Category: Imported

18 / CHRONICLESnTHE SHUTTERnby J.C. Halln”There were eleven windows showing between thenwooden trellis covered with ivy. One shutter in thenmiddle was put there for symmetry only, but I oftenndream about this mysterious room which does notnexist behind the closed shutter.”n—Anais Nin: JournalsnI too. Only last night I climbednThat fragile stair, more like a ghostnThan man,...

20 / CHRONICLESnbirth. Another is that reahstic fiction is none so real as itsnadmirers Hke to pretend. NaturaHsm especially tends tonverge toward, and often to break into, phantasmagoria in itsnmoments of harshest intensity. If the climaxes of such worksnas Frank Norris’ The Pit or Zola’s Germinal or L’Assomoirnstood separate and complete, no one would ever...

Raphaelite sappiness. Perhaps this is a danger for anynhterature in which the happy ending is necessary to itsnrituahstic structure.nYet the best of visionary fiction is careful to take accountnof the grand tragic element of our lives, and to absorb it in anlarger scheme of things. Tragedy is no longer perceived asnwe usually perceive it, as...

22 / CHRONICLESnA CHILD’S JOKE a story by Leon SteinmetznThe sea, warm and quiet, lay in front of me. Dusk wasnfalling, and there was a strong smell of brine and kelpnin the air.nI was sitting on a piece of a ruined ancient column on thenshore of the Black Sea and couldn’t quite believe that just...

flat roofs; tiny squares with monuments to the heroes of thencivil war in green-tarnished bronze trousers.nProvincial towns like these can easily depress you, if younhappen to wind up in one when you are not in the rightnmood. But to me, after cold and wet Moscow, these whitenstucco houses, the small dusty squares, even the 30-yearoldnbuses...

24 / CHRONICLESn”What chicken gods?”n”That’s what sards with a hole in the middle are called.nWater makes the holes, and you can string them and wearnthem around your neck. People say they’re lucky. Tolik, mynson, recently found two.”nMost of all, though, he liked to show me the ancientnruins. As it turned out, there were many of...

scope it out.”nI removed my shoes and climbed onto the bed.nMatvey pulled the cloth off.nVigorous black lines, here and there touched by color,nran over the entire canvas. The lines twisted into spirals, fellndown, soared up; naked bodies, some winged figures, gustyntongues of flame, heaved up mountains could be discernednin them. Light and dark were wrestling...

26 / CHRONICLESnfrom her eyes. She jumped up from the table, grabbed herncoat, which hung on a nail on the door, and rushed out ofnthe room.n”Mama …” Ida ran after her.n”She’ll calm down,” she said returning shortly. “She’llnbe all right. She had a fight with the neighbors today, that’snwhy she’s like that. I’m sorry,” she...

The old woman, who was sitting next to Matvey,nstretched out her hand and, without a word, grabbed hisnsleeve.nBut Matvey went on.n”… You were given a chance—you were born anhuman—and you blew it. For that, in the next life, you’llnbe born a spider.”n”Did you hear that?” the old cop turned to the one withnthe sheet. “Write...

comes readily to mind. Examples stillnabound. Polls on the air strike againstnLibya reveal that the “Yuppies” composednvirtually the only group to opposenthe raid. It will take more than anspirit of “democrahc capitalism” tonsave the United States and the West.nThe U.S. can produce the conservativenleaders it needs if its “naturalnaristocracy” can acquire values othernthan those of...

ered that it was best for all that theynshould do so.” The dismal record of sonmany of the colonies since “independence”nspeaks volumes on this point.nKitchener was made a viscount andnwas voted 50,000 pounds for his SouthnAfrican service. Now quite wealthy,nhe dabbled in investments in tradenwith Japan, railroad building in Russia,nand a plantation in Kenya, butnbusiness...

32 / CHRONICLESnin the midst of a mystery, GerardnStraub made a pit stop at PentecostalnFundamentalism, from which he hasnfashioned this “expose of Christianntelevision.” Feeling “a responsibility tonshare with the public the dangers . . .nin the electronic church,” he movesnfirst to expose the “born-again phenomenon”nto an “unsuspecting”nAmerica. These revelations are worthngoing into because in addition...

my word, more than that you don’tnwant to know.)nHis “investigation” complete, hisncase airtight—and being, by the way,none who has made every effort atn”understanding and appreciating othernfaiths,” one whose “nature much prefer[s]ngentleness” and whose “tirelessntolerance” extends all the way fromnsmokers (“we should be tolerant andnunderstanding of the smoker”) to pornographersn(“at worst, they are peoplenwho don’t know...

some strange company andnimplied a heritage that I couldnnever reconcile with my ownnviews of past or present.nThinking Back is a relilection onneach of his published books. SincenWoodward has so often given novelninterpretations to Southern history, henhas been the subject of a great deal ofnprofessional criticism. That criticismnplays a major role in his new book, innwhich...

