1986 Interview

Studs Terkel (S.T.): The story of George Anastaplo, as the story of a certain moment in American history, begins in 1950. Professor Anastaplo teaches Constitutional Law at the Loyola University School of Law. He also teaches in the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults at the University of Chicago. His most recent book is called The Artist as Thinker, with rather original views about various creative spirits from Shakespeare to Joyce. We will come to that. But we have to begin with an event in 1950. George, you graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1951, about seventeen years after I did. I was among the lowest in the class; you were the highest. Your class included Ramsey Clark, who became Attorney General of the United States, Abner Mikva, now a federal appellate judge, and Patsy Mink, who became a Congresswoman from Hawaii. You were tops in the class. But something happened. You passed the written bar exam, of course. But then there was something -- I remember it was called the "Morals Quiz" -- in which the young applicant, the would-be lawyer, submits to an oral examination. What happened on that November day in 1950?

George Anastaplo (G.A.): I guess I failed. In fact, Studs, it was probably the first test I ever failed in my career. In some ways that was very instructive. And I failed it in an unexpected way. Because I couldn't see that the questions they were asking were proper ones, I wouldn't answer them. That proved to be the end of my legal career -- at least my career as a practicing lawyer. I have sort of a legal career now as a law professor at Loyola, but that is a different kind of career.

S.T.: Who was the committee?

G.A.: The full committee was made up of seventeen members of the Illinois bar appointed by the Supreme Court of the State to review the character and fitness of the applicants who appeared before them after having passed the bar examination. The typical hearing lasted a few minutes before two members of the committee, a subcommittee: one would appear before them and it would be over within a few minutes and then one would be admitted to the bar. But I had difficulty with my two people because of the questions they were asking.

S.T.: What was it that failed you?

G.A.: The questions asked depended upon the temperament and interests of the particular members of one's committee. My subcommittee on this occasion happened to be interested in whether applicants thought members of the Communist Party should be permitted to practice law. The proper answer to that question was, "No, they should not be permitted to practice."

S.T.: You mean the prudent answer.

G.A.: The answer they were looking for.

S.T.: That's what I mean.

G.A.: Prudence is a different kind of thing. Other committee members would ask other questions, whatever suited their interests. I indicated that I didn't see why membership in the Communist Party should, in itself, bar anybody from admission to the bar. The response of one of the members to that was, "Members of the Communist Party believe in revolution." I said, "Doesn't everybody?" He then asked, "What do you mean, 'Doesn't everybody?' " I replied, "Well, look at the Declaration of Independence. It says that there are times when it is right to alter or abolish the established government. In fact, there may even be a duty to do so." The subcommittee thought these sentiments so troublesome that I was then asked, "Are you a member of the Communist Party?" And I said, "I don't think that's a proper question, and I won't answer it." Over the years I had a number of hearings with the full committee before it was all over. But it really came down to the two sets of inquiries I have just reconstructed. That is to say, "What do you think about the right to revolution and the Declaration of Independence?" and "Are you a member of this, that, or the other organization?" Before it was over, ten years later, they had asked me at one time or another if I was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, whether I was a member of something called the Silver Shirts of America (you may remember that extreme right wing organization, Studs), or whether I was a member of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. I refused to answer all such questions.

S.T.: You said, "None of your concern," to all those questions?

G.A.: They were improper questions and I refused to answer them. They said, "Until you answer our questions about the Communist Party we will not admit you." And that's where it was left by the character committee. That's also the position that the courts took on review.

S.T.: What happened after your first meeting with the subcommittee?

G.A.: The original subcommittee met with me only a half hour or so. They saw that there was an unanticipated difficulty and they reported this back to the full committee. The original subcommittee met in November, 1950; the full committee met with me in January, 1951. That meeting lasted several hours. Then they thought about it for a few months. In June of that year, they decided, sixteen to one, that I had not established my qualifications for admission to the bar.¹¹ Eventually I took the issue to the Supreme Court of Illinois. In 1954 the Supreme Court of Illinois upheld the committee, seven to nothing. I then took an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, but that court would not hear it. Justices Black and Douglas indicated they wanted to hear it. After that there were cases in the courts involving bar applicants in other states. Two such cases were heard by the United States Supreme Court. This encouraged me to try again with the committee here in Chicago. That led to twenty more hours of hearings. This was in the 1957-1959 period. I lost again, but I got six votes that time around.

