzying prose.16
That could be valued above is key. We speak about cultures borrowing
from each other as if cultures exhibited some intentionality, or notion of reci-
procity, or were lending libraries, but nothing is less demonstrable. In fact, it
would be hard to argue that any culture requires a cultural import from a sec-
ond culture. The United States did not “need” Bauhaus architecture, nor did
German culture “need” the books of Kafka, but people who had assumed the
gatekeeping function (Philip Johnson and Max Brod) took it upon themselves
to facilitate the transfer, which resulted in some ancillary cultural, symbolic,
or financial capital for themselves. “Distinction” is what Bourdieu would call
the value of symbolic capital, but maybe it is personally or socially reward-
ing. Unfortunately, how this gatekeeping worked in early World Literature is
largely unavailable to us.
When we look at contemporary World Literature, however, we can see that
gatekeeping must be understood as dimensioned in two or more national or
linguistic cultures. If we were to look to Bourdieu to help us to adumbrate this
complexity, we would find that the binary under-​structures of his basic ideas
of habitus and doxa need to be infinitely multiplied to account for the gate-
keepers’ perceptions of opportunity and of opportunity cost. Just imagine
trying to determine—​with money riding on your decision—​if the peculiar
black humor of late Soviet novels can be profitably translated to Spanish. But
if you can examine the gatekeeper’s logic or enthusiasm, through his or her
letters, understanding how he or she saw a cultural fit is easier.

Travelers and Translators

I start with the claim that gatekeepers have acquired the cultural resources
to be aware of the literary artifact’s possibilities beyond its home field. This
implies that there are two sets of “the rules of the game” that apply in
every gatekeeping situation: those in the culture of origin and those in
the culture of reception. As Damrosch makes clear, gatekeepers tend to
6Introduction

come disproportionately from the ranks of travelers, academics, and polit-

ical activists. The Epic of Gilgamesh enters world culture due to scholarly
adventures by Edward Mitford and Austen Henry Layard. Mark Harmon,
a translator, rescues Kafka from existentialism and gives him back to the
Czechs. French–​Venezuelan anthropologist Elizabeth Burgos writes down
the testimonio of Rigoberta Menchú.17 In such examples Damrosch pro-
vides an almost off-​hand critical insight. While an agent in the strictly
national culture of Bourdieu’s double habitus would move to the “strong
pole” (intellectual and institutional legitimacy), the agents who pop up in
Damrosch’s accounts take cultural work and move it across borders into
new niches in foreign cultures that are differently dimensioned. There is
something admirable and daring about this, something that has escaped
theorizing about World Literature.
Translators are among the most important gatekeepers, but not all are as
passionate as Burgos or as bent on restoration as Harmon: the assignment
to translate Cien Años de Soledad landed in Gregory Rabassa’s in-​box on
the basis of his translation of Julio Cortázar (symbolic capital), which came
through friendship with Paul and Sara Blackburn (social capital), but there it
remained for three years. Only García Márquez’ sense of his potential earn-
ings and audience in English persuaded him to wait; his friend Cortázar said
it was worthwhile. The fortuitous collaboration could be explained, for both
parties, by Bourdieu’s notion of economic capital, but the availability heuristic
of Kahneman and Twersky, explained in Chapter 1, gives it more precision.
Rabassa’s gatekeeping consisted in knowing his target culture’s mytholo-
gies and idioms and in knowing how, as translation theorist Lawrence Venuti
might say, to estrange enchantingly. “Foreignization” is valued in some
schools of translation studies, but the work of Maria Tymoczko and Jeremy
Munday raises questions about its role in culture transport. Emily Apter in
The Translation Zone (2006) and Against World Literature (2013) argues that
the notion of “equivalency” is misguided, given how embedded in contextual
meaning all words necessarily are. Yet translations are published, and one
task of this study is to ask how and why “domestication” works so well.
The gatekeeping of literary agents and especially of publishers involves big-
ger risks, as John Thompson shows, and that’s why they collaborate. Could
the contemporary fiction of Moldova find a French audience? The translator
of Moldovan probably does not take on a novel without a contract. Agents and
publishers risk real money when they move a text toward international cir-
culation. Publishers, those crucial participants in what James English terms
The Economy of Prestige (2005), have evolved “prizes and awards” by which to
gauge the marketability of new authors, and then to promote their best bets.
Bookstore owners take fewer risks, but they too have serious money in the
game and are gatekeepers. Reviewers take the fewest risks of all, but they are
among the most important gatekeepers.
Introduction 7

Interaction Rituals

While we don’t have access to the inner calculus of risk-​taking among all these
agents, we can uncover what Collins calls their “interaction rituals” through
interviews and the letters and documents in archives. Interaction rituals have
six aspects: (1) assembly—​the gathering and interaction of two or more art-
ists, (2) focus—​they share common techniques or themes, and each is aware
that the other does so, (3) common mood—​there is an emotional or social
affect that results, (4) intensification—​there is a shared rhythm, a “shared
reality,” (5) the promotion of the focus to symbolic status—​they become a
group, a salon, with symbols of participation, and (6) the rise of leaders who
can express the emotional energy (EE) of the previous stages.18 Not all aspects
are present in every interaction ritual, but I will illustrate a number in the
first chapter. We will see how Gabriel García Márquez, through the interac-
tion rituals, accumulates “cultural capital,” a phrase that Collins uses in a
more active sense than Bourdieu does. People, he says, are attracted to situa-
tions in which they can make the best use of their knowledge, contacts, and
resources to make further action happen, further group cohesion possible.
Such impulses are dynamic, especially when the doxa are redefined by the
energized actors that captivate Collins.
Making the best use of their cultural capital, these actors begin to intro-
duce new ideas, but as Collins writes “ideas cannot be too new, whatever
their creativeness.” That is because there is the matter of fit, or marketabil-
ity, or the prevailing paradigm. To understand the introduction of the new,
Collins asks us to “imagine a large number of people spread out across an
open plain … something like a landscape by Salvador Dali or Giorgio de
Chirico. Each one is shouting ‘Listen to me!’ This is the intellectual attention
space. Why would anyone listen to anyone else? What strategy will get the
most listeners?”19
One obvious tactic to gain attention is to pick a quarrel with someone else,
and we know that this often works in literature. A dispute will usually gain
the attention of the one attacked and it might attract a crowd. But if everyone
does this, no crowd gathers. Some arguments have greater appeal because
they contradict the positions held by several people. If there are others who
feel similarly, they gather round and provide support. Then again, aesthet-
ics is not all argument. “There are first-​mover advantages and band-​wagon
effects,” writes Collins: “The tribe of attention seekers, once scattered across
the plain, is changed into a few knots of argument. The law of small numbers
says that the number of these successful knots is always about three to six.”20
These insights also apply to literature, for attention is similarly limited and
success in artistic life often occurs when one finds a unique position that re-​
routes existing currents. Certain moments on the field, like the 1960s, are
propitious.
8Introduction