38 / CHRONICLESnLetter From Bedlamnby R.E. LiebnSmile When You Say ‘Psychiatrist’nI did not mean to harm anyone when Inbought a Bachelor of Arts degree innChild Psychology for $100. I meant itnto be a bitter joke on myself I wasngoing to hang it up in my room, muchnas an important man might hang anPlayboy cartoon on...

but the cook at the place earned morenthan what I had earned. Mr. G. andnhis family liked to eat well, to eat verynwell; and for that reason the fare givennto the boys was extremely plain. I hadnto eat with the boys. As the solensupervisor, responsible for 34 juvenilendelinquents aged from eight to 16, Inwas on...

40 / CHRONICLESnto question a lot during the first hournand indeed to disagree a bit with thenpsychiatrist, so that he could pretendnhe was an open-minded person. Anyonenwho remained silent got a messagenfrom him through the Charge Nurse:nPerhaps Mr. X. did not have anythingnto contribute to the great work at theninstitution; perhaps Mr. X. would benhappier...

—who bragged about having left threengirls pregnant, who admitted to beingnan alcoholic, and who expressed hisnleftist politics by taking his charges onnstealing raids in stores. None of thenpsychiatrists questioned the notionnthat saving is abnormal and causesnchildren to explode.n”And he doesn’t relate!” said careworkernM.R.—one must not blamenher for being a lesbian and for havingnhad “a crush”...

42/CHRONICLESnlessons to be learned at the poker table.nA friend, who claims to be quotingnMark Twain, says that the two bestnthings in life are playing poker andnwinning, and playing poker and losing.nIn North Carolina, the emphasisnwas on playing poker; in Washington,nit’s on winning and losing,nPeter J. Donaldson is on the staff ofnthe National Academy of Sciences,nbut...

Is the family in Americanan outdated relic of the past?nIs the intact nuclear family now just a memory from days gone by … a vestigialnsocial form that was, at best, oversentimentalized and, at worst, a narrow prison,nforcing men, women, and children into stereotypical roles that stultified freedom and individuality?nIntroducing a monthly newsletternthat holds this truth...

44 / CHRONICLESnAfter cleaning and properly tighteningnthe solenoid, the electric arcingnstopped. Nevertheless, the car stillnwouldn’t start. Hewey, Dewey, andnLewey scratched their collective headsnand decided it was the starter. Deweyndid the grunt work and replaced thenburned out unit. Sure enough, thendead engine would now crank, but itnwouldn’t start. It was something morenthan the starter. Maybe it...

satisfy the claims of the Order.nClaims may be madenby . . . original British ornCommonwealth claimants orntheir successors in respect ofnfinancial and property claimsnarising before 1939 which werenregistered . . . between 1918nand 1951.nWith characteristic understatement,nwhich seems to pervade even publicnannouncements, H.M. Covernmentnwent on:nIt is not possible to forecastnwhat percentage of the assessednvalue of successful...

46 / CHRONICLESnrelics arrived in the Hermitage . . .nwhether from aristocrats who stayed onnand changed their ways, or fromnmountains of the officially confiscatednand the privately looted,” yet in thenend, perhaps wearied by the unpleasantnrealization that the distinction betweennthe two was more blurred thannhe as a decent Englishman couldnallow himself to suppose, he concludednthat it...

SCREENnThe Three Sistersnby Katherine DaltonnCrimes of the Heart; written by BethnHenley; directed by Bruce Beresford;nDe Laurentiis Entertainment Group.nWhen Perseus went to slay the monsternMedusa, advice and presents fromnMinerva and Mercury were notnenough; he had to seek out the Graeaen—three crones with but a single prizedneye they shared between them, whichnPerseus snatched in order to forcenthem...

48 / CHRONICLESnand very Southern, There’s also ancertain slickness to the overall productionnand some of the performancesnthat rings false—for Henley a few hitsnand for director Bruce Beresford a fewnmisses.nBut all in all the film is funny andnworth seeing. Nevertheless, the problemnwith Crimes is that like the majoritynof successful plays (which is what itnwas originally) it’s...

than the scholarly work that it is.nWhile Troyat does nothing to disturbnthe previous less than consistentnviews of Chekhov, he emphasizes twonaspects of his life as a powerful subtextnsuggesting Chekhov was deserving ofnsainthood. During his youth, he sufferednhis father’s notorious tyrannyn—including daily beatings supposed tonbuild moral character. Yet Chekhovn(unlike his brothers) never spoke ill ofnhis father...

