Horatio Alger and Garry Wills
Geltman, Max
~ ; his solution to the dilemma implicit in the "amurei destruction" strategy is the develolmmnt of a subsulmtantial limited-war capability by the NATO alli~ n 0 e . Mr. NLxon's views are...
...without so much as an inkling of what is contained in Aristotle (or in Bart/ett's, Garry's most frequently thumbed volume), pushed his way up the ladder of success to reach the summit from which vantage Wills would topple him...
...Newhouse, also a self-confessed MADman, makes no attempt to evaluate this ammn~tion...
...He was kind and decent and he trusted his own trust---and it was that which finally brought him reward...
...Wise in such matters, Representative Dellums, therefore, then requested that the chairman of the District of Columbia Committee, Charles Diggs (D.-Mich...
...In each of his annual State of the World messages (apparently drafted by Mr...
...As a result of the Fonda-Hayden activiThe Alternative June-September 1974 21...
...provide space for the Fonda-Hayden activities in the D.C...
...Representative John Conyers (D.-Mich...
...Moreover, the SALT process itself provides a vital clue to t h e NrLXon.Kissinger nuclear strategy:, as Professor Van Cleave and Donald G. Brenhen both have observed, in formulating American negotiating positions no serious consideration was" given to any alternative other than a MAD posture (see Van Cleave~ op...
...It was there that her anti-American carnival was held...
...So far Nixon and...
...All the agon is here, in this exquisite little study of Samuel Johnson, but not the nastiness that attracted the editors of the New York Post to serialize Wills' opus...
...preaches a message of contempt for his own shortcomings...
...he doesn't understand that Homer was blind so he could refrain from gazing upon the follies of men, especially those who put spite above sympathy, and envy above competence...
...it did not escape into a vague And abashed, sometimes brazen illiteracy where it is used to to begin a nonsentence which usually ends with the nonw~cl %n": =IAke I said marL" Our books were read/n@ books--novels ,for boys, yes...
...Garry Wills m a y have discovered the title for his book on first looking into Bertrand H. Bronson's Johnson Agon/stes, published in 1946...
...The dialogue flashed acroes the screen as rapidly as the shadow-n~imes flitted before our eyes as we watched Pearl White elude the villains in forty-episode serials in our twu-for-a-nickel movies...
...Brennan's testimony on SALT before the Senate CommiRee on Foreig n P, elntions, relriuted in ConA~es...
...Here one may ask: Who and what made Garry Wills...
...Andno one was more ~ in t ~ resard than AJger with _9 whose heroes we easily identified" Ph//the PZdd~r, The ~rand/~y...
...The boy from Whittier, California (not even from the East Coast...
...The agreenmnts, Mr...
...but novels all the same...
...Even here our author is not being authentic...
...Wills, of whom it could have been predicted that he would find it easy to slide .down the ecclesiastical greasepole from Cardinal Newman to the Berrigan Brothers, does not like Horatio Alger...
...Wills loves Jane and Tom (Hayden) and the Berrigans and the Black Panthers, and all the things the hated 'hniddle classes" fear, because he is a fat boy with sugar-coated lips, out of the same class which, while it could provide him with a classical education, did not provide him with the talents to make it either as scholar or classicist...
...That is the message of Alger, although he never delivered messages...
...We had to or we would have been denied the greatest pleasure provided by the entertaining media of our rime'the "silents...
...Why should he...
...Yes, years before the ~alkiea" down upon us to shatter the blessed silence that enveloped us, our elders went to their kind of movies that ~t~Jked...
...The "evil" words finally extruding from his phlegm-encrusted throat, Wills explodes: ~Only the most resolutely self-deceived 'earner' can make the boast ~I never get something for nothing