S.T.: It's a committee of seventeen prestigious Illinois lawyers who generally sit in panels of a couple of members and then in the full committee if there's a problem?

G.A.: Only the full committee heard me in the 1957-1959 period. There were, you know, some very good men who came down on my side that time, people like Calvin Sawyier, who has been a great supporter of mine over the years. But I lost eleven to six. (The only dissenter in 1951 had been Stephen Love.) I again took my case to the Supreme Court of Illinois, and I lost there four to three.

S.T.: You were gaining.

G.A.: Then I took my case to the Supreme Court of the United States, and I got in that time. Although I lost there five to four, I did get a magnificent dissenting opinion from Justice Black. After that, I retired from the practice of law.

S.T.: Black would say, "If there was ever an American, someone who believes in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, it is George Anastaplo." In fact, he implied that it was your duty to answer as you did, to say "It is none of your business," when you were asked these questions.

G.A.: Justice Black's opinion is very interesting, because it's the opinion of an old man who has a certain sympathy for this foolish young man. He said that I was attempting to preserve this country's freedom and that perhaps the only thing that could be said against me was that I may have taken too much of the responsibility upon myself. This is a nice way of putting it. What is also good about the Black dissent is the fact that he thought well of his opinion. The first of his own writings read at his funeral in 1971 was an excerpt from the conclusion of his AnastapIo opinion, which he had designated to be read on that occasion, an excerpt which ends, "We must not be afraid to be free."

S.T.: This case of yours becomes more and more interesting as the years go by. More and more lawyers and judges have come over to our side. We come now to changes that have occurred in the climate of opinion since your litigation ended in 1961.

G.A.: In recent years many Chicago lawyers, including members of the Committee on Character and Fitness and even a recent chairman of the committee, Richard James Stevens, have been friendly. In fact, they have been very much concerned to have the committee reverse its decision. And this it has done, Studs.

S.T.: The committee reversed its decision?

G.A.: It reversed its decision on its own initiative and recommended --

S.T.: -- new members of the committee?

G.A.: Oh, yes. The old ones are long since gone. There was no one still there, so far as I know, from the original 1950-1951 committee when they, on their own, reversed in 1978 the committee decision and recommended my admission. The problem has been, however, that I have consistently said since 1961 -- since the five-to-four decision of the Supreme Court of the United States -- that I would never apply again, that I had had my decade in court, and that I was retiring from the practice of law. I have also said that others could do what they wanted to correct the situation, that I would not stand in their way.

S.T.: People have wanted you to reapply since, but you didn't want to apply?

G.A.: I haven't wanted to apply for a variety of reasons, and these I have spelled out on several occasions. So the committee went ahead and rehabilitated me on its own, partly because of Mr. Stevens's insistence and partly because of the efforts of people such as Cal Sawyier. But the committee's recommendation has not proved enough for the Supreme Court of Illinois. They much prefer to have an applicant apply, and I haven't been applying. So I think my case is really finished, and a good deal is to be said for leaving things as they are.

S.T.: There was one time where they spoke of your principles as stubbornness and ego, especially when you said, after plenty of provocation, that you thought that the Illinois bar needed you more than you needed the Illinois bar. By the way, I happen to agree.

G.A.: Well, at that time it may have been true. It may not have been prudent to say it quite that way, but I do think it was true back in the Fifties. I am not sure it's true today, because another episode in recent years was when the Illinois Bar Association—it, too, on its own initiative, under the leadership of its president at that time, Al Hofeld -- insisted upon recommending my admission to the Supreme Court of Illinois. (This was in 1983.) That's an indication, Studs, that the bar may not be as bad as it once was.

