I  heard a funny war story last night from my cousin George Oppen's best friend JZ who  just had his 90th birthday. Apparently during the war, JZ was in Astoria, Queens making films for the army. John Cheever and William Saroyan and Kucor  were in his group. Saroyan was generally disliked by the sargeants because during morning marching drill he would stop to pet a dog or give a nickle to a kid. They thought he was trying to get a section 8 discharge for odd behavior. One day JZ was at the urinal humming Brahms' 2nd Movement of the Ist Symphony to himself and conducting with his penis. Saroyan was at the next urinal and asked him if he did this all the time. JZ said yes everyone in his family did it. Saroyan asked him to tell him about his family and Julian said they were all simple, lovely people.Saroyan suddenly realized he'd been putting him on and said, "Oh, you're a writer." From then on whenever people saw Saroyan they would hum a bit of the Brahms. Eventually Saroyan made himself so disliked that they sent him overseas. As he was being carried off in the truck with his army kit, he screamed "Fuck you all"over and over till the truck was out of sight.