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bottles. Clokey and Ike hurried to help themselves.

"I think you’re unfair to Lance, Lois," said Toohey. "Why shouldn’t he write an

autobiography?"

"Because his life wasn’t worth living, let alone recording."

"Ah, but that is precisely why I made it a bestseller."

"You’re telling me?"

"I like to tell someone."

There were many comfortable chairs around him, but Toohey preferred to remain on

the floor. He rolled over to his stomach, propping his torso upright on his

elbows, and he lolled, pleasurably, switching his weight from elbow to elbow,

his legs spread out in a wide fork on the carpet. He seemed to enjoy

unrestraint.

"I like to tell someone. Next month I’m pushing the autobiography of a

small-town dentist who’s really a remarkable person--because there’s not a

single remarkable day in his life nor sentence in his book. You’ll like it,

Lois. Can you imagine a solid bromide undressing his soul as if it were a

revelation?"

"The little people," said Ike tenderly. "I love the little people. We must love

the little people of this earth."

"Save that for your next play," said Toohey.

"I can’t," said Ike. "It’s in this one."

"What’s the big idea, Ellsworth?" snapped Clokey.

"Why, it’s simple, Lance. When the fact that one is a total nonentity who’s done

nothing more outstanding than eating, sleeping and chatting with neighbors

becomes a fact worthy of pride, of announcement to the world and of diligent

study by millions of readers--the fact that one has built a cathedral becomes

unrecordable and unannounceable. A matter of perspectives and relativity. The

distance permissible between the extremes of any particular capacity is limited.

The sound perception of an ant does not include thunder."

"You talk like a decadent bourgeois, Ellsworth," said Gus Webb.

"Pipe down, Sweetie-pie," said Toohey without resentment.

"It’s all very wonderful," said Lois Cook, "except that you’re doing too well,

Ellsworth. You’ll run me out of business. Pretty soon if I still want to be

noticed, I’ll have to write something that’s actually good."

"Not in this century, Lois," said Toohey. "And perhaps not in the next. It’s

later than you think."

"But you haven’t said...!" Ike cried suddenly, worried.

"What haven’t I said?"

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"You haven’t said who’s going to produce my play!"

"Leave that to me," said Jules Fougler.

"I forgot to thank you, Ellsworth," said Ike solemnly. "So now I thank you.

There are lots of bum plays, but you picked mine. You and Mr. Fougler."

"Your bumness is serviceable, Ike."

"Well, that’s something."

"It’s a great deal."

"How--for instance?"

"Don’t talk too much, Ellsworth," said Gus Webb. "You’ve got a talking jag."

"Shut your face, Kewpie-doll. I like to talk. For instance, Ike? Well, for

instance, suppose I didn’t like Ibsen--"

"Ibsen is good," said Ike.

"Sure he’s good, but suppose I didn’t like him. Suppose I wanted to stop people

from seeing his plays. It would do me no good whatever to tell them so. But if I

sold them the idea that you’re just as great as Ibsen--pretty soon they wouldn’t

be able to tell the difference."

"Jesus, can you?"

"It’s only an example, Ike."

"But it would be wonderful!"

"Yes. It would be wonderful. And then it wouldn’t matter what they went to see

at all. Then nothing would matter--neither the writers nor those for whom they

wrote."

"How’s that Ellsworth?"

"Look, Ike, there’s no room in the theater for both Ibsen and you. You do

understand that, don’t you?"

"In a manner of speaking--yes."

"Well, you do want me to make room for you, don’t you?"

"All of this useless discussion has been covered before and much better," said

Gus Webb. "Shorter. I believe in functional economy."

"Where’s it covered, Gus?" asked Lois Cook.

"’Who had been nothing shall be all,’ sister."

"Gus is crude, but deep," said Ike. "I like him."

"Go to hell," said Gus.

Lois Cook’s butler entered the room. He was a stately, elderly man and he wore

417

full-dress evening clothes. He announced Peter Keating.

