Charlie the Writer

As I mentioned before, his contemporaries (by which I guess I mean me and a small circle of friends) figured Charlie Horman would be one of the great novelists of our generation. He had shown lots of early promise.  Tragically, as it turned out, his life was cut short at age 31. With Joyce Horman's permission, I may in the future post links here to a sample of his writings (letters, poems, stories, articles, film scripts) which have survived. [Quite a few of Charlie's poems are scattered throughout the earlier posts on this blog from a couple of years ago.]

For now, here's a piece entitled Night (which our mutual friend Bob Gates brought my attention to recently) by the not-quite-15-year-old Charlie. It was published in the Exeter literary magazine, The Pendulum, in April 1957:

CLICK . . . click . . . click—clear, almost metallic--the footsteps ring out through the orange glow of a city night. Already the haze of eight hours' waste material, pumped from factories and homes, smoke-stacks and incinerators, is beginning to dissipate, revealing through the spider-web framework of the el the cold glare of stars. A slight breeze whips my open coat around and starts small whirlpools of dust, cinders, and scraps of paper on the sidewalk, while a street-light sets off shadows, which grey and merge with the surrounding darkness. I pause before a gigantic four-leaf-clover sign, swaying from an iron rod—"The Irish Shamrock Bar." The smell of scotch and beer mingles with that of old sawdust and other subtler odors. The inside is a more-or-less accurate reproduction of an old Irish pub with its oak tables and booths and green decorations. An old man is bent over the bar — a massive, coarse overcoat wrapped around him — a battered hat pulled well down on his grizzled head. He mumbles something gently, and the bar-tender walks over to the corner and cranks an old machine, which begins some vaguely familiar ballad. The el crashes by outside.

On the next block I begin the cross-over to Lexington. Night makes the glass invisible; and so, the brownstones look as though they have been gutted by fire. Occasionally what light there is picks out the jagged edge of a shattered pane. Alleys yawn wide between the buildings—their rusty iron gates giving way to the ramshackle wooden fences of the back yards. A cat screeches somewhere behind one of the brownstones. Down the street a boy moves out of the shadow -- his leather jacket zipped up to his chin, his boots scuffing slowly against the pavement. The distant glow of a street-lamp flashes on something above his right hand —slowly, evenly he is swinging a chain. He's in darkness again, and only the steady scuffing tells me he's still there — still coming. He ambles into the light again, heading directly towards me — then passes. Sudden gusts pick up the litter paper from the street, stir it, and whisk it up past the second story in great whirling columns.


Night becomes day in a dazzling play of neon lights on 86th Street. Six movies flash their current shows — the waiting lines shifting, melting, turning different colors under the brilliant displays. People fill the night. Coming from such emptiness, I feel detached, as though it were a dream. I come up to Woolworth's and go in; for me there is nothing as wonderful as a "5 & 10." I can walk up and down the counters for hours without buying anything. Now it is almost empty — they are about to close. Shining toys stand stacked in trays; cookies are piled in bushel baskets; rugs, pictures, records, books stand out from the jumbled maze of wares. A cute girl in a yellow sweater is walking up the aisle. She goes to Brearley — I've seen her before at some dances, although I don't know her
name. She brushes against me, flushes, and walks faster. Shortly after, the janitor tells me to "get the hell out."

I'm fast becoming depressed by the purposeless walking. On the corner a girl in her late teens sidles up to me in the darkness, then turns away when she sees how young I am. I feel sort of blurry, almost sick; so I turn into a pizza place and find some of my friends from school already there. They re-order, and I join them. We leave together; and, as we walk down the street, honky-tonk bursts from the open door of a cafe; and a murmur of conversation, broken by peals of laughter, drifts up from a basement night club. One boy suggests we go to his house and run some records. A few cokes, a few 33's, a lot of talk — and the party's over. We decide to walk downtown, dropping boys as we go.


