Kontinent
Pilon, Juliana Geran
the same question about a convicted murderer. Another example of the prevailing rhetoric is a recent newspaper article by one Bob Greene, a Chicago reporter writing about the reactions of a...
...Kontinent is the result of a powerful epistemology, as expressed in these lines from Alexander Galich's poem: In this window the morning light breaks every day, Like a blind man, I know everything here by touch...
...To me, at least, this silence is surprising, for the key issue is one of stark simplicity...
...The Gilmore case has also added its own twist to emotional attack on the death penalty...
...Neither is it meant for ~migr& alone but for the entire continent of man, for East and West alike, for those who will pay heed...
...Consider what a jewel Mr...
...Though edited by a Russian, Vladimir Maximov, Kontinent's aim is to reach mankind in as many languages as possible...
...On several occasions Solzhenitsyn warns against glibness...
...What was Wodehouse like before the birth of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves and Bingo Little and Mr...
...It's as though a painter were privileged to look over Leonardo' s shoulder when he started scratching in his first sketchbook...
...imprisoned once for having criticized the party's position toward the Hungarian uprising in 1956, then again for his book Conversations with Stalin, forbidden to publish his novels and stories, now among the witnesses of the Red Terror...
...The first section contains early contributions from publications, some of which have since gone broke...
...Beats Anything Else You've Read...
...The book is divided neatly into two parts...
...The opposing arguments on this score are all too familiar, and I will only repeat here the observation of James Q. Wilson which I reported in my earlier column: Deterrence studies are inevitably and inherently flawed to the point of virtual unreliability...
...Mulliner and Psmith and Freddie Fitch-Fitch and Stanley Featherstone Ukridge and all the others he created to enrich our lives...
...But until we face frankly the moral question raised by the issue of capital punishment, we shall in all likelihood be forced to view numerous farcical performances of the type now being staged in Utah...
...Thus his portrayals of English upper crust truly were a toast to his countrymen, not a merciless roast...
...Runyon, like Wodehouse, should be read aloud from time to time, for good writing is like fine wine that 28 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977...
...And you may join those being put in their place by Keggs, who preceded Jeeves as the perfect butler...
...The litany of experience...
...The Gilmore incident thus finds the nation little advanced in its consideration of capital punishment, despite literally decades of heated discussion and argument...
...Alas, those who can still harbor such hopes haven't been reading very carefully lately...
...a few poems--all convey the same message: creation will go on at gun-point...
...Gilmore is any indication, however, discussion on this level is unlikely to take place any time soon...
...proponents continue to respond with questionable arguments and statistics about deterrence, which their antagonists in turn seek to refute with equally unreliable data...
...Thus, Aryeh Neier of the ACLU argued recently in the New York Times that Gilmore's desire for execution was a product of his being forced to choose between prolonged and nerve-racking delay and the relief of having it done with...
...Yet the magazine is largely a manual for the handicapped...
...Make no mistake...
...Not just another commentary on the implications of sixty (ninety...
...When asked if he agrees with Solzhenitsyn, the agnostic Djilas picks up a copy of Gulag to show the passages underlined in pencil: "The most significant book of our times...
...Let us not deprive Mr...
...But this doesn't spell hope...
...Delving into this uncollection is a Martin L. Duggan is editorial page editor of the St...
...Walpole is a tadpole while Wodehouse is a whale of a writer...
...Jasen has presented us with: An opportunity to read Plum, as Wodehouse was called by his friends and admirers, in his formative years...
...Louis Globe-Democrat...
...Uncollected" suggests something that was left for the rubbish man who passed it by...
...If the melodrama of Mr...
...Finally, along with the legal battles, and the emotional assaults of the Left, the old deterrence debate continues...
...no state is willing or would be permitted to undertake the kind of controlled experiment which would yield solid empirical data on the question, even if such an experiment could be designed...
...and the courts continue their futile search for an answer in a hodgepodge of legalisms...
...a short story (illustrating, without pathos, the salvation that a modicum of love can bring amidst the aimless poverty of socialist antiutopia...
...seeing is to be deceived...
...To the Western liberal who would trade freedom for (he fancies) bread, who believes that the common man would sacrifice art to the redistribution of potatoes, Ludek Pachman has this to say: ...we found in 1968 [in Czechoslovakia] that it was the workers in particular who immediately called for freedom of the press and freedom of opinion, and were willing to wait awhile for a raise in pay (which was, to be sure, dismally low...