The 1960s

My authors may have had awakenings in the 1960s, in highly politicized envi-
ronments, but there were many attempts to re-​orient attention space back
then, only a few of which were successful. These writers actually resisted
polarization, holding out for positions neither Establishment nor Radical-​
Left, a “world elsewhere” born out of a “double denial” of the type described
by Bourdieu. They mastered the evolving prise de position, or unique artis-
tic viewpoint, required to keep them prominent in the conversation of low
numbers. Their personal artistic crises, born out of the age, forced them into
negations of previous artistic positions. These were often informed by foreign
cultural capital, which they used to take positions that were inimitable—​by
virtue of being personal and complexly synthetic. Their translators, agents,
and publishers, moving on a parallel path in attention space, confirmed in
their own experience that these writers offered something authentic. In the
gatekeepers’ alertness to cultural discrepancy, they saw a need or a possible
niche in the parallel receiving culture. The kinds of reward coming to the
gatekeepers could be cultural, symbolic, financial, or a combination.
This study also suggests that the 1960s prompted more people to try their
hands at gatekeeping. There were several factors involved. One was the
increase in travel by young people, both domestically and internationally. For
his high school graduation present, Paul Auster went to Paris by himself in
June 1965. Raymond Mungo of Liberation News Service was twenty when he
went to Prague in 1967: “Kids travelled a lot in those days—​youth fare,” he
explained.21 A twenty-​year-​old Carl Weissner left Germany for the United
States in 1966 to meet Charles Bukowski and the Beat poets. In most western
nations the tribes of the young were on the move.
Obviously the war in Vietnam was another factor that fueled this ferment.
If the United States and its allies seemed to constitute a monolithic power in
world politics, commonly thought of as the Right, there was also a worldwide
anti-​war Left, not nearly so uniform, despite efforts by radical groups like
the SDS to discipline it. Though all of the writers in this study were at least
nominally of the Left, this political dichotomy disturbed them, leading each
to imagine a third way.
The counter-​culture also created its own media, using unconventional
sources (Granma from Cuba, Liberation News Service, etc.) and enthusi-
astically adopting new, cheaper technologies of production, of which the
Gestetner mimeograph was emblematic. The poet Paul Blackburn dated
mimeo poetry magazines to 1952 and noted that they were international
in their contributors as well as in their places of publication.22 There were
low-​power underground radio stations on the FM band, street papers in all
large cities, and young editors like John Bryan at LA’s Open City. By 1970
they were using the new photo-​typesetters to produce camera ready pages
Introduction 9

that they printed at non-​union printers. Even billboards, as Marjorie Perloff

noted, could provide inspiration.23 They were political, but also artists and
publishers, producing literary journals and books. Their methods bypassed
the unions and the linotype. Douglas Messerli, founder of Sun & Moon Press,
started out on a mimeo machine, graduated to the IBM photo-​t ypesetter, and
sent Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude to low-​cost Bible printers in the
upper Midwest.24 Such cost-​cutting, which Thompson attributes to big pub-
lishers, may have started at small ones.
This generation then grew up in gatekeeping, working as translators, edi-
tors, anthologists, and cultural ambassadors, “afraid that things would be
lost” in the 1960s tumult, as Messerli put it.25 They found their literary oppor-
tunities in these small presses, in modest prizes, in small insider connec-
tions, and in “bootstrapping” themselves upward. It was the age of the “little
mag,” as Abel Debritto documents.26 The interaction rituals of this publishing
world initially involved face-​to-​face encounters with other gatekeepers/​writ-
ers: Diane di Prima made production chores a de facto requirement for her
friendship.27 But these rituals are also manifest in letters, which are archived,
and more recently they have become digitized, a situation that perfectly fits
Randall Collins’ diagnosis of the on-​coming “stratification of the attention
space,”28 a topic taken up in my conclusion.

The Authors

The authors treated here are not a cross-​section of World Literature. They
came to me through my teaching, mostly overseas, and in the process of try-
ing to explain to students how literature travels. They test hypotheses about
gatekeeping, translation, reception, and they particularly demonstrate the
evolution of the gatekeeping process from 1960 to 2010. They also raise ques-
tions about gender: what I have done, hopefully in provocative fashion, is to
finish each chapter with a coda that troubles that issue.
Chapter 1: I frame the career of Gabriel García Márquez by examining it in
synchrony with Bourdieu’s reading of Flaubert’s A Sentimental Education. The
components of Gabo’s field were all present, but as Flaubert noted, one writes
what one’s position in the field allows. García Márquez was in a unique posi-
tion to synthesize his costeño background, Castro-​ism, cinema, and literary
influences. But it took gatekeepers who could nudge him, who recognized not
just the potential of his work, but how to spread it abroad. This chapter thus
develops the key roles of (1) the first reader, (2) the salon, (3) the older writer
or patron, and (4) the agent. It then moves to the interesting but lesser role
of (5) hegemonic governments and closes with the key functions of the (6)
translator and (7) reviewers, who in the United States/​British markets domes-
ticated García Márquez through parallels to the Bible and to the “family of
10Introduction

man.” Most of these gatekeeping roles are examined in every chapter, just as
each concludes with a contrapuntal coda: here, the case of Rigoberta Menchú.
Chapter 2: Charles Bukowski exhibited no sense of prise de position and had
scant cultural capital; in fact he wasn’t taken as a “serious” author in his home
country, especially at the moment he was discovered by John Martin and Carl
Weissner. That is the point: his gatekeepers made him into an international
figure. In this generation Ginsberg or Ferlinghetti might seem more obvi-
ous figures to study (they worked tirelessly for other writers), but they don’t
show as compellingly how gatekeepers can create a writer of World Literature.
In the cultural debates of the 1960s, Weissner and Martin discovered that
Bukowski’s gruff “NO” to politics was a formidable aesthetic, a refusal of
authority that, in its creation of a rhetorical void, aggregated enough power to
itself to constitute a kind of position, especially in Germany. Bukowski also
conducted scandalous reading tours and received an unusual boost from his
performance on a French television network. These are emergent processes
of gatekeeping. He also had a fascinating interface with the gay poet Harold
Norse, a first reader who illustrated a different aesthetic. This chapter’s coda
on Diane di Prima raises important questions about gender, political involve-
ment, and the lack of a strong agent.
The second half of this book examines a pair of younger writers, Paul Auster
and Haruki Murakami, who were students during the political upheavals
of the 1960s. The modern face of World Literature was evolving quickly, and
they incorporated the decade’s conflicts in their fiction. College educated,
they could see also the advantages conferred by certain professors, patrons,
and small presses. They deliberately acquired expertise in foreign cultures, in
languages and translation, becoming gatekeepers of those cultures and litera-
tures back home. Gatekeeping was part of the field that they inherited.
Chapter 3: As an undergraduate at Columbia University, Paul Auster sub-
stituted student publications for salons and tried to negotiate an aesthetic
path between the violent campus demonstrations and the anti-​community,
pro-​war policy of the administration. His first reader was usually his girl-
friend (and later wife) Lydia Davis. He found his initial position through the
French poetry of Francis Ponge, which led him to discover the avant-​garde
French journal Tel Quel. He developed greater symbolic capital by “going into
exile” in France with Davis. When he returned, he was selected to edit the
Random House Anthology of 20th Century French Poetry: that made him argu-
ably the most important US interpreter of French poetry and hence some-
one whose writing was of interest. Auster became the most important US
writer of World Literature in France, where gatekeepers such as his translator
Christine Le Bœuf were crucial. In this way Auster guaranteed himself the
refracted reputation that came accidentally to Bukowski. But why, I will ask in
the coda, did not Lydia Davis become as famous?
Introduction 11