S.T.: Some of the committee that originally turned you down were furious with you. One of them spoke what I think is the truth. He said of you, "He always conducted himself before our Committee as if he was better than us." Now to me that is the most revealing of all. They knew deep down that you were right, and they were furious at you for putting them on the spot and defying the fashion of the day, which was to say, "This guy's a Red, kick him out." You said, "That has nothing to do with it." They sensed deep down that you were better than they were and they were furious. Does that make sense to you?

G.A.: Another way of putting it, Studs, is to say that they were not used to having young applicants -- we're talking about youngsters between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-seven -- they weren't used to having people like that defy them.

S.T.: Or question them?

G.A.: Or question them. They were used to subservience. You could argue that if someone doesn't have enough sense to know when to bend before a powerful wind, he may not be a responsible lawyer, he may not be able to work with others in ways that would be useful for his client, and so forth. You could make an argument that a certain kind of subservience and subordination is desirable. Thus, to have a kid carry on this way was, in a way, offensive.

S.T.: They were accustomed to, for want of a better word, bullying young applicants. And you would not be bullied.

G.A.: Malcolm Sharp, whom you studied with also, at one time likened it to the hazing of a fraternity. There was something of that here.

S.T.: Malcolm Sharp, by the way, was a remarkable professor of law and a remarkable man in many respects. I was in his very first class at the University of Chicago Law School in 1933. It was in, of all things, Partnerships. I wish it had been Constitutional Law. But he was there. He and, of course, Harry Kalven, who was quite marvelous, were two members of the faculty who supported you all the way, students as they were of the Constitution.

G.A.: Wilber Katz and Roscoe Steffen were also helpful, and Hans Zeisel was in my corner. So was Stanley Kaplan. There were a few.

S.T.: How were the rest of the U. of C. Law School faculty?

G.A.: Well, they did not -- they did not conduct themselves as they should have.

S.T.: [Laughter ] I like that. You could be a good lawyer, of course, you could. [Laughter.] I like your rather diplomatic understatement here. You want to let it go at that? O.K., they didn't back you, quite obviously. In fact, one who was the Dean of the Law School, highly regarded as an intellectual in town, his particular role in this I find absolutely reprehensible.

G.A.: But, as I have said before, you can say this in his behalf: he was concerned for the future of the school. He was a new dean at that time -- he was an old member of the faculty, but he was a new dean. He had ambitions for the school and he had reservations about what this youngster was doing. He could see, from his point of view, that the kid was only going to hurt himself and he was not going to do the school any good either. And, so, maybe the best thing to do was to put pressure on him to change his position.

S.T.: One of his predecessors as President of the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard Hutchins, took a different position at a time just as tense as this one, with Robert Morss Lovett. That's another story.

G.A.: Well, people do have different temperaments. You know, some people's temperaments lead them to try to avoid certain kinds of difficulties. Mr. Hutchins did do some things he shouldn't have done in provoking people.

S.T.: We are talking about something called principle. We profess to believe in the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights and its First Amendment. George, today you are a highly respected professor of law at the Loyola University School of Law, teaching, appropriately enough, Constitutional Law and Jurisprudence. You were, for a while, a member of the political science faculty at Rosary College.

G.A.: Yes, for many years. In fact, Rosary gave me a job when nobody else would.

S.T.: Really?

G.A.: Oh, yes, that has to be said for it, just as it should be recognized that the Loyola law school took me on when no other law school seemed interested in me. (That was in 1981.)

S.T.: Before we leave your case, let's talk a little more about your opponents. A number of years went by, and they admitted they were wrong ?

G.A.: That's in a way probably the most serious defect of the people we have been talking about. Not that they did what they did in the heat or tne moment -- that is understandable: people are under pressure they're confused, they don't quite know what the issues are, this young man is perhaps not stating his position as well as he should have, all these and other considerations. But the serious problem with my original opponents both on and off the committee, beginning in 1950-1951, was that they persisted in their position over the years and never made any effort to make amends for what they had done. That. l think, is not the way they should have conducted themselves.

S.T.: 1950 begins the McCarthy era.

