her: at first she had kept son John Anthony’snparentage a secret in order to savenface among her colleagues at Benson’snAgency. Then, with the unexpectednpopularity of Zeal to Thy House, shenbecame a sought-after advocate of traditionalnorthodox Anglicanism. Like thenperpetual foundling in an Edwardianncomedy, the child’s discovery by thenLondon papers must have been a grievousnfear indeed. She...

And, dying so, sleep our sweet sleep no more.nDorothy L. Sayers once wrote thatn”The first life of any celebrity is nowadaysnaccepted as an interim document,”nand James Brabazon’s biography of her isncertainly that. It was written to straightennthe record before the “chaif-chewing”nexperts descended upon her. The biographynis an honest, though obviously incompletenaccount, appearing, with thenWishing Away...

description of the ideal that has beennchosen. Hoffman is content to inform hisnreader only that his is a liberal vision, thencharacter of which is to be inferred fromnthe vision of a good world that he subsequentlyndescribes. He simply assumesnthat the reader shares this vision, for henmakes no effort to convince those whonmight hold another that...

Profound Dislikes & Spiritual HeroismnVladimir Nabokov: Lectures on RussiannLiterature; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich;nNew York.nRonald Hingley: Nightingale Fever:nRussian Poets in Revolution; Alfred A.nKnopf; New York.nby Charles A. MosernVladimir Nabokov, exiled from hisnhomeland for art’s sake, is the only mannever to have established a reputation as anmajor writer of fiction both in Englishnand in Russian. He was also...

not a great writer, but a rather mediocrenone—with flashes- of excellentnhumor, but, alas, with wastelands ofnliterary platitudes in between.nA bit later in his discussion (and he wasnalways acutely aware that his assessmentnof Dostoyevsky was not widely shared),nNabokov came closer to formulating hisngenuine objection. Dostoyevsky’s world,nhe complained, “is created too hastilynwidiout any sense of that harmony...

sciously rejected the thought of exilenfrom her native land, even though hernex-husband, another excellent poet, wasnexecuted as a counterrevolutionary inn1921, her son was arrested during thengreat purges of the 1930’s and she herselfnwas the target of an intense campaign ofnpolitical vilification—because of her religiousnand personal verse—at the end ofnWorld War II. But she published only...

anecdotes, interesting conversations, occasionallyna sharp observation. I lookednforward to Old Glory. I should havenknown better.nA dififerent sort of problem comes upnwhen outsiders (Raban, as I said, isnEnglish) write books about our society.nHere we are the natives. When thenauthor is amused, puzzled, irritated, ornpleased, we’re the reason. And here thenpresumption of knowledge is with thenreader, who...

home; an Irish-Choctaw-Scotch-Mexicannfiverboat captain. Old Glory isnat its best when Raban just lets some ofnthese people talk. Here is a group of cardplayersnat Erjie’s Bar and Cafe in Lockport,nLouisiana. Raban asked about anplace to stay:n’Hey,’ called a fat man from his barnstool. ‘You want a place, I can shownyou a place. Out there in the...

scriptural metaphor, we rednecks mightnsay, is the Coat of Many Colors, not thenTower of Babel, but I confess—and Garreaunmight, too—that this judgment isnas much aesthetic as political.)nThe persona that emerges from Garreau’snbook is that of a curious, perceptivenand witty reporter—a good companionnfor the kind of voyage the booknoffers, one with which the reader cannidentify. Having...

nerve. Contrary to the popular impression,nthose who came of age during then1940’s and 1950’s were not narrowmindednstrivers, interested only in jobs,nhomes and automobiles. Rather, this wasna generation that could be quite responsivento patriotic ideals—especially the callnto contain, with force if necessary, the advancenof totalitarianism. With WorldnWar II barely over, it again shoulderednarms in Korea. It...

inequity.”* Accordingly, he and Doddnhave called for increased American economicnaid, while also sponsoring a measurenforbidding military involvement innCentral America without prior Congressionalnapproval.nAlthough such sentiments are by nonmeans universal among the Vietnamngeneration, they are surely characteristicnof it and especially of its most prominentnspokesmen. For this is a generation lackingnnot only memory of World War II,nbut, in...

