Category: Imported

42 / CHRONICLESndiscussing drug control legislationnwhich, for lack of sufficiently severenpenalties for drug traffickers, has nonpossibility of solving the terrible drugnproblem. Congress has recently enacted,nover the President’s veto, a “waternquality” act recently characterized bynJames J. Kilpatrick as a bureaucraticnmonstrosity, meant to benefit individualncongressmen. Left altogether unsolvednby the Congress are such crucialnproblems as the national debt,...

10 for Sigmund Freud—abhorred thenvery notion of “hterature” and nevernwrote anything but “thoughts.” Tonsuppose that the Western reader, considerablynless aware of this writer’snachievement in 1987 than he was inn1929, when 750 copies of FallennLeaves were published by James Stephensnat the Mandrake Press, maynnotice and understand two of Rozanov’snthoughts served up as “aphorisms”nis sheer folly. In...

44 / CHRONICLESnenough to persuade the newcomer toncancel his planned march.nNow, many of us think folks oughtnto be able to march for any damn-foolnreason they please or none at all. OnenForsythian who felt that way, a whitenman named Dean Carter, said he wasngoing to march, with his family,nwhereupon the threats got a little morenserious. Carter,...

300 years old. Every day, in the midstnof what some people persist in calhng anrecession, states, cities, and countiesnthrow restraint to the winds and giventhemselves exuberant birthday parties.nWhy?nOne answer could be that such celebrationsnare good for us. State governments,nstrapped for money, can’t votenmuch into state centennial commissionncoffers, especially here in thenUpper Midwest where our tax...

46 / CHRONICLESnPOP CULTUREnFillet of Soulnby Gary S. VasilashnEntertainment industry awards showsnare, almost by definition, public orgiesnof televised backslapping. Still, TVnviewers stick with them, not so muchnto discover what the best movie, TVnshow, or record is—for each viewernalready knows what’s best—but innorder to see personalities in environmentsnthat put them out of characternand in competition with...

these results: favorite album, “WhitneynHouston”; favorite video single,n”Greatest Love of All” by WhitneynHouston; favorite female vocalist,nWhitney; favorite male video artist,nLionel Richie; and, outrageouslynenough, to borrow a turn of phrasenfrom Mr. Richie, he also picked upnthe favorite male vocalist award. Ofnthe total 18 awards given in the combinednpop-rock and soul-R&B categories,nthose two received nine.nThis is not...

61 CHRONICLESnDeath and taxes are only a little morenpredictable than the art of Andy Warhol.nJust one month after Warhol’sndeath in Manhattan at age 58 from anheart attaek the morning of Februaryn22, the day after otherwise successfulngall bladder surgery, the artist was backnin the news. Unlike the obits, the newsnwasn’t on the front page; like the...

recently, he has been convicted ofnattempted murder. However, a kindlynChicago judge has ordered the latestnsentence to run concurrently with hisnterm as a sex offender. Perhaps JudgenJames Bailey is constrained by somenobscure Cook County statute to exercisensuch leniency. If not, some highernpower should reduce Escobedo’s sentencento a house arrest—preferably thenhouse of Judge Bailey or one of...

8/CHRONICLESnPERSPECTIVEnARMS AND THE MANnImust have been 11 or 12 years old before my father put angun into my hands and told me to shoot. By then, I hadnbeen out hunting with him several times a year but I hadnnot ceased marveling at the eiSciency and grace with whichnhe handled a shotgun or a rifle. Once,...

gradually absorbed into the manhood of the tribe. ThenAmerican system of schools, styles (punk or prep), andngraduations may be the least effective that could have beenndevised. Where are the wise older men who give instruchonsninto our tribal lore (college professors?), the gruelingnordeals that give proof of manhood (SAT’s? GRE’s?)?nIt is small wonder that at most...

10 / CHRONICLESnwas virtually running American foreign policy—drawingnup vast plans, carrying out illegal deals, all without thenknowledge or complicity of senior officials. If North is reallynguilty of all this, the entire administration should resignnand, preferably, go into exile. It is as if a commander shouldnblame a defeat upon an adjutant. No President is perfect,nand of...

12 / CHRONICLESnstreet, a thing my other grandmother would never do,n”Hold up your shoulders, grandson,” and I would straightennup. This was in front of Mr. Rufus Hayne’s house, whonconjured some warts from my hand. He just took out hisnpocket knife and ran it over the warts, mumbling words Indidn’t cateh. In a few days they...

Ginsberg’s Legends of the ]ews, he states that “God madenseveral worlds before ours, but he destroyed them all,nbecause he was pleased with none until he created ours.”nAt this point there must be some query into the forbiddennmystery of the Creator’s mind. Simply what limits had thenAll-powerful One put upon Himself when He creatednHimself Creator? Without...

