Bill Moyers, in his superb TV documentary "The Secret Government" aired last fall, made the case for the second; namely, that the American empire is a threat to constitutional democracy at home. It ranges from demerits for girls with short dresses and boys with long hair through paddling for moviegoing, smoking, dancing and petting, to expulsion for drinking or taking drugs. In "Emperor of the Air" Ethan Canin writes, "I felt my life open up and present itself to me" The stories that open up and present themselves have a sense of urgency-somebody's heart is on the line Canin conveys this quietly, but effectively. In fiscal 1980 the federal government spent $590. 9 billion; in fiscal 1986 the government spent $979. 9 billion.
Not surprisingly, these "fictions" support the interests of the few in the name of the many. Because of the encompassing proportions of this vision, it is difficult to summarize it without making it sound bizarre-which I don't think it is. To make summary intelligible, it might be best to start with Sale's beginning. The de Man scandal has also made people wonder again about the attractions fascism evidently held for upper-class European intellectuals in the 1930s (see Page 6, that "low, dishonest decade" in W H Auden's phrase. At issue is whether or not Harris' royalty payments from "Strangers in Two Worlds" scheduled for publication this summer by Macmillan, should go to as-yet-unnamed persons who might merit restitution for her crime. The foundation also is studying the possibility of holding an annual conference to monitor and survey developments in world literature.
Because of the revolution in information-technology, we can expect more reference works like "The New Palgrave" But it will not be easy to meet the standards for completeness and distinction that this work has set. In the tradition of the "New Groves' Dictionary of Music" and other monuments to the development of a single subject, comes this multivolume reference work on economics and on much else that touches this discipline: history, politics, mathematics, philosophy and a fair amount of the rest of social science. To implement the author's proposal would require, among many other things, redrawing international boundaries, dissolution of traditional sovereignties, eliminating most political and economic institutions-and a dependence upon universal human qualities only rarely demonstrated by history. These things are set out in a number of simultaneous sub-plots that present us with many dozens of characters: Russian and German soldiers, civilians, bureaucrats, intellectuals, the inmates of prison camps on both sides, and deported Russian Jews; and along with these, a number of real historical figures including Stalin, Hitler, Eichmann and senior German and Soviet military commanders. After serving as a war correspondent in World War II, the popular Soviet novelist Vasily Grossman was attacked for unorthodoxy. They give a restrained but persuasive account of the cynical counter-culture which the students assemble to keep some privacy for themselves, even as they half-accept and half-reject the ice-cold shower of virtue emitted by the institution. They are amusing about the polished mix of frankness and discretion they encountered. Tesnohlidek's evocations of nature are poetic in their expression and universal in their appeal.
" Again and again, she returns to the effect of poetry on spirit: "Hell is the absence of metaphor" and ". Merwin lives in Hawaii where native peoples and languages as well as native flora and fauna have suffered huge losses. He was Andries Pretorius, the hero of Blood River, where a laager full of Afrikaners saw off 10,000 Zulus. Smith, a British writer, has researched all facets (political, social, ecclesiastical and individual) of the issue on both sides of the Atlantic with splendid diligence. Auden, Arnold Toynbee, Karl Barth and Jacques Maritain are only a few of the luminaries he engaged directly.
On balance, however, this chapter does offer some interesting insights into how one large company works. Consumer advocate, author "Unsafe at Any Speed) and general purpose consciousness-raiser Ralph Nader has teamed up with William Taylor, a former feature writer for the Hartford Advocate, to give us in "The Big Boys" an up-close and personal view of nine major business leaders-seven of them CEOs of large companies. Unfortunately, the book suffers enormously from this decision. The work is just too rich ever to stop reading and start reviewing. Now we realize that the female plays a central role in sexual behavior and ultimately in the evolutionary direction of the species.
How welcome then is this new edition of John Buchan's 1915 classic, also clothed in that midnight blue with inlaid paintings on front. Bioregionalism starts with the premise that the face of the Earth is organized not into artificial man-made states but by natural regions of tremendously varying sizes. "A Perfect Spy" is a great vibrant cornucopia, spilling over with "something for everyone-indeed something magnificent for everyone-a permanent addition to the canon of English literature. Canin makes us feel what he feels, using what is known as "deceptively simple" prose. At center stage is Vito McMullen, who, as his moniker announces, shares the Italo-Irish heritage of "Pope's" Charlie Moran. The "original-that is, the first work of the artist's hand-is usually lost in the process of producing the marbles and bronzes. Schreiber compiled this book from the voluminous journal Bird kept of his work.