“But there is one thing about those days I am sure of, one memory I have that sticks like glue. I began haunting the movies on Forty-Second Street like every other miserable unemployed bum in New York in those days. I never even looked at the marquee to see what was playing. I simply bought a ticket every day and plunged into that fabled darkness. Then not only was ‘realife’ suspended, but very soon I began feeling wonderfully anesthetized. One day a Russian movie came on the screen. It was Eisenstein’s Strike. Inside of ten minutes I felt something electrifying was happening on that screen. And inside of twenty minutes I realized I was in the presence of a new world, a place where some new sense of human life was stirring. And it stirred me, it stirred me deeply. I came out of that movie feeling alive for the first time in months, maybe years, maybe my whole life.

“I went back to City, walked into the library, and got out every book I could find on contemporary Russia. Then I calmly walked out of the school, went back to my room, holed up, and began reading. I don’t think I came out of that room for a week.