#maclean's magazine

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"During the winter of 1918–19, Ottawa was rattled by the extreme rhetoric it was hearing from some of the country’s labour leaders. Police spies were sending in alarmist reports that unions were seething with revolutionary discontent. In response, the government set in motion a campaign of counter-propaganda to discredit the Reds. Chief press censor Ernest Chambers routinely fed information gleaned from police reports to members of the print media. Chambers kept his eyes peeled for anti-Red articles in the daily press so that he could dash off a letter offering the author more inflammatory information about the present danger. He did his best to orchestrate a comprehensive propaganda campaign, involving the press, university professors, service clubs, churches, even movies, all fuelled by information of the right type provided by his department. In January he wrote to the presidents of several major universities asking that they makes speeches or write articles exposing the fallacies of “extreme red Socialism and Bolshevism.” At the same time, he warned against revealing the existence of this anti-Red campaign. “Were the agitators conducting this propaganda able to plead that they are being made the subject of organized attack,” he wrote the president of the University of Toronto, Sir Robert Falconer, “it would aid them tremendously in their campaign with the disaffected.” (Falconer wrote back declining the invitation to take part in Chambers’ campaign: “If prices could be kept down and employment could be assured,” he told the censor, “I think many of our immediate troubles could be quickly surmounted.”)

The kind of information Chambers wanted to disseminate could be found in the Canadian Annual Review of Public Affairs, published by J. Castell Hopkins, a prolific author of popular biographies and encyclopedias. Hopkins’ portrait of the Soviet Union under Bolshevik rule exemplified the mixture of misinformation, fear, and smug middle-class superiority which fuelled anti-Red hysteria in Canada. “In Russia,” he told his readers, “disorganization, starvation, individual license, robbery, brutal crime, the over-throw of social laws and religious influence and ordered government, wholesale immorality, were natural products of the rule of men who were ignorant of all but wild theories nursed in malignant or disordered minds.” For Hopkins, Bolshevism simply meant “wholesale pillage and the murder of the classes owning money or property.” Things were better under the tsars, he said; at least the Romanovs were honest and meant well. The Bolsheviks were terrorists who roused the basest instincts in the Russian masses and rode them to power. Life in Russia, he told his readers, had become a living hell. There was no free speech, no democracy, no private property, only terror, mass executions, and torture,

including mutilations of all kinds, slow starvation, burning alive, piercing with bayonets [...], deliberate breaking of arms and legs, stamping on wounded living bodies with hob-nailed boots, nailing officers’ shoulder straps to their bodies, thrusting of gramophone needles through finger nails, blinding in most brutal forms.

Hopkins’ list of bizarre atrocities was reminiscent of the most extreme anti-German propaganda during the war, now turned against a new enemy, the Bolshevik.

Implicit in Hopkins’ overheated prose was a warning to his Canadian readers: This could happen here. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and other socialists preached a form of class warfare every bit as frightening as their Russian counterparts, he said. Working under the cover of the One Big Union and organizations such as the Social Democratic Party, they intended to destabilize the economic situation with general strikes and exploit the chaos to seize power from the government. According to Hopkins, this was no theoretical danger. “At the end of 1918 there were 21 Soviets established in the country awaiting for action,” he announced, without any evidence whatsoever.

One powerful institution that shared the concern about the insidious threat of Bolshevism was the Canadian Pacific Railway. In the fall of 1918, John Murray Gibbon, CPR publicist, broached the subject with filmmaker George Brownridge. Gibbon was one of the country’s leading intellectuals. A graduate of Oxford University and an experienced journalist, he had joined the CPR’s London operations in 1907 and had moved to the company’s Montreal head office just before the war. He was not only an ambassador for the railway but, as author and festival impresario, he was an energetic promoter of Canadian culture as well. The CPR had a problem with Bolsheviks stirring up its workers, Gibbon told Brownridge, and he thought that the film industry could do something about it. During the war Brownridge had established a studio, Canadian National Features, in Trenton, Ontario, where he managed to make two feature films before going broke. Neither of those films was ever released, but the indefatigable Brownridge was back in business at Trenton two years later as the Adanac Producing Company (the name is Canada spelled backwards) and eager to attract corporate support from the likes of the CPR.

