SOURCE: "The Doctor's Black Bag: William Carlos Williams' Passaic River Stories," in Modern Language Studies, Vol. XIII, No. 1, Winter, 1983, pp. 77-84.

In the essay below, which originally was presented as a paper at the Eastern Comparative Literature Meetings in May 1980, Monteiro shows how Williams's own identity as "poet-physician" informs several of his doctor stories.

All day long the doctor carries on this work, observing, weighing, comparing values of which neither he nor his patients may know the significance. . . . He is half-ashamed to have people suspect him of carrying on a clandestine, a sort of underhand piece of spying on the public at large. . . . His only fear is that the source of his interest, his daily going about among human beings of all sorts, all ages, all conditions will be terminated. That he will be found out.

William Carlos Williams, Autobiography (1951) Black bag (adj., as in black bag jobs...