than ambiguous in their portrayal ofnhuman life as essentially pointless and ofnAmerica as a corrupt intruder into the affairsnof other countries.nIhere is a depressing sameness aboutnhis three novels. They all focus upon thenmost sordid aspects of modern life:ndrugs, alcoholism, perverted sexuality,nsadistic violence, moral and political corruption.nThey are like a tour of big citiesnthat shows you...

have been doing during diose six yearsnwas helping defend the people “fromnthese American flunky thugs that runnthings here.” Her fiery idealism seemsnlargely a product of a frustrated personalnlife. Her only happiness comes from assistingnthe revolutionaries, and she isncontent to die for that cause.nThe center of the second set of charactersnis a violent, amphetamine-fuelednsociopath who goes...

ists on common grounds. For both herenand in Europe, sensitive individuals ofnthe late 19th and early 20th centuries experiencedna malaise, a feeling of overcivilization,na loss of vitality, a spiritual sterilitynand the emptiness of a “weightlessnculture.” It is the expression of thesenmoods that Lears pursues in his study. Henis careful to note the idiomatic qualitiesnof this...

way for a culture of consumerism markednby the hedonism that characterizesnmodern capitalist society. Much of hisnwork is simply a vehicle for Lears to expatiatenupon his own anxieties about ournoppressive culture, and the antimodernistsnbecome accomplices to its insidiousncourse. But the reader is given fair warning.n”All scholarship,” Lears says, “is—nor ought to be—a kind of intellectualnautobiography.” The...

Lears’s discussion here suggestivelynreveals how complex antimodertiismnreally was and how intriguing a subject itnis. Here we have the revolt from anemicnovercivilization, the disquietude fromnliberal Protestantism, the surrogate religionnof medievalism, the profound alienationnfrom the new business order ofnAmerica, and, withal, the pervasive ambivalencenthat marked the retreat intonantimodernism. Lears, in treatingnAdams, has recourse to psychobiographynand pursues it...

coming a parody of himself as eacli newnfilm went into the can. Yet he seems tonhave been so manipulated by circumstances,nby his manager “Colonel”nParker, that he was unable to do anythingnbut inexorably become a biggerthan-life,nflickering image on a screen.nMusical achievement was recorded onlynon eairly wax; the subsequent gold recordsnwere representative of nothing morenthan marketing. It’splausible...

king. Whatever else Elvis really was, henwas still one of them.n1 queried two young ladies, one 19nand the other 35, about their memoriesnofElvis. The younger, a fan of rock musicnand a regular attendee at rock shows,ndidn’t picture a raucous, wild, hip-shakingnyoung man or even a diamond-studdednwhite-jumpsuited Vegas star. Instead,nshe said that his eating habits,nwhich she...

The Creedal ConnectionnSamuel P. Huntington: American Politics:nThe Promise of Disharmony; ThenBelknap Press of Harvard UniversitynPress; Cambridge, Massachusetts.nby DanielJ. O’Neilnlooming from a political scientist,nthis book is a pleasant surprise. ThenAmerican branch of the study of politicsnincreasingly has turned from questions ofnultimate concern to scholastic exercisesnabout methodological purity and to accentuatingnthe obvious, especially whennit is quantifiable. Disproportionate...

the current establishment. Huntingtonnthen breaks with most conventional attemptsnat interpreting American historynby (1) his emphasis on the central role ofnideas; (2) his view of consensus as the keynto conflict; (3) his cyclical interpretation;nand (4) his predictions concerning thenftiture.nLike an increasingly large number ofnacademicians—e.g. Berger, Nisbet,nBell, Greeley—Huntington seems fascinatednby religion and its role in Americanndevelopment. He...