After talking to Gibbon, Brownridge, armed with a suitable script about a Red plot to take over a trade union, came back to the railway for financial help. Eventually the CPR and several other large employers did put up the money. CPR president Edward Beatty made his position clear in a letter that he wrote to journalist and president of the Canadian Reconstruction Association, John Willison.

Of course there can be no doubt that from one end of the country to the other an effort must be made to stamp out this extreme socialism which practically amounts to disloyalty…

Brownridge began work on his film, called The Great Shadow and starring Tyrone Power Sr. The film was directed by Harley Knoles, who had just completed another anti-Red feature in the United States called Bolshevism on Trial co-starring his Canadian-born wife Pinna Nesbitt. The final script of the new film included most of the elements of Red Scare melodrama: vicious Bolsheviks determined to destroy society by setting one class against another; a handsome secret service agent to provide love interest; a fairminded employer who only wants what is best for his workers; and a “responsible” labour leader who must wage a life-and-death struggle to keep his union free of extremism. The Great Shadow was one of several Red Scare features to appear at this time in Canada and the US. The newest forms of popular entertainment were not ignored when it came to combatting the threat of Bolshevism. The film was finished too late to influence opinion during the crucial spring of 1919, but when it did reach the screen in the late fall it met with widespread critical praise. Unfortunately, no copy has survived.

Another busy scaremonger was Charles Cahan. In January Cahan, whose extreme views had managed to alienate most of his support in the federal Cabinet, resigned from his job as director of public safety. He had failed to convince the government to create a secret service modelled on the American Bureau of Investigation, and with his departure the entire Public Safety Branch was abolished after just three months in operation. In a letter to Prime Minister Borden, Cahan explained that,

I tried in vain, after your departure [for Europe], to obtain a hearing from your colleagues; but they treated my representations with such contemptuous indifference, that there was for me no alternative but to retire quietly and await events.

In Cahan’s view, the ultimate aim of the “Reds” was to “kick the Government off Parliament Hill.”

Cahan had no intention of retiring quietly; far from it. He continued to speak out at every opportunity about the Bolshevik threat, and one of his speeches, “Socialistic Propaganda in Canada,” was printed as a pamphlet and had wide distribution. In it, he summarized the four main doctrines of “International Socialism” as he understood them. First of all, class warfare between workers and capitalists caused “envy and hatred of all who have acquired property of any kind whatsoever.” Second, the state acquired ownership of all means of production and responsibility for all social relationships. Third, only the interests of workers had any importance. And last, the capitalist class was stripped of all possessions. Propaganda in favour of these views was flooding the western world, said Cahan. In Canada it was mainly the IWW that was fomenting class warfare, especially among the large “alien” population. If this was allowed to continue, he warned, there would be “tumults and disorders” that would require the intervention of the army. He suggested denying the right to strike, keeping a watchful eye on labour organizations and the foreign-language press, restricting immigration, and the speedy acculturation of immigrant children in the schools. Cahan’s basic message was that anyone who accepted the concept of class differences was contributing to a civil war in Canada that threatened democratic institutions and individual liberties.

Cahan carried his campaign to the pages of Maclean’s magazine. Under the ownership of Colonel John Bayne Maclean and the editorship of Thomas Costain, this magazine had become a major organ of the Red Scare. Cahan sounded his familiar warning about the IWW and other “Red” elements who were spreading “pacifist, socialistic, revolutionary and seditious literature” and organizing “societies for the insidious propagation of doctrines destructive of our existing political, social and industrial institutions.” He revealed that these activities were funded by thousands of dollars provided by agents of the Russian government, and he even hinted that the conspiracy to overthrow the government reached into the corridors of power in Ottawa. In the absence of Borden (in Europe), he wrote, the cabinet had been “utterly lacking in unity of purpose and in courageous action.” In case after case, Cahan claimed, federal authorities had intervened to secure the release of agitators who had been arrested for their activities. And, of course, had he not been removed from any position of influence under suspicious circumstances?