Leaving the warmth of the street-light, I turn alone into the shadows of the side street. With the usual good-natured slaps and the passing of weeds, my friends shuffle on. Only the swelling and dying of the little, red pinpricks of light and the larger glow of a pipe shows me where they are. As the footsteps recede, one voice drones on, interrupted only by intermittent bursts of laughter -- finally even that is lost in the night. The darkness still holds its own, but there's a crystal quality in the air -- an expectancy of dawn. This is the breaking point — the no-man's land between night and day. The city is like a deserted theatre. The stage is set for the next performance; and, although the people are gone, the debris remains with an old vino sprawled on the steps of a tenement. My mind no longer finds it easy to sink back into memories of the night. Reality breaks over me. Even the cold is somehow different — deader. The silence becomes oppressive. As I stand there, the shadows reach out — depress me. With a wrench I break the stillness and step forward to fill the vacuum. My footsteps click emptily on the stone pathway leading home.

What is adventure but the split-second of anticipation before something happens. That momentary clutch can be more harrowing or enjoyable than the event itself, and often that anticipation is so strong that when the adventure comes it already seems commonplace. Adventures are exercises of the imagination. The quickening of your pulse when an unknown boy comes out of darkness swinging a chain, or a girl you know vaguely brushes against you as she walks by; or you stand on a deserted corner at four o'clock in the morning, the only person awake in a sleeping city — this in itself is adventure.


[Copyright Joyce Horman}

Missing Charlie

I was surprised and pleased to see Joyce Horman's name on the cover of the current issue of The Progressive magazine. Her article begins:

"FORTY YEARS AGO IN SANTIAGO, Chile, my dear, smart, Harvard-educated, independent thinking, loving, trying-to-figure-it-all-out-and-do-the-right-thing journalist/documentary filmmaker husband was stolen from my life, from the lives of his loving parents, and all of his friends."

Tribute to Justice: Remembering 40 Years

The Charles Horman Truth Foundation, spearheaded by Joyce Horman, is preparing for a fortieth anniversary event in New York City on September 9, 2013. Details are at www.hormantruth.org/ht/2013event.

Teach the children

After our 50th Exeter reunion, classmate Ben Wagner shared with me an email from his cousin's wife, a native of Santiago, Chile:

Indeed the movie Missing is quite impressive. We had to watch it in high school as part of Chilean History. It is quite shocking to hear the stories of what happened in Chile during those times...all the disappearances, exiles and pure abuse of power... I was young during Pinochet's dictatorship (the coup happened the year I was born) and so was my older brother, so my parents had to stand in lines for hours to be able to buy some sugar or bread, etc. The military had rationed the food trying to scare the people and lead them to believe that the socialist government was responsible for the lack of goods. But it was found later that the houses of the leaders behind the coup were filled with food and essentials... There is a great book that talks about how the armed forces tortured and killed thousands of people and how they buried them in the desert in piles... Its resemblance with what the nazis did during the holocaust is scary. I will try to find the book's name in English for you. It is called Los zarpazos del puma. Another great book made into a movie, is The House of the Spirits (or ghosts?) by Isabel Allende. She is Allende's niece and was forced to flee the country and exiled. She's a wonderful writer. My favorite!

The book she refers to is called The Claws of the Puma in English, by Patricia Verdugo. Much information about this impressive woman in her obituary.

Another guy's take on 1973 Chile, et seq.

A site entitled "grounds for appeal."

Victor Jara, The Clash, and the Washington Bullets

Victor Jara was a popular Chilean musician and supporter of Salvador Allende who was tortured and killed in the soccer stadium about the same time as Charlie. Clash fans will remember Jara from the song "Washington Bullets," on their 1980 album Sandanista!:

As every cell in Chile will tell
by the cries of the tortured men.
Remember Allende and the days before
before the army came.
Please remember Victor Jara
In the Santiago Stadium
ES VEDAD - those Washington bullets again!

[Click on the audio link in my profile (below right) to hear Joe Strummer's song.]

And here are Victor Jara and Pete Seeger doing "Little Boxes."

