The Taking of Farnham Hall
Searching for Reality in the 1960s.
by
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And it was strange, then, because for the very first
time in my life I began to catch an inkling of just how tough it must be
actually to be black. It was all very
well to talk about racism and equality and all that, but I’d never had the
least glimmer of what it was all about. How could I have? I mean, I’d never
experienced anything of what they had. I’d never seen a ghetto. I hardly knew
more than half a dozen black students, and most of them didn’t know anything
more about the ghetto than I did. So, in a way, this was my first contact with
the real thing, and even this was crazy and artificial and kind of a fantasy. I
mean, they kept saying that they had everything under control. They had the
guns, the men, the cause. They didn’t need us. They didn’t need anybody. They
were bullying and insulting and really drunk with power. And the more they
strutted and stuck their fists out at me, the more sad I felt. It wasn’t just a
national disgrace. I mean, it was really awful!
Not that I was all that calm and collected at the
time. For all my sympathy, I also realized that some of them were quite wild,
and could be dangerous. One of them particularly worried me. During the whole
evening, he kept wandering around the room, shaking his head and muttering, and
occasionally bursting out into violent tirades against me, the Movement, the
country, whites in general, the whole world. Suddenly, he would be at my
shoulder breathing hard into my face. “What are you trying to say, man!” he
would explode into my ear. “What are you trying
to say?” There was no rhyme or reason to his outbursts. They came
unpredictably, irrelevantly, from an inner source totally unconnected with
anything we were talking about. Once he came around and demanded to know what
my hometown was. Thinking of Sheila and Mark in particular, I started to lie,
but then decided that it was too dangerous. On the millionth chance that they
might already know where I came from, they could literally go for me. The
reaction to my statement, however, was so violent that I thought I might be
lost anyway.
“Greenwich, Connecticut!” the mad student screamed.
“Oh, Jesus, let me at him! What is he doing here? What is he doing here? Oh, Jesus Christ Almighty,
let me at him!”
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About the Book
It is often said that the 1960s are still with us, though understanding that complex period remains a mystery. Thus the importance of The Taking of Farnham Hall, which not only describes a typical student rebellion of the time, but also offers clues as to what underlay that rebellion - and this in a basically comic novel! The humor notwithstanding, this book, like its central character, is ultimately searching for "reality" behind the wildness of the 60's.
Why did students take over so many universities in the late 1960s? The Vietnam War fails as an explanation since the student riots began in Berkeley long before Vietnam was an issue, and also occurred in countries with no involvement with Vietnam. The Taking of Farnham Hall, presented from the vantage point of Jonathan Billings, a would-be revolutionary, suggests a different explanation: the search for real commitment in an otherwise blah world.
About the Author
Much has been reported in newspapers, magazines, and books about Richard T. Gill's many varied careers - as economist, television analyst, social critic, college administrator, short story-writer, and even Metropolitan Opera basso. Particularly relevant are the sixteen years he, along with his family, resided within Harvard College, serving as Dean and then Master of Leverett House, Harvard's rough equivalent of an Oxford-Cambridge College. Those years covered the entire decade of the 1960s when the student rebellion reached its peak, including, not incidentally, the take over of University Hall, the College administration building. He was deeply involved in dealing with these difficult issues, meeting frequently with students as well as faculty and administration groups. Although The Taking of Farnham Hall is pure fiction, there is no question but that it offers many parallels with the experiences of universities all over the country. Author of numerous economic texts, Gill's most recent book is Posterity Lost: Progress, Ideology, and the Decline of the American Family, described by the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as "a book of the first importance . . . a superbly insightful work."