G.A.: It was a bad period in the Korean War, things were very bad. The country was very disturbed for a variety of reasons. People were worried, and they were looking for things they could do to help make things better for themselves. One remedy, of course, was to root out those who were thought to be dangerous. It was a confused time for people. We can look back upon the intimidating men we now call witchhunters and inquisitors and we can see that they were in bad shape themselves. They were troubled souls who believed they had a way to make things better. What they did not recognize was that what they were doing was making things worse because they were, in effect making it more difficult for the community to discuss properly the genuine problems that it was facing at home and abroad. They made it more difficult to deal with the very things that they were worried about, including "the Soviet menace."

S.T.: I want to ask you how you got this way. In one of your lectures in your Human Being and Citizen book, on the trial of Socrates, there is a remarkable analogy to your situation: a similarly stubborn person was brought before judges who wanted him to bend to the fashion of the day. Would you mind expanding on that a bit?

G.A.: There is something of an analogy, even though Socrates obviously has to be taken much more seriously than I can ever hope to be. The trial of Socrates did take place at a time when Athens was very troubled, very confused. It had lost a great war --

S.T.: -- to Sparta --

G.A.: -- to the Spartan alliance, the Peloponnesian War. That loss had been devastating in its consequences. Athenians were looking around to see what had contributed to the debacle. Here was this "arrogant" man who'd obviously been doing things that were different from what had been done before by people of intelligence and of great persuasiveness. Furthermore, some of his former students had engaged in activities that had not turned out well for Athens. It was not unnatural, then that many Athenians regarded him as one of the contributing causes for their troubles, and so they moved against him. Times were changing. The old gods were being questioned, the old social order was being transformed. The war had had other consequences as well. Similarly, in 1950 there was not only the Korean War, Studs, but you know better than I can know, because of your own experiences, that the Cold War followed immediately upon the Second World War, which had followed immediately upon the Great Depression. That meant that from 1929 on to 1945 there had not been any extended relaxation for the American people. People came out of the Second World War expecting, "Now, we've been through a Great Depression, we made great sacrifices; we've been through a Great War, we made even greater sacrifices. After fifteen years, at last, we can relax and enjoy ourselves." And then, what happens? Stalin and the Cold War. It's a new kind of threat, less unifying than the one in the Second World War had been, and less healthy than the Depression had somehow been. And it proved to be too much for many people, especially when in 1950 the Cold War finally erupted into the hot war in Korea.

S.T.: It was a time that called for spine and principle. At that time, Malcolm Sharp, one of your supporters and friends and the law school teacher I most admired, stuck his neck out a number of times on behalf of the Rosenbergs.

G.A.: Oh, yes, he was even involved in the Rosenberg litigation, at the end. But what I'm trying to suggest is that we're fortunate we came out as well as we did, considering what had been happening since 1929. By 1960 things had become much better. Even so, my opinion is that in some ways the mistakes of the Viet Nam War, in the late 1960s, can be traced back to the Red Scare in the late 1940s and in the 1950s, because that kept us from considering certain problems properly. One of the peculiarities of the Viet Nam War is that when it began for us it was often spoken of as an effort to "contain" China; but by the time that war ended we were virtually allies of the Chinese, which is, you know, a bizarre turn of events. People such as my character committee back in the Fifties helped deprive us of perhaps the most important weapon in the American arsenal, which is the ability to think together about the problems of the country.

S.T.: Of course, you're talking about thinking and an awareness. If ever there was a time when thinking was needed, it is this very moment. Instead we have smiles substituted for thoughts. l guess you're talking about what a democracy is and how much it depends on public opinion. It does, of course.

G.A.: It does, indeed.

S.T.: At the time of Socrates' trial there was a crisis, and so he had to go. But we come back to what the citizenry of a democracy should be. One of the key words, I suppose, is aware. This is what the town meetings were all about—

G.A.: -- an informed citizenry that's aware of the community's principles as well as of its circumstances. I believe the 1950s made it difficult for us to be properly informed about certain problems having to do with international relations, the Russians, what they were apt to do, what they were not apt to do, and so forth. The fact that Stalin was a monster did not automatically settle how we should have conducted our own affairs in this country.

