Last Updated on November 3, 2017
It’s hard to imagine that it has been this long, but forty-five years ago on this date, 6 May, 1960, the “Twilight Zone“ episode that served as the namesake of this journal made its debut broadcast on CBS.
The story centered on an ad executive buried by the pressures of work and ambition searching frantically for an escape to a quieter, simpler place. Rod Serling‘s opening narration set the scene quite well:
“This is Gart Williams, age thirty-eight, a man protected by a suit of armor all held together by one bold. Just a moment ago, someone removed the bolt, and Mr. Williams’s protection fell away from him and left him a naked target. He’s been cannonaded this afternoon by all the enemies of his life. His insecurity has shelled him, his sensitivity has straddled him with humiliation, his deep-rooted disquiet about his own worth has zeroed in on him, landed on target, and blown him apart. Mr. Gart Williams, ad agency exec, who in just a moment will move into the Twilight Zone — in a desperate search for survival.”
I think all of us have been Gart Williams at some point. Some of us are always Gart Williams. The episode spoke to me in a lot of levels, obviously. It is a testament to Serling’s writing that it still speaks to so many people so clearly almost a half-century later.