The publication of these books, therefore,nis significant, if only because theyndeal sensitively with old age. In truth,nthe old have often been the subject ofnimportant literature—witness KingnLear. However, in recent decades the torrentnof fiction, poetry, drama and liberalnsociology has been centered obsessivelynon youth, particularly the radical youthnof the 60’s. In the late 70’s, as if cued...

onliness; “If there really is that secret essentialnyou down under all those layers ofnskin and bone and fluid and personality,nthe chances are that it is always and permanentlynalone. You can’t touch it.nNobody can touch it.” In her breezy way,nPromise Land lets The Grip know that henmust make a choice: either he abandonsnTom Zucold, who is...

THE MONUMENTAL LITERATURE OF DWARFSn.. . CONTINUES.nTHE^^ ROCKFORD PAPERS’ newnseries, “The Monumental Literature ofnDwarfs,” continues its critical look at contemporarynAmerican literature with essaysnon the following celebrated authors:nE. L. DOCTOROW. Is his writing annattempt to create literature or does hensimply put together attractive ideologicalntracts? Stephen Tanner takes a look at thenauthor of Ragtime.nGORE VIDAL. Is the...

man’s bullets would not hatm them.nThis belief lay behind such well-knownnIndian experiences as William HenrynHarrison’s victory at Tippecanoe Creeknand the famous Wounded Knee Massaaenof 1890.nWhether to accept new and challengingnintellectual conditions under thenpressure of changing events that one’snideas cannot accommodate, or to dancenthe Ghost Dance, is a choice many culturesnhave had to face. Today that...

-/Vlasdair Maclntyre does not see itnthat way. Cultural relativism, by denyingnthe validity of the concept man, hasnrendered ethics irrational, has made itnimpossible to have a science of ethics orneven to discuss ethical issues rationally. Isnabortion murder or freedom of choice?nHow does one decide? Passionate lettersnto the editor in newspapers reveal thenplight of modern ethical discussion....

tific” basis for the Soviet denunciationsnof American imperialism.nHowever, despite his encyclopedicngrasp of his latest subject, Avineri hasnfallen below my expectations in treatingnit. He misinterprets the ties between thenJewish people and the Western world asnegregiously as many of the current leadersnof American Jewish organizations.nWestern civilization, in both its Christiannand bourgeois aspects, is made to appearnhostile to...

and help him to ride one of his own hobbyhorses:ndiat corporate capitalism, becausenof its “internal tensions,” producednnazism and thereby the Holocaust.nUtilizing the theories of Syrkin,nAvineri predicts further anti-Semitic explosionsnas both the victims and the benefactorsnof capitalism try to find scapegoatsnfor the defects of the system.nIt must be said in fairness that Avinerindoes not serve up...

world. O’Connor advocates generosity,ncompassion and forgiveness, a sense ofntruth and honesty, and the self-knowledgenthat makes all of these values possible.nO’Connor’s collection of storiesnabout the people whom he knew in Corknoften remind one of James Joyce’s collection,nDuhliners. But O’Connor dislikednJoyce’s style, feeling that it overshadowednthe content of his work. Instead, henadopted a 19th-century model, Stendhal,nand compared...

SCRKI N TnBest-Selling Poetry & Salable RefusenE.T., The Extra-Terrestrial; Written bynMelissa Mathison; Directed by StephennSpielberg; A Universal Picture.nConan the Barbarian; Written by JohnnMilius and Oliver Stone; Directed bynJohn Milius; A Universal Release.nby Stephen MacaulaynIn the 19th century, several poetsnbegan to feel a sense of doom as the empiricalnmethod inexorably encroachednupon the realm that was once...

stretched, stalked or otherwise torturednor menaced by a malevolent creature—nhuman or not.nIn the days when the word automationnhadn’t even been coined, workingnin a factory was tough. As there wasn’t anTV set to escape into and as the 21stnAmendment wasn’t ratified until 1933,nthe pulps provided the laborer a modicumnof relief after the whistle blew. Althoughnone wouldn’t...