"Pete?" said Lois Cook gaily. "Why, sure, shove him in, shove him right in."

Keating entered and stopped, startled, when he saw the gathering.

"Oh...hello, everybody," he said bleakly. "I didn’t know you had company, Lois."

"That’s not company. Come in, Pete, sit down, grab yourself a drink, you know

everybody."

"Hello, Ellsworth," said Keating, his eyes resting on Toohey for support.

Toohey waved his hand, scrambled to his feet and settled down in an armchair,

crossing his legs gracefully. Everybody in the room adjusted himself

automatically to a sudden control: to sit straighter, to bring knees together,

to pull in a relaxed mouth. Only Gus Webb remained stretched as before.

Keating looked cool and handsome, bringing into the unventilated room the

freshness of a walk through cold streets. But he was pale, and his movements

were slow, tired.

"Sorry if I intrude, Lois," he said. "Had nothing to do and felt so damn lonely,

thought I’d drop in." He slurred over the word "lonely," throwing it away with a

self-deprecatory smile. "Damn tired of Neil Dumont and the bunch. Wanted more

uplifting company--sort of spiritual food, huh?"

"I’m a genius," said Ike. "I’ll have a play on Broadway. Me and Ibsen. Ellsworth

said so."

"Ike has just read his new play to us," said Toohey. "A magnificent piece of

work."

"You’ll love it, Peter," said Lancelot Clokey. "It’s really great."

"It is a masterpiece," said Jules Fougler. "I hope you will prove yourself

worthy of it, Peter. It is the kind of play that depends upon what the members

of the audience are capable of bringing with them into the theater. If you are

one of those literal-minded people, with a dry soul and a limited imagination,

it is not for you. But if you are a real human being with a big, big heart full

of laughter, who has preserved the uncorrupted capacity of his childhood for

pure emotion--you will find it an unforgettable experience."

"Except as ye become as little children ye shall not enter the Kingdom of

Heaven," said Ellsworth Toohey.

"Thanks, Ellsworth," said Jules Fougler. "That will be the lead of my review."

Keating looked at Ike, at the others, his eyes eager. They all seemed remote and

pure, far above him in the safety of their knowledge, but their faces had hints

of smiling warmth, a benevolent invitation extended downward.

Keating drank the sense of their greatness, that spiritual food he sought in

common here, and felt himself rising through them. They saw their greatness made

real by him. A circuit was established in the room and the circle closed.

Everybody was conscious of that, except Peter Keating.

#

Ellsworth Toohey came out in support of the cause of modern architecture.

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In the past ten years, while most of the new residences continued to be built as

faithful historical copies, the principles of Henry Cameron had won the field of

commercial structures: the factories, the office buildings, the skyscrapers. It

was a pale, distorted victory; a reluctant compromise that consisted of omitting

columns and pediments, allowing a few stretches of wall to remain naked,

apologizing for a shape--good through accident--by finishing it off with an edge

of simplified Grecian volutes. Many stole Cameron’s forms; few understood his

thinking. The sole part of his argument irresistible to the owners of new

structures was financial economy; he won to that extent.

In the countries of Europe, most prominently in Germany, a new school of

building had been growing for a long time: it consisted of putting up four walls

and a flat top over them, with a few openings. This was called new architecture.

The freedom from arbitrary rules, for which Cameron had fought, the freedom that

imposed a great new responsibility on the creative builder, became mere

elimination of all effort, even the effort of mastering historical styles. It

became a rigid set of new rules--the discipline of conscious incompetence,

creative poverty made into a system, mediocrity boastfully confessed.

"A building creates its own beauty, and its ornament is derived from the rules

of its theme and its structure," Cameron had said. "A building needs no beauty,

no ornament and no theme," said the new architects. It was safe to say it.