Colonel Maclean was an enthusiastic proponent of conspiracy theories. A long-time member of the militia, he had encouraged the government to take a hard-line, anti-Hun, anti-pacifist approach during the war. At the end of 1918, he wrote in his magazine that the Germans, had they won the war, had plans to dismember Canada and distribute parts of it to their leading bankers, nobles, and businessmen. Quite literally, therefore, the Canadian army had saved the country from extinction; it only made sense, wrote Maclean, to put the army in charge of society now that the war was over. He recommended, for instance, that military men take control of the school system. “It makes one dizzy to think of the great things that could be accomplished,” he wrote.

The January 1919 edition of Maclean’s carried an article titled “Is Bolshevism Brewing in Canada?” to which the author, Thomas Fraser, answered with an emphatic “Yes.” The magazine had commissioned Fraser to discover if Bolshevism was present in Canada. His conclusion: “There is a bold, systematic and dangerous effort being made to lay the fuse of Bolshevism from one end of the Dominion to the other.” The IWW was behind it, he explained. “Their idea is to seize control of all industries and abolish the wage system.” Their aims were completely hostile to democracy, Fraser warned, and to the middle class. The “root of the whole matter” was that “much of the good old Anglo-Saxon stock” was gone, slaughtered in the recent war, and Canada was filled up with “workmen of foreign extraction” sympathetic to Bolshevik propaganda.

One appreciative reader of Fraser’s article was press censor Ernest Chambers. He wrote Colonel Maclean a congratulatory note in which he warned that “the situation is very much more dangerous, in my opinion, than the public has the least conception of.” Encouraging Maclean to continue to raise the alarm, he concluded:

I am firmly convinced that, without the real solid, sensible people of the country taking into their own hand the active combatting of this Bolshevist propaganda, we run the risk of reaching, within measureable time, the conditions which at present prevail in Russia.

Among the more extreme anti-Red fanatics, a rationale seemed to be emerging that justified taking the law into their own hands to preserve the nation from revolution.

In the June 1919 issue of his magazine, Maclean himself took Chambers’ advice. In a provocative article titled “Why Did We Let Trotzky Go?” he blamed unnamed “politicians or officials” in Ottawa for allowing Trotsky to leave his Amherst internment camp and return to Russia to lead the revolution there. Trotsky, claimed Maclean, was a German agent paid to take Russia out of the war. If Canada had held onto him, the war would have been shortened by a year. This was a familiar belief at the time, but Maclean went further. He claimed that Trotsky had organized groups of revolutionaries in Toronto and Ottawa who were poised to take over the country. Charles Cahan had revealed some of this threat, wrote Maclean, but then “the Trotzky influences got busy and Mr. Cahan was ordered to cease his inquiries and send in his resignation.” (Despite the allegations of Cahan and Maclean, no evidence was ever produced that Leon Trotsky had supporters within the Canadian government who were twisting its policies in his favour.)

By the August issue, Maclean was getting even more alarmist. By then, of course, the Winnipeg General Strike had taken place. Not surprisingly, Maclean’s saw it as a prelude to revolution. The Bolsheviks were pouring money into the country to cause strikes and encourage social unrest, the Colonel wrote. It was all a conspiracy organized by the Germans and their Russian Bolshevik agents to disrupt western countries so that Germany could rebuild its economy and regain its markets. For Maclean, and for many others, the Hun and the Bolshevik were indistinguishable. In their view, the war was still going on and it was being fought in the streets of Winnipeg and other Canadian cities."

- Daniel Francis, Seeing Reds: the Red Scare of 1918-1919, Canada’s First War on Terror. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. p. 58-62.

[sersh]

ELLA PURNELL ELLE's Rising Stars 2024

[victoryrifle]

FALLOUT - First Scene

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Maclean's, magazine, Vol. 80, N. 11, Maclean-Hunter, November 1967

[uchicagomagazine]

Want more Norman Maclean, PhD’40? Read his reflections on Nobel laureate and UChicago physics professor Albert A. Michelson and gamesmanship, from our Summer 1975 issue.