...My personal response has not been overly difficult to reach: I believe that the basic moral precepts of our social order are valid as standards for human conduct, and we need have little difficulty, therefore, when careful, collective, and fair judicial process determines that certain acts so violate those moral precepts that the perpetrator deserves death...
...literary experience that can't be duplicated...
...Opponents continue to attack the penalty in ihetoric (often overblown) of righteous indignation...
...The secret is contained in his volume which Price and Pride would consider a bargain...
...The journal's varied styles--nonfiction (including an essay on metaphysical beliefs in the Soviet Union...
...Runyon's Guys and Dolls were to Broadway what Wodehouse's Dukes and Dowagers and Blokes and Beauties were to Blandings Castle...
...Its essaysm describing, for instance, the social and political ramifications of abstract art in the USSR, the state of creativity in Czechoslovakia (before and after '68) and the cultural implications of the Russian takeover, a penetrating short history of literature under Stalin (by Andrei Sinyavsky) which also deals with some of the symbolism involved--are informative, fascinating, sober...
...Juliana Geran Pilon came to this country from Romania in 1962...
...Yet isn't this a strange wish...
...She teaches philosophy at California State College, Sonoma...
...thirsty' '--but the adjective is fairly typical of much media coverage of this issue, which tends to be couched in language of "barbarism...
...Not as self-conscious and pontifical as the collection From Under the Rubble (1974), though equally anguished, Kontinent is a textbook on cultural survival, on the sacrifice that is genuine art behind the Iron Curtain...
...To understand them, eyes are not merely insufficient, they are a handicap...
...Hardly what most of us would call "blood...
...To Sakharov's criticisms, which in the main echo Western "liberal" charges (e.g., Solzhenitsyn's "'fanatical" religiosity, his nationalism and reactionary "antiprogressivism," his single-minded opposition to democracy), Solzhenitsyn answers curtly: "Anyone who takes the trouble to reread my Letter [to the Soviet Leaders] will be convinced that it contains nothing of the sort...
...The second half contains short stories published as early as 1901...
...Thus Kontinent, conceived by men with eyes of stone, having beheld the Gorgon of totalitarianism...
...But even more important than the actual decision we reach is that we discuss the problem in terms which acknowledge its serious moral dimension, and in ways which reveal our own understanding of our obligations to take such questions seriously...
...Indeed, the aims and principles of this publication--another of Solzhenitsyn's brainchildren--should put a libertarian's conscience at ease: 1. ABSOLUTE RELIGIOUS IDEALISM, that is, with a given dominant Christian tendency, a constant spiritual union with representatives of other faiths...
...Kontinent is not, then, merely a publication for the literary elite, in spite of its having gathered the most sophisticated writers capable of transmitting the message of freedom...
...Perhaps the main feature of the journal is the Solzhenitsyn-Sakharov exchange...
...In fact, the responses are little more than simplified statements of the deterrence theory, coupled at times with comments about the seeming justice of imposing death on those who kill, both expressed in the prose of eleven-year-olds...
...Whether we should or should not have the death penalty involves a straightforward moral determination-namely, whether there are crimes for which we, as a free society, are willing to say that an individual deserves to die...
...Before he completed his studies at Dulwich College, Wodehouse must have realized that anyone bearing his monicker and boasting that alma mater could get a lot of mileage out of just being himself and writing about those around him...
...A subtitle then might be: But Not All That Bad...
...ciate, if you will, that here is the opportunity to be present at the birth of Reggie Pepper, who was to evolve into Bertie Wooster...
...Or like an aspiring travel agent being able to sign on as a cabin boy to Christopher Columbus...
...And then, there is the cameo portrait of Milovan Djilas, ex-member of the Central Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, former close collaborator of Tito, who lives a stranger in his own country...
...It is tempting to say that we look forward to future issues of this journal as they appear in Western languages...
...In his introduction Malcolm Muggeridge reminds us that someone as thick as Hugh Walpole couldn't comprehend what Belloc was talking about...
...But despite the fact that surveys reveal an increasing percentage of the populace in favor of capital punishment, voices such as National Review are generally outnumbered in our public discourse on this question...
