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By Root 689 0

London, Vinnie has a bad conscience about her profession. The success of children’s literature as a field of study—her own success—has an unpleasant side to it. At times she feels as if she were employed in enclosing what was once open heath or common. First she helped to build a barbed-wire fence about the field; then she helped to pull apart the wild flowers that grow there in order to examine them scientifically. Ordinarily she comforts herself with the thought that her own touch is so light and respectful as to do little harm, but when she has to sit by and watch people like Maria Jones and Dr. Smithers dissecting the Queen Anne’s lace and wrenching the pink campion up by its roots, she feels contaminated by association.

Smithers now figuratively spreads out his collection of dead flowers, pours a final slow molasses-jug full of clichés over them, and sits down looking self-satisfied. The discussion period begins; earnest persons rise and in assorted accents direct self-promoting speeches disguised as questions to the panel members. Vinnie yawns behind her hand; then she unobtrusively opens the latest New York Review of Books, bought at Dillon’s on her way to the symposium. She smiles at one of the caricatures; then she receives an unpleasant shock. On the facing page, in a prominent position, is the announcement of a collection of essays entitled Unpopular Opinions, by L. D. Zimmern, whom she hasn’t thought of for weeks.

She is startled too by the accompanying photograph, which doesn’t at all resemble the figure in her imagination, the victim of polar bears and the Great Plague. Zimmern is older than she has pictured him, thin and angular rather than heavy, and not bald—indeed, he has more hair than necessary, including a short dark pointed beard. His semi-smile is ironic, verging on scornful or pained.

But it doesn’t matter what Zimmern actually looks like. What matters is that he is about to publish, probably already has published, a book that is almost certain to contain his awful Atlantic article. This disgusting book, available both in hard cover and in paperback, is at this very moment in bookshops all over the United States, lying in wait for anyone who might come in. It will be—or has already been—widely reviewed; it will be—or has been—purchased by every large public and university library in the country. Presently it will be catalogued, and shelved, and borrowed, and read. It will shove its sneering way even into Elledge Library at Corinth. Later, probably, there will be an English edition, and possibly—especially if he is one of those awful post-structuralists—a French edition, a German edition . . . The hideous possibilities are endless.

Vinnie feels a sour, burning pain beneath her ribs, the gift of L. D. Zimmern. To relieve it she tries to picture him as a child among the instant children here: an unpopular child, scorned and persecuted by the others. But the scene won’t come clear. She can transport Zimmern to London University mentally, but she is unable to make him young. Persistently fixed in sour middle age, he stands by the deserted speakers’ table glancing round condescendingly at the roomful of riotous children, including or especially Vinnie.

And even if she could imagine another suitably sticky end for Zimmern, she thinks, what’s the point? This violent fantasizing is unhealthy; also useless. There is no way Vinnie can actually revenge herself; no forum for her except magazines like Children’s Literature that Zimmern and his colleagues will never see. She can’t even complain to her friends any longer, not after so many months—it would make her seem neurotic, obsessed.

Besides, Vinnie is reluctant to relate her troubles at any time. She believes that talking about what’s gone wrong in one’s life is dangerous; that it sets up a magnetic force field which repels good luck and attracts bad. If she persists in her complaints, all the slings and arrows and screws and nails and needles of outrageous fortune that are lurking about will home in on her. Most of her friends will be driven away, repelled