S.T.: So, you're associating your particular case, minor though it is in the overall picture (though it's not, far from it, it's a key case) with the climate of the time?

G.A.: That's right. Such a thing as happened then with bar applicants, for example, is unthinkable today. For one thing, it would be the fellow students of the particular applicant who was being harassed who would immediately rise up today. There's no question about it. The faculties of most of the law schools would also intervene. Back in 1950 it was unthinkable for either one's faculty or one's fellow students to do anything to help. But that's not where the threat is today. You know, Studs, the critical threat we are obliged to deal with comes from a different quarter each time.

S.T.: Yes.

G.A.: If it were always the same thing each time, it would be no problem deciding what to do.

S.T.: I see a threat today. If I were to choose one threat today, I would say mindlessness, or perhaps the threat of banality.

G.A.: I would go further and say it has something to do with the moral corruption, including greed, which has taken hold among us, which has made people far less sensible than they should be. The making of money, if not money itself, has become far too important for many of the most talented among us.

S.T.: I'd like to return to your case.

G.A.: Some of your listeners may be interested in the wrap-up discussion of my case coming up in volume 35 of the DePaul Law Review. It is a very long article with lots of documents about developments in recent years. People can now read to their hearts' content about these matters.

S.T.: George Anastaplo is a really good writer. His books are very exciting and provocative. We'll come to The Artist as Thinker, which ranges from Shakespeare to Joyce. But, first, I still want to know what made you that stubborn person that November morning in 1950 before those austere and prestigious lawyers. Let us come to the beginning with George Anastaplo. You come from a Southern Illinois town, Carterville. That's near Carbondale?

G.A.: That's right, about ten miles.

S.T.: What was it -- what chemistry or what influence was it?

G.A.: Well, partly a matter of chance, Studs. You have to remember that if that subcommittee hadn't happened to be made up of the particular members it had that morning, those questions might not have been asked. Something else might have been asked, and then I would have gone on to a career at the bar. After that I probably would have gone on fairly soon to a career in teaching. I suppose at the University of Chicago Law School. That's probably what would have happened, because I had a good academic record, and I had certain capacities and abilities which would have been recognized, I suspect.

S.T.: Now, what led to what happened instead?

G.A.: I don't know; it's very hard to know what led to it. Perhaps certain stories, lessons having to do with the Greeks and the Turks: in some ways those committee members were the Turks sitting across the table demanding some kind of conformity to their creed. By the way, I have rather liked the Turks I have met in my adult life. So much for that theory! [Laughter.] The other thing that probably was important were my own experiences in the Air Corps during the Second World War and for a year and a half thereafter. I had thought on more than one occasion that I had reached the end of my life.

S.T.: You had some close shaves? This was where, in the European theater?

G.A.: No, I was flying all over the world -- as far west as Formosa, as far east as Saudi Arabia, and as far south as Liberia. One of the close shaves I particularly remember was during a "routine" landing on the island of Kwajalein, and that had a very interesting effect on me. I knew I had stared death in the face. I was what? Twenty, twenty-one years old. It certainly impressed me, but it hadn't terrified me. I wasn't going to allow myself to be bullied by the men sitting across from me, who, by the way, so far as I knew, had themselves never even served. They were, for the most part, too old to have had the service I had had. And so I just wasn't going to knuckle under to them. I had faced much more serious challenges than what they were offering. And maybe something about the way they put it to me moved me: either you do this or will do that to you.

S.T.: That was one aspect.

G.A.: I should also add that my wife was a considerable support. It might have been different if she had simply thrown up her hands and said, "We can't have this. You know we have a six-month-old baby." That child, by the way, has gone on to become a lawyer. She had no trouble getting admitted to the bar herself. [Laughter.] One thing which proved to be useful is that her father had been a wildcatter in the oil business down in Texas, and --

S.T.: -- your wife's father?

G.A.: Yes. The prospect of the family completely losing its income from time to time was not unfamiliar to her. Wildcatters ride financial roller-coasters, you know.

S.T.: There's your wife, there's your stubbornness, and there's your experiences in the Air Corps. Wasn't there something else, a teacher or someone else you had come upon?