Chapter 4: Haruki Murakami also lived through the protests of 1968,

an experience he would later turn to profit in Norwegian Wood. But before
he had that opportunity, he too had to establish himself as an expert on
a foreign literature. Under the guidance of his Waseda University profes-
sor, he translated Raymond Carver, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Irving, and
J. D. Salinger for smaller Japanese journals, which later published his
post-​modern stories and awarded him prizes, a new kind of gatekeep-
ing. Like Auster, Murakami also understood the centrality of transla-
tion. He befriended Raymond Carver, John Irving, and other writers that
he translated. He even developed gatekeeping as a theme in his fiction, a
post-​modernist gesture that drew devotees, such as the young translator
Alfred Birnbaum. After examining these, I turn to Norwegian Wood and
the novel 1Q84, which unpack and grouse about the process and production
that World Literature has become by 2012. In the coda, I ask why Banana
Yoshimoto hasn’t become as famous.
Conclusion: Not only does World Literature from the 1960s onward begin
to align itself with contests, prizes, and popular media: above all, it becomes
Anglophone, as studies by Thompson and Greco reveal. Writers apprentice
in it, as Mark McGurl’s The Program Era (2011) argues. Also collaborating
with Big Publishing is the reviewing apparatus, typified by Michiko Kakutani
of the New York Times and John Updike in the New Yorker, who are scruti-
nized here. These critics typify a preference for literature in translation that
was masculine, apolitical, and based on modernism. This particular kind of
translation became an international commodity, under the label “magic real-
ism,” which could be applied to John Fowles, Angela Carter, or Ben Okri.29
By 2010 “World Literature,” born in the communal and technological stew of
the 1960s, had become simply a category of the Anglo-​American publishing
juggernaut.
 {1}

Gabriel García Márquez

Gatekeepers and Prise de Position

Few readers or scholars understand the process by which Gabriel García

Márquez became a literary giant and those intimate with his biography might
be rightfully incredulous that he did. It took him seven years to find a pub-
lisher for his first novella. He was working in public relations, not having pub-
lished for several years, when he wrote his breakthrough novel at age forty. He
had no sinecure, no grants, no agent, and no translator at that point.1 But he
had friends. This book begins by examining that basic sociology: how those
old-​fashioned gatekeepers guided him to find a singular aesthetics and then
helped him to become a foundational figure in modern World Literature.
Let’s start with two law students meeting in a Bogotá café. Plinio Apuleyo
Mendoza, the son of wealthy and politically connected parents, was drinking
coffee with a friend when a “skinny happy guy, agitated like a baseball bat-
ter or a rumba singer” sat down at his table uninvited and ordered himself
some red wine. “So, ‘Doctor’ Mendoza,” said this guy, named Gabriel García
Márquez, “how is the lyrical prose going?” Apuleyo Mendoza didn’t know
that anyone read his writing, and García Márquez struck him as a brash
costeño, “one of those students from the Caribbean coast, who passes his life
in boarding houses, cantinas, and pawn shops.”2 Mendoza was struck by his
energy, and he watched “with a kind of horror” as García Márquez tried to
pick up the waitress and then left without paying. “Who was that,” he asked
his friend, “some communist?” “No,” said the friend, “that’s a kind of mas-
ochist. One day he comes to the university saying he has syphilis, another day
that he has tuberculosis. He drinks, he doesn’t show for exams, he wakes up
in brothels.”3
García Márquez attracted many friends on the basis of that energy, for the
potential that people saw in him. Some were initially taken aback, but most
became believers and advocates. Some watched out for him, others helped
him to mature aesthetically. This was the start of a relationship that Randall
Gabriel García Márquez 13

Collins has identified as the basic interaction ritual of the literary world, the
face-​to-​face meeting that generates an intense emotional energy (IR and EE in
Collins’ terms). It was clear that “Gabo” had that EE, so much that it some-
times got in his way and he would require a number of Max Brods. Apuleyo
Mendoza became a lifelong friend, guiding and supporting him, and read-
ing many of his manuscripts before publication to ensure that they did not
show Gabo’s influences too plainly.4 In this second capacity he was also a
“first reader,” a type of gatekeeper addressed below.

Understanding Literary Careers in Bohemian Eras

This is the same kind of “café interaction” that Gustave Flaubert described
150 years earlier in Sentimental Education (1869), which Pierre Bourdieu elu-
cidated in The Rules of Art. The protagonist Frédéric Moreau is also a law
student who goes to the capital, eager to lead a romantic and cultured life,
though he is woefully short on cash. He acquires friends, patrons, a fortune,
pursues mistresses, has legal problems, and ends up reminiscing about it all
with his roommate Deslauriers, a kind of fictional first reader. His recollec-
tions take on a grander meaning because they sum up the Bohemian Era in
Paris, explaining a whole period in French history. Bourdieu points out that
Flaubert, taking on the character of Moreau, is the actual hidden “subject of
his own creation”—​a creation that is produced by a “liberating rupture” of
the forces that had constrained him. To put it more fully, Flaubert’s art is a
kind of triumph over “the powerlessness of being manipulated by the forces
of the field” that control Moreau, which are the “dominant fraction.”5 When
he narrates Moreau, Flaubert shows how the artist can distill his accumulated
symbolic, cultural, and financial capital into a new position, which in this case
will be called realism.
My suggestion is that we understand García Márquez similarly, as an artist
who, beginning with an overpowering but inchoate desire to create the soul of
his region, is helped by many gatekeepers to consolidate strands of Colombian
culture and politics with international film and modernist narrative until he
finally creates the Buendía family, achieving the most famous example of
magic realism. Both Flaubert and García Márquez exercise what Bourdieu
terms a double denial of the reigning aesthetic polarities in their worlds. But
I will need to elaborate for García Márquez a process that Bourdieu elides
when discussing Flaubert, for no one proceeds alone from the double denial
directly to the rupture: there are always some helpers. Indeed many artists are
not even aware of the aesthetic extent of the fields in which they create, much
less of ways that the reigning aesthetics can be contested. García Márquez, as
we will see, might not have arrived at the point of rupture except through the
gatekeepers who nudged him down new paths. Understanding him by reading
14Gatekeepers

Bourdieu reading Flaubert through Moreau might seem too recursive, but it
is this process in their fields—​an evolving absorption and distillation—​that
brings artists to a prise de position, which is a unique aesthetic stance.
Gabo had many gatekeepers, but I have singled out eight to represent
the main functions, many of which I revisit in later chapters. First, there
was Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, the friend and first reader, who often guided
García Márquez through bohemia and communism. There was the Grupo de
Barranquilla, his first experience of a salon. Then Carlos Fuentes was impor-
tant as the older writer, through whom he met his agent, Carmen Balcells. The
government of Spain was an accidental gatekeeper, but his publisher under-
stood how to leverage it. His American translator, Gregory Rabassa, had enor-
mous caché, which helped with book reviewers. Each of these eight functions
represents a different kind of gatekeeping.6

