Sections Above and Below This Page:

from friends, never from strangers, because these individuals were sincere and had no other way of participating in what Emmett and the rest were doing.

It was only after he sent the money back to the West Coast and was getting ready to return there himself that Emmett was invited to the conference in England by its London organizers. From the moment he found out the details of "The Dialectics of Liberation," Emmett felt he had a responsibility to attend because the forum was packed solid with hard-core-radical-political careerists, headlined by Stokely Carmichael, and including John Gerassi, Paul Goodman and Herbert Marcuse whom Emmett regarded with a respect he holds for few men. Also in attendance and representing their various fields of endeavor were the brilliant, vanguard psychiatrist, R.D. Laing; ecologist and student of mammals, Gregory Bateson; poet, scribe and the kind of good person that is hard to find, Allen Ginsberg.

He was the only one invited, however, to lay out what was going down among the young people for whom he apparently was selected as representative. So Emmett decided he had to go, but he didn't have any money or means to get there since he'd already mailed nearly all of what he had back to San Francisco. He was standing in Greenwich Village's Sheridan Square at the time, right in front of the Village Voice newspaper offices, and that was just about the only reason he had for entering and asking the receptionist if he could please speak with the publisher.

"Is he expecting you?"

"No, but it's an important personal matter, you understand. Just ring him up 'n tell him Grogan, Emmett Grogan, from San Francisco's here to see him, and I'm sure everything'll work out."

The secretary did just that, and, when she put down the phone, she told him that Mr. Edwin Fancher, the publisher, would see him in a few moments, as soon as he was finished with whatever had him occupied. Then she asked Emmett with a phony, rich-man's-daughter shyness, "Is it true?"

"Is what true, pretty lady?"

"That part in the Ramparts story--did you really get away with the meat after the butcher hit you over the head?"

"No."

"No?"

"No. Sorry. Next time I'll try harder. Just for you."

A jovial man whose looks Emmett immediately forgot came forward [end page 418]