A Tale of Modern Times William Dear: The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III; Houghton Mufflin; Boston. Dallas Egbert was a genius. At the age of 13 he entered Michigan State University to study computer science. MSU assured the Egberts that the university would take special care of the brilliant but remarkably...
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Reconstructing the Bostonians
The Bostonians: Directed by James Ivory; Screenplay by Ruth Prawer Ghabvala; Merchant-Ivory Production. A popular film that is more than chewing gum for the mind is a rare treat, and a novel of power and poignancy, translated into a well-created film, is sheer bliss. The Bostonians is a love story about an archaic Southern man...
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Old Answers to Old Questions
After a decade or two of introspective breast-beating, educators are turning from an examination of what is wrong with public schooling to what is right with private schooling. This latest entry to the field examines religious education in the United States. Nearly 5.1 million students attend some sort of private school (K-12), eschewing for whatever...
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Filming for Dollars
Zanuck: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Last Tycoon by Leonard Mosley; Little Brown, Boston. Movies have not always been taken seriously as art. When Rudolph Arnheim 50 years ago compared film with painting, music, and literature, he was being deliberately controversial. It was a long road from the nickelodeon to artistic respectability. Today film...
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Nest of Vipers
Adieux: A Farewell to Sartre by Simone de Beauvoir; Pantheon, New York. It may hurt, but it is useful to know that in matters of foreign translations available at our publishers and bookstores, we live in a well-guarded ghetto. There are protective turrets in the ghetto’s wall, called Sartre, Beauvoir, Gunter Grass, Hein rich B6ll,...
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Beyond the Norm and Back
Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert; G.P. Putman’s Sons, New York. While waiting for the cinematic spectacle of Dune, we decided that a bit of exploratory work was in order, so we attended to Frank Herbert’s world –– nay, universes –– of Dune. That was no small feat, as it is a trek into Dune,...
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Screen
Seeing Red Red Dawn; Directed by John Milius; Written by John Milius and Kevin Reynolds; MGM-UA Entertainment. by C. P. Dragash There is a common daydream among men who grew up in the years between the Berlin blockade and the Cuban missile crisis: the Russians have invaded the American heartland, and a...
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Perceptibles
Howard Thurman: For the Inward Journey; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; San Diego. During his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, Jesse Jackson was widely praised for using the language of black evangelism. Wiser observers recognized that Jackson had actually degraded his inherited religious vocabulary by cutting it loose from its spiritual roots and putting it...
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Waste of Money
Media MIA’s Vietnam Reconsidered: Lessons from a War;Edited by Harrison E. Salisbury; Harper & Row; New York. James Dunkerley: The Long War, Dictatorship and Revou1tion in El Salvador;Junction; London. It has been a decade since America withdrew its troops from Vietnam. Unfortunately, scores of servicemen remain officially unaccounted for, their fate shrouded...
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Notables
Pure Drivel The feminist movement has fallen on hard times. Many of the intellectual leaders of the movement are abandoning the battlefield and withdrawing to the snug fastnesses of fantasy and self-gratification. Some dream of once and future Amazonian kingdoms ruled by women. Others plan to engineer their androgynous land of heart’s desire with...
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Commendables
A Dangerous Classic Richard M. Weaver: Ideas Have Consequences; University of Chicago; Chicago and London. Richard Weaver was among the rarest of rare birds: an American political philosopher. His intellectual roots reach back through the Nashville Agrarians (Donald Davidson, especially) to Calhoun and ultimately to Thomas and Aristotle. A professed enemy of the...
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In Focus
Journey to Nowhere Lesley Blanch: Pierre Loti: The Legendary Romantic; Helen and Kurt Wolff Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; San Diego. In the end, nothing is more boring than adventure. Once the newness has worn off, foreign landscapes, forbidden loves, and bizarre rituals prove less stimulating than familiar settings, ordinary people, and well-worn traditions. This...
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Screen: Zoology
Screen Zoology Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes; Directed by Hugh Hudson; Screenplay by P. H. Vazak and Michael Austin, based on Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Buroughs; Warner Brothers. Greystoke raises a large number of questions, most of which will not be addressed here. For example, there’s the question...
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In Focus
Of Careers, Criminals, and Creative Writers Theodore Dreiser: An Amateur Laborer; University of Pennsylvania Press; Philadelphia. Nelson Algren: The Devil’s Stocking;Arbor House; New York. By the time the average American child has reached adolescence, he has been asked hundreds of times by solicitous relatives and politely curious strangers, “What are you going to be when...
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Commendables
Of Isms and Idolatry The Economic System of Free Enterprise: Its Judeo-Christian Values and Philosophical Concepts; Edited by Paul C. Goelz; St. Mary’s University Press; San Antonio, TX. During their relatively short but incredibly bloody existence as a world historical force, Marxists have murdered millions of men, women, and children, largely without regret. Many Marxists, however,...