The First Reader

García Márquez, age sixteen, left the town of Sucre in the state of Aracataca in
January 1943, bound for the capital of Bogotá. He hardly ever returned, except
for short visits, and even in his imagination the campos were not for him. His
was the journey of the young man from the provinces to the literary capital,
to cosmopolitanism, like that of Moreau (and of Flaubert himself). It was also
a journey that introduced him to all the cultural and economic forces that
could prevent his art from taking shape. Bourdieu calls these impeding forces
the dominant fraction of the dominant class. At each step García Márquez was
helped by a gatekeeper to re-​conceive his capital into a form that would elude
these limits.
In Bogotá at college, García Márquez “acted in part like a rebel let down
by the system, and in part like a kind of poète maudit whom no system would
ever satisfy,” writes biographer Gerald Martin.7 He was reading Kafka and
“felt an irresistible longing to live in that alien paradise” of pure art. Soon
he created a geographic dichotomy to map this paradise onto his own expe-
rience: “The most attentive of us [students] were from the Atlantic coast,
united less by Caribbean conspiracies against the Cachacos than by the vice
of books.”8 Note: the most attentive. In this initial position-​taking he does not
deceive himself. The campos were not cultured. As Martin notes, “he dreaded
going home. If in order to learn about Sucre we had to rely upon statements
made by García Márquez between 1967 and his 2002 autobiography, we would
have known next to nothing.”9 Like Flaubert’s Moreau, García Márquez was
poor: he would always be “intensely aware of his costeño roots,” sharing “a
room with a number of costeño students,” and “always short of money.”10 In
this way, he was no different from thousands of other aspiring artists. It was a
huge field and nothing distinguished him.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The night of no
moon
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The night of no moon

Author: H. B. Fyfe

Illustrator: Paul Orban

Release date: August 31, 2023 [eBook #71530]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1957

