In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

"Mr. Thomas, how do you-all like your new so-cialized medicine?" Dylan, responding as usual more to her femininity than to the tone of her voice, began an enthusiastic paean in praise of the welfare state. The woman scarcely listened, but as he went on enumerating the many benefits, her breast began to heave, her face took on a look of agony, and her eyes darkened. "Why-!" she blurted out. "You don't know what you're talking about!" Dylan's face changed from amiability to ferocity. He had assumed she wanted a straightforward answer. Now she was telling him, who had lived under the program, that he didn't know what he was talking about. Elizabeth couldn't remember exactly what Dylan had then said to the woman. She did know that the first words were, "You bloody, fuckin' bitch -" which she said was followed by the most elegantly strung together sequence of obscenities she had ever heard uttered. The doctor's wife collapsed in tears onto her husband's starched white shirtfront. It was then that Dylan had come striding in to me to make his startling announcement. Thanks to the spontaneous response of Albrizzio, the party did not immediately crash about the heads of the unfortunate hosts. It merely dissolved into two factions. The doctors and their wives continued to occupy the living room, where I could see them through the archway, glasses in hand, undoubtedly conversing in the highly civilized manner of those who are firm in their convictions and know they are beyond reproach. The artistic coterie held forth in the dining room, drinkless, but with the food in their possession, which they gobbled in a loud and disorderly manner. The host and hostess moved back and forth between the two camps trying to appear as though nothing had happened. Of course they knew something had. For the next several years whenever I had a letter from Baldwin Maxwell it always referred, no matter how irrelevant the context, to some aspect of Dylan's visit. The next year, when both Lowell and I were away in Europe, Dylan returned for another tour ofAmerica, but he was not invited to appear at the University of Iowa. The artists and writers were the first to leave the party, but I can RAY B. WE S T, JR. 257 remember that it was a long, probably painful for the Maxwells, leave-taking in the entryway. Dylan demonstrated one of his "funny laughs." Elizabeth asked Cal to do this. He obliged. Georgia Maxwell said Baldwin had a funny laugh. Dylan looked at him. "He's doing it now," he said. I recall a remarkable look of relief on the face of Georgia Maxwell as the door finally closed behind us. Outside in my car, Lowell suggested that we all go to their apartment for a final drink. This was vetoed by Elizabeth, who at that time was watching carefully over Cal's health, seeing that he didn't drink too much and that he got enough sleep at night. I didn't hear it, but my wife told me afterward that Dylan muttered under his breath: "Don't break your jaw agreeing." In any case, we went home by ourselves and finished the evening off with the usual bottle or two of beer. Dylan was scheduled to fly the next morning from Cedar Rapids to San Francisco. Dylan knew no one in San Francisco, and I had tried without success to get in touch with Mark Schorer and Wallace Stegner, the only two people I knew in the Bay Area, to see if one of them could meet his plane. I did reach Brewster Ghiselin in Salt Lake City where the plane was to touch down, and asked him if he couldn't contact some of his California friends. He said he would and that he would also be at the plane when it stopped in Salt Lake if I thought that a good idea. I asked Dylan, whom I had shown Brewster's volume of poems, and he said he would like to meet him. Still, he dreaded the flight from Cedar Rapids. The morning he was to leave, he even forwent the usual beer, and I believe, although I am not sure, that he ate some solid food at breakfast. He did not take his pill. I particularly remember that, because I was hovering about the bathroom waiting to get in, when I heard Dylan's...

Share