BOOKS

THE ELEPHANT MAN: A STUDY IN HUMAN DIGNITY

Ashley Montagu Outerbridge & Dienstfrey

It’s always amazed me that the word “freak” should have hung on so long as a label for who we are. Frank Zappa’s idea on the matter was clear long ago: the comfortable but ultimately monstrous existence of middle class America has spawned a mass of spiritually disfigured children. Their only path to liberation is to affirm their grotesqueness and extend it to even greater extremes, etc., etc.

But why the freaks have continued to identify themselves in this way after their liberation, after the “Freak Out,” continues to baffle me. Zappa himself seems to have been caught in his own web, a prisoner of the side show he created for people like Wild Man Fischer and the GTO’s. Apparently, the worship of distortion is not without its costs.

The Elephant Man is the true and remarkable story of John Merrick, a freak who lived in England in the early part of this century. Merrick suffered from a severe genetic disorder, neurofibromatosis, which caused a horrible disfigurement of his bones and skin. From the time of his childhood he was exhibited in smalltime side shows to crowds who payed their pennies to gaze upon his deformity and gasp in horror. On the few occasions when Merrick was permitted to leave the exhibition he would wear a mask and long cloak to cover his face and form. But even then, the people in the streets would follow the elephant man and taunt him as he walked along. Since the bones in his face impaired his speech, Merrick was unable to communicate with anyone. Other than the mistreatment given him by his keeper, Merrick lived totally without human contact.

Eventually, Merrick’s exhibitors were banned by the police in England and on the Continent. The elephant man was too horrible to be seen by the general public. At that point Merrick’s keeper stole what little money the show had amassed and gave his star attraction a train ticket to London where the poor man, then in his mid-twenties, arrived ill and totally destitute. By a stroke of good fortune, he was rescued from jail by Dr. Frederick Treves, an eminent British physician who had examined him a few years earlier. Treves managed to have Merrick given a room, food and medical attention at a London hospital. It was then that the doctor made an amazing discovery.

When he listened to his patient’s mumblings carefully, Treves found that the elephant man could both speak and think. Behind the grotesque shell lived a man of considerable intelligence, warmth and romantic imagination. It soon turned out that Merrick loved to read and carry on long conversations. With his one functional hand he was able to build intricate wooden models of famous buildings. Above all, he was not the least bitter about his previous captivity or mistreatment. While he dreaded ever going back to the freak show, John Merrick harbored nothing of the toxic spirit of resentment or revenge.

The story amountsto this. Before Merrick met Dr. Treves, no one had ever bothered to ask him if he would like to lead a productive life, to love and be loved in return. Each man took the appearance as the final reality and then imposed it on “the elephant man” as a set of chains. But Merrick waited in his bondage hoping that someday he would find an opening. When it finally came, he stepped forth and let his star shine with the brilliance he had nourtured all those years.

Ashley Montagu handles the details of John Merrick’s life with tact and care. Actually, it’s one of those classic stories which tells itself. Montagu is particularly interested in the question — Why, after so many years of abuse, could the man have emerged such a full and loving person? — but there are many other questions involved here as well.

I have given this book to a number of friends, some of them “freaks.” They have all been deeply moved.

Langdon Winner

THE FAMILY

The Story of Charles Manson's Dune Buggy Attack Battalion Ed Sanders Dutton

Brothers and sisters, the Devil walks among its.

Shocked? Don’t be. He always has.

He always will.

Am I suggesting that Charles Manson was . . . ? Not hardly. If there’s one point this book makes glaringly clear, it is that Charles Manson was outstandingly ordinary. He just had some extraordinary breaks. No, by the Devil I mean ... Well, look at it this way. There used to be these comic books called CRIME DOES NOT PAY. The stories were about the careers of famous criminals. Always around, and acting as a narrator/ guide in the story, was Crime himself, a nasty-looking type who made himself invisible, and whispered into the ears of his victims. Of course, when the G-Men made their inevitable move, Crime would be standing on the sidelines, cackling at his man’s fate. Thus with the Devil. And thus with Charlie Manson.

Not, of course, that that makes any of his victims get up and live again. Not that that can deter any of those who have chosen his path.

Ed Sanders has succeeded brilliantly in doing what he set out to do, namely provide an intricately-detailed, chronologically sound, eminently readable account of the events leading up to, the so-called Tate-La Bianca Murders, the murders themselves, and the eventual round-up of Charles Manson’s so-called family. As he takes great pains to point out in the introduction, every fact stated in the book is the result of painstaking research and documentation. As he further points out, it is by no means the definitive book on the subject. “A scientific, scholarly study, for instance, is needed on techniques of psychedelic brainwashing and criminal behavior under complex hypnotic suggestion-patterns. Young people need to know the techniques a guru or so-called leader might use to entrap them in a web of submission so that they can keep a constant vigil against it.” So true, so true.

The Manson story is a grim one. It is a story of literally dozens of highly impressionable adolescent (and barely pubescent, in some cases,) girls, for one thing, almost all of them from homes with weak or nonexistent parental guidance. It is the story of a 34-year-old ex-con who had some sense of what was happening to the society around him, and who used that sense to his own ends brilliantly. It is also the story of a city at the absolute end of the world, where people are so world-weary that they search out the Antipodes of their pleasures — and if that means performing (and filming) human sacrifices replete with blood-drinking, well, so be it.

