Quickly (25 January 1956)
The Village Voice, 25 January 1956; transcription provided by Jerry Lucas; proofread against the source 2026-06-01.
Column Three
Here is the diversion I promised.
COMMUNIQUES FROM THE MARSH MEDIA
ED SULLEN-VAIN on C’s of B. S.
Tonight, I want you to meet a great American, a clean cut boy. One of our up and coming champions in the next uh… Olympics… A fellow who has overcome the heartbreaking and… crippling handicap of early success, I mean a great fellow… A very well-neat.. That is a very well-knit prince of an American-type who has promised in the international sports and athletic competitions. Which we all call the Olympic Games… That is, he has promised to bring us back the Bongo Board Championship from the Iron curtains… I am happy and privileged to introduce Mr. Lightning on the Bongo Board… that pride to our flag… Norman Mailer????
CHEDDAR CHOPPER in the N. Y. Daily Nose
… I wish some of the uninformed and downright sinister elements which still exist in our cleaned-up and happy movie colony would realize that they don’t have to keep on buying all those novels by novelists with dirty fingernails. Those fancy New York publishers have been giving snow-jobs to the weaker element out here. Why there’s enough talent in this town to write “The Caine Mystery” fifty times a year.
WAX BURNER in the N. Y. Homely
On my recent exclusive lecture trip for this newspaper, I had the opportunity to talk to hundreds of stimulating young faces in the latest college generation. To generalize too quickly on what I learned, and I have learned so much, would be inadequate and would tend to blur the lights and shadows of the psychological and sociological nuances and shadings I have been exploring. However, briefly, crudely, despite all the contradictions and fascinating cross-currents, I would say that the new American college generation is not rebellious, iconoclastic, cynical, and destructive, but rather shows an encouraging health, maturity, and intrinsic integration. The young people I met on my talks are Anti-Fascist, Anti-Marxist, Anti-Republican, Anti-Nihilist and Anti-Pacifist. Yet they await the war with no calm equanimity. They show an informed interest in getting married. They are frank in their lack of fear or sex. On the other hand they are not not-afraid of sex. They realize it can be abused. I have been encouraged by all the signs I have seen of the continuing earnest, serious, liberal, and essential individuation of the people’s spirit which was refracted, no matter how imperfectly, everywhere I traveled. So, modestly, tentatively, I await the future with informed confidence.
LEARNED LIONS in the N. Y. Homely
I was walking through Central Park with my family when we saw the Hon. Prime Minister Emeritus of England feeding a sparrow at the Tavern-on-the-Green. “How do you do again, Mr. Churchill,” I said, and he answered with his famous smile: “Nonsense, Learned, call me Winnie. Why I remember when we were boys together, and you used to borrow puffs on my old cigar.”
VOLTAIRE VEIN-CHILL in the N. Y. Daily Rimmer
Jail to you, Mr. and Mrs. Erotica and all the flips on Tea. Several solovisions down in Greenwich Village where they put two holes in the doughnuts for the perverts are putting out a monthly rag called “Village Vices.” Playwright Norman Miller—he scripted “Naked to the Death”—now Svengaling those hammy hermits into Poverty Row where there are NO holes in the doughnuts!!!
DOROTHY KILL-TALENT in the N. Y. Churlish-American
If the real sordid story behind the dangerous growth of that new Greenwich, Conn., weekly, the Village “VOICES,” were ever to be told, it would put me in jail for libel!!
NICHE TOUCHEE in the Village Void
Smash the television sets! Beat the brains out of conformity, beat them into the beauty of little birds’ wings. Yet show all honor to those who refuse to pose with their fingers in their nose forever. So I will make the humble hesitating gesture of joining Humbly Ad’s campaign train where the beautiful speeches are beautified, and let us start Poets-for-Stevenson!