The Right Stuff
Wolfe, Tom & Ross, Mitchell S.
B00KS IN REVIEW - "The Right Stuff" He never travels without his capsule of cyanide, and he never goes to sleep sober. Devoted in equal measure to vodka and the Russian classics, Bolgin also follows the Western press. "Do...
...Even those who are ill-disposed to the entire genre, who feel, with the late Edmund Wilson, that the reading of suspense novels is "a habit wasteful of time and degrading to the intellect, into which people have been bullied by convention," will find Who's on First worth their while...
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...It is evident, then, that in Buckley's skilled hands the thriller becomes something more than a clever yarn of adventure and intrigue...
...Paris Green on White...
...I do not remember anyone feeling patriotically uplifted...
...he asks a subordinate at one point...
...In his intellectual odyssey from isolationism to activism, Blackford Oakes is not untypical of an entire generation of conservatives who came to political maturity at the onset of the Cold War...
...To hinge the imposition of punishmcnt on the prediction or resoiution of such empirical contingencies is, say Berns and Holland, to misconceive its proper basis, which lies in the realm of non-utilitarian morality...
...What was important was their having the appearance of uniqueness, and so endless energy was applied to the propagation of appearances...
...What did these men have that others didn't...
...Importantly, we all endorse a retributivist punishment theory that is compatible with--indeed, conducive to--the morally pedagogic function of The Saturday Evening Club met recently in Mitchell, South Dakota, and its members were so impressed by the city's slogan that we decided to adopt its message as our own...
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...I do remember being bored...
...No writer in our time has conveyed better the effects of abundant technology on the American mind...
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...The right stuff" suggests a combination of qualities inherently unique...
...As to what Oakes and Bolgin fight about, suffice it to say that the balance of world power hangs on the outcome of their struggle...
...I have disparaged his reliance upon pet phrases like " t h e right s t u f f " and " t h e Genteel Gent" (the p r e s s ) , but t h e r e seems to be less of this...
...Blackford Oakes understands this quite clearly...
...Through the modern miracle of dyeing, we can now o f f e r you blue or gold American Spectator Tee Shirts as weII as the traditionaI (and more formal) white tees...
...Vastly more important is the fact that, to put it plainly, Communist regimes are profoundly evil, with oceans of innocent blood on their hands...
...After all, none other than the Grand Poobah of American literature, Norman Mailer, had taken a crack at describing the most momentous of spacey subjects--the moon landing itself--several years back...
...On the preponderance of the evidence concerning the success rate of prison treatment programs, Holland finds security in rejecting rehabilitative claims against the finality of execution...
...The book's title is labored like a leitmotiv throughout the book in an effort to delineate the pilots' characters--a weakness, by the way, but a minor one...
...or $5.50 (elsewhere) for a I- I I year subscription, starling with the current is- | | sue...
...I am tired of reading that one...
...Buckley's point is a good one: Despite, or rather because of, their strict regimentation, Communist societies simply don't work well...
...Both place their consideration of the ultimate sanction within the larger framework of criminal punishment and its traditional justifications...
...In Stained Glass, one of Buckley's previous novels, the two antagonists actually cooperate in assassinating Count Axel Wintergrin, an idealistic German nationalist who does not subscribe to the doctrine of "containment," and is bent on unifying the two Germanies...
...Since most opponents of the death penalty pronounce themselves smugly secure in the "knowledge" that execution is not a marginally superior deterrent than other, lesser forms of punishment, they invite the inevitable inquiry: But what i f such demonstration could be satisfactorily made...
...P.S...
...Hundreds of marvelous phrases remain: Lyndon Johnson "oozing protocol...
...The result was a fat volume called Of a Fire on the Moon, an incredibly windy and tedious effort which depressed me horribly...
...9 Dulles, crotchety, shrewd Nestors whose conversations light up the novel with wit and charm...
...I completely agree...
...Though Bolgin and Oakes are relentless adversaries, their relationship is by no means a straightforward "zero-sum game...