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What Price Integrity?
Seth Cagin and Philip Dray: Hollywood Films of the Seventies: Sex, Drugs, Violence, Rock ‘n’ Roll, and Politics; Harper & Row; New York. One of the big blows to the underground press in America in the 1960’s was an ad campaign staged by a major record company that used such toy-gun revolutionary slogans as “The...
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Art
Fluff John Bernard Myers: Tracking the Marvelous: A Life in the New York Art World; Random House, New York. Books — paper ones, not those cassettes that are now hanging on racks in bookstores for the busy executives who would like to listen to a paragraph or two while not making deals on their cars’...
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Notables
Building It’s always with pleasure that we come upon a volume by Saul Bellow, for he is a writer with talent and, more importantly, vision, a man who can meld the quotidian and the profound into a unified, intellectually compelling narrative. With the case of Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories...
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Commendables
Be True to Your School Ernest L. Boyer, High School, A Report on Secondary Education in America; Harper & Row; New York. by Carlisle G. Packard In 1955, two-thirds of Americans asked by a Gallup poll indicated that they would be willing to pay more taxes if the increase were applied to raising teachers’ salaries. In...
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Screen
Slime After Slime Star 80; Written and Directed by Bob Fosse; Ladd Company/Warner Brothers. by Stephen Macaulay An ad for Star 80 claims that it is considered “One of the Year’s [1983] Ten Best” by a number of people who should know; lest anyone have doubts, the claimants are listed. One man, apparently, just couldn’t...
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In Focus
Aloof and Awry George H. Douglas: Edmund Wilson’s America; The University Press of Kentucky; Lexington, KY. Henry David Thoreau went to Walden Pond, so he told the world, to get away from people. But the reader of Walden may wonder with James Russell Lowell if Thoreau is not just a poseur who actually wants “a...
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Perceptibles
I. Grekova: Russian Women: Two Stories;Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich; New York. Judy Blume: Smart Women; G. P. Putnam’s Sons; New York. During the “sexual revolution” in Russia in the l920’s, writer Alexandra Kollontai acquired notoriety for her “glass of water” theory, according to which “love was but [a] sexual urge akin to thirst, with the quenching...
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Waste of Money
Spent Fireworks Allen Wier: Departing as Air; Simon & Schuster; New York. by Dennis R. Perry Critic Allen Tate once commented that the epic could not be written in a society without common values. Allen Wier’s Departing as Air unfortunately—and unintentionally—reminds us that if there is a basis for fiction in our society, it is based...
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In Focus
Signals of Strength Charlie A. Beckwith and Donald Knox: Delta Force; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; San Diego. This warrior’s account will leave its mark above all as hero saga in a land by no means lacking in heroes but oblivious and often antagonistic to their deeds. Nor will it be forgotten as testimony in a vituperative...
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Screen
Return to Remedial Physics Silkwood; Directed by Mike Nichols; Written by Nora Ephron and Alice Arlen; ABC Motion Pictures/Twentieth Century Fox. One of the latest causes of self-righteousness, posturing, and enlightened indignation is not a person or place, but a thing: a group of heavy metals that disintegrate and emit various rays (alpha, beta, gamma),...
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Waste of Money
More Equal Than Thou Judith A. Baer: Equality Under the Constitution: Reclaiming the Fourteenth Amendment; Cornell University Press; Ithaca, NY. Among the amendments to the Constitution, none were ever more morally justified nor more desperately needed than the three which abolished slavery and gave blacks the rights of citizenship and of equal protection under...
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Past & Presence
Rumble Fish; Directed by Francis Ford Coppola; Written by Francis Ford Coppola and S. E. Hinton; Based on a novel by S. E. Hinton; Universal. An individual is the sum of his memories and his dreams. That, of course, is no great revelation; the Greeks were scripting plays about it thousands of years ago. Nowadays,...
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Factualism
Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film by Erik Barnouw; Oxford University Press; New York. Cinema in our society serves, for the most part, to entertain. This is not to deny the existence of training films—educational tools, which are served by a sizable industry—but to take note of the fact that the cinema is almost...
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Art
Léger Peter de Francia: Fernand Léger; Yale University Press; New Haven, CT. During the fabulous, legendary, supreme outburst of artistic creativity that occurred during the first three decades of this century, concentrated in Europe between Vitebsk and Pyrenees and called “avant-garde” (or the School of Paris, modern abstraction, fauvism, cubism, futurism, expressionism, constructionism, suprematism, surrealism,...
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Music
Recycling Jim Morrison is dead and buried and thriving in Paris. That is a fact, not the name of a new bit for the dinner theater circuit. Morrison — the rock singer who had his loins between his ears and pretentions of being a filmmaker (Pauline Kael admired him) and a poet (a sort of...