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT

OF NO MOON ***
 The Night of No Moon

By H. B. FYFE

Illustrated by ORBAN

A rough planet, Boyd III—where survival of the

fittest gave way to survival of the worst tempered!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Infinity June 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The main trouble with the planet Boyd III was one satellite too many.
Had there been no third moon, large and close, the tides might have
been less confused and the weather more predictable. Certain peaks
of atmospheric wildness, recurrent coastal catastrophes, logical but
distressing customs of the natives—lack of these factors would have
made Boyd III a much more attractive world.
The same lack, however, would not have tempted Pete Guthrie to
survey such conditions from the surface of the planet as part of his
exploratory and mapping duties. But it was too late now to be sorry
he had not secured his rocket properly against the incredible tides of
the shoreline he had rashly chosen for a landing.
He mentioned this, for about the hundredth time, to Polf.
"Huh! Cables! Braces! No matter when wind-spirits want you,"
retorted the local humanoid, darting a cowed glance at the sky from
beneath his heavy brow-ridge. "They want you stay, we will keep
you."
"And I'll be stuck with you forever! Don't you have to make a living?"
"I am appointed. Like Retho, who sleeps at your door in the nights."
Guthrie scowled and examined the sky. It was a clear blue. One of
the moons, named Jhux, was a yellow-white disk, faintly blurred at
the edge by its thin envelope of air. The spacer wished he had
remained on Jhux to do his observing. With an oxygen mask, a man
could be fairly comfortable there.
The clear blue sky above him, on the other hand, would be a
fearsome sight in a month or so when the storms closed in.
"It is good some spoke for you," said Polf, nodding in quiet
satisfaction.
Guthrie frowned at him. Every so often, his companion's thought
pattern eluded him. The Skirkhi, as they named themselves, used a
typically developed humanoid language, and he had managed to
learn enough for communication. It was the way they thought that
baffled him.
"Last season was not as bad as some," continued Polf, staring over
the flat plain from their trifling eminence on the hill. "Elders say living
will be hard this storm. It is a time of heat."
Guthrie also stared off into the distance, toward the seacoast beyond
the plain. He tried to show no expression, for he suspected that
these people were cunning at reading faces.
His looks, to be sure, must be a handicap to them. He was long and
lean of face where they tended to be round and pudgy. His reddish
hair and blue eyes were certainly outside their experience, for they
had aroused much frightened comment when he had first been
discovered near his landing site.
He turned his head slowly to study Polf. The Skirkh crouched with
bowed legs folded under him and his big head thrust forward. His
profile was flat against the blue sky, for his nose was a wide-nostriled
snout. The eyes that gazed moodily at the horizon were black glints
between brow and cheek ridges.
The lower part of the native's face, though the chin receded,
completed the design of blunt, durable strength. It symbolized,
Guthrie reflected, Skirkhi life. The delicate had simply not survived
on this world.
On the other hand, Polf was not very large compared to the Terran.
Guthrie guessed him to be an inch or two over five feet, although his
squat, straddling stance made the estimate a rough one.
I wouldn't have much trouble with him, Guthrie thought. Of course,
the whole gang would be something else....
The village of two hundred was part of a tribe of six or seven times
that number. There were other tribes in surrounding areas, but
Guthrie had learned little about them. The Skirkhi said they were evil
people. He assumed that that meant they treated prisoners with the
same eager cruelty he had seen his captors display.
I should complain! he reproved himself. If not them, it might have
been me. I wonder when the Service will check about the reports I'm
not sending?
"Gaah!" exclaimed Polf, springing half erect and assuming a bare-
toothed posture of defense.
His naturally tan face flushed to an alarming coppery hue, a process
Guthrie had previously observed when village arguments came to
blows.
The flaring light streaked deliberately across the sky, pulsing
repeatedly, and descended in a direction Guthrie fancied was
southeast.
He realized that he, too, had risen at the sight. He turned to follow
the vapor trail in the sky, and noticed that the lower end wavered
erratically.
"That's no meteor!" he muttered. "But look at the knot-heads! If they
land that way, they'll spread like a ton of boiling butter and I'll never
get away!"
He realized that Polf had scampered back after a few steps downhill,
and was now crouched at Guthrie's feet more like an animal than a
man. The Skirkh uttered a sound between a snarl and a whimper.
"Get up, Polf!" said Guthrie. "It's a spaceship. I told you what mine
was like. Go tell the elders! They will think well of the bearer of such
news."
Polf bobbed his thick head and took a step downhill. Then duty
halted him.
"Oh, all right; I'll come with you," sighed Guthrie. "Maybe they'll
appoint us to lead the search if you tell them there will be other
Terrans."
He hoped that there would be other live Terrans. Even more, he
hoped that their ship would be in good condition. He was good and
tired of Boyd III.
Two days later, about noon, a sound of excited voices approaching
roused Guthrie and his shadow, neither of whom had been permitted
to join the search. They sat up, where they had been sunning
themselves on the roof of their house.
"They're back," exclaimed Guthrie, poking Polf eagerly.
Then, as he caught sight of two taller figures with the search party,
he slid down from the roof and started to run as soon as he hit the
ground.
Polf let out a squeak and tumbled in pursuit. By the time Guthrie and
his shadow reached the end of the single, irregular street boasted by
the village, the new arrivals had been surrounded by half of the
population.
At first, Guthrie found his approach deliberately blocked by several of
the village elders.
"What do you fear in this moment?" he snarled in Skirkhi, as he
shoved his way through the inner ranks. "Who else will tell you what
they say?"
He managed to jab old Kilki on the side of his thick skull with one
elbow, a limited satisfaction because Kilki ranked only about fourth in
the Council of Elders. Guthrie wished he could get at Thyggar, who
had ruled that he be kept inside one of the cramped stone huts for
several weeks following his capture.
Kilki rubbed the knobby side of his head philosophically and said,
"How we know they are not good spirits called to steal you back to
the sky, Gut'rie?"
"Huh!" snorted the Terran, pointing to the disheveled pair with the
search party. "They don't look like good spirits to me!"
"That is what you say," grunted Kilki. "Maybe we burn—then be
sure!"
The man was Guthrie's height or an inch taller, and broad of
shoulder. He had a strong face with bold, regular features slightly
spoiled by a thick stub of a nose. High cheekbones gave his eyes a
masked expression. Though sweat-darkened, his hair appeared to
be blond and wavy.
The girl did not stare at Guthrie with the same blend of irritation and
expectancy. Instead, her gray eyes shone with a trusting relief that
caused the spacer to grimace uncomfortably. He thought she was
probably pretty, if a trifle thin, but could not be sure. Somewhere on
the way—he guessed in the marsh about a mile south of the village
—she had fallen flat in the mud.
"Who'n'ell are these monkeys?" demanded the man. "I couldn't get
anything out of them except signals to go faster."
He almost succeeded in controlling a querulous note in his voice by
trying to assume the buddy-to-buddy tone of one Terran discussing
with another the universal peculiarity of aborigines. He watched
Guthrie carefully.
"What did you come down in?" asked the latter abruptly.
The other stared. The girl, who had been sagging wearily against the
stocky form of the nearest Skirkh, straightened up with a hurt look.
"It was an emergency rocket of the Mount Pico. Mr. Trent piloted it
down here after the others ... passed on ... from their burns—"
"Explosion and fire just before we were to pass this system on the
way to Altair," explained Trent rapidly. He had retreated from hope to
a worried expression. "I don't know what did it; they braked from
interstellar drive to give the rockets a chance at these planets. It all
went pretty fast."
"Then there's no ship to pick us up from this mudball?"
Trent glanced at the jostling Skirkhi, then at Guthrie. His brow
furrowed.
"Well, of course the government and the spaceline will send ships to
search this volume of space. I think the crew got off a message...."
"Aw, hell!" grunted Guthrie contemptuously.
Trent's voice trailed off. Then, ignoring Guthrie's scowl, he tried to
pick up where he had left off.
"... but I thought, perhaps ... couldn't you send a message about us?"
Guthrie regarded the crowd of Skirkhi, who gaped back with
gleaming eyes and hanging jaws. Old Thyggar raised a thick, four-
fingered hand at him and demanded, "What do they say?"
"Later, Old One," retorted Guthrie, turning to look at the girl.
"Oh—this is Miss Norsund," Trent explained. "Listen, if you don't
want to send a message, couldn't you have some of these people
guide us?"
"First," said Guthrie, "travel is dangerous. You might get eaten or
made into window-flaps. Secondly, I don't know where they could
guide you to."
He let them absorb that, then went on.
"And I can't send any message because I don't know the right spells
and incantations to summon any good spirits to carry the message."
Trent and Miss Norsund began to develop glassy stares.
"And finally," growled Guthrie, "they won't let me send a spirit
message because they're saving me for the first night with no moon!"
A subdued chattering sprang up among the Skirkhi when they heard
his voice rise to a shout. Guthrie controlled his accumulated
frustration with an effort. Meeting the girl's shocked glance, he felt a
twinge, and knew he had better stop.
"Are they good spirits?" demanded old Thyggar impatiently.
"Ask them, Old One!" said Guthrie, turning on his heel.
He seized the unguarded moment to jab the heel of his hand under
the short chin of the nearest Skirkh, propelling the latter against his
fellows. Through the narrow way thus cleared, the spacer stalked out
of the crowd.
"Thyggar wear sour look," mumbled Polf, trotting doggedly at his
heels.
He sounded more respectful than at any time during the day. Guthrie
reminded himself to watch out. He seemed to be earning too much
admiration; it might be wiser to slack off before it drew retaliation.
Through experience, he was learning to keep the score even, but....
Polf somehow managed to trip him as he turned into the doorway of
the house assigned to him. He plunged through the low, dark
entrance head first, displacing a crude but sturdy bench someone
had left in the way.
"Your father was undoubtedly a good spirit who stole your mother's
wits with a dream of soft summers," said Guthrie, sitting up just in
time to thrust a boot between Polf's ankles.
The Skirkh sprawled in his turn upon the hard-packed floor. The two
of them sat there for a long moment, raising both palms in the ritual
gesture to the sky spirits and glaring at each other in mutual respect.