In earlier epochs,na critic tormented only the writers…nOf all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant ofnhypocrites may he the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting.nLaurence SternenIn ours, he torments everybody.nRecently a middle-aged father publishedna book about his sordid adventuresnin massage parlors, wife-swappingncommunes and the worlds of easy sexnand...

used the creed to destroy a system thatnthey hated.nDespite the changes in American societynand the turmoil of the past, Huntingtonnis optimistic that the creed will surviven. But will it suffice for a future of limitednresources, excessive population, andnforeign threat? Huntington perhaps toonflippantly dismisses Willmore Kendall’snsuggestion that, given the built-in disaepancynbetween the creed and the existential,nthe...

resented grew quite conservative as timenpassed, the original liberal sensibility remainednthe most powerful force onnwhatever legacy he may have left us.nHence, it is important to understandnsomething about his anti-Marxist socialism.n”I caught it from my wife,” he toldnMalcolm Cowley. He was an old-fashionednsocialist who could not make classnwarfare the tyrannizing principle of hisnsocial philosophy. He was...

there was some jealousy mixed in as well.nDrooks’s liberalism made it impossiblenfor him to understand or to be fair tona great many of the most significantn20th-century writers: Proust, Joyce,nPound, Eliot, Stein, Faulkner. Theynwere, like Hawthorne and the laternMelville, concerned with sin, weakness,nthe chaos of the present and, as such,nwere probably fascist to the core. FornBrooks,...

chance. Anything else is evasion, mythologynor self-deception,—get all spiritualityninto it. ” Good is in man and is notnto be found anywhere else. His ownnidentity was such a precarious thing, henwas afraid of losing it in Catholicism.nMuch is revealed by his intense hatred fornT.S. Eliot: why, for instance, did he considernhim “a demonic anti-selP’?nLiooking now at...

talents and aspirations. After all, he is anman who strives for that formula ofnelegance which can be derived only fromna secret mixture of self-assurance andnself-deprecation—the quintessence ofnStyle. In Bauhaus, Mr. Wolfe is sometimesnon target in his pursuit of thatnelegance, but often he is not—which Indeplore, for he is one of my mostpreferrednpresences in today’s culturalnlandscape....

cupy the seats of power, then the Churchnwill return to the witness-bearing puritynof her earliest days, a time when martyrdomnwas the usual outcome of an ecclesiasticalncareer.nOne should not underestimate thenstrength of his case: every student ofnChurch history can produce his own examplesnof the Church’s collusion withnthe City of Man. And Martin—whosennovels. The Find Conclave and...

intolerant of errors of judgment. He presentsneach of his popes with the GreatnChoice, permits most of them some transitorynglimpse of the truth, and then callsnin human pride and “historicalnnecessity” to explain the great refusal. Innthe process historical contexts, errors ofnjudgment and moral corruption are allnconfounded. The temptation to judgenand condemn much of the Church’s historyntestifies...

thing. You really sec nothing else at firstnglance, so well is the picture composed.nThey occupy the precise center of thenphotograph. And why not? The eyesnafter all are the windows of the soul, andnoh what a soul we have here. The lightingnis perfect, the shadows around the eyesnincredibly deep and dark so that the eyesnthemselves shine...

human nature. Of course some greatnwriters can do more—perhaps paint annentire life into a few pages. But genuisesnare even more rare than writers of goodnstories—and it doesn’t pay to play at beingna genius if you are not.nUamon Runyon was no genius, butnhe wrote wonderful stories. One of thenmost endearing things about Runyon isnthat, in the...

their murderous national honor than toncheat them at cards and bribe them withntheir own money? It’s too bad MissnThe Magic & Power of WordsnBorges: A Reader: A Selection from thenWritings of Jorge Luis Borges; edited bynEmir Rodriguez Monegal and AlastairnReid; E.P. Button; New York.nItalo Calvino: If on a winter’s night antraveler; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich;nNew York.nby...

think of one man, of that man’s trivialnfortunes or misfortunes, though he benthat very man.” Borges wants to deciphernwords and language as a means of reachingnthe ultimate meaning behind them,nbut he realizes that to penetrate thisnrealm would be to arrive at a silencenbeyond the power of man to create or tonfathom.nIhe possibilities afforded by wordsnand...