G.A.: Well, of course, there were the teachers you know, people such as Malcolm Sharp, who was a very strong supporter almost from the beginning. Mr. Sharp's response was a good one, as I look back. When he first heard what I had done before the committee—it had been for me an unexpected development before the committee, I should say -- when he heard that I had done this, his first advice was, "You ought not to do it. You're not likely to win, and it's going to hurt you, and you should really give in." Now that, I think, is responsible advice from an elder. But when he saw I would not give in, he didn't then say as some did, "Well, if you're not going to give in, I'm not going to help you." He became a very strong supporter and, in fact, before it was over with, he was insisting that I had done right to do what I did. In fact, he would tease his colleagues by suggesting that my bar admission case was the Law School's "most important contribution" to legal education in their time.¹²

S.T.: Could we stay with this a minute, Malcolm Sharp being the remarkable man he was. He at first told you, "Give in; say 'yes,' agree with them that they have no right to practice, those damn Reds." But then, as your case went on, he changed. So he himself, mature teacher that he was, grew.

G.A.: It wasn't so much that he grew as that he was dealing with a young man, and this was really the Dean's position, too. When you deal with a young man, you should counsel him as to what the consequences are likely to be of what he's doing.

S.T.: Like a lawyer with his client?

G.A.: You put the pressure on him, and say, "Do you really mean this?" I would do the same, I hope, with a youngster today in comparable circumstances. In fact, when people came to me in years subsequent to my case and had similar situations, I would always do that, remembering how Mr. Sharp had done it. But once someone clearly indicated that he was serious about it, then it was a different matter. Mr. Sharp didn't have to be converted to my position. Rather, he had to be assured that I meant it. Once he was assured that I meant it, and that I wasn't going to change, he threw his support completely behind me.

S.T.: He also thought this particular case, the Anastaplo case, could be a marvelous bit of education at the U. of C. Law School.

G.A.: He insisted that it had been. Harry Kalven also came to that conclusion. On several occasions I appeared before his classes and discussed the whole problem.¹³

S.T.: Let's talk about The Artist as Thinker, too.

G.A.: Yes, by all means.

S.T.: But first, one more obvious question, a fantasy question, about your case. What if it hadn't been there, what would have become of you?

G.A.: As I've said, I would probably have practiced law a few years. I probably would have moved into law school teaching after that. I then would have done what people routinely do in that world. What I had to do instead was to begin teaching as a graduate student in the University of Chicago's Basic Program, with its adult education seminars devoted to the greatest works of literature, political science, philosophy, and science. After that, Rosary College provided my first employment as a regular member of a faculty. This was because I happened to know the then-new President of the College. Sister Candida Lund was somebody I had been in graduate school with. She suddenly needed somebody to fill in at one point, and there I was, with a University of Chicago Ph.D. because I had gone back and gotten that degree at Chicago after I finished litigating. Between the Basic Program and Rosary, I began to educate myself, teaching and hence learning something about the very best books, and not only about law. That has been very helpful ever since in thinking about constitutional law and in thinking about jurisprudence. One result is The Artist as Thinker book. There is also the other book in which such things as my Apology essay may be found, the Human Being and Citizen volume. These books deal with matters that most lawyers, or law professors, would not be either inclined or equipped to write about.

S.T.: As is said in one of the Sacco-Vanzetti letters: "We might have gone our way as a cobbler or a fisherman whom no one would have known anything about." I am not comparing you to them, but simply --

G.A.: -- I hope not, because they came to a rather hard end.

S.T.: But the fact is your case is such a glowing one. You have gone through a hell of a situation. There was a blacklist involved, too, again involving to some extent the University on the South Side. I dwell on that because I get furious at times at my alma mater. Then there is what Harry Kalven and Malcolm Sharp said about how marvelous your case is for students going to law school as to what principle is about, and what the Bill of Rights is about and what our democracy is about. So we have got to come to your new book. How would you describe The Artist as Thinker? You begin with various Shakespearean figures. You're provoking the reader, at least you provoke me, when you ask whether Cordelia was right when she spoke her heart and the truth to her vain, foolish father.