On the second morning after the arrival of Trent and Miss Norsund,
Guthrie judged the time ripe for a longer talk.
When he and Polf approached the hut in which the newcomers were
quartered, signs of obstructionism appeared; but the spacer sneered
them down. By the time he found himself seated on the ground
facing Trent and the girl, the onlookers had been reduced to Polf and
a trio of glum guards. The former seemed to take pleasure in his
comrades' loss of face.
"Sorry I took so long," Guthrie apologized. "There's a certain act you
have to put on around here. They been treating you all right?"
He looked at the girl as he spoke, reflecting that a little cleaning up
had improved her immeasurably. With the mud off, she displayed a
glowing complexion and a headful of chestnut curls; and Guthrie was
no longer sure she was too thin. He determined to check the first
time she stood up in the short, borrowed dress of Skirkhi leather.
"Look here, Guthrie—that is your name, isn't it?" Trent asked
peevishly.
"That's right. Pete Guthrie, currently employed, I hope, by the
Galactic Survey. And you two are Trent and Norsund?"
"George Trent and Karen Norsund, yes. But what I want to say is
that we find your attitude very strange. How can we expect co-
operation from the natives if you throw your weight around the way
you do?"
"And what," asked Karen Norsund, turning her big gray eyes on
Guthrie, "was that remark about the natives saving you from
something?"
"It's for something. I think I'd better tell you the local superstitions."
"If you don't mind," Trent interrupted, "I'd rather know how far it is to
a Terran settlement. We tried to treat the crowd like humans after
you left, but we'd prefer not to stay here until a rescue ship arrives."
"As far as I know," said Guthrie, "we are the only Terrans on this
planet."
He watched that sink in for a few moments, then explained how the
system had fallen within the volume of space allotted to him for
general survey, how it had never before aroused any great interest
beyond being noted in the Galactic Atlas for the benefit of space
travelers in just such a situation as theirs.
"I hope your rocket is in good shape," he finished. "Did you land
well?"
"Oh ... well enough," said Trent. "What about it? Why not stay here
until we think a rescue ship is near, then go back and televise for
help?"
"It's not that easy," said Guthrie. "If this ship we're hoping for stops to
scout for other survivors, we'll be in a real unhealthy situation."
They looked puzzled.
"The seasons here," he explained, "tend to wild extremes. They have
tidal waves you wouldn't believe. In a few weeks, the storms will
begin and the Skirkhi will go to the hills to dig in. It's a bad time to be
caught in the open."
"Oh, come, man!" Trent snapped. "We shouldn't be here that long."
"It's only two or three weeks. The trouble is that on a certain night
shortly before they leave the village to the mercy of the sky spirits,
the Skirkhi have a nasty custom—"
"I don't care about your low opinion of the local customs," interrupted
Trent. "From what I've seen of you, Guthrie, it is obvious that you are
not the sort to represent Terra on the frontiers. Just tell me—if you
can't get along with the natives like a civilized being, where do you
expect to get?"
"Up to Jhux," said Guthrie.
"Where?"
"Jhux, the largest moon. It has a thin atmosphere. We could pump
enough air into your rocket to live on, and wait to signal any
approaching ship."
"But why go to all that trouble?"
"Besides," Karen Norsund put in, "I think I've had enough travel in a
small rocket for the time being."
"It'll be better than the hurricanes here," Guthrie sighed. "Now, if
you'll just let me finish about the Skirkhi—"
Trent screwed up his face in exasperation until his eyes were slits
above his cheekbones. He shrugged to Karen in a way that turned
Guthrie's neck red.
"All right!" the latter choked out. "You seem to want to make me look
narrow-minded! Wait till you know the Skirkhi! They believe very
seriously in these sky spirits. They try to buy them off, to save the
village and their own skins—and they pay in blood!"
He waited for the shocked exclamations, the suspicion, then the
exchange of glances that agreed to further consideration.
"Until you two came along, I was the goat. Now there are three of us
to choose from, but your rocket gives us the means to make a run for
it."
They thought that over for a few minutes.
"How do you know they won't ... use ... all three of us?" shuddered
Karen.
"The Skirkhi have learned to be frugal. They'll save something for
next season. Otherwise, they'd have to raid some other tribe or elect
one of them."
"But, before then, either a rescue ship or one from the Survey will
have arrived, don't you think?" suggested Trent.
"What are you getting at?"
"Well ... this: assuming that you are not exaggerating your distrust of
the natives, if they actually feel it necessary to ... er ... sacrifice to
these sky spirits, that will still leave the remaining two of us a good
chance."
Guthrie wiped a hand slowly over his face. He glanced out of the
corner of his eye at Polf and the Skirkhi guards, wondering if they
could guess the drift of the conversation.
"And what will your next idea be?" he demanded bitterly. "Want us to
draw straws to see which of us goes out and commits hara-kiri for
them?"
"Now, now! We must be realistic. After all, nothing serious may come
of this. Merely because you and the natives share a mutual antipathy
—"
"You make me sick!" growled Guthrie, rising to his feet.
"I don't know what you mean."
"But I know what you're figuring," said the spacer. "The excuse will
be that you're willing to take your chance with the Skirkhi choice, or
that you don't want to stir up trouble because of the girl; but actually
you think I'm the natural candidate!"
"Mr. Guthrie!" exclaimed Karen, jumping up.
"Pardon me! I have to go and commune with the spirits of the sky!"
He pivoted toward the street and bounced off one of the guards who
had crept closer to eavesdrop. Automatically, he shoved the Skirkh
into the wall.
Behind him, he heard a muttered curse in Skirkhi, then another thud
as a thick skull clunked yet again into the wall. He deduced that Polf
was following both his footsteps and his example.

They walked out toward the hill where he and Polf had sat the day
the rocket had flared down from the sky. Two pale crescents hovered
on the horizon.
"There will still be Yiv in the night," muttered Polf, "but soon he will
follow Jhux and there will be no moon. Then come storms."
Guthrie recalled his surprise at the natives' awareness of Yiv, a small
satellite whose distance made it appear merely an enormous star.
He had noted it from space, but they must have realized its nature
from regular observation.
They walked a few minutes, when Polf peered slyly at him.
"I think these sky ones good spirits, not like you."
"What do you mean?" asked the other suspiciously.
"When in hard talk, you get red in face almost like human. They not.
The she-spirit a little, yes. But the other ... I think he is best spirit of
all!"
"Aw, what do you know about Terrans?" demanded Guthrie
uncertainly.
"What are Terrans?" Polf leered at the effort to take him in by a trick
name. "You, Gut'rie, you act like us. You learn fear evil spirits like
smart man. Maybe was trick of good ones—send you here so we
make mistake."
Guthrie stared down at the stocky Skirkh, trying to follow that chain
of thought and wondering how many in the village would find it
logical.
Most of them, I'm afraid, he thought. I wonder ... what if I just kept
quiet and let him dig his own grave? If I read Trent right, he'll do it!
They sat for a while on the crest of the low hill, in the warmth of the
sun. Polf seemed not to mind Guthrie's brooding. Patience was a
Skirkhi forte. At times, the spacer pitied the natives, with their harsh
and precarious life.
Maybe something could be done here, he reflected. A good,
thorough survey would tell. After all, G. S. engineers have controlled
temperatures on some planets by diverting a few ocean currents.
And there's cloud-seeding....
"Huh!" he grunted. "Already thinking as if I were safe on Jhux."
He began to question Polf as to what the search party had reported,
and derived a good idea of the route to the rocket. Tortuous details of
Skirkhi trail directions baffled him every few minutes, so that it was
twilight before he was satisfied that he could find the craft on his
own. With Polf trailing, he strolled thoughtfully to his quarters,
bracing for supper of fish or lizard.