14/CHRONICLESngod. He saw imitation as an attempt to deny power, and sonbrought death and disease into the world.nThe divine problem seems to be the stress betweennEternity and Time. To summarize much, that the Creator’snhuman artifacts become carnal gave Him a great vexation.nSo much so that he drowned nearly all of them, along withnthe innocent animals...

together in the larger role which he plays among us today.nFor Mr. Lytle has become (and was on his way to beingnsince he first began to write) one of the memory keepers, anrepository of the shape and feel of life in this country beforenit ceased to think of itself as part of the Christian West.nIndeed,...

for Mussolini. In Hemingway’s “My Old Man” and SherwoodnAnderson’s “I Want to Know Why”—both racetracknstories in which sensitive youths are traumatized by thenmoral defections of adult sportsmen—it is the failure of thenadult world to support the innocent expectations of adolescencenin all matters, not simply in sport, that is at issue.nSimilarly, in Ring Lardner’s “Champion” the...

bad news, unlike the supply of oil, is beyond danger ofndepletion. The wide appeal of this romance has made thenproduction and circulation of expose literature a growthnindustry. Nor is the romance confined to the world ofntabloid journalism; the expose impulse is conspicuously atnwork in all levels of writing, particularly in biography,nwhere the reader has learned...

motives and composition of its purifying bonfires. Such anhistory might very appropriately begin with the busk of thenGarden of Eden as depicted in Milton’s Paradise Lost andnend with the ironically observed grand busk that is intendednto be a fiery preliminary to the return to Paradise innHawthorne’s “Earth’s Holocaust.” Somewhere in the darkernchapters there would have...

20 / CHRONICLESntion a sign of cultural rot, but in their own way they paynhomage to the human need for regeneration throughnself-transcendence, if only in the form of an avengingndiscovery of our common victimization. The demonstrationnthat there is enough honesty and courage around tonmake such an experience possible is itself a comfort: At thenvery least...

Nancy Lieberman is one of the world’s best femalenplayers but insufficiently talented to make a malenprofessional team. She has no female professional leaguento play in because few spectators are willing to pay tonsee women in a sport that is played so much better bynmen.n22 / CHRONICLESnthey rank among the very best basketball players in thenworld,...

24 / CHRONICLESnprized as rhetorically effective. Even the Athenians admirednthe Spartans’ style. Later, the oratorical Cicero may havenbeen less typical of the Roman character than the morentaciturn Cato and Caesar. A refusal to waste words oftennsignals an allegiance to language—there is a differencenbetween the characters and their creators. Huck Finn isnonly an invention. Behind him...

rather than an attempt to make us insiders to an experience.nIn contrast, despite all its floweriness and Reader’s Digestndeseriptiveness (and pardy because of that), Carrying thenFire welcomes the reader. Long sentences and fancy phrasesncan also cover up feeling and exclude outsiders, but Collinsnwants us to understand, to experience, to enter into thenCommand Module and see...

ed upon the character and upon hownwell one played it. Miss Fanny Burney,nin her extremely successful novelnCecilia (1782), depicts a rich variety ofncharacters in fashionable London society,nmost of them rather shallow.nThere is a voluble, who sees everythingnin hyperbole and always talks fasternthan she thinks; there is a jargonist,nwho aspires to nothing but complimentsnin the “Lilliputian...

ifomia, they found a fully developednlegal structure in the European sensen— a heritage of three centuries ofnSpanish exploration, settlement, andndevelopment. This legal system wasnbased on Roman law, not the Englishncommon law, but it had been modifiednto fit the necessities of life in thenNew World, as, for example, in thenmatters of water, mineral, and agriculturalnlaw.nIn 1778...

away at the forms of ethics, philosophy,nand worship, milhons chng everntighter to the artifice of sports, lest theynfall into Chaos. Many fans wouldnprobably “cut the game,” if not for annagging fear that life beyond the playingnfield is pointless. At night the ballnpark is brightly lit and comprehensible,nwhile the world beyond lies submergednin darkness and confusion.nInevitably,...

34 / CHRONICLESnA good deal of selectivity must benemployed to build Dolan’s unattestednthesis that there have always been twonequally important schools of thoughtnregarding Catholicism in America:nEnlightened Catholics wanted thenpluralism that came with a nationalnchurch in tune with the American waynof life; the benighted “Europeanists”nwere the opposition. Those with propheticnforesight wanted a congregationalnmodel for the church,...

