There is now no telling what Desperate Scenery contained in 1948 - when Paul
delivered the book to his publisher - as distinct from the contents of the book as
published after Paul (with Saxe Commins’s editorial assistance) revised it in 1953.
It is possible that typescript also involving Elliot’s time in Boise and at the
Arrowrock Dam was delivered at one time or the other, but sheared from the pages to be
published - "Boise and Arrowrock will have their places in another volume of these
Items."1 The story elements, involving Elliot only
marginally except as an observer or assistant, seem the most likely to have been invented;
in any event they carry the thematic burden of the narrative. (Paul seems to have
developed at least as early as Linden
on the Saugus Branch this method of translating and externalizing more personal
experience; it shows the blocked novelist rechanneling himself through
"autobiography.") Once again Paul shows his interest in what creates
"community," especially as in the West - unlike Ibiza, France, New England or
Kentucky - there is no historical and cultural inertia. But here for the first time in the
"Items" series, the community is personal relationships. The burden of Desperate
Scenery is that faith, and faithfulness - if sometimes a helpless love (whether
consummated or not) against which society erects barriers - constitute the social bond and
that these are sufficiently sustainable and sustained to justify one’s own faith in
mankind. These are matters on which Paul may well have been dwelling in the months before
abandoning his fourth wife - and their child in 1948.
On the train to Pocatello, Idaho, from Louisville, young Elliot meets two young ladies
and a young man, of varying backgrounds, who become friends, and whose experiences allow
the book to fill out the possibilities of the West for ardent youth. One, Belva Capwell, a
"Jack Mormon," or backslider, from Utah, is going to work in the Riverview
Hotel, to which she introduces Elliot. Elizabeth Wong, from Texas, works for "free
China," raising funds for Sun Wen (Sun-Yat-Sen)’s Republic in the Chinese
communities of the West. Her ingenuousness is matched by the trust of others. (Elliot
promptly falls in love with her.) Wilfred Heron, a bizarre collegian, the only son of
wealthy parents who send him a monthly allowance,
might be a poet or a problem, or both. He... wore a black raised skull-cap like an
inverted dish with a one-inch rim, and a dull black broadcloth robe that was pressed and
spotless. He was carrying a slim straight staff that reached the level of his chest....
topped with a very beautiful blue stone. "Polyhedron crystal from the Andes."
Wilfred is "a disciple of Spinoza," and he is going to Reno, Nevada for the
Jeffries-Johnson fight, to "replenish my funds" by betting on the black man.
That he does, and returns to Idaho to give his faithful friends the winnings on the stakes
with which they have ingenuously entrusted him. He had seemed to be right out of Herman
Melville’s The Confidence Man, but "NO TRUST"
is not this book’s theme tune. On arriving in Pocatello, Elliot meets Oscar Rydvall,
wandering violinist, who completes the group, providing him with a particular friend, one
who will join him, making music, sharing confidences, and working on the U.S.
Government’s new Jackson Lake Dam project across the state line in Wyoming.2
Just as Desperate Scenery lays down its faithful friends, so there are prime
examples of lack of trust, the harm it can do (unless averted by the more benign), and the
betrayal of humanity that it constitutes - on the young
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persons’ arrival in Pocatello, a zealous authority arrests Elizabeth Wong on
suspicion that she is a California Chinese hooker; a comically-presented Food and Drug
Commissioner, insists that no-one take short weight even though the community has got by
happily on rougher measures for years; the government requires every order for the new dam
in quadruplicate with self-defeating rules about tendering. Paul’s altruistic theme
is like Stephen Vincent Benet’s in "The Devil and Daniel Webster." Lack of
trust is collusion with the forces of evil; trust is productive and healthy.
Elliot and Oscar stay for a time in Ashton, where he boards with the Mormon family of
Nephi Coleman. Before the dam-workers leave for Jackson Lake, Coleman’s wife Altha
falls for Oscar and they engage in rapturous love-making. She "had spiritual stature
enough to sustain her own repentance," and by keeping her peace about her infidelity,
Altha paradoxically wins the author’s praise as a model of higher faith.3
The narrative is replete with sub-plots about the faith of women - including manly
women and womenly men. There is "The Dilly" (or "Miss Hat"), who helps
two girls who have been beaten escape from the Reform School, herself in love with one of
them, and risks everything for them. The chef Fritz’s homosexual passion for his
assistant Walter nearly gets him murdered. Both he and The Dilly (and her protegées) are
rescued by Elliot and others as a - quite unlikely, as realism - acknowledgement of the
intensity of their passion, which to a lesser or greater degree scandalises society but
without risking which there would be no social bonding at all. A repressed society would
lose much else beside. These are "Winter’s Tales," as is the practical joke
played on the trusting boss carpenter, Abe Johnson, whose good faith is practiced upon, as
a result of which he organises out of misplaced compassion a large and quite unnecessary
loan. So awed are the pranksters by Abe’s trustfulness that they thenceforward
pretend that the need for a loan was not a joke. Honest human nature triumphs, unknown to
itself. The hunter McCaffrey has suffered from exposure and injuries and as a result
cannot return to Boise, where he is assumed to be dead. He worries all winter about
whether his wife is being faithful to him,
The [other] patients would lounge in the front office... and when the door was open
into McCaffrey’s room, would tell about experiences they had had or heard about,
involving wives whose husbands were away, and especially about wives who had quarrelled
with their husbands [as had McCaffrey’s] just before the latter had departed There
were endless discussions of the nature of women, what proportion were chaste, those who
had been born wanton, and the thousands or millions in between. Doc was asked all sorts of
questions in that field, as to how long a lively woman can go, unmated, without having a
nervous breakdown.4
In the event, it turns out that Flossie McCaffrey had scalded herself and was perforce
chaste all through the period when McCaffrey is missing, presumed dead. And finally there
is the torch that Elliot carries all winter for Elizabeth Wong, which is left burning at
the book’s conclusion, and promised by Paul to have a conclusion in a further
instalment which, whether it was drafted or not, never appeared.
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