At intervals during the next three days, he saw the new couple about
the village. Trent, especially, did not seem eager to speak to him,
and they were always accompanied by at least one Skirkhi couple.
In a moment of relaxation, Guthrie permitted himself to observe
Karen with pleasure, when she appeared in her own clothes. With
the mud washed out, it became apparent that she had been wearing
a smart pair of lounging pajamas when interrupted by the
spaceliner's alarm.
Trent had also cleaned his sport shirt and baggy slacks, and now
went about making himself buoyantly pleasant to the natives. Once
or twice, turning away from this spectacle with a frown, Guthrie
chanced to encounter the black, analytical stare of old Thyggar. A
sardonic grin quirked the elder's wide mouth.
"Retho tell me Trent learn speak Skirkhi fast," Polf reported, glittering
eyes nearly hidden by the contortion that passed for a smile on
Skirkhi faces, "so he can tell what a good man he is. He says is kind.
He says is friend. You would laugh, Gut'rie—he call you names!"
"So will he laugh," growled Guthrie, "on the other side of his face.
He's begging for it, all right."
He chewed his lip for a moment, then shrugged. With a nod to Polf,
he started down the street to the huts assigned to Trent and Karen.
He found the girl behind the squat stone house, doing her best to
comb out a mop of freshly washed chestnut hair.
"You'd do better to leave some mud in it," he advised her.
This drew a hard gray stare. Guthrie turned to Polf.
"Can't you do something with this one sitting beside her?" he
demanded.
Polf grinned, showing a sturdy set of broad teeth.
"It would be like sacrifice to those who sent down these others," he
said. "Last night, when leaving Retho at your door, I kill chivah lizard
in street. With club. But was only a little blood and we are full of
thanks."
After a few minutes of conversation under the glowering gaze of the
Terran girl, he enticed the Skirkhi woman around the corner toward
the entrance of the hut. Guthrie turned to Karen.
"Listen!" he said urgently. "What is this I hear about Trent going
around like a cock-eyed good-will ambassador?"
"I can't help what he does," Karen said defensively. She had trouble
meeting his eye. "I told him I didn't think he should talk that way, but
he said ... well ... that you—"
"I can imagine," said Guthrie. "Well, he'd better stop it, and not on my
account. This is a queer, dangerous place."
He took a few steps to the corner of the hut, to check that the space
between adjoining houses was empty of spies. The guards loitered
in the street.
"It may sound strange," he continued, "but it makes a distorted kind
of sense for people who live on a planet like Boyd III—this belief in
sky spirits. I told you about the bad season, I think, and the uproar
raised by coinciding tides."
Karen, having brushed her hair into some sort of order, eyed him
watchfully.
"I would expect them to protect themselves from the rains," she
remarked.
"Rains!" snorted Guthrie. "You don't know! Hurricanes! Tidal waves!
Floods! They lose people every storm. This is a very bad place to
live. So what do you suppose they worship?"
"Sky spirits, you keep telling me."
"Yes," he said, lowering his voice instinctively. "But not good ones,
naturally—spirits of evil."
Karen looked at him sidelong and clucked her tongue.
"It's not funny; it's perfectly logical. They spend their lives one jump
ahead of freezing or drowning. Their world's against them. Other
savage races have figured it that way, even on Terra."
"All right, it's logical. What has it to do with us?"
"It has this to do," said Guthrie. "That clown, Trent, is going around
making friends like a puppy. He's cutting his own throat, an' I'd bet he
thinks he's cutting mine. But you don't think they'd sacrifice a bad
person, do you?"
The thought penetrated, and she rose slowly to her feet. He reached
out to her shoulders and gave her a little shake.
"The Skirkhi spend weeks before the stormy season making sure the
evil spirits notice what nasty people they are. Like Terran kids before
Christmas, in reverse. And there's that apple-polisher making a
gilded saint of himself while the natives are spitting in their friends'
faces and trying to steal their wives or cheat old Thyggar on their
taxes."
The girl stared at him in horror. The flesh of her shoulders was soft
but firm under his fingers. He suddenly wished there were no Skirkhi
hanging about.
Suddenly, Karen's gray eyes widened with a new wariness.
"Let go!" she ordered.
"Maybe I shouldn't," Guthrie teased her. "Maybe I ought to let the
Skirkhi see that you have claws. It would help your reputation here."
She began to struggle, and he had a hard time holding her but
somehow hated to let go. He was conscious of a padding of feet in
the alleyway as a couple of guards drifted in from the street.
Karen tried kicking him in the shin, then wound the fingers of one
hand in his hair and yanked. Guthrie, who had by then clasped both
hands in the small of her back, let go with his left to grab her wrist.
Immediately, the nails of her other hand raked past his right eye.
He muttered a curse, let go completely as he felt a sudden fury well
up in him, then grabbed a handful of her long hair in his left hand. He
half raised his other hand, undecided whether to slap or let her go.
She screwed up her face and tried to turn away.
"Guthrie!" shouted a man's voice.
Trent ran between the huts, trailed by a score of Skirkhi.
Well, this ought to be it, thought Guthrie, releasing the girl. He can't
let this pass. I suppose I have a poke in the snoot coming.
Trent hauled Karen aside protectively, frowning at Guthrie. The latter
stood with his hands waist-high, shoulders slightly forward, waiting.
Watching Trent's eyes, he saw them flicker toward the expectant
Skirkhi.
"I realize that there can be only one explanation, Guthrie," said the
other, "but this is obviously neither the time nor place to argue it."
"I didn't offer any explanation," said Guthrie, ashamed but irritated.
"We are being observed," Trent reminded. "Show a little Terran
dignity!"
He raised his chin with dignity and Guthrie punched it as hard as he
could.

Thinking it over later, he realized that he had entirely wasted the

quick feint with his left. Trent was still posing as a saint when
Guthrie's fist sent him flying into the solid stone and clay wall of the
house behind him.
The spacer stared at Trent as the man slid limply down the wall to a
sitting position. He flexed his numbed fingers thoughtfully, as Trent
peered glassily up at him without seeming to know where he was.
Karen slipped behind a rank of thick-shouldered Skirkhi as a hum of
comment began to rise from the gathering. Guthrie turned and
pushed his way through to the street. Out of habit, he took the
direction to his quarters, vaguely aware that Polf had reappeared to
follow him.
Disgusted with himself, he tried to see Karen's side of it.
It must have looked just wonderful! he told himself. I think I might
have really tried it—guess she saw that in my face, so I can't blame
her for ducking. How could I? This place is getting me. Pretty soon,
I'll be a first-class Skirkh!
He kicked moodily at the dust outside his doorway, then climbed the
projecting stones at the corner. Polf grunted and followed him up to
the roof.
"He is too good," said the Skirkh. "It will be easy. I will do it for you
with Retho. My brother, Kror, will come too."
"Do what?" asked Guthrie.
"Steal his woman for you tonight. It will be a bad thing to do and the
best time to do it. Elders say no moon tonight."
"But what makes you think—?"
"Your face. Do not say to Polf you not want. And if you not admit she
is his woman, it is not bad enough a thing to do."
"You don't understand, Polf," said the spacer. "I couldn't ... that is, it's
not the same for me...." My God! he thought. I'm beginning to sound
like Trent!
"The storms come," murmured Polf. "You want the wrong spirits for
friends? If it is tonight, elders stay with Trent. Will be easy."
"Won't you have to be there? And your friends?"
"Gah!" exclaimed Polf. "Whole dumb village be there. What better
time to do bigger spirit work? You want Thyggar steal her first?"
Guthrie sat up abruptly, and almost slid from the roof.
"Well, why not?" he muttered after a moment. "She must have
warned Trent by now. If he can't think of a way out, I'd better save
what can be saved. That was his own idea. I can't help it if he
wouldn't listen to me."
It did not sound quite right to him, but time was running out. The
thought of being transformed lingeringly into a few pounds of hacked
and burnt meat crossed his mind once again, and he could feel
himself beginning to sweat. He glanced over his shoulder at the
broad, expectant face.
"All right," he whispered. "Tell Retho and your brother."
What else can I do? he asked himself. If it has to be one of us—