G.A.: The younger you are, the more attractive Cordelia is. But over the years, I must say, I have come to believe that she should have recognized how vulnerable King Lear was and how hard it was for him to be sensible. She should, for his good as well as for the good of their country, have been somewhat more prudent in the way she dealt with his demands. In the dozen chapters in this book on great English-language artists from Shakespeare to Joyce, I generally address, as one way of thinking about each of the stories, this question: "How should this or that character have conducted himself?" That, it seems to me, is an important question to ask in trying to understand this kind of work.

S.T.: If Cordelia had recognized the vulnerability of her father and said, "I love you more than Goneril or Regan do," she wouldn't have been disowned. That's exactly what Malcolm Sharp said to you at the very beginning. There is the same vulnerability in both cases.

G.A.: But there is this great difference: I was not destroying myself or anybody else. We must not dramatize too much what happened to me. I have been fortunate in my health and in graduate school teachers such as David Grene and Leo Strauss. I've had a fairly comfortable life; I've certainly had an interesting one. Nobody's been locking me up in jail. People have been kicking me out of countries, as you know from Herman Pritchett's adaptation from W. C. Fields --

S.T.: -- the Colonels' Greece and the Soviet Union—

G.A.: -- that's right, but even those crises were great adventures. If I were faced with a situation where somebody's life was at stake, I would probably be much more inclined to knuckle under. I hope I'd have enough sense to know when I should be willing to back off.

S.T.: Nonetheless, we still come to this question of Cordelia, or let's go to Romeo and Juliet. Here again you provoke. You are saying, "Maybe they should have listened to their parents. [Laughter.] After all, there were feuding families here, and maybe they shouldn't have run off the way they did and defied --"

G.A.: -- let's say that I believe they should have made a different kind of approach to their families in order to reconcile them, using their love. Instead, the way they acted made it possible for the worst things to happen through misunderstandings and errors. That was not for the good of anybody.

S.T.: You know, what is good about this book, The Artist as Thinker, is that it does provoke and, of course, the appreciation of the artist is all the more sharpened thereby. The Artist as Thinker is published by Swallow Press, which is a marvelous Chicago publishing house for young poets. Now it's merged with --

G.A.: -- Ohio University Press, but it's still somewhat separate.

S.T.: You have an analysis of Antony and Cleopatra. Octavius was a main-chancer. This has always been the case of those who are operators, no matter what the period of history is. Maybe some of the accusers of Socrates, just as certain guys in your time, were main-chancers. I was in the Etruscan museum in Rome, this was in 1962 or 1963, and there was an Apollo. I couldn't take my eyes off this Apollo. In the early Sixties, we heard of young guys on the make -- attache cases were coming into fashion again --

G.A.: Right.

S.T.: Business management courses were becoming very popular, much more so than the humanities. This Apollo, so help me, was a Yuppie, a pre-Yuppie Yuppie on the make. He had a certain look. Whoever did that particular statue -- it was a miniature -- knew what he was doing. His body was leaning forward, and he was on his way to the commodities floor. [Laughter.]

G.A.: I see. [Laughter.]

S.T.: This has always been so, hasn't it?

G.A.: Still, I take it, Studs, that in some ways, those are useful people. We need them for some purposes. In fact, they do many of the things that we ourselves don't want to do, to keep things running. We do need someone like Octavius to keep things going. We also like someone such as Antony who is much more erotic and much more open to beauty and to life itself, with a certain vitality. But, obviously, it's going to be difficult to live in a country that is run simply by Antony, especially since he can be so caught up with Cleopatra. These people you refer to as Yuppies, they are useful. People who go to the commodities exchange are doing something for us, however impoverished their own lives may be in critical respects as a result of their preoccupation with money. They are helping to do something with the movement of goods, with the --

S.T.: -- but for whose benefit?

G.A.: Well, I think ultimately for everybody's benefit. I'm certainly more conservative than you are on this.

S.T.: You happen to be a very conservative man. [Laughter.] We need to know what the issues involved are.

G.A.: Well, take the commodities—

S.T.: O.K.

