be acquisition of the tribute to Tibbettnassembled by Andrew Farkas.nJ.O. Tate is professor of English atnDowling College on Long Island.nOn the Road tonSomewherenby Chilton Williamson, Jr.nThe Return of Richard Nixon andnOther Essaysnby Gregory McNameenTucson and New York: HarbingernHouse; 213 pp., $9.95nThis book is mistitled, in the sensenthat Richard Nixon is the leastninteresting of the multivarious subjectsncovered herein. The author, of course,nis not to blame for that fact; and perhapsnit was modesty that kept him fromnperceiving where the strengths of hisncollection really lie.nThese essays differ in depth and innquality as well as in their subject matter,nbut the best of them — “When WenWith Sappho,” “The Betrayal of ErnestnHemingway” (published last year innChronicles), “The Imaginary Atlas,”nand “To the Manner Born” — shownMcNamee to be a natural handler ofnthe essay form. He has the born essayist’snrequisite breadth of learning, hisnfacility for the long and deceptivelyneasy-seeming reach, and — where thensubject under discussion is neithernRMN nor Ronald Reagan — his relaxedntone conveyed by a distinctivenpersonal voice. Though as a writernGregory McNamee is politicallynspeaking very much engage, he is at hisnbest artistically when dealing with literaryntopics. Of the many performancesnincluded in this collection, “When WenWith Sappho” (about the poet, essayist,npainter, critic, and classicistnKenneth Rexroth) is the most learned;n”Buried Under the Volcano” (concerningnthe novelist Malcom Lowry)nand “The Betrayal of Ernest Hemingway”n(on the subject of Hemingway’snheirs and assigns, who took it uponnthemselves to publish posthumouslynthe author’s unfinished third-rate manuscripts)nare the most sensitive andncompassionate; while “The Imaginaryn40/CHRONICLESnAtlas” is a textbook example of thenessayistic art of digression, progression,nmodulation, and final resolution. It isnalso perhaps the work in which thenauthor most completely realizes hisnnatural voice — its pitch, its tone, itsnmood:nSouthern Utah is scorchinglynhot in the summertime; goodnweather for rattlesnakes, poornweather for traveling in annautomobile without airnconditioning … I stopped innMount Carmel, a lovely greenntown, for a cold beer withnwhich to combat the elements. Infound one, too, for evennalcohol-shy Mount Carmel liesnwithin the oikoumene, thenhabitable world of the Homericnpoems, distinguished by thenthings of civilization. Much asnsome might suspect thencontrary, the state of Utah — ornmost of it, at any rate — is notnPhiloktetes’s cave.nFrom this introductory paragraph — sonvaried in mood, diction, and frame ofnreference — “The Imaginary Atlas”nproceeds to its pantheistic conclusionnvia such intermediary subjects as Utahnbeer signs. King Roger of Sicily’s mapnof Idrisi, humanly conceived bordersnand “the manifold divisions of the worldnin space and time,” Joseph Conrad andn”places of darkness,” fabulous geographynin Western history, fractal geometry,nand Gaian ecology. About midpassage,nthe following sentence appears:n”We would want to know the ancientnnames of all places, for the past is a landnwe may inhabit whenever we wish.”nThat sentence is significant, for itsnburden is central to McNamee’s understandingnof the nature both of time andnof human culture. “A current notion inncontemporary physics, the epic poetrynof our day,” McNamee writes inn”When We With Sappho,” “is thatntime is granular, meaning that somehowntime has a physical nature and canntherefore be as easily bent and moldednas a beam of light or an electro-magneticnpulse. . . . The so-called primitivenlanguages have recognized it for millennia,nbut the Euroamerican mind is justnbeginning to accept as commonplacenthat time is not neatly ordered, that it isnnonlinear, that it is relative to the viewpointnof the observer.” The notion thatnnnthe past exists in both present and futurenwas a central tenet of 20th-centurynModernism, and the point of this is notnlost on McNamee, who grasps as firmlynas did T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, WilliamnFaulkner, and Kenneth Rexroth the factnthat “a civilization must have continuitynand memory if it is to endure, thatnmodernity should not be obliterationnbut extension.”nThough in strictly political termsnMcNamee may be a Man of the Left,nculturally speaking he belongs in thatncategory of anomalous men who — likenhis friend and sometime collaborator,nthe late Edward Abbey—resist the traditionalnoutworn taxonomy of Left andnRight. In fact, in the present volume,nthe essay “Scarlet ‘A’ on a Field ofnBlack” — whose subject is Abbey’s politicsnand art, which Abbey considered, asnMcNamee does, to be one and thensame thing — makes patently clear hownmuch civilized people of the “Left” andnthe “Right” share both a commonncomplaint and a common enemy in thenpost-Modern world. When GregorynMcNamee writes of “the disastrousntimes which we inhabit” and refers tonwhat he calls “the present barbarism,”nmen and women for whom that disasternand that barbarism are not—as they arenfor McNamee — almost totally signifiednby “The Age of Reagan” neverthelessnknow exactly what the author is talkingnabout.nChilton Williamson, Jr. is seniorneditor for books at Chronicles.nDeath in Disguisenby F. W. BrownlownD.H. Lawrence: A Biographynby Jeffrey MeyersnNew York: Alfred A. Knopfn445 pp., $24.95nThe 1950’s were the high point ofnD.H. Lawrence’s critical reputation.nIn those days university Englishnprofessors were keen teachers ofnLawrence’s message of “life” and emotionalnhonesty, and he was a popularnsubject for undergraduate theses. Hennow appears less frequently on readingnlists, and the other day I heard a highschoolnteacher say that her studentsn