haunts Odendahl’s book. She has writtenna gloss on H.D. Lloyd’s WealthnAgainst Commonwealth: her CharitynBegins at Home is feminist deconstructionnas muckraking. The public’s ripofFnby “tax subsidies” are the rebatesnof today. The private charters shendeplores are secure, except for criminalnand other forms of “self-dealing.” Andnshe calls for an end to “dynastic”nmonies, a view common during then1930’s but dropped down the memorynhole decades ago.nBy having broken company withnliberal defenders of foundations,nOdendahl exposes an old and deepnpolitical fault line between entrenchednfoundation executives and foundationnradicals like herself, who dismiss allnprivate charity-givers as “lackeys” andn”functionaries” running an oligarchy.nOdendahl prefers the demos of ad­nBRIEF MENTIONSnvanced afSrmative action at the state’sndirection. Private charity is merely capitalism’snfig leaf, unless it is dedicated tonwelfare spending, and directed by thenunderclass.nPrivate foundations do have a history,nthe first part of which ended inn1969 when Congress emasculatednthem with tax code restrictions. Beforenthat, and starting in the Progressive era,nfoundations operating under the mantlenof the “knowledgeable” servants ofnsociety raised up what we now know asn”government.” Nowadays, displaced innmany of their functions by the state,nand losing sovereignty to public charities,nfoundations are charity’s House ofnLords — the tamed liberal establishment.nPhilip N. Marcus is a foundationnconsultant.nWHEN THE MUSIC’S OVER: THE STORY OF POLITICAL POPnby Robin DenselownLondon and Boston: Faber and Faber; 292 pp., $19.95nWhen rock and roll arrived on the music scene in the mid 1950’s, many parents innthe Midwest and South regarded it as a Communist plot to promote sexualnpromiscuity, race-mixing, and political rebellion. Most of the original rockers werenunconventional, to say the least, and their collision with Tinpan Alley could havenbeen billed as the Wild Bunch crashes high society. Still, Elvis and Jerry Lee, andnCarl, and Johnny, and Roy were ordinary Southern Democrats in most of theirnsocial and political attitudes, and, as Robin Denselow reveals, even Neil Youngnsupported Ronald Reagan. Rock music in its more serious manifestations turnednleftward, because American culture is overwhelmingly leftist. It is a contagion thatnonly the very naive (like Elvis) or the very acute can escape, and acute brains donnot devote their talents and energies to attracting a following among screamingnteenagers.nAll of this is lost on Mr. Denselow, a Guardian writer who knows little aboutnAmerican music and still less about our politics. He agrees, in substance, with thenBaptist preachers who arranged the record burnings of the 50’s and findsnconfirmation in the careers of Pete Seeger, John Lennon, Phil Ochs, Bob Mariey,nand Gil Scott-Heron. With the exception of John Lennon, none of these figuresnbelongs in a history of rock or even pop music. Sure, there have been manynperformers who, for one reason or another, have embraced virtually every leftistncause that has come around, but where in this silly book are the white supremacistnbands, for example, or the populist C&W artists?nDenselow has done some homework, however, and his discussion of the SannFrancisco music-politics-drug scene is fascinating, even though he never does getnto the point. He can’t understand, for example, why “Country Joe” McDonaldn(named, by the way, for Joe Stalin) thought Phil Ochs’ political songs were silly.nDenselow finds them naive, but cannot help taking all that blather aboutnrevolution seriously. So did Ochs, who killed himself when he ran out of causes.nLike the American pop culture critics at Rolling Stone, Denselow is ignorant,nbigoted, and unimaginative. But the same is true of television critics who write fornmajor newspapers. The reason is simple: the only people capable of writingnintelligently about these subjects won’t waste their time, and this leaves the fieldnopen for, well, Robin Denselow.n— Thomas Flemingn40/CHRONICLESnnnThe PatheticnIndividualnby fames W. TuttletonnTheodore Dreiser: An AmericannJourney 1908-1945nby Richard R. Lingemannhlew York: G.P. Putnam’s Sonsn544 pp., $39.95nPerfection of the life or perfection ofnthe art? The imperatives of artnbeing what they are, Yeats thought thatnthe writer could not have both. Withnthe completion of Richard R. Lingeman’sntwo-volume biography of TheodorenDreiser, it seems evident thatnDreiser was fated to attain neither.nBorn in 1871 in Indiana, Dreisernmanaged at best a patchwork education,nsupported himself by journalism, andntried his hand at fiction. His apprenticenwork was undistinguished, but the successnoi Sister Carrie (1900), a work ofnnaturalistic determinism, made Dreiserna new force to reckon with in thenliterary world. His early life to 1907nwas covered in the first volume of thisnbiography — Theodore Dreiser: At thenGates of the City, 1871-1907 (1986).nIn the present volume Lingeman concludesnhis project with a massivelyndetailed account of Dreiser’s maturenyears.nIn. 1908, when Volume II commences,nDreiser was 37, married tonSara White and a respected editor ofnthe Delineator, a ladies’ magazine innNew York. The appointment wasnshort-lived, however, as he was firednover a scandalous love affair withnThelma Cudlipp, a girl much youngernthan himself Purchasing a defunctnmagazine (the Bohemian), Dreiserntried to support himself in publishing,nfailed, and resumed freelance journalismnand fiction. These are the years ofnhis major novels: Jennie Gerhardtn(1911), The Financier (1912), ThenTitan (1914), The “Genius” (1915),nAn American Tragedy (1925), ThenBulwark (1946), and The Stoic (1947).nIn addition, he produced a great deal ofnhack work: plays, verse, travel, shortnstories, and autobiography. He died inn1945.nThe image of Dreiser that emergesnfrom these pages is not notably differentnfrom the Dreiser sketched in then