G.A.: The commodities people are, in some ways, performing an important service in the allocation of resources. They do something about spreading risk, they provide for future supplies, and so forth.

S.T.: I like this idea of talking with you about your new book, using your own case of the 1950s as a base. You have more of an understanding attitude toward some people for whom I feel no great affection. You discuss the double aspect of things in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, the intellectual and the monster that is created. You connect that with Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, and with a look at Ahab chasing another monster in his madness. You show the two aspects of the human, the two impulses of human beings.

G.A.: The passions do have to be taken very seriously. In one form we find them attractive, in the form of certain kinds of love. There are other forms of them that have to be restrained. The life of Socrates teaches the limits of philosophy in any community. This means that it is not possible to turn a community as a whole into philosophers whatever the Enlightenment may have thought. The community as a whole is dependent upon opinion of all kinds, including many opinions that are apt to be ill-formed and unexamined but that still have to be reckoned with. This raises serious political and social problems.

S.T.: Tell me more about that double aspect. You discuss various characters from Shakespeare to Joyce, and you have a tribute to the great Nobel Laureate of Greece whom you knew, George Seferis, who spoke out as you did during Junta times in Greece. In Mark Twain, there is Colonel Sherburn --

G.A.: -- oh, yes, in Huckleberry Finn.

S.T.: In Huckleberry Finn, there is the double theme. Here's a guy who's a brutal sort of colonel, who shoots this helpless old drunk because he called him names. At the same time, when the crowd comes to lynch him, he holds them back, speaking as a principled individual to a mob.

G.A.: That's right.

S.T.: So, there's a schizophrenia, there's a double. Some would say, "Mark Twain is being inconsistent."

G.A.: That's right.

S.T.: How can these two aspects be in the same man?

G.A.: That's what I investigate in my chapter on Twain. We know where he got the story about the heroic defiance of the mob. Twain, as a boy, saw a sheriff confront a mob like that and face it down. But I think it's virtually inconceivable that you'd have these two men -- the principled sheriff and the callous killer -- together in one man.

S.T.: Except for one thing --

G.A.: Yes?

S.T.: You say something interesting after that in your book. There was a schizophrenic society in this country at that time. There was a tremendous frontier movement heading for the territory and a wildness too; there were heroism and brutality at the same time. So, there's schizophrenia involved here, too, in this one guy.

G.A.: The underlying passions that were disturbing the country had to do with slavery. That's one thing that Twain always had problems with, trying to put quite diverse elements together: on the one hand, the Southerner could be a gentleman and a man of distinction and of probity; on the other hand, he did hold slaves, beside often being enslaved himself by an exaggerated sense of honor.

S.T.: Coming back to one last thing. We'll have to end the hour with this, and that's Huck himself. We're so often told, and it is often the case, that a battered child becomes a battering parent. Huck had this brutal father who beat the hell out of him -- a brutal, ignorant lump -- and here's Huck, this kid with such radiance. How did that happen? How come he didn't become a brute? That's the question.

G.A.: Well, maybe chance -- chance or providence in the form of the special people that he was exposed to, the circumstances in which he lived. Also, because the father was such a drunken brute, he was often incompetent, literally unable to do anything, and so he just neglected Huck, who did have remarkable natural talents that he could draw upon if left somewhat to his own devices. He was a neglected child, and that saved him from certain kinds of abuse.

S.T.: That may save us eventually also. Maybe the incompetence of the barbarians may save us all. [Laughter.] That's a slender reed to bank on, though.

G.A.: I'm counting somewhat upon that on both sides of the Iron Curtain. A certain kind of incompetence around the world may help us all. [Laughter.]

S.T.: George, any postscript for now?

G.A.: Only one thing. I believe that the most serious question for us at this time is whether there are standards and principles which are not merely matters of opinion and to which we can look for guidance. That there are such standards is doubted by all too many intellectuals today. I suggest that there are standards and principles that have an enduring quality about them, standards and principles that reason can search out and establish well enough for us to act upon them.

S.T.: So, the circle is completed at this hour. That's what we started with -- you, your own standards and principles. George Anastaplo, thank you very much.