...Nixon's The One--in 1980) Please send me these bumperstickers at $2 each, 3 for $5...
...After all, it would be several more years before, as Wolfe notes in his closing sentence, "The day might come when Americans would hear their names and say, 'Oh, yes--now, which one was h e ? ' " Wolfe triumphs in his ability to recall the events of Project Mercury with a sense of irony and a sense of humor appropriate to the grandest hype job carried off in the Republic between the end of World War II and the start of Super Bowl I. Not that Wolfe is scornful of the astronauts-far from it...
...It hasn't, of course...
...If ever a public event was likely to excite the imaginations of schoolchildren, space exploration was it...
...Simply put, if a punishment is deserved it ought to be imposed, no matter what if any deterrent or rehabilitative effect might thereby be achieved...
...I SAVE YOUR GAS!' BEAT INFLATION...
...This is but the converse of the question frequently put to abolitionists on the issue of deterrence...
...here than previously...
...Like millions of other shavers across America, I passed a number of flighty days in front of a television set which had been installed in the classroom...
...To say, as Wolfe did a few years ago, that in its years, of affluence the country has enjoyed a "happiness explosion" is to mistake absorption for satisfaction...
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...Nuke The Whales...
...Home of the Corn Palace...
...It is edited by this young bourgeois fanatic . . . . I always read the National Review, it makes me so funny-mad...
...38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1980 Stylistically, he shows signs of improving with age...
...The slogan...
...That they stifle these attributes is, however, merely the least of the Communists' many sins...
...Have You Slugged Your Kid Today...
...While Bolgin and Oakes clearly dominate the book, it contains a host of interesting minor characters as well...
...Large . . . . . . . X Large Paris Green on Gold . . . . . . Large . . . . . . . X Large Paris Green on Light Blue . . . . . . Large . . . . . . . X Large Please send me my very own American Spectator Turkey Jacket (White on Navy Blue) Enc[osed is $12 per jacket, Three jackets for $30...
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...Reading it was like enduring a 400-pound woman on your lap all day long, and the subject seemed almost as much to be blamed as the author...
...A l l of this is the stuff of comedy, and Wolfe has captured it well...
...In the estimation of my classmates and me, Space Days were better than spelling quizzes but less fun than filmstrips...
...Although I am not a subscriber to the children-are-wisest-becausethey-are-the-most-innocent school of social philosophy, I do think that in this case the kiddies were ahead of the rest of the country...
...Since such a reaction to National Review is hardly uncommon, it is far from clear whether Bolgin, au fond, is a dyed-in-the-wool Stalinist or merely a muddled Menshevik...
...F106, 163-09 Depot, I Flushing, NY 11358 , THE RIGHT STUFF Tom Wolfe / Farrar, Straus and Giroux/$12.95 Mitchell S. Ross The archbishops of American letters have pretty much had their say about Tom Wolfe's latest book, and so have the hardcover customers...
...Caution: I Speed Up For Small Animals...
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...Obviously, Buckley is no fan of predictable denouements...
...Should the practice of death as punishment be abolished...
...Our growing line of products also includes American Spectator Turkey Jackets, "Nuke The Whales" Tee Shirts, and a variety of bumperstickers and buttons...
...But what if, it is fair to ask Professors Holland and Berns, a highly successful rehabilitation rate could be demonstrated among the denizens of death row...
...Or perhaps Bolgin secretly admires National Review, and denounces it only to maintain appearances...
...My schoolteachers had us huddle around the tube and observe the mighty doings...
...Should these individuals who have improved be spared the lightning...
...The exploration of outer space marked the nadir of the history of heroism...
...C 0 R R E S P 0 N D E N C E Against Capital Punishment Walter Berns' For Capital Punishment: CHine and the Morality of the Death Penalty and Maurice J. Holland's favorable review of it in your pages (December 1979) invite the sympathetically critical discussion which the book has thus far failed to receive...
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...In the crepuscular world of espionage, no possibility, however remote, can be summarily excluded...