SO / CHRONICLESnPlatonov is presented as a shamefulncad pursued by the four main femalencharacters within the play. We learnnfrom Troyat that, at various periods innChekhov’s life, “All the women morenor less in love with him knew onenanother and despised one anothernunder the most friendly of exteriors”;nalso that Chekhov “was not averse tonthe idea of several...

hypothetical future. Platonov’s incubusnis his feehng that his potential forngreatness has rotted, unstimulated bynhis “godforsaken” “mudhole” of a relentlesslynprovincial town, Moscow asnpanacea is broached in the last scene,nwhen it is waved before Platonov like ancarrot by the wealthy widow Anna,nwho tries to regain him by offering tonsponsor his settling there.nIn accord with such a reading,...

Or, if you prefer, take TWO free. Values to $69.95n2730 THE CONSERVATIVE MIND – RussellnKirk. New 7th Edition of “the best and clearest expositionnof die conservative philosophy.”—James J.nKilpatrick. $19.95n2550 WITNESS – Whittaker Chambers. Eloquentnautobiography of the man who spied for Stalin,nrepented and became America’s chief anti-nCommunist witness. $17.95n2201 WEALTH AND POVERTY – GeorgenGilder. “So grand...

6/CHRONICLESnAmerican GNP grew by about 3 percentnor less in 1986 according to currentnestimates. Almost everyone wouldnlike to see figures slightly higher—sayn4 percent or 5 percent. But manynanalysts feel reasonably comfortablenwith 1986’s lackluster yet apparentlynsolid growth. Unfortunately, much ofnthe growth in our GNP in recent yearsnhas been illusory—as artificial as walnutnveneer on pasteboard. HonestnGNP figures would...

issue in Illinois and many other statesnis the method of electing local governmentnofficials. In a classic ward system,nmembers of a city council arenelected from the neighborhood districtsnthey represent. The smaller thendistrict, the more susceptible thencouncilman is to pressure from constituents.nIn an at-large system, however,nall the voters vote for all thencouncilmen (or commissioners). In ancity like...

8/CHRONICLESnto answer to his neighbors?nThere is httle justification for atlargenelections. They are antidemocratic,nbigoted, and stupid. I say stupidnbecause in a town tike Springfield,nwhere blacks comprise the lowest socioeconomicnclass, a minority that isnexcluded from the political processnnaturally develops resentments—annexplosive situation, especially in a periodnof underemployment. Since thenproblem is so obvious and the remedynso simple, why do...

Announcing Brand’Pfew TitlesnFrom Krieger . . .nADULT LEARNING IN AMERICA:nEduard Lindeman and His Agendanfor Lifelong Educationnby David W. StewartnOrig. Ed. 1987 308 pp. $24.50n”Education is Life” was the maxim of EduardnLindeman. His philosophy of adult education, ornlifelong learning, is analyzed in this study of thenorigins of adult learning in America and other countries.nLindeman was a...

10 / CHRONICLESnPERSPECTIVEnLITERACY BEFORE THE REVOLUTIONnby Thomas FlemingnPublishers Weekly must be the most depressing magazinenpublished in the United States. Oh, there are others hkenEsquire that make us despair for the affluent numskulls whonswap life-styles as if they were wives, or The New Yorker thatnmakes us remember how really boring New York can be.nBut for the...

circulars (Newsweek). The career of Gordon Lish is instructive:nLish, a self-described novelist, has worked for Esquire,nKnopf, and Yale. For promoting the careers of some of thensilliest and least-read writers in America, Lish has receivednawards both from the American Society of MagazinenEditors and from the Columbia School of Journalism.nMultiply Lish by a few hundred, and you...

12 / CHRONICLESnprofessionalism of the “Babbitts turned Greeley” with theirnjournalism schools, codes of ethics, and press clubs. It wasnonly a matter of a few years before the old-fashionednreporter turned into a new-style journalist like Tom Wicker,nwhose novels read like columns and whose columns are asntrue to life as the latest Danielle Steel.nIn the case of...

14 / CHRONICLESnabout some other craft. In many cases, “stating a position”nis only to represent oneself as a certain kind of person,nclaiming the affection of others of that kind, expressing anparticular loyalty. The world of letters is awash withnignorant assertion and self-dramatization.nPublic-spirited persons must have a view, must join thengame, because democracy itself requires us...