Noble LiberalismnAlain Besancon: The Rise of the Gulag:nIntellectual Origins of Leninism; Continuum;nNew York.nby Lee CongdonniJy now it is commonplace that intellectualsnroutinely succumb to the totalitarianntemptation, chiefly from the left.nOver and over again they have served asnapologists for tyrannies that advertisentheir commitment to Marxism-Leninism,nprating about the villainous characternof Western “bourgeois” democracy.nSince the end of World War...

well as historical importance: To what extentnis Soviet history and policy determinednby Marxist-Leninist ideology? Accordingnto most anti-Soviet Russians, thenideology—imported from the West—ncreated in Russia a monstrous dictatorshipnthat represents a fundamental breaknwith the country’s past. Some Westernnhistorians, including the Polish-bornnRichard Pipes, take a different view;nadapting Tocqueville’s famous argumentnconcerning historical continuitynduring the French Revolution, they insistnthat the...

much as did his liberal critics. The causenof Ivan Karamazov’s damnation, afternall, is that he, like the revolutionaries,nhated this imperfect world and thosenwho inhabit it.nIn any event, Besangon proceeds tonargue that the intelligentsia needed anpolitical party to elevate it to power. Thenturning point came in 1898 with thenorganization of the Russian Social DemocraticnParty, soon to...

on the average, a book a year, and then”Oates fiction factory” (as one critic hasncalled her talent) is one industry seeminglynunaffected by recession or supplysideneconomics. By contrast, Polish-CanadiannHelen Weinzweig, now nearingnseventy, published her only other novelnabout ten years ago, while AustraliannHelen Garner, about forty, is publishingnher first. Although the three women varynin age, nationality and...

THE MONUMENTAL LITERATURE OF DWARFSn. .. CONTINUES.n7H£_ ROCKFORD PAPERS’ newnseries, “The Monumental Literature ofnDwarfs,” continues its critical look at contemporarynAmerican literature with essaysnon the following celebrated authors:nMARILYN FRENCH and MARY GOR­nDON. Are their novels literature or feministnbrochures? Betsy Claike writes on perhapsnthe most-hyped contemporarynauthoresses.nNORMAN MAILER. Is he still the greatnwhite hope of American literature or...

lan jungle in which human life is “solitary,npoor, nasty, brutish, and short.”nSociety is corrupt; government is fascist;nGod is dead or dying—all the sleazy wisdomnof the 60’s and 70’s is replayed. Thenmajor characters in the three novels arenalike in that they want to live “in the moment,n” and thus all they find is a “halflifenof waiting.”...

Their myth grew to such dimensionsnthat, on the fiftieth anniversary of theirnexecution, Governor Michael Dukakis ofnMassachusetts issued a lengthy proclamationndecreeing, among other things,nthat “any stigma and disgrace should benforever removed from the names ofnNicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.”nIn the end Sacco and Vanzetti were vindicatednby the myth they had helped toncreate.nAlthough the myth of SenatornJoseph...

Star, and her name is today a bywordnamong Washington conservatives as ansymbol of a slanted political reporter.)nThe Milwaukee Journal pionttttd thisnsort of reporting by inserting into its Mc­nCarthy stories bracketed material whichndisputed or refuted his charges. If “objective”nreporting assumed that thencharges made by a United States Senatornwere probably correct, advocacy journalismnin its early stages implicitly...

Sleazy Treatments of Complex MattersnAnthony Cave Brown and Charles B.nMacDonald: On a Field of Reel; G.P.nPutnam’s Sotis; New York.nDonald Neff: Warriors at Suez: EisenhowernTakes America into the MiddlenEast; Linden Press/Simon & Schuster;nNew York.nby AlanJ. Levineno. fn a Field of Red is purportedly anmajor work on Soviet and communist intriguesnfrom 1919 to 1943; unfortunatelynit proves to...

original Leninist sense, i.e. that the Russiannrevolution would spark similar revolutionsnelsewhere, was always a mirage.nPerhaps if they had been better led, communistsnmight have succeeded in seizingnpower in Berlin and Vienna in 1919, butnthey could not have retained it. Evennsuch a temporary victory was possible onlynin countries that had suffered defeat:nthere was no possibility of a...

