I Feel Your Pain, Philip Wylie
Philip Wylie, 1950 / Photo by Joseph Steinmetz
In the summer of 1970, I wrote a letter to Philip Wylie, the author of Generation of Vipers. I first read the book in college, nearly two decades after it was published in 1942, but its vitriol informed my own growing sense of rebellion against the way things were. In his book, Wylie rants against what passed then for the American Way of Life, including the sanctity of motherhood and our belief that the US was as wholesome as apple pie.
His were the first words I read that uncompromisingly challenged my parent’s post-war conservative world. Like so many other youth coming of age in the tumultuous, but glorious sixties, I dropped out and tuned in. Like a migrating bird guided by the unseen network of earth’s magnetic fields, I left San Francisco to begin a three-year journey across the country that led to a remote log cabin in the southern Pennsylvania woods, where I lived close to the land with my wife and newborn son.
I don’t remember exactly what prompted me to write to Wylie. It might have been to tell him how much I resonated with his book. That it had, in part, inspired me to leave the city and get back to basics where I could live the life I wanted. I probably mentioned that my son’s birth was a planned home delivery, that my wife was breastfeeding, that I heated with wood, that I was an artist, my wife a potter. I felt virtuous, in harmony with everything and everyone. I sent the letter to Wiley’s publisher. I never expected to get a reply.
A few weeks later, his letter arrived, postmarked Miami, Florida.
In it, Wylie thanked me for writing, but went on to warn me not to expect the world to change. He complained that resentment against his book had plagued his days since Vipers was published—and for what, he wanted to know. Nothing had changed in his lifetime. Additionally, because of his book’s notoriety, his daughter, Karen Pryor, who had championed breast-feeding in the early sixties through her books and lectures aimed at new mothers, was singled out, and received death threats for her views. In the end, I don’t recall that he actually wrote the words, It doesn’t pay to fight the system, but that’s what he meant.
I was shocked. I felt disappointed and disheartened. Instead of encouragement, Wylie essentially told me to straighten up and fly right, something my parents had been telling me to do my whole life. I threw the letter away. Wylie died a year later. Undaunted, I continued on my path.
A few weeks ago, for the first time in fifty-two years, I began to think about Wylie’s letter and regretted not keeping it. I would have liked to read it again to see if I may have overlooked some mention of hope Wylie had included so I wouldn’t despair, that, perhaps in his wisdom, he might have let me down more gently, and I just don’t remember. Yet, I doubt it would matter any more, even if I found a smattering of hope contained in his letter.
In this, my eightieth year of life, I have come to realize, like Wylie may have at the end of his life, that little has changed despite my best efforts to make a difference. And, that’s okay with me. I could not have remained silent, regardless of whether anyone listened or not. Nevertheless, I can understand how Wylie must have felt. After all of these years, I feel your pain, Philip Wylie, but I am not yet defeated.
In order to cope these days, I remind myself of a passage from the Tao Te Ching: “The universe is forever out of [our] control and trying to dominate events goes against the current of the Tao.”
Therein lies my hope.
—Stephen Newton