An Anatomy of the Laundry (iii) and Letters from Attica (ii)

from bomber Sam Melville at Attica Correctional Facility and son Joshua in this century

Sharon Fischer tells about the meetings that gave rise to An Anatomy of the Laundry in a footnote to the 50th anniversary annotated edition of Letters from Attica. John Cohen had noted in the 1972 edition that the work “grew out of Fred Leshure’s weekly sociology class.”

“Edward T. ‘Fred’ Leshure was a disc jockey from Corning who was in Attica for selling heroin. It was his ‘sociology’ class that enabled inmates from all four blocks to meet and discuss strategy and make plans.”

So, An Anatomy of the Laundry is the product of a proseminar? That is, committed students engaged with classic readings together while developing self-directed work? That accounts for the mock-heroic schoolboy title, between ambitious and pretentious, over the substantial content.

The interweb annotates that Eddie now teaches yoga a few hours west of here, in Asheville. Sharon’s note expands on views of Sam from another man of words swept into Attica Correctional Facility by the policing of narcotics, William Coons.

Eddie was in for selling heroin, William for selling LSD. He was a working author of spin-rack, topical porn as Dell Holland. Publishing a book under his birth name once only just after the massacre, he recalled Sam as a confirmed Marxist-Leninist, an idealist,

and, “in my opinion, a Romanticist.” Note that capital R. This detached, expert observer is a product of a department of English, where Romantics are the poets of the 19C who involved themselves in politics without solid ground. On the other hand William is also a known decadent, fabulist, and hack for hire.

Did Eddie teach a class in sociology? You mean such as social workers attend? To gain a credential to work with clients of an institution? What do you think?

Or was the course, as Sharon puts it, a ‘sociology’ class, a false pretext for meetings? No. As she also suggests, these revolutionaries met to discuss social theory and apply it. As I said already, they sound to me like a proseminar at a university, also Bible study in a church, an old-time small-town debating society,

or kollel among Jewish husbands. The next year, 1972, the Mid-Atlantic Radical Historians’ Organization started calling such things a MARHO. I attended one in New Haven in 1978. If you are going to study Marx you should at some point do it with Marxists.

In the weak sense, we all already are. If you have used the word “capital” you are one of Karl’s students. It was his idea. Title of his book. What he knew about. Now, was Sam a confirmed Marxist-Leninist as William says?

Confirmed as at church? You mean a Communist? A member of the Party? That is a status, like being a made man, or a priest. There is a ceremony. You carry credentials and live under discipline as police do.

Not Sam’s style. He was confirmed rather in the sense of a bachelor, in his case an apt comparison. He left his marriage to make revolution. It was indeed Marxist-Leninist revolution in the sense of his small group arriving at analysis and taking action.

Was he an idealist? Ya think? But remember that we are hearing it from William the addict, English teacher, and pornographer. He meant that Sam acted for others, on principle. A Marxist may do those things but never as an idealist in the philosophical sense of ideas as agents in themselves.

In those terms Sam was a materialist. Finally, was he a Romanticist, a follower of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth? We do know he read poetry but I don’t yet know what.

Did he like those poets and their readers build castles in the air despite evident defeat? That is not how he thought of himself. Sam thought he was in the vanguard of world revolution. It is 50 years on. What do you think?

This was the third Viet Nam letter of 3 so far on An Anatomy of the Laundry by Sam Melville. The first posted on January 26, 2023 and the second on February 1, 2023.

Viet Nam letters respects the property of others under paragraph 107 of United States Code Title 17. If we asked for permission it wouldn’t be criticism. We explain our fair use at length in the letter of September 12, 2022.

The colophon of these Viet Nam letters, directly above, shows the janitor speaking with poet David A. Willson on a Veterans Day.