Few people of this school, however,nhave given freer rein to their fantasies. Innorder to portray Israel as the aggressor,nNeff resorts to the tedious method ofnemphasizing any violent or hostile Israelinactions while ignoring or minimizing thenevents that triggered them. Israel’snreprisal raids for border incidents ornPalestinian raids are much more heartilyncondemned than “fedayeen” activitiesnin Israel. Neff barely...

commission—that have beennthe salient features of child-rearingnfor decades. It stresses thenfundamental wisdom of thenadult rather than the child, withnthe former’s privilege to put thenmarriage, rather than the child,nfirst. Since the marriage is thenFoul PlaynGlenn N. Schram: Toward anResponse to the AmericannCrisis; University Press of America;nWashington, D.C.nDon’t expect Glenn Schramnto win any awards from thenAmerican Political...

S( Kr.i:nCritical FolliesnAtlantic City; Written by John Guare;nDirected by Louis Malle; Paramount Pictures.nVictor/Victoria; Written and directed bynBlake Edwards; MGM/United Artists.nby Eric ShapearonOnce again, a foreigner performsnmagic—a proud tradition since denToqueville, perhaps even before that—nby putting his finger on that enigmaticnbutton which releases some elusive truthsnabout America, truths that arenunbeknownst to natives. This is a movienabout...

Ml SICnRecords: Tuneful Affairsnby Robert R. ReillynAn attractive disc of chamber musicnby the Western Arts Trio has been issuednby Laurel Records (LR-109), Volume IIInin a series featuring this fine ensemble.nThe first piece is Joaquin Turina’s SecondnTrio, Opus 74 in B minor for piano andnstrings. The beginning is reminiscent ofnAnton Arensky’s Trio, a late 19thcenturynRussian work....

(1955). This work is written in a muchnmore modern idiom than the Thomson.nIt is not inaccessible, but it’s complexitynmakes it quite difficult to approach. Accordingnto the composer’s notes, the firstnmovement is “a rather explosive shortnsonata-form movement,” the secondn(which, separately, in the form of Adagionfor Orchestra, received the Fromm FoundationnAward and a Leopold Stokowskinperformance) is “pervasively...

for racial harmony; Soap counselsntolerance for homosexuals; even Fonzie’snown Happy Days takes on a new socialnconsciousness. With Norman Lear in thenlead, the sitcoms battle against everynconventional belief in sight.nSince parents all too often teach conventionalnbeliefs to their children, itnfollows that the sitcoms must liberate thenchildren from these pernicious influences.nFather doesn’t know bestnanymore. Sitcom kids work...

tendon was basically moral, conceptual,nconditioned by a profound faith in eachnside’ s argument. Often, it was referred tonas a tragic and insoluble clash betweennhonorable men who differed so extremelynthat blood must flow. Nothing couldnbe further from the neofeudalism of today’snmedia. They are in a triple conflict:nwith the goverrunent which was mandatednby the people, with the...

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Sexual Revolution is a pathetic misnomer. The most popularnfeature of revolutions is their reversal of roles: aristocrats go tonthe scaffold, judged by the wretched of the earth. The needynare told that all their needs will be fulfilled. The greedy have allntheir luxuries withdrawn—at least temporarily. In light of thisnsimple recipe, nothing short of a mass...

millennia to walk a tightrope between sexual morality and sexualnmores, in America went head over heels into a direct confrontation—andnthe end result is our current chaos in whichnsome American churches opt for modish permissive progressivismnjust to keep their flock in the pews, while others use obsoletendialectics to combat a permissiveness which they cannotncomprehend. Actually, what...