...Only one American writer approaches Wodehouse in doing for his countrymen what the English master accomplished...
...Most of the important talents will drown, while at the same time the simple folk's impulse for creation and beauty will continue to be stifled...
...One can imagine that Wodehouse early in life saw the great good humor of being named Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (pronounced Woodhouse...
...No matter...
...0ig4ii~I~QQI44QgI~4iQ~0mq~oiUQ00Q0i4wQUIQ~I4qQaIq~Q0Q0QiQ6gO00qIAa~QgQOOi4ggnq~giQ~BQQ49Q4O00wQi~g0gioQI4~QaqQq~e0O8Qg~9~g~0IQi~UIg~m~4~4qq~Q10 BOOK REVIEW The Uncollected lVodebouse Edited and with an Introduction by David A. Jasen / The Seabury Press / $8.95 Foreword by Malcolm Muggeridge Martin L. Duggan The title of this book is apt to drive Eggs, Beans, Crumpets, and all Drones completely bonkers, for it is a collection of stuff from the earliest writings of Wodehouse in newspapers and magazines--bits not previously put between the covers of a book...
...and therefore our decision on capital punishment cannot and should not be made on the classically utilitarian grounds of whether or not it will decrease the incidence of violent death...
...4. ABSOLUTE NONPARTISANSHIP, that is, a categorical refusal to express the interests of any existing political group...
...The American is Damon Runyon...
...A common bond...
...Another example of the prevailing rhetoric is a recent newspaper article by one Bob Greene, a Chicago reporter writing about the reactions of a group of sixth graders to the idea of capital punishment...
...Shouldn't we hope that the need for such publications will disappear...
...Wodehouse is the only person capable of making such snobs and simpletons lovable rather than insufferable...
...2. ABSOLUTE ANTITOTALITARIANISM, that is, a struggle against any variety of totalitarianism--Marxist, nationalist, or religious...
...Hence, Neier argues that Gilmore's experience is but a dramatic example of the "savagery" of capital punishment...
...3. ABSOLUTE DEMOCRATISM, that is, consistent support of all democratic institutions and tendencies in contemporary society...
...Greene expresses surprise that the overwhelming majority of the students had indicated support for the death penalty, since, in his words, he "had assumed" that the youngsters "had not yet been hardened to the ways of the world...
...Through it all, the critical issue is seldom if ever aired...
...A proper title for this 212-page book of revelations could be: The Worst of IVodehouse...
...Perhaps that is why, in the phrase of NationalReview, he has been so successful in turning his fate into the stuff of theater...
...Anyone who would regard even the least of Wodehouse as an unpalatable leftover would criticize the second wine course at Cana...
...million dead in the USSR, of a culture smothered--this is not so much a book as an event...
...BOOK REVIEW Kontinent Edited by Vladimir Maximov / Doubleday-Anchor / $3.95 Juliana Geran Pilon One would hope that a publication like Kontinent would not have to be reviewed...
...Of course, with the soul and its yearnings, dignity disappears as well...
...As National Review aptly responds, "since life is full of dilemmas, what we feel for the murderer who has to decide whether he wants to keep sweatily postponing retribution is something other than pity...
...To know by touch is to merge, to be within, to be renewed...
...Appre...
...Shouldn't we hope for Russian, Polish, Romanian creations to appear in their native tongues, for native readers...
...Their teacher as well, he reports, "was surprised by the bloodthirsty nature of their responses...
...and, to be sure, we cannot afford to skim through the The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1977 27 testimony of those who bear the tidings of a secular Hell that gets hotter and closer by the minute...
...When that which has been uncollected is collected, doesn't that rather alter the nature of things...
...These are from the years 1900-1909 and from 19141919...
...Those of us who read Wodehouse out loud agree with Hilaire Belloc that Plum was the most accomplished writer of the age, assuming you laugh in the English language...
...Jasen of that part of the $8.95 which is his due...
...Conceding that a title such as A IVodehouse Exchequer would be too trite, and too pretentious to suit the source, The Uncollected Wodehouse is unsatisfactory as a handle for this laughyourself-sick pack...
...Its Editorial Board includes writers who specialize in the Western id (having fashioned it in part), notably Saul Bellow and Eugene Ionesco...
Vol. 10 • February 1977 • No. 5