Later, he tried to convince himself that he could sleep for a few

hours.
Still later, following Polf down the torch-lit street, trying to look
nonchalant before the unusual gathering of Skirkhi, he asked himself
again, What else can I do? He avoided the amused glint in old
Thyggar's eyes.
The doing drove out the thought, and it was some hours before it
occurred to him again. When it did, he was stumbling up a pitch-
black slope miles to the south of the village.
Behind him, he could hear the sounds of panting and of dragging
footsteps as Karen, Polf, and two other Skirkhi followed. The slope
leveled off to a plateau. Something too big and solid to be a tree
loomed up against the horizon.
"There it is!" Guthrie gasped.
The darkness was relieved only slightly by the stars, but there was
no mistaking that silhouette. Guthrie stumbled the last hundred yards
and came to a halt beside one big fin.
He stretched out a hand and accounted for the others by touch as
they arrived. The rocket was canted slightly because one of the fins
had sunk a little way into the ground, and the hatch half-way up the
hull had been left open with the exit ladder extended to the surface.
"We'd better catch our wind before trying to climb up," he said.
He knelt on the grassy ground and rolled wearily over to a sitting
position.
"How could I do it?" he murmured.
"What? You speak wrong talk, Gut'rie," panted Polf. "Like you talk to
the good one before they start celebration. What you say to fool
him?"
"What does he say?" whispered Karen anxiously.
"Wants to know what I said to Trent," he answered, tugging the
frayed cuff of his trousers away from his leg. He seemed to be mud
to the knees.
"When you came along as he was getting ready for the ceremony?
You told him to dump the fancy costume and run for it."
"I did?" mused Guthrie. "Yes, I forgot. Well, he wouldn't listen, would
he?"
"No, and he wanted me to go with him. You got mad because he
thought they were taking him into the tribe."
"He's being taken, all right," muttered Guthrie. "There's no moon up
yet."
He crawled to his feet and groped through the dark to the ladder.
"What are you doing?" asked Karen.
"Gonna take a look. Hope there's fuel to bounce her off this
mudball."
He told Polf of his intention and began to climb. The metal rungs
were cold. Reaching the open airlock, he swung himself inside the
cramped chamber and closed the outer hatch in order to open the
inner. Lights came on automatically.
He found a shorter ladder inside and climbed up to the passenger
compartment. There were padded seats for about two dozen people,
well packed, but they had swung to an upright position for landing.
Guthrie climbed them to the pilot's position, where he seated himself
to look over the instruments.
"Whew!" he exclaimed. "This can has just enough to get along on."
After noting the amount of fuel left in the tanks, he searched the
drawers of the little control desk for information. He discovered a
booklet of data on the rocket and a set of simple charts. To these, he
added his memory of the mass calculated for Boyd III back when he
had facilities for such work.
"We ought to get off okay," he told himself. "My God! A hand-crank
calculator—they don't waste power in these things! Well ... later."
There was power provided, he saw, for "beacon" and "auto. radio" as
well as for a few essentials like ventilation. A distress call could be
broadcast automatically, at intervals regulated to economize on
power, and the same could be done with the beacon. He looked up
details in the booklet. The rocket possessed, at least, means to
make a loud noise and show a bright light if any rescuer should
approach. It remained for them to take it where these could be
effective.
He went to work calculating firing data to blast the rocket into a
course for Jhux. His figures lacked the polish he might have obtained
in his own ship, but anything would have to do in this pinch.
"Maybe I ought to figure a closed orbit," he muttered. "Once up, we
can pick the right time to edge out to Jhux ... maybe put out a few
signals first."
He stared reflectively at his arithmetic, chin in hand.
After several minutes, he leaned back and thought, Pete, my boy,
maybe you won't have to do it after all! There might just be an out if
there's still time.
He grabbed up the pencil he had been using and feverishly
undertook another course calculation. In the end, after making a few
corrections and comparing the requirements with the fuel gauges, he
decided it would be possible.
"Now, let's see ... how do I get a distress call taped and set for
broadcast...?"
When he scrambled down the ladder a little later, he brought a
flashlight with him. Karen squinted and the three Skirkhi cringed in its
beam.
"Polf, how long till day?" Guthrie demanded.
Polf found enough voice to guess that a third of the night remained.
Guthrie reached up and strained to unhook the ladder. As it came
loose, he let it fall and said, "Let's get out of here before the jets
light!"
"What are you doing?" protested the girl, grabbing his arm.
"Sending it up on automatic to broadcast a distress call."
"But I thought—"
"Well, I thought of a better one," snapped Guthrie. In Skirkhi, he
added, "Move your feet, worms, before we become a burning
sacrifice!"

Shoving the natives ahead and towing a Karen whose voice showed
signs of turning shrill, he got the group over the crest of the hill in
plenty of time before the sky flared and thundered with the sudden
roar of rockets.
The horrid noise departed toward the upper atmosphere. Presently,
Guthrie's eyes readjusted to the dark until he could make out the
trees through which they had groped and bumped heads an hour
earlier.
"Might as well start," he said. "We might make it back in time for
lunch."
"But the rocket!" wailed Karen. "After that awful trip to find it!"
"I set the controls," he explained, "to blast it up into an orbit around
the planet, where it can broadcast our location until we're picked up."
"Oh," said Karen. "Well, I hope you can handle your friends till then."
"We should be able to see it in a little while. I set the controls to flop
it over when it's high enough and send it around east to west."
"Why?"
"So it will match the apparent motions of the moons."
Karen walked perhaps twenty steps in silence, then stopped dead.
"Guthrie! Do you really mean we can see it?"
"Sure. I did it a bit roughly, but I'm hoping for under two thousand
miles and two or three periods a night. Even when it isn't catching
any sunlight, that beacon ought to show. Dimmer than Yiv, maybe,
but moving and easy to spot."
With the flashlight, making their way through the woods took less
time. They were half-way across a grassy plain when Polf exclaimed
and pointed to the sky. Guthrie whooped.
"There's a moon for tonight!" he yelled. "And every night, for quite
some time, until the pulls of the real ones spoil its orbit."
He felt so good that he threw an arm about Karen's waist. It must
have felt good to her, too, for instead of pulling away, she leaned
closer.
"They'll wait now, won't they?" she asked. "I mean, unless there's no
moon.... Wait till George finds out what you've done for him!"
"I don't know why I'm so good to him when I like the Skirkhi better,"
said Guthrie. "Of course, we can't explain until I think up a suitably
rotten excuse, or it would ruin my reputation with them!"
They stood motionless for a few minutes, watching the bright light
creep perceptibly along its path in the heavens.
"Is it Yiv?" asked Kror, puzzled. "It should not be, now."
"Gah!" exclaimed Polf. "You mud-head! Of course, it is not Yiv. Our
Gut'rie has made a new moon. Be grateful to Polf for bringing you,
for we shall be big in the village after this!"
He looked proudly at Guthrie. The latter turned off the flashlight to
see if the sky were actually beginning to show a pre-dawn lightening.
"We will be very big," Polf repeated. "Are we not friends of the evilest
spirit of them all?"
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE NIGHT OF
NO MOON ***

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