Ben Webster. Ellington profited, too,nfrom the collaboration of a young mannfrom Pittsburgh, Billy Strayhorn, whonhad come to him as a lyricist but whonrapidly developed into a first-class composernand arranger. The fresh talent andna new spirit of enthusiasm resulted in anstring of masterpieces, among thzmJacknthe Bear, Ko-Ko, Concerto for Cootie,nCotton Tail, Never No Lament, Bojangles,nHarlem Air...

are quite successful in reproducingnHodges, Nanton and Tizol.nWorld War II forced many changes innEllington’s personnel, but in 1955n(when Johnny Hodges returned after anfew years as a leader and Sam Woodyard,na superior drummer, was acquired) anothernexciting period began. The newnseries of innovations took the form ofnwhole albums rather than three-minutenperformances; among the more notablenwere Such Sweet...

middle class was given the hard sell.nCommon School Journal informed diencitizenry: “Our fathers encountered thenperils of the ocean, and endured the privationsnof a wilderness, nay, they sufferednand died for the great cause ofnequality …” Surely, no student ofnhistory would require any comment onnthis outright fabrication. Today the hardnsell is no softer; the deceit, lies and...

less other anti-ERA activists all over thencountry) who, if we were to believe Mr.nBroder’simplications, apparently are notnwomen. Actually, it was men, accordingnto the polls, who were, in their majority,nfirmly pro-ERA. We know little aboutnthe attitudes of children and house pets.nThe ERA went down to defeat notnbecause of its substance but because of itsnimage, failing because...

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The 19th century was the heroic age of the historian. Thentriumph of the historical method, according to one periodnsource, had “revolutionized not only the sciences of law,nmythology and language, of anthropology and sociology, but itnhas forced its way even into the domain of philosophy andnnatural science.” The concentration on primary records, the usenof the comparative...

-/jLnd so the world lurched ahead. The cultural tremornbrought on by the Great War and the rise to power ofnBolshevism, fascism and nazism shattered the faith held bynliberal historians that human progress was not only inevitablenbut also the theme which gave order to the past. The result hasnbeen sixty years of muddled scholasticism and the...

OPINIONS & Virw^TnnTimeless Apostasy ChicnGay Wilson Allen: Waldo Emerson, AnBiography; Simon & Schuster; NewnYork.nby OttoJ. Scottnseveral commentators have claimednthat Gay Wilson Allen has written thenfirst full biography of Emerson in thirtynyears. That is untrue—EdwardnWagenecht published a biography ofnEmerson in 1974; Joel Porte issuednanother in 1979- Both these volumes arenstill drifting through remainder outlets.nBeyond that, a...

her nephew drift, but also left a runningnchorus of comment and analysis on hisncourse which is more penetrating thannanything done by secular scholars sincenthen.nChanning charted the Unitarianncourse fot the Transcendentalists, but henwas not Emerson’s only exemplar. Therenis hardly a sentence of Emerson’s thatndoes not echo a previous thought, andnDr. Allen deserves credit for recognizingnthis much....

dustry.nThe Transcendentalists moved intonpolitics during the Mexican War. Likentheir imitators during the 1960’s, thenTranscendentalists saw racist motives innthe American war against Mexico, butnnot in Mexican hatred of Americans. ThenTranscendentalists spoke openly againstnthe war and heaped scorn upon thosenwho fought. One of the politicians attractednto the movement was Lincoln,nwhose speeches on the issue in the Housenof...

Six were now transformed into heroes.nEmerson thought Grant’s terms at Appomattoxnwere too lenient; he wanted tonsee the South punished.nAfter the war Emerson, Thoreau andnmost of the Transcendentalists becamenthe subjects of an outpouring of mawkishnand adulatory books, reminiscencesnand recollections. The Sage, however,nfell victim to aphasia and slipped into ansad decline. On this topic, as on the...

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...