If there is anything in this book that will come as a surprise to the reader, it is the extent to which Manson was not only tolerated but encouraged by Hollywood’s upper crust. True, there were dope dealings afoot, and people, naturally, tend to encourage that, but there are other, darker matters alluded to and damn near specified in this book. Among the questions the book raises that will probably never be answered is the question of how deep Ije was into Hollywood neo-Satanism — do the socalled “chop films” exist? And if so, so > what? And what next?

And that’s what reading The Family is like. One gruesome detail is replaced by another on the next page, and the whole thing melds into a gruesome fugue that grips the reader in spite of himself. And when the end comes and you realize the insignificance of the Family’s capture, ah, then comes the horror.

Because what Manson did was easy. If we are to believe the evidence, worse things than that are happening virtually undetected. And if you don’t murder people (or if you do a better job of disposing of the bodies), it’s all pretty much legal. The horror comes not when you realize that Manson’s creepycrawlys were programmed to kill, it comes when you realize that they were programmed at all. Because they wanted to be. And they loved it. Because being told is a lot easier than finding out. There are a lot of people out there looking for answers. And they’d as soon be told. Programmed people are less than human, even if they are programmed to do good.

Brothers and sisters, the Devil walks among us. Hello, Jesus.

Skip this book at your own pe;ril.

Ed Ward

All In Color for a Dime Edited by Dick Lupoff and Don Thompson Arlington House

In 1954, Dr. Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent was published, the first book ever devoted to the comic book. With this book, Wertham set out to prove that the often violent, kinky little booklets had a harmful effect on the kids who read them. Seduction of the Innocent succeeded in stirring and uniting public disapproval of comic books until the comic book industry was forced to impose a rigid system of self-censorship, the Comics Code Authority. The Authority may have prevented the publication of . some of the more objectionable material once common in comics (and it was pretty objectionable, too), but most comic book fans also agree that it helped stiffle much of the creativity once found in comics.

All In Color for a Dime is an altogether different sort of book about the comics. It is an anthology of articles by a number of writers — all long time fans of the comics — discussing and reminiscing about their favorite old comic book characters. Wertham claimed to prove that comics cause juvenile delinquency by showing that jd’s read comics. Lupoff and Thompson suggest that this book by the same logic might prove that reading comic books causes people to become writers and editors.

In “The Big Red Cheese” you’ll meet Billy Batson, a “poverty-stricken orphan” who finds himself in an abandoned subway tunnel one night, in the mysterious company of an ancient wizard, who gives Billy the power to turn himself into a superman when he says the word, “Shazam!” (That’s the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of /Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury.) Thus Captain Marvel was born. Captain Marvel’s popularity was to challenge even that of Superman, the first and most enduring of superheros — and did you know that the first Superman stories were written and drawn not by old fat New York hack artists, but by a couple of teenagers? Those two teenagers changed the course of an important part of the magazine publishing industry, which had up until then been publishing mostly newspaper comic strip reprints.

How about Batman and Robin? Did they really have a homosexual thing going together, as Dr. Wertham seemed to think? Well, maybe not, but they certainly had some fine times together, frightening criminals with Batman’s eerie looking costume, and usually stomping them pretty good in addition. (Batman’s parents had been killed by criminals, and he had decided then to devote his life to crime-fighting. He adopted his bat costume so he could strike terror into the hearts of wrong doers.)

In one particularly interesting chapter, you’ll read about Popeye, the “first super hero of them all.” Today Popeye is mainly remembered for his animated cartoons, but at one time he was star of one of the most popular comic strips, and featured in many excellent comic books. The strip featured many fascinating personalities — Popeye, Alice the Goon, Jeep, Olive Oyl, Poopdeck Pappy, Popeye’s father, and many others. The stories were weird, amusing fantasies, punctuated by Popeye’s tremendous fights. Popeye’s appeal can be measured by the lasting effect that it has had on our language and culture: “goon” and “jeep” both originated there, as well as Wimpy, his famous Wimpyburger, and his favorite con, “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”

An epic part of comic book history is covered in the chapter titled “Ok, Axis, Here We Come!” During the war years, just about every superhero around turned to fighting Japs and Nazis. In fact, not only did all the established super guys turn to fighting the war, but lots of new ones came on the scene — mainly because there was a big comic book boom during the war. It seemed like every millionaire playboy around was putting on a costume and getting into the game. Captain America was one of the more notable warriors. Dressed in a uniform that seemed to have been made out of an old flag, he and his kid partner Bucky were all over the place fighting foreign monsters — and those bad guys looked a lot more like monsters than humans. It’s nice to be able to recognize your enemy that way.

With all this super-man-power, it seems like the war should have been over long before it really was — but the Axis just kept coming up with super-villians to put up against the costumed soldiers. However, there were some super heros that were just too powerful to allow their presence in the war — Superman, for instance. Obviously, he could have cleared up the mess in a few days. They got around that by having him fail his army physical — when he took his eye test, he was so nervous he looked through the wall, into the next room at another eye chart. So he stayed home and took care of sixth columnists.

If you share any of the memories in this book, or if you read and enjoy today’s comics, you’ll find this affectionate overview of the comic book’s history extremely interesting. In addition, the many color plates are wellchosen and reproduced, and supplemented by many 'black and white illustrations.

Hank Luttrell