In the Age of the Feuilleton, in brief, the social demandnthat we have unjustified opinions, expressive of our personahtynand class-loyalty, is a mechanism of social control.nReally to think that what we choose to say is true admits thenpossibility that we and our leaders might be wrong. Toninquire into the rahonal grounding of the opinions currentlynon...

pressure from below to the “revolutionary” trends of then70’s. When I first came into contact with Americanneducation, in the very early 50’s, I was struck by the myriadndemands addressed to schools and colleges by pressurengroups like businesses, banks, civic clubs, and advertisers,ndemands that servile school boards immediately translatednas “courses” in the curriculum. Thus I was...

18 / CHRONICLESnmethod for the graduating student to make money: in law,nbusiness, or some governmental bureaucracy. The coursesnare shaped so as to satisfy job requirements—or thenprofessor’s fancy-flights into some Utopia. The electivesn(themselves an anti-intellectual invention) allow for thenpicking up of a few luxury items, just adequate to drop annunexpected statement at cocktail hour but not...

new publisher, Prometheus, the book remained to benjudged on its merits or demerits and not on admittedlynshaky ethical behavior in search of publication. In thisninstance, the “truth” of the manuscript was not in question;nrather the “morality” of publishing strategies by a youngnauthor was central.nIn each case, these are books with a “serious” purpose ornmessage, but...

include a heavy reliance upon established authors, firmlyndrawn parameters of fields of interest, the much mentionednmultiple referee processing of manuscripts, down to morenmundane matters of insistence upon a ribbon copy andnverifiable author questionnaires. While no one mechanismnis foolproof, as a collection of safeguards these worknrelatively well. The problem is that they may work too well.nThe...

themselves, which can be no betternthan the books authors and pubhshersnmake available, is the quality of manynof the reports of books during thosenfirst years, which are the work of thenClub’s judges and staff. ChristophernMorley’s report on Dashiell Hammett’snThe Thin Man, to mention anstriking example, is not literary “hype”nbut serious criticism. It lets the readernknow what...

discussion of his editorial procedures isnso subjective that he never really meetsnthe basic scholarly requirement of indicatingnfully the nature of the omittednmaterial.nOn the other hand, one might havenmade use of the diary and other sourcesnand written an intereshng shortnbiography of Chaplin, which wouldnhave been more useful than the author’sndecision to present both annabridged diary and...

orientation.nThis suggests that a simple-mindednscientism, artificially and naively extendednin time by the Asimovs and thenSagans, was only a passing phase, thatnits inherent instability was such that itnhad to give way before long. It isnremarkable that it lasted as long as itndid, but that long life was largely anphenomenon of the English-speakingnworld. Writing in The Idea...

28 / CHRONICLESnRogers, George Leonard, WilliamnIrwin Thompson, and TheodorenRoszak—not to mention Shirley Mac-nLaine. Respectable causes like holisticnhealth and the human potential movementnin psychology became havens fornNew Age thinking. The affinity betweennthe new psychics and pantheismnbrought in scientific recruits like physicistnFritjof Capra of Berkeley. Consultingngroups, such as the PacificnInstitute, provided sanitized versionsnof mystical philosophy for corporationsnand...

30 / CHRONICLESnwho saw the U.S. Constitution as anhuge money-making scam), and thenindefatigable John Reed (the onlynAmerican buried in the Kremlin wall).nWhen this “progressive” hodgepodgenof a magazine began appearingnin print, it was received with mixednemotions. The magazine was not quitenleftish enough for the real radicals,nand, in the opinion of WillardnStraight, it was a little too...

than our own birth: Because Hke it ornnot, we are attached. We are notnhistoryless hke Adam, breathed out ofnnothing; we’re drawn from the narrownend of a real and compeUing vortex—nhistory—vivid with blood and bone,npassion and fear, as it touches down tonmake us in the here and now. Part ofneverything that was and will be, wenmove...

34 / CHRONICLESnLetter FromnSwitzerlandnby Harold O.J. BrownnThe German SwindlenTo walk along a narrow ridge or cliffnpath, German-speakers will tell you,nyou have to be schwindelfrei. ThenFrench word vertige exists in Englishn(vertigo), but we would be more likelynto say “dizziness.” The German wordnis for vertige or dizziness der Schwindel,nbut Schwindel also can meannwhat it does in English...

important sense it is they who representnthe real spirit of end-century Germany.nIt is easy to explain this apparentnGreen hypocrisy as the BavariannChancellor Franz Josef Strauss does:n”A rose is Green before it is red.”nStrauss, whose real chance of becomingnWest German chancellor a fewnyears ago provoked fear and loathingnverging on hysteria in all the bestnGerman circles, is...