Archival photo: University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf2-06092r, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

[guy60660]

Alex MacLean | Aesthetica

[musicmags]

[masgwi]

[afnguy]

[oldshowbiz]

1966.

Maclean's Magazine trashes Disney's Winnie the Pooh

[thirdwednesdayorg]

In Green Waves / Ruairidh MacLean

In Green Waves, by Ruairidh MacLean is one of three winning stories from 3d Wednesday’s annual flash fiction contest. Contest judge, John F. Buckley said, this tale of appetites and silence artfully charts an entire lifetime, from conception to death, without seeming either rushed or glib.You can read it HERE or in the autumn issue of the magazine.

[sersh]

ELLA PURNELL Photographed by Thomas Whiteside for Interview Magazine, April 2024

[dazed-and-confused23]

Ladyfingers

Summary: Lucy promises Cooper that she can handle being by herself for a while and proves it to him while he's away.

Pairings: The Ghoul | Cooper Howard x Lucy Maclean

Warnings: violence and death. Blood and canon typical actions. Fluffy things and Cooper being worried but proud of his little killer.

I've seen a lot of Worried!Cooper Howard things on Tumblr lately and I wanted to try my hand at it. Hope you enjoy!

Masterlist

"You are sure you'll be alright without me?" Cooper questions his little vaultie for the third time. They are down on caps, and he had volunteered to go find a bounty to cash out on. Lucy had grimaced and asked him if she could stay here, in the sturdy little house they'd been using for shelter the past couple of days. He had ground his teeth in protest, but Lucy had given him such a pitiful look that he'd broken before he could argue with her.

"Yup. I've been up here long enough to handle myself. I handled you, right?" Lucy pointed out, and Cooper sighs. Not to toot his own horn, but he was one of the more dangerous players in the wasteland, and his smoothskin wasn't wrong. He just didn't like the thought of her leaving his sight.

"Alright, alright," Cooper tosses his hands up in surrender, though a frown still lingers on his lips. Lucy hops forward and threads her fingers with his own, tip toeing to kiss her ghoulish companion. Cooper immediately kisses her back, tugging her close by the hands so that she stumbles into his chest.

"You run for town if anyone tries anythin', you hear me?" Cooper demands when Lucy drops back to her booted feet. He untangles a hand to grasp her by the chin, locking eyes with her own.

Lucy's expression turns soft, and she can't help the teasing tilt to her voice, "Awe, is the big bad, bounty hunter worried about me?"

Cooper rolls his eyes and scoffs, lips pursed to the side, "You make it hard not to, little killer. Trouble finds you worse than a magnet does a fridge."

She can't help but grin, Cooper wasn't technically wrong there. Lucy turns her face and presses a kiss to his wrist, "I promise I'll come running if there's trouble."

The ghoul nods, appeased at the promise. Coop tugs her in for another hug, and then let's go, loping to the front door. Dogmeat waits patiently, ready to go with him. He looks back at Lucy one last time before he and Dogmeat slip out the door, and he locks it behind him.

Lucy slumps when Cooper disappears. It feels weird being completely alone, but she uses the time to clean her weapons and stitch the holes in her vault suit. Her pip-boy radio is turned on, and she listens to Helen Forrest sing about being mad about the boy she loves.

She quirks her lips and turns the song up, thinking it funny how relatable she finds the song. The vault dweller loses herself in the back and forth of sewing up her suit, and as the hours pass, Lucy doesn't realize how late it has grown, nor how loudly her music echos out of the quaint little house.

Three men, one ghoul and two humans, creep up to the side of the house. They had heard the music and followed it to the humble adonde, grinning to one another when they spot Lucy inside. The vault dweller isn't paying attention, too absorbed in the old world magazine she is reading to hear the back windows slide open.

Lucy chokes back a scream when a hand slams across her mouth. She doesn't hesitate to throw her head back, her skull meeting the nose of the man who holds her. He shouts when her head connects and breaks his nose, sending blood splattering down his face and into her hair.