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Commendables
Original Thought & Triplicate Forms George Roche: America by the Throat: the Stranglehold of Federal Bureaucracy; Devin-Adair; Old Grennwich, CT. Edwin J. Feulner, Jr: Conservatives Stalk the House: the Republican Study Committee 1970-1982; Green Hill; Ottawa, IL. Conservatives come in at least two types: those who wish to conserve principles and those who wish to...
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In Focus
Simpering for the Soviets Derek Lambert: The Red Dove; Stein and Day; New York. Anthony Olcott: May Day in Magadan; Bantam Books; New York. At a recent professional conference I had an informal discussion about world affairs with an editor of a metalworking trade journal. A constant concern in that industry, as in automotive, is...
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Perceptibles
Hugh Bayless: The Best Towns in America; Houghton Mifflin; Boston. A semanticist would have a field day with the title affixed to Mr. Bayless’s efforts. The word “best” is one of the most subjective in the English language. And “town”: What, exactly, are the definitive differences between town, village, municipality, city? (Hint: It isn’t size;...
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Waste of Money
An Empty Shell Game A.P. Foulkes: Literature and Propaganda; Methuen; New York. The cover of Literature and Propaganda, the proverbial warning notwithstanding is very telling about the book’s contents and about how perverse the image of America is in the offices of Methuen. Indeed, the cover makes an impression with such a magnitude of force...
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Some Dare Call It Justice
REVIEWSrnSome Dare Call It Justicernby Stephen B. Presserrn”Justice is a contract of expediency, entered upon to prevent menrnharming or being harmed.”rn— Epicurus, AphorismsrnThe Betrayal of America: How thernSupreme Court Undermined thernConstitution and Chose Our Presidentrnhy Vincent BugliosirnNew York: Thunder’s Mouth Press;rn166 pp., $9.95rnSupreme Injustiee: How the HighrnCourt Hijacked Election 2000rnhy Alan M. DershouitzrnNew York: Oxford...
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The Coming Ordeal
The Coming Ordealrnby Srdja TrifkovicrnDoes America Need a Foreign Policy?rnhy Henry KissingerrnNew York: Simon & Schuster;rn352 pp., $30.00rnThis latest book b’ the former sccretan’rnof state illustrates the difficult}’rnof separating a piece of writing from itsrncreator (Alan Greenspan on macroeconomics,rnBill Gates on informahon technology’,rnSteven Spielberg on einematograpln).rnWould a similar, slim volumernattract national attention if came from...
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Clark’s Tale
digm provide examples of ideological distortionrnlegitimized by a value system immunernto critical scrutiny. That Kissingerrnis probably unaware of the hierarchy ofrnnormative control that determines hisrnown thinking does not mean he is off thernhook. A “self-revising” analyst—a boldrnthinker unbound by institutional loyaltiesrnand personal ambition —would deliberatelyrnseek the distinction betweenrnvalues and norms. Critically examiningrnnorms —in this case,...
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Sins of Omission
Sins of Omissionrnby Roger D. McGrathrnSlavery’s Inconvenient Factsrn1 learned firsthand how distnrhing faetsrneonld he when teaehing a U.S. historyrneonrse at UCTA in 1987. One of mvrnteaehing assistants, a politieallv eorreetrn()nng woman, beeanie tcrrihK’ upset afterrnlistening to m leetme on slaer.rn”I le shouldn’t be sa ing sueh things!” shernexelainied to another teaehing a,ssi,stant.rnWhen asked b’ the...
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Something Is Missing
REVIEWSrnSomething Is Missingrnby Paul Gottfriedrn”If anyone wish to migrate to another village, and if one or more who live in that village do notrnwish to receive him, if there he only one who objects he shall not move there.”rn-The Salic Law, c. 490rnThe New Americans:rnHow the Melting Pot Can Work Againrnhy Michael BamnernWashington, D.C: Regnen’;rn33H...
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Operation Futility
Operation Futilityrnby Jonathan EllisrnKilling Pablo: The Hunt for thernWorld’s Greatest Outlawrnby Mark BowdenrnNew York: The Atlantic Monthlr Press;rn2%pp.,$2S.OOrnMark Bowdcii was interviewing arnretired U.S. military offieer for hisrnbook Black Hawk Down when a framedrnphotograpli eauglit his ee. In it, a gronprnof jnbilant sokliers posed around therncorpse of a hloodv, fat man. Curious,rnBowden asked about the picture....
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Cast-Iron Man
ficially, Colombian police killed Escobar.rnBut tliere will always be questionsrnabout who was or wasn’t there on that finalrnday. ,’ceording to Bowden, some onrnhand say U.S. Delta 1^’orce operativesrnw ere at the scene; odiers sav it was simplyrna Colombian operation. U.S. SpecialrnForces had spent months training Colombia’srnpolice in the techniques of manhunting.rnFor them, Escobar’s demisernmeant success....
