walking as a spontaneous self-expression,nshe decided to put certain constraintsnon her bodily and leg movements.nIt also does not occur to him thatnan eventual return to the good savagenis now blocked by ethnography whichnshows that primitives, too, play rolesnand put on masks (and tribe-imposednbehavior) in all of life’s important situations:ninitiation rites, worship, hunting,nmarriage. Do the women’s libbersnnot play a role, that of the antipuritan,nwhile remaining as puritanic as ever,nthat is, living according to a new formula,ncalled “lifestyle”.”nThe tired conclusion inevitably followsn: the enemy of the person is society,na nonperson, an alienating machine.nIs it run by fascists, capitalists, and establishmentarians.”nNot only by these,nalso by their allies: liberals, conservatives,nradicals, conspirators all againstn”self-discovery” (p. 84). The battle linenis drawn, on one side everybody, on thenothersidethe person, recently reinforcednby the planet. Rid of the rules of reason,nRoszak writes now easily and “dialectically”:nhe is against society, locked up innold puritanic forms; the new society willnbe ethical and esthetic. He is againstnschools, because they demand discipline,nyet he searches for a good one for hisndaughter. He is against the family, yetnfinds it natural that a mother gives upnher newborn child—to a homosexualnwho adopts it since he wants to experiencenwhat it is like to be a parentn(p. 159). Apparently, a homosexualnfamily is approved. Naturally, Roszak isnagainst religion and church, but agreesnwith some guru that “God lives in younas you” (p. 93).nX hus every institution is restructured,nreally abolished, like emotions innKoestler’s Janus, and like folly in Foucault’snand Szasz’s writings. It would benuseless and tedious to explain to Roszaknthat since institutions are natural tonmen, in place of the abolished institutionsnnew ones would arise, certainlynworse because products not of humanninteraction but of social engineering.nIn other words, self-expression wouldnin no time be made to cohere in a programnunder the ideologue’s whip. Cambodia’snrecent leaders wanted to turnnthe country into a Rousseauistic idylln—with the help of shovel-strokes onnthe nape of the neck.nSuch facts and evidences have no interestnfor Roszak, who deals in abstractionsnlike Planet and Person, vague andndistant, symbolizing a similarly abstractn”emancipation.” Anyway, nobody willnsee through Planet and Person, inexpressivenas characters of a Beckett play,nthe predicament of our culture—justnas nobody will be convinced, after readingnthis book, that Roszak himself isnconcerned with it. He steps forward asnone of the culturally repressed, an innernexile, a spokesman for . . . for one doesnnot quite know what. His own predicamentnis to have arrived at the tail endnof a line of “critics” of a culture they donnot understand and of a society theynhate. What is there for such men to saynif they want to sell books? Their, Roszak’snown, culture places him light yearsnbelow the model of these critics,nNietzsche; and his scholarship is inferiornto that of Marcuse or Foucault. He is inna class with Dlich and Stephen Larsenn(The Shaman’s Doorway), the class ofnscavengers collecting the last debris ofna civilization, then gratuitously sketchingna new one on quicksand.nI remarked before that Theodore Roszaknand his best sellers are proof that ournculture is beyond repair. It is at thisnpoint that something must be said, ifnnot in Roszak’s defense, at least as anpartial justification for his exasperatingnshallowness.nThe other day I entered my bank. Thenhuge hall was transformed into the templenof Karnak, the imitation marble columnsncovered with paper imitatingnstone, including the cracks; overheadnbedsheets sewn together were hanging,napparently in lieu of a cloudy sky; paintednpyramids and sphinxes were allnaround, and a four-foot cobra wrigglednin the streetside window. I was toldnthat the campaign for more depositorsnnnhad started with a gala evening of 500nguests, TV cameras and reporters, atnwhich occasion the chief executive rodena live camel, etc., etc. So that nobodynshould miss the source of cultural inspiration,n”Tut” posters from the MetropolitannMuseum’s exhibit (itself annadvertising affair) were all over thenplace.nThis may be “bold and imaginative”nadvertisement, but it destroys the sensenof culture as surely as the KGB’s psychiatricnclinics destroy the sense ofnpersonality. Now the sad thing for Roszaknis that he cannot rise to the levelnof an appropriate critique of such anculture-poisoning —the way Arnold,nHenry Adams and T. S. Eliot rose tonthe level of criticizing their own pseudoculturalnlandscape. With all his verbosity,nRoszak—let us grant for the momentnthat his indignation is genuine—is reducednto cultural-linguistic impotence,nas he confronts the Karnak on 40thnStreet, the boss on a camel, and the cobranin the window. So he chooses refuge innsome anonymous abstractions. In thenprocess of escape, his cultural imaginationnis shattered and his critical languagenis reduced to fluent meaninglessness.nAnd perhaps he is right. Reasoned discoursenand culture-reformist attitudesnwould indeed prove disproportionate;nthe Person/Planet remains the onlynreality worth fighting for. It is the camelnthat Roszak rides.n1 detect behind Jastrow’s book thenpublisher’s hand who whispered to thenauthor something like this: vulgar materialismnas a fashion is out. The newnfashion, even in science, is to bring God,nor at least some intelligent design atnthe origin of the universe, into the discourse.n”God is dead” was true in the allcontestingnsixties; He is alive again innthe seventies, thanks to Solzhenitsynnand John Paul II. Write a text, any text,nno matter how repetitious and popularized,nand put in a lot of “human touch”nstories from the life of great scientistsn13nChronicles of Culturen