36 / CHRONICLESnLetter to AnothernEditornby Arnold Beichmann”More and more, the categories wenthink by are forms of darkness. Yetnwe keep using them as if fearful ofnthe deeper darkness we’d inhabit ifnwe had to front this life withoutnthem.”n—Jack Beatty, “The Category Crisis,”nAtlantic (March 1986)nAn open letter to Jack Beatty, Editor,nAtlantic MonthlynDear Jack:nI hope you will overlook this...

debate? Could I be called a “professionalnanti-Marxist”? Is Kenneth Minogue,nin light of his book Alien Powers:nThe Pure Theory of Ideology a professionalnanti-Communist or a professionalnanti-Marxist? Or both?n9. Is the expletive “professional anti-nCommunist” intended to weaken anynopinion of mine critical of the USSR,nhowever informed, logical, ornthoughtful it might be? After all, youndidn’t intend the use of...

38 / CHRONICLESnhis client was merely defending himselfnagainst what he perceived, rightlynor wrongly, as a sexual advance. Afternall, Erickson was a grown man whosenproclivities were well-known; Westcottnwas just an innocent, frightened youngnboy, and state law does permit the usenof force in defending against sexualncontact.nErickson denied that he had gazednat Westcott and brought in a femalenfriend...

ty. Inability to talk about football raisesnquestions of sexual preference.nIf football intensely matters at thenlocal level, the stakes are infinitelynhigher at the university. Everyone innthe Southwest is expected to have anfavorite college team. In Oklahoma itnis taken for granted that you will supportneither the University of Oklahomanor else its cross-state rival, OklahomanState. Most Sooners choose...

40 / CHRONICLESnBut salary is only part of it. Anothernsource of income, sometimes evennlarger than salary, is what a winningncoach receives from doing his ownnweekly television show during the season.nAdditional revenue comes fromncommercials or even a radio show.nAnd there are paid appearances tonspeak to this gathering or that. Onennationally prominent coach now receivesn$15,000 for a...

Letter From thenLower Rightnby John Shelton ReednLife in the Rust BeltnLast August marked the 50th anniversarynof the first field trials of the Rustncotton picker, an occasion little notednoutside the pages of Forbes, where Insaw it. Somebody should have made anbigger deal about it. For better or fornworse, that machine has transformednthe South in my lifetime,...

42 / CHRONICLESnhigh-tech, high-wage industry advancednthinkers get excited about. It’snthe kind of industry that finds lowwage,npoorly educated, gratefiil-for-a-n)ob, displaced cotton pickers attractivenworkers. It’s also often the kind ofnindustry so economically marginalnthat it needs tax breaks and subsidies ofnvarious sorts. It doesn’t do much fornour average industrial wage, or ournimage. Some say that we’re basicallyncompeting with...

Perhaps even more significant is thencompanion Religion and Social Conflictnin the USA, which “analyzes thenways of ‘extinguishing’ social conflictnwith the help of religion.” Christians,npay attention.nTitles like USSR Through IndiannEyes, Red Star and Green Crescent,nand A Tree in the Centre of Kabul tellnanother side of the same story: Russiansnlove religion. “Socialism,” runsnthe catalog blurb, “has turned...

44 / CHRONICLESnSCREENnThe Long Warnby Katherine DaltonnPlatoon; directed and written by OlivernStone; Hemdale Film Corporationn& Orion Pictures.nSome opinions are communicated likena virus, and the received wisdom onnPlatoon is a good example of thisncultural dissemination on the scale ofnan epidemic. It’s a movie that moviegoersnhave flocked to, and as for ourncollected punditry, bowing and scrapingnbefore Platoon’s...

skull crushed.nCut to the next morning, twitteringnbirds and Taylor, bloody but alive,nraising himself out of the muck. Henfinds a gun and then Barnes, alive asnwell and demanding a medic. Surroundednby bodies of Americans andnVC, Taylor shoots him, killing thisnmachine that could not die, beatingnBarnes at his own game.nI am the child, Taylor muses in thenchopper...

46 / CHRONICLESnthese truths.” The two seem to feel thisnway far more than the playwrightsnthemselves. If only they had listened,nthey could have learned somethingnfrom Michelene Wandor when shensaid, “Theater goes for novelty anyway,nand when women are seen merelynas the novelty of the moment, thennwe know we’re not progressing.” Evennmore absurd is their insistance on thenidea...

ilection for extramusical associations,nfor program symphonies and tonenpoems, for operas and other vocalnworks, for theoretical discussions ofnthe moral and philosophical implicationsnof their work—all attempts tongive concrete, palpable form to theirnnebulous inner states. Complete subjectivistsnwould not have bothered;nthey probably would not have composednat all.nThe effort on the part of modernncrihcs to dismiss Romanhcism is notnpurely malicious...