See also http://latinosinlondon.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/jarahands/

The wheels of justice grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small. Let's hope.

November 26, 1998

By TIM WEINER 

WASHINGTON, Nov. 25— Many European leaders applauded today's ruling against the former dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, but within the United States Government and in some legal circles, there was a note of consternation at the potential power of a Spanish judge to transcend national borders in the name of international law.
Muted responses from United States officials reflected some uneasiness in Washington with the idea that former Government leaders can be held responsible by foreign courts. At the State Department and the National Security Council, spokesmen said that Mr. Pinochet's fate was a matter for the Spanish and British courts.
Alfred Rubin, a professor of international law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston, said the power of the Spanish judge in the case to reach across national boundaries was troubling.
''What's to prevent Spain from extraditing Henry Kissinger, who was involved in the coup?'' he asked. ''What's to prevent Spain from ruling the world? The whole thing seems to be leading to chaos, with every country sitting in judgment of the revolutions of other countries. That strikes me as undemocratic.''
Across Europe, many officials were openly elated.
In Geneva, Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the ruling ''will hearten human-rights defenders around the world.'' The decision ''confirmed the emerging international consensus against impunity,'' said Ms. Robinson, a former President of Ireland.
In Paris, Jacques Chirac, the President of France, said: ''May justice be done, and may light be fully shed on Pinochet's responsibilities.'' The French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, said: ''It's a surprise, it's a joy, it's bad news for dictators.''
France, along with Spain, Belgium and Switzerland, has sought Mr. Pinochet's extradition for crimes against their citizens. The United States has not.
The German Justice Minister, Hertha Daubler-Gmelin, has said she would support an extradition request if there was evidence of damage suffered by German citizens. The German Greens Party, junior partner in the Government, praised the ruling. ''This confirmation of human rights from the motherland of democracy clears the way for legal proceedings against a criminal dictator to take their course'' in Spain, a ''democracy which is still young,'' said the party's co-leader, Gunda Roestel.
In the United States, relatives of victims praised the ruling. Michael Moffitt, whose wife of 113 days, Ronni Moffitt, was killed by General Pinochet's secret police, said the ruling was a ''great vindication.'' Ms. Moffitt died along with a former Chilean Foreign Minister, Orlando Letelier, when their car was blown up by a bomb in Washington in 1976.
''It's a great Thanksgiving Day present for a lot of people, a lot of victims of that beast,'' said Mr. Moffitt, 47, a financial manager living in New Jersey. More than 3,000 people were killed as the general took power in a 1973 coup. The dead included Charles E. Horman, a 31-year-old American working as a filmmaker and writer in Chile.
Today his mother, Elizabeth Horman, said the ruling gave her a measure of happiness. ''The wheels of justice grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small,'' said Mrs. Horman, an artist who lives in Manhattan and is in her 90's.
''I want Pinochet in prison,'' she said. ''Do you realize what he did to us? Do you know what kind of man my son was? He was attractive and humorous and loving. And he was a human rights advocate. And that's why he got caught up in the coup.''
Michael Ratner, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents Mr. Horman's family, said the Letelier and Moffitt killings represented strong legal cases against the former dictator. But he added that it was far from certain that the Justice Department would move against Mr. Pinochet.
Though mid-level officials at the Justice Department have discussed extraditing Mr. Pinochet in those killings, they have considered it as an option only if the former dictator won immunity from the British courts. Any extradition proceeding by the United States would have to be approved by the State Department and the White House.
In Madrid, Isabel Allende, the daughter of Salvador Allende, the elected president of Chile who overthrown by General Pinochet's coup, said: ''Future dictators will have to think very hard before they turn to killing, before they betray their oaths, before they break their democratic constitutions.''
She added: ''This is not a case of revenge. What we want is justice. We are fighting for justice and not impunity. I feel great satisfaction and it is a great, historical moment.''

Or as it is sometimes put,  "The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding fine."