Fast Mental FoodnWilliam F. Buckley, Jr.: MarconPolo, if You Can; Doubleday&Co.;nNew York.nby Becki KlutenWhat is America’s answer tonJames Bond up to now? In WilliamnF. Buckley, Jr.’s latest, thenredoubtable Blackford Oakesnsteps into fictional shoes thatnwere worn in real life by FrancisnGary Powers. We are back withnour old friends (CIA spooks all)nand lovers from Buckley’s firstnthree spy...

We Can C^e You Six NewnReasons to Subscribento THE ROCKFORD PAPERS.nWe think THE ROCKFORD PAPERS’new sixpartnseries will give you six reasons to put us onnyour permanent reading list.nThe series is called “The MonumentalnLiterature of Dwarfs.” In it we try to undo whatnthe liberal culture has done to contemporarynAmerican literature.nSix critics re-examine the work and reputationsnof...

one did not. That’s the wholenpoint of a collection of humorousnessays; it’s a sort of dessertncart from which one may picknand choose. It makes no differencenif one selects thenNapoleon or the strudel—everybodynenjoys som’rrhing.nAny dedicated smoker is guaranteednto share in her enthusiasmnfor the sport—along withnher puzzled disdain for the morenmilitant nonsmokers among us.nPerhaps one day members...

noted but is simply the lensnthrough which our societynperceives itself and thenmold through which it increasinglynshapes itself.nThis is not a revelation.nWriters such as Cervantes andnFlaubert emphasized the overwhelming—andnoften disastrous—effectnthe fashionablenideas of their time had on DonnQuixote and Emma Bo vary. Butnit is worth repeating when one isnconfronted with serious phenomenanwhich affect our lives:nthe banality of...

the Lower East Side moved withnastonishing, ferocious dynamismninto this newly opened fieldnof economic activity, where sellingnimages—a cultural merchandise—suddenlynbecame anroute to unheard-of wealth,npower and glories. They, themselves,nwere often cutthroats andngamblers, ruthless exploitersnand workaholics, mercilessnschemers and frivolous hypocrites.nBut, paradoxical as itnsounds, they were in love withnthe Little Lord Fauntleroy ethos,nwith the Louisa May Alcottnmoral aesthetics, with British-nVictorian...

created a psychological ambiance whichnconditioned the American mind in a perplexing,nobscure manner—people maynhave been aware of the surrealism ofnthose movies, yet they somehow believednin their potential to engender reality, tonreflect some hazy truths. In other words,na mystique was accepted as both reverienand recipe for living; a placebo turnednout to be a prescription for culturalnnorms.nThus, a...

approach, but still invests the pieces withnthe phrasings and subtleties of jazz.nThere is no mistaking where her hean isnwhen she inflects “One for My Baby”nand “Over the Rainbow” with blue notesnor makes “Ding Dong the Witch isnSTAGEnThe Epistemology of ReportingnHow I Got That Story; Written bynAmlin Gray; Directed by CarolenRothman; Westside Arts Theater.nby Robert R....

Voegelin but is contemptuously ignorednby the most formative component ofncontemporaneity—the media. Then”facts” are up front and in the “news”nsections and the “values” are neatly relegatednto the editorial pages. Butn”news,” by its very nature, cannot benneutral. Carl Becker observed, “Historynis not fact, but the interpretation ofnfact.” This is true of “news” as well. Thenvery process of...

1830’s. Wonder of wonders: Schlesinger’snJackson is a 20th-century liberal, anFranklin D. Roosevelt in frontier garb.nTo the credit of the historical profession,nthe next generation of historiansnsubjected Schlesinger’s view of Jacksonianismnto scathing criticism. The samencannot be said of Schlesinger’s three-volumenwork of the 1950’s. The Age ofnRoosevelt. American historians still generallynaccept as holy writ Schlesinger’snview of the 1920’s...