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Sheep in Sheep’s Clothing
of which u ere national poHtical parties.rnBeeansc American parties are alwaysrncoalitions, obtaining national politicalrnpower rec|uires enlarging the issues overrnwhich the parties fight, histead of pushingrnpolideal discourse downward, partiesrnmove issues up to the uncontrollablernstage of national polities. Calhoun’s associatesrnin the Southern states’-rights mocnicntrnfell into a similar trap. Whilernclaiming the United States was a compilationrnof many communities...
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The Boys in the Back Room
American people — to answer this qnestion.rnDraw ing npon classical republicanrnw isdoni, he offers a rep] that is as prudentrnin counsel as it is disturbing in diagnosis:rnC)ul- when the boch’ of the peoplernas a w hole has awakened to tlic full extentrnof die usurpations and injustices perpetratedrnamong them does armed resistancernbecome an thing more than...
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A Life in Sketches
cies created vulgarity and the moronicrnmind that accepts it? To merntelevision is just one more facet ofrnthat considerable segment of ourrncivilizahon that never had any standardrnbut the soft buck [Novemberrn22, 1950].rnRight. And as long as Raymond Chandlerrnmakes with what he called the “magic”rnand the “music,” he will alwas havernan audience. Chandler respected whatrnHammett had accomplished...
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Confederate Rainbow
ConfederaternRainbowrnby Clyde WilsonrnThe Jewish Confederatesrnby Robert N. RosenrnColumbia: Universih’ of South CarolinarnPress; 517 pp., $39.95rnClear the Confederate Way: The Irishrnin the Army of Northern Virginiarnby Kelly /. O’CradyrnMason Cit, lA: Savas Publishing Co.;rn’>4S pp., $26.95rnFire and Roses: The Burning of thernCharleston Convent, 1834rnby Nancy Lusignan SchultzrnNew York: Free Press; 317 pp., $25.00rnAs we all know,...
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New Skins, Old Wine
burg—I am told b a close student ot thernsubject—returned to Confederate linesrnmarked bv a multitude of black faces.rnClyde Wilson teaches history at thernUniversity of South Carolina.rnNew Skins, Old Winernby Harold O.]. BrownrnHidden Gospels: How the Searchrnfor Jesus Lost Its Wayrnby Philip JenkinsrnOxford: Oxford University Press;rn216 pp., $25.00rnFor almost 2,000 years, Christiansrnhave been confessing Jesus Christ...
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The Study of Wisdom
case ma)’ be, correctie.rnHarold O.J. Brown is religion editor forrnChronicles and a professor of theologyrnand philosophy at Reformed TheologicalrnSeminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.rnOne of thernLucky Onesrnby Katherine DaltonrnString of Pearlsrnfev Priscilla BuckleyrnNew York: Thomas Dunne Books/St.rnMartm’sPress;lH3 pp., $21.95rnPriscilla Buckle) has long been wellrnknown to readers of conservativernjoiunalism. For nearly three decades,rnshe was managing editor o^...
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Animal Farm
ally limited and morally obtuse.rnThe paperback editiom of JeffreyrnMeyers’ Orwell (Norton) and PrivilegedrnMoments: Encounters v’ith Writersrn(Wisconsin) will appear this fall.rnAnimal Farmrnby Jonathan EllisrnAlmost Heaven: Travels Throughrnthe Backwoods of Americarnby Martin FletcherrnLondon: Little, Brown and Company;rn304 pp.. $14.95rnMartin Fletcher worked seven yearsrnas a Washington, D.C., correspondentrnfor the London ‘Limes. Beforernreturning to Britain, he packed up a...
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Music
delegates from three other states arrivedrntoo late to participate. In desperation, therndelegates of the five states present submittedrna report to the Confederation Congressrnnoting the failure of all states to attend,rnexpressing the need for “reform” ofrnthe general government, and calling for arnConstitutional Convention in Philadelphiarnthe following May.rnI’he government of the first republic,rnthe Confederation Congress, agreed tornthis...
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The Whippoorwill
REVIEWSrnThe Whippoorwillrnby J.O.Tatern”The pure products of Americarngo crazy.”rn-William Carlos WilliamsrnRobert Mitchum:rn”Baby, I Don’t Care”rnby Lee ServerrnNew York: St. Martin’s Press;rnS90 pp., $32.50rnThe go-to-hell attitude, unique features,rnand deceptive talent bv whichrnwe know Robert Mitchum (19l’7-1997)rnwere the product of his heredity and experience.rnHis father was a Scotch-IrishrnSoutli CaroHnian with some Amerindianrnblood —he died young in a railroad...