Cameron and a few men had broken the path and paved it with their lives. Other

men, of whom there were greater numbers, the men who had been safe in copying

the Parthenon, saw the danger and found a way to security: to walk Cameron’s

path and make it lead them to a new Parthenon, an easier Parthenon in the shape

of a packing crate of glass and concrete. The palm tree had broken through; the

fungus came to feed on it, to deform it, to hide it, to pull it back into the

common jungle.

The jungle found its words.

In "One Small Voice," subtitled "I Swim with the Current," Ellsworth Toohey

wrote:

#

"We have hesitated for a long time to acknowledge the powerful phenomenon known

as Modern Architecture. Such caution is requisite in anyone who stands in the

position of mentor to the public taste. Too often, isolated manifestations of

anomaly can be mistaken for a broad popular movement, and one should be careful

not to ascribe to them a significance they do not deserve. But Modern

Architecture has stood the test of time, has answered a demand of the masses,

and we are glad to salute it.

"It is not amiss to offer a measure of recognition to the pioneers of this

movement, such as the late Henry Cameron. Premonitory echoes of the new grandeur

can be found in some of his work. But like all pioneers he was still bound by

the inherited prejudices of the past, by the sentimentality of the middle class

from which he came. He succumbed to the superstition of beauty and ornament,

even though the ornament was of his own devising, and, consequently, inferior to

that of established historical forms.

"It remained for the power of a broad, collective movement to bring Modern

Architecture to its full and true expression. Now it can be seen--growing

throughout the world--not as a chaos of individual fancies, but as a cohesive,

organized discipline which makes severe demands upon the artist, among them the

demand to subordinate himself to the collective nature of his craft.

419

"The rules of this new architecture have been formulated by the vast process of

popular creation. They are as strict as the rules of Classicism. They demand

unadorned simplicity--like the honesty of the unspoiled common man. Just as in

the passing age of international bankers every building had to have an

ostentatious cornice, so now the coming age ordains that every building have a

flat roof. Just as the imperialist era of humanity required that every house

have corner windows--symbol of the sunshine distributed equally to all.

"The discriminating will see the social significance eloquent in the forms of

this new architecture. Under the old system of exploitation, the most useful

social elements--the workers--were never permitted to realize their importance;

their practical functions were kept hidden and disguised; thus a master had his

servants dressed up in fancy gold-braided livery. This was reflected in the

architecture of the period: the functional elements of a building--its doors,

windows, stairways--were hidden under the scrolls of pointless ornamentation.

But in a modern building, it is precisely these useful elements--symbols of

toil--that come starkly in the open. Do we not hear in this the voice of a new

world where the worker shall come into his own?

"As the best example of Modern Architecture in America, we call to your

attention the new plant of the Bassett Brush Company, soon to be completed. It

is a small building, but in its modest proportions it embodies all the grim

simplicity of the new discipline and presents an invigorating example of the

Grandeur of the Little. It was designed by Augustus Webb, a young architect of

great promise."

#

Meeting Toohey a few days later, Peter Keating asked, disturbed:

"Say, Ellsworth, did you mean it?"

"What?"

"About modern architecture."

"Of course I meant it. How did you like my little piece?"

"Oh, I thought it was very beautiful. Very convincing. But say, Ellsworth,

why...why did you pick Gus Webb? After all, I’ve done some modernistic things in

the last few years. The Palmer Building was quite bare, and the Mowry Building

was nothing but roof and windows, and the Sheldon Warehouse was..."

"Now, Peter, don’t be a hog. I’ve done pretty well by you, haven’t I? Let me

give somebody else a boost once in a while."

At a luncheon where he had to speak on architecture, Peter Keating stated:

"In reviewing my career to date, I came to the conclusion that I have worked on

a true principle: the principle that constant change is a necessity of life.

Since buildings are an indispensable part of life, it follows that architecture

must change constantly. I have never developed any architectural prejudices for

myself, but insisted on keeping my mind open to all the voices of the times. The

fanatics who went around preaching that all structures must be modern were just