...Devotees of the genre, needless to say, have reason to celebrate...
...Although Who's on First is a more conventional thriller, in that Bolgin and Oakes are engaged, as they quite properly ought to be, in fighting each other, in the end, interestingly enough, both men win...
...though as a matter of intellectual and social history one would want to trace and try to fathom the connections between this decade's decline of faith in social progress and the increase in its calls for harsh criminal sanctions...
...The preparations were undertaken by batteries of technocrats...
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...Blackford Oakes felt only this," Buckley writes, "that there wasn't any alternative for those few who did understand, or thought they did...
...It is also an affirmation of certain values--courage, cultivation, freedom--and a condign indictment of Soviet oppression...
...ceived the essential emptiness of the occasion by yawning while the grownups fired confetti at John Glenn's proud head...
...They had, living in the same world, to do something...
...The work of the astronauts could mainly be done by simians with superior haircuts...
...That book--Buckley's finest, in my opinion--was both a superb thriller and an oblique criticism of U.S...
...Rehabilitation is considered in this context only because of the abolitionists' confused notion that if it were shown to be a real possibility, they would have a strong argument against that punishment which, by definition, eliminates all hope of such reformation...
...habits: He never travels without his capsule of cyanide, and he never goes to sleep sober...
...foreign policy...
...Indeed, I suspect he began his investigations in a genuflective mood, and thought of Glenn, Sheperd, Schirra, and the rest as modern Pizarros and Francis Drakes...
...Such agreement bespeaks shared acceptance of a legal order informed by and reflective of underlying moral values that do not themselves have origin in that order...
...Medium...
...But in his description of the matter itself he is unsurpassed...
...On the Russian side, there are also quite a few unusual personalities, among both the jailers and the jailed, all of whom share a pervasive fear of unauthorized behavior which often immobilizes them in moments of crisis, when snap decisions are called for...
...fellows from the neighborhood who wear sports shirts designed in weird hh)oms and streaks of tubercular blue and runny-egg yellow hanging out over pants the color of a fifteen cent c i g a r . " If l concur in Karl Shapiro's assessment of Wolfe as a "goddam j o y , " will Wolfe's publishers find a fresh blurb to paste on his jackets...
...Do you ever read the National Review...
...He is less astute in his pronouncements on the moral corollaries of this fascination...
...On the American side, there are vivid depictions of Acheson and AUTHORS WANTED BY NEW YORK PUBLISHER Leading subsidy book publisher seeks manuscripts of all types: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, scholarly and juvenile works, etc...
...The voice of mission control was a dreadful drone...
...And yet we perMitchell S. Ross lives in De#pit...
...While candidly acknowledging that such refutation in no way advances the affirmative argument that must be made in favor of capital punishment, he leaves implicit the suggestion that part of the retentionist's case has already been made...
...He understands the giddy exhilaration of men spellbound by gadgetry...
...If we use it in our ad, we w i l l send you a free American Spectator Turkey Tee Shirt...
...The answer is: not much...
...Both groups have been very kind to him, and justly so: The Right Stuff illuminates and invigorates a subject which I had thought to be as devoid of literary interest as the drinking habits of Christian Scientists...
...In suspense novels, as in real life, ingenuity and audacity frequently carry the day, but Communist regimes discourage both attributes...
...There is also a more judicious employment of ellipses and exclamation points, which have tended in the past to become annoying...
...Though his father was active in the America First movement, and his own youthful sympathies were with the isolationists, the mature Oakes is a committed "cold-warrior" whose involvement with the CIA springs from an uncompromising hostility to Stalinism in all of its manifestations...
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...The country needed to believe these men were special, their colleagues needed to understand why these men had it all over ordinary mortals, and, ultimately, the astronauts needed to convince themselves of their status as flying princes of democracy...
...Would you then change your-views on the subject...
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...Wolfe recounts the years of Project Mercury, at the conclusion of which I was nine years old...
Vol. 13 • June 1980 • No. 6