"Fuckin' bitch! Get her!" He shouts, and the ghoul and other man appear out of nowhere. Lucy kicks and fights back, landing a lucky hit to one of the men's balls and sending him to the floor. It gives her enough time to scramble to the far end of the room and search for her side arm.

She grunts when the ghoul tackles her, sending them both to the floor. Her head bounces once, and she sees stars for half a second before her vision rights itself. The ghoul tries to wrap his hands around her neck, but Lucy is stronger than her small frame seems.

The vault dweller swings an elbow up and into his face, knocking his head to the side and sending a tooth flying from his mouth. She bucks her hips and dislodged the ghoul enough that she can wiggle free. Lucy stands up and grabs the first thing her hand finds.

Lucy holds the iron fire poker tightly, brandishing the sharp end at the three men that surround her. The original one lunges, tries to feint to the left, and gets stuck in the ribs for his troubles. Bones crack, and the man wheezes as he spins and clutches his side. The second human, now recovered from the kick to the balls, is faster and gets into Lucy's space quick enough to snatch the poker mid swing.

"Gonna pay for what you did little cunt," He spits nasty, but Lucy wasn't about to let him close again. She rears back and kicks him, and he's too focused on the weapon to see her booted foot come flying in to strike him in the stomach.

He grunts and stumbles backward, taking the fire poker with him as he goes. Lucy turns and runs, putting distance between the men and eyes frantically searching for her bag. She finds it kicked halfway under the couch and makes a dive for it, hands snagging the strap and taking the bag with her as she runs for the front door.

The ghoul grabs her again, shoving her against the door and making her bite her bottom lip. Pain laces up her face and blood pools in her mouth. She rears back, thrashing in his hold and forcing the ghoul to let her go. Lucy unlocks the door and runs outside, digging her hand into her bag to finally grab her sidearm as she runs through the dead forest.

The men follow her, the one with the broken ribs lagging behind but still in hot pursuit. The man with the iron poker rushes forward, tacking Lucy to the ground and sending her 10mm skidding away from her. She shouts, the air in her lungs expelling in a rush from the hit. Rocks and twigs dig into her front, but that doesn't stop her from throwing her weight against the man, fingers scrambling in the dirt to find her gun.

Lucy gets socked in the rib for her troubles, making her grunt and glare at the gravel below her. She does it again, wiggling back and forth and scooting herself forward until the tips of her fingers brush against the metal of her weapon. The vault dweller lunges forward and finally wraps her fingers around the grip.

The young woman rolls, wacking the man in the face with her 10mm and shooting blindly. A cry of pain goes up in the air, and the ghoul falls, shot in the stomach by the lucky shot. She squeezes the trigger again, missing this time, but the gun going off right beside the man who still holds her is enough for him to release her legs.

Lucy scrambles up, and so does the man. He throws himself forward, and the gun goes off, a bullet punching through his gut, and his weight knocks the smoothskin to the ground. Blood soaks her front, and the man weakly pushes himself up, coughing in Lucy's face and sending blood splattering her cheeks.

The vault dweller shoves his body off her, rolling to her feet and snarling in rage at the only man left standing. Before she can fire her weapon, the familiar sound of a dog barking hits her ears and Dogmeat comes flying out of no where, her teeth locking around the man's wrist and bringing him down to the ground before she let's go to snap and bite for his throat, canines sinking into his flesh and ripping his jugular out.

Lucy sucks in sharp intakes of air, eyes casting around until she spots the silhouette of her ghoul come jogging into the clearing. Anger paints his face, underlined by a current of worry that makes her heart beat a little harder in her chest. She spits to the side, grimacing at the taste of iron, and smiles at Cooper.

"Hi."

The ghoul looks her over with his eyes and then closes the distance to yank Lucy in for a kiss. His vaultie is soaked in the blood of the men who attacked her, but she's never looked so beautiful standing there in the setting sun.

He pulls away after a moment and tugs Lucy in for a hug, "Hi to you too, shithead. Thought you said you'd run?"