48 / CHRONICLESnmusic, and it is as futile to try tondivorce him from it as it is to try tondivorce Einstein from the Theory ofnRelativity.nThe moral intentions of Beethoven’sncompositions are often specificnand concrete. The Eroica symphonyngives unqualified support to the moralitynof heroism; Fidelio affirms the moralitynof political freedom; the NinthnSymphony, the morality of joy; in...

muke. It is significant that in AlbannBerg’s Wozzeck, one of the more successfijlnatonal works, when the composer,ntowards the end, wishes to drawna musical moral from the operaticnproceedings, he drops the serial stylencompletely and writes in powerful,ntragic D minor.nIn a way, the achievement of thenmodern American Romantics is evennmore impressive than that of theirnEuropean predecessors. During...

6/CHRONICLESnFresh from his masterful coup de sabotagenin Amerika, Kris KristofFerson betooknhimself to the USSR, to be beratednby comrade Gennadi I. Gerasimovnfor his anti-Sovietism. Either Gerasimovnhad not seen the series in hisnclosed-circuit sessions, or he was wilyneven by Soviet standards. In any case,nKristofFerson defended the productionnas an inside job, to gain credibilitynwith the American public. Previously,nKristofFerson...

represent a Massachusetts district? Thenrepeated references to John Kennedynought to answer that. As for character,nafter watching 14 hours of Kris Kristofferson’snimpression of Buster Keaton,nsome viewers might have thoughtnthe show was really Night of the LivingnDead.nThe most engaging characters are anKGB colonel and a Russian general,nboth of whom express great angst fornthe poor Americans who don’t...

8 / CHRONICLESnagents would always know when andnwhere to show up.nSome may still contend that divorcenshould remain a free private choice,nunencumbered by tax restraints. Butnalmost all of the arguments now usednto justify heavy taxes on other badnhabits — like liquor, tobacco, andnstudded snow tires—could with evenngreater justice be applied to divorcentax. Smoking may cause cancer,...

“The Chesterton Review is keeping alive what hasnbecome a fugitive tradition of social criticism.”n— Joseph Sobran, The National Review (New York).nA Special Issue ofnThe Chesterton ReviewnCharles Dickens. November 1985 issue deals withnChesterton’s work as a Dickens critic. Contributorsninclude Sylvere Monod, President of Dickens Fellowshipnand Merja M. Makinen, Dickens House Scholar in 1983.nOther Special IssuesnFATHER BROWN...

10 / CHRONICLESnTHRICE-TOLD TALESnPolitics and tale-telling are virtually inseparable activities.nGreat political events—wars, rebellions, socialncrusades—do not exert their full measure of influence untilnthey are whitded into legends. More than one Britishnstatesman has derived his understanding of the Wars of thenRoses from Shakespeare’s Histories, and in the UnitednStates the stories of Washington at Valley Forge, Lincolnnthe man...

are all scientists. The main trouble with historical writing isnthat the reader gradually comes to realize that the historiannexpects to be taken seriously as a purveyor of truth rathernthan as a philosopher or (what is more common) anpropagandist. Serious historians always have an ax to grind,nand the best of them finish the edge with the...

12 / CHRONICLESnTHE PACTnbyJ.C. HallnChildren and loversnAct so safe in sleep.nHow can they trust us so?nWhat is the pact we keep?nAstonishing that a light’snShaft or an elbow’s knocknScarcely disturbs them. They lapsenBack to themselves. The shocknOf such insouciancenIs not theirs but ours—nThat nature should chance all nightnHer brief gifts, like flowers.nWhen in the doorway’s streaknOur...

14/CHRONICLESnresolved before life resumes its even course. I am describing,nvery roughly, the feeling of artificiality which was withnme at the very beginning, when I was trying to write andnwondering what part of my experience could be made to fitnthe form—wondering, in fact, in the most insidious way,nhow I could adapt or falsify my experience to...

harmony of the form itselfnIf, for instance, the Hbidinal drive is popularly believed tonbe fundamental, then it is useless, indeed rather sinister, tonresist it even if it requires breaking faith with other people.nIn fact it is heroic, as in the case of Connie and Mellors innLady Chatterley’s Lover, to give that impulse absolute sway.nThe reader...

multiple time-lines, without borrowing science iiction’snmuch more relaxed view of motivational verisimilitude.nEven more brilliantiy Nabokov, in Ada, invented a wholennew world for his narrator-heroine and narrator-hero; likenDoris Lessing and Anthony Burgess, among others, henfound it necessary to go all the way over to science fiction,nin order to set his characters free.nIt may seem irresponsible to...