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186 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
economic theories of Sylvio Gesell, but the effect was lost among
the ads for gents' underwear and Scotch whiskey.
Gingrich's fad for the moderns did not last long, and he switched
to cartoons and luscious photographs. A clever employee grabbed
this idea, and now Playboy outstrips its immodest parent. Ezra has
suggested that I go after Gingrich and try to get him back into the
fold, but it is unlikely that he would choose to go back to literature
at this late date.
Ezra founded a short-lived magazine in Italian, L'Indice, and
advertised in the Genoese press for Italian writers, with little success.
His efforts to rouse his countrymen from their seemingly
hopeless state of mental torpor were not confined to the young. He
wrote to his old English professor, Dr. Felix E. Schelling, at the
University of Pennsylvania:
"Dear Doc Schelling,
As one of the most completely intolerant men I have ever met,
the joke is on you if you expected to teach anyone liberality. As
for my being embittered, it won't wash; everybody who comes near
me marvels at my good nature. Besides, what does it matter to me
personally? I don't get scratched by it, but the howls of pain that
reach me from the pore bastids that are screwed down under it
and who have no outlet, save in final desperation writing to someone
in Europe . . . I have never objected to any man's mediocrity,
it is the idiotic fear that a certain type of mediocrity has in
the presence of any form of the real. And the terror of newspaper
owners, professors, editors, etc. in the presence of idea. I have
documents stacked high, from men in most walks of life. Proved
over and over again. No intellectual life in the univs. No truth in
the press. Refusal to look at fact. It is nonsense to talk about my
being embittered. I've got so much plus work going on that I have
difficulty in remembering what particular infamy I wrote you
about. . . . What little life has been kept in American letters
has been largely due to a few men getting out of the muck and
keeping the poor devils who couldn't at least informed. . . . You
ain't so old but what you wouldn't wake up. And you are too
respected and respectable for it to be any real risk. They can't