Lucy shrugged at him, hands clutching at his sides as she rested her brow along his collar bone, "I tried, but it didn't really work out."

Cooper huffed and shook his head. This is what he gets for leaving her by herself, but he is proud that she'd been able to hold her own without him there. He kissed the top of her head again.

"Good job, lil killer. We'll make a wastelander outta you yet."

[thursdaymurderbub]

James Stewart & Judy Garland at her engagement party to David Rose, 1941

But we can! Jimmy Stewart married Gloria Hatrick Maclean 8 years later on August 9, 1949.

Silver Screen Magazine September 1941

[mortaswriting]

Chapter 1: First Meeting

this is a #ghoulcy au with the plot of silence of the lambs

Beginning

Lucy MacLean is standing in front of an office. As she enters, she comes face to face with Davey, the agent in charge of the unit she has been assigned to. Upon looking at him, she notices that he has a haunted and restless expression.

Lucy: Good morning, Mr. Ruey.

Davey: I apologize for pulling you out of your training so early... there's a job that came up, and I thought of you. It's not exactly a job, it can be seen as a special assignment...

He hands Lucy a stack of papers (a dossier). Upon opening the dossier, she is confronted with a horrifying image: the brutalized body of a flayed woman.

Davey: We're trying to interview all the serial killers currently in custody for a psychocomp behavioral profile. Most of them were happy to do it... they enjoy boasting about their "works of art." Are you easily frightened, Lucy?

Lucy: Not yet. She said lightheartedly, trying to dispel the heavy atmosphere that had settled in the room.

Davey: I want you to go after someone who hasn't been cooperating much. I need you to go back to the asylum and find him.

Lucy remains silent. For a few seconds, her features appear clouded, and then her face is taken over by a haunted expression.

"The Ghoul, The Cannibal?"

Lucy quickly tries to calm herself down and push away the horror.

"Okay, I can do this."

Davey: I don't expect him to talk to you. We've tested it for a long time, but we couldn't get anything out of him. Howard was a brilliant psychiatrist, he knows all the tricks, he can manipulate you without you even realizing it. So you must be very careful with him.

After finishing giving all the instructions, Lucy headed to the Vault State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

There, she had a far from admirable conversation with Dr. Chet, who was flirting with her the whole time. He was an extremely unpleasant individual. In the end, he explained all the rules to her, about staying away from the glass, not taking anything Cooper tries to pass, and most importantly, not falling for his tricks.

Dr. Chet and Lucy went through several corridors and descended several stairs until they reached a hallway. Chet said his goodbyes and let her go alone to the psychiatrist's cell.

She walked through a hostile corridor, where several deranged killers lived, a few cells before reaching Cooper Howard's.

Suddenly, a strange figure rushes towards her in the second-to-last cell, their face grotesquely pressing against the bars as they hiss,

"I c-can smell your cunt."

Lucy shudders for a moment but quickly resumes walking down the dark hallway.

Gradually, she reaches Cooper Howard's cell. He starts to appear slowly. The cell is protected by a glass that seems difficult to break (she hopes that's true). Lucy stops at a comfortable distance and introduces herself.

"Dr. Howard, my name is Lucy MacLean. May I speak with you?"

Howard is leaning against his bunk, wearing white pajamas and holding an Italian Vogue magazine. A face long deprived of sunlight, almost faded, except for the bright eyes and the moist, red mouth. He gently rises, crossing over to stand before her: the gracious host. His voice is cultured and soft.

"Good Morning," he said, with a warm smile.

LUCY: "I want to ask for your help with a questionnaire."

DR. HOWARD: You're one of Davey's, I presume.

LUCY: Yes, I am.

DR. HOWARD: May I see your credentials?

Lucy is surprised but takes her ID card out of her bag and shows it to him for inspection. He smiles gently.

DR. HOWARD: Closer, please... closer.

She complies each time, trying to hide her fear. Dr. Howard's nostrils flare as he gently, like an animal, tests the air. Then he smiles, looking at her card.

