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168 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
ideas in rebuttal of the other man's ideas in the belief that the best
ideas should win. I do not say that they do, but they should. At any
rate, after three numbers, The Enemy retired from the contest.
The second number of The Exile was published by Pascal Covici
in Chicago. The first issue had been printed in Dijon by Maurice
Darantiere, who had printed Ulysses and other avant-garde works.
Ezra decided that he might find a larger public in the United States
if he had the magazine printed there. Samuel Putnam put him in
touch with Covici, who was willing to take a flyer on its prospects.
He printed the second, third and fourth issues. The expected number
of subscribers did not materialize, and that was the end of The
Exile.
The Autumn, 1927 issue also contained a prose piece by Robert
McAlmon, a description of the Paris Bohemia entitled "Truer
Than Most Accounts". It had been written in 1922, and McAlmon
gave it to Pound. He later asked that it be returned, but Pound
held onto it, and five years later, was able to print it. Pound also
included perhaps the only surviving chapter from Joe Gould's
Oral History of the World, which had been sent on at the instigation
of E. E. Cummings. Pound commented, "Mr. Joe Gould's
prose style is uneven."
The third issue of The Exile, dated Spring, 1928, contained
poems by William Butler Yeats, Louis Zukofsky and Pound. There
was also the concluding chapter of a long story by John Rodker.
On the magazine's title page was the bold motto "Res Publica—
the public convenience."
Pound appended a long list of editorial suggestions, containing
such pointed items as the following:
"3. All bureaucrats should be drowned. All interference in
human affairs by people paid to interfere ought to be stopped."
"5. Le style c'est homme. Knowledge of this simple fact would
have saved us from Woodie Wilson."
"6. All officials in the State dept. ought to be vacuum-cleaned."
Pound antedated Joe McCarthy's assault on the State Department
by more than two decades. Despite this warning, no improvements
were made until the lad from Wisconsin came onto the