OPINIONSrnBabylon Revisitedrnby J.O. Tatern’When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe,rnwe shall become as corrupt as Europe.”rn—^Thomas JeffersonrnTerrible Honesty: MongrelrnManhattan in the 1920’srnby Ann DouglasrnNew York Farrar, Straus & Giroux;rn606 pp., $27.50rnThis snowball of a book, gatheringrnmass as it accelerates, is studdedrnwith accretions and revisions. A work ofrncultural criticism rather than of merernliterary or even social history, it seems tornmake its own rules as it goes. You mightrnsay that it is about everything, and that isrnthe best thing you could say about it—rnand the worst.rnPerhaps wc have seen this kind ofrnbook before. There have been volumesrndevoted to Paris and London and Vienna,rnas I recall, that take some of Professorrn].0. Tate is a professor of English atrnDowUng College on Long Island.rnDouglas’s liberties in asserting that a certainrncity at a certain period was wherernand when modernism organized andrnasserted itself. Carl E. Schorske’s Finde-rnSiecle Vienna: Politics and Culturern(1980) comes to mind perhaps first; andrnindeed wc cannot be surprised to find inrnSchorske’s acknowledgments a proirrinentrncitation of Ann Douglas.rnLess schematic than Schorskc andrnworking with less coherent materials,rnDouglas is if anything more expansive,rnsubjective, and aggressive. Anv reservationsrnwc may entertain have to do lessrnwith her exposition than with her subject,rnfor who does not have developedrnopinions about New York City? After all,rnManhattan has continued to be (unlikernVienna) in cultural conflict with the restrnof its nation to such a degree that SenatorrnGoldwater once memorably proposedrncutting it off (along with the restrnof the northeast) from America and lettingrnit float out to sea. For some reason,rnhis suggestion was not taken seriously,rnbut modern technology that has madernan honored prophet of Jules Verne mayrnyet validate even the former senatorrnfrom Arizona. Ann Douglas would notrnwish it so. Her survey of Manhattan inrnthe 1920’s, I think, is an indirect celebrationrnof it now, and touches on every partrnof our self-definition, of the nationalrnpsyche, the emotional economy of thernnation. Yet I should add that this celebrationrnis highly ambivalent, a celebrationrnkeenly attuned to contradiction, tornthe ironies and obscurities of extremity,rnand to the paradoxes of the imagination.rnTo put it bluntly. Professor Douglasrnseems to see most human endeavor andrnbehavior as psychodrama. Her highlyrnTo order these books, (24hrs, 365 days)rnplease call (800) 962-6651 (Ext. 5200)rn28/CHRONICLESrnrnrn