"Agent MacLean. Please, have a seat."

She sits on the folding metal chair. He politely waits until she settles, then takes a seat and gazes at her with delight.

DR. HOWARD: Now, then. What did Hueys say to you?

(She is intrigued) "Multiple Hueys," in the next cell. He hissed at you. What did he say?

LUCY: He said, "I can smell your cunt."

DR. HOWARD: I see. I myself cannot. You use Evyan skin cream and sometimes wear L'Air du Temps, but not today. You brought your best handbag, didn't you?

"Yes."

A pause, then Lucy takes the questionnaire out of her briefcase.

LUCY: Dr. Howard, please consider--

DR. HOWARD: No, no, no. You were doing well, Sweetheart. You were polite and receptive to courtesy, established trust with the embarrassing truth about Hueys, and now this...

"I'm just asking you to take a look at it, doctor."

She hands him the questionnaire on the sliding food tray. He stands up, looks at it, flipping through a page or two dismissively.

DR. HOWARD: Oh, Sweetie... do you think you can dissect me with this little blunt tool?

"No. I just hoped for your expertise."

Suddenly, he throws the tray back at her with a metallic CLANG. It startles her. His voice continues to be a pleasant purr.

DR. HOWARD: You're so ambitious, aren't you...? Do you know how you come across to me, with your fancy handbag and cheap shoes? You look like a hick. A well-groomed, restless hick, with a taste... Good nutrition has given you some bones, but you're not more than a generation away from poor white trash, Agent MacLean...? That accent you tried so desperately to shed from pure West Virginia.

Each of his words hits her like a small, precise dart.

"You see a lot, Dr. Howard. But are you strong enough to point that powerful perception towards yourself? How about this...? Look at yourself and write the truth."

(She throws the tray back at him) Or maybe you're just afraid.

DR. HOWARD: You're tough, aren't you?

DR. HOWARD: Well, you're far from ordinary, Lucy MacLean. All you have is the fear of it.

Now, please excuse me. Good day.

LUCY: And the questionnaire...?

DR. HOWARD: Once, a census taker tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti. Go back to school, little MacLean.

He takes a step back and then returns to his bed, becoming still and distant like a statue. Frustrated, Lucy hesitates, finally puts her bag on her shoulder, and walks away, leaving the questionnaire on the tray. But after just a few steps, as she passes by Hueys' cell, she sees that creature in his bars again, hissing at her.

HUEYS: I bit my wrist to make it bleeeddd!

S-see how it bleeedddss?

The dark figure suddenly throws the palm of his hand towards her, and it splatters on her face and neck, not with blood, but with pale droplets of semen. She lets out a small cry, touching her fingers to the wetness. Stunned, almost in tears, she forces herself to straighten up and move forward, searching for a tissue. From behind her, Dr. Howard shouts, very agitated.

"Agent MacLean... Agent MacLean!"

Lucy slows down, stops. She trembles but makes the difficult choice to turn around, go back, stand in front of someone again.

Dr. Howard, who is trembling with anger. For a moment, his face opens up, and we catch a glimpse of hell itself. Then he composes himself again.

"The discourtesy is unimaginably ugly to me."

Lucy: "So please, take this test for me."

"No. But I will make you happy... Lucy MacLean."

"What is this, Dr. Howard?"

Before Cooper can say anything, the guards flood the room to separate Lucy from the glass.

"Approach that glass, and your visitation authorization will be revoked, Agent MacLean."

Lucy storms out through the doors of the sanatorium, and just as she arrived, she leaves, without answers. She decides she will drive to her hotel room where she intends to sleep for the next few hours.

But instead, she spends the rest of the night thinking about Cooper Howard.

[uchicagomagazine]

Until now, there was no biography of Norman Maclean, PhD’40. Read an excerpt from Rebecca McCarthy’s (AB’77) new book about the beloved—sometimes feared—author and UChicago professor. https://mag.uchicago.edu/arts-humanities/searching-story

Photography by Leslie Travis, AB’73; Copyright 2024, The Chicago Maroon. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.