Volume 11, Number 5 · September 26, 1968
In the Jungle
By William Styron
It was perhaps unfortunate that Daley, the hoodlum suzerain of the city, became emblematic of all that the young people in their anguish cried out against, even though he plainly deserved it. No one should ever have been surprised that he set loose his battalions against the kids; it was the triumphant end-product of his style, and what else might one expect from this squalid person whose spirit suffused the great city as oppressively as that of some Central American field marshal? And it was no doubt inevitable, moreover, a component of the North American oligarchic manner—one could not imagine a Trujillo so mismanaging his public relations—that after the catastrophe had taken place he should remain so obscenely lodged in the public eye, howling 'kike!' at Abe Ribicoff, packing the galleries with his rabble, and muttering hoarse irrelevancies about conspiracy and assassination, about the Republican convention ('They had a fence in Miami, too, Walter, nobody ever talks about that!') to a discomfited Cronkite, who wobbled in that Oriental presence between deference and fainthearted suggestions that Miami and Chicago just might not be the same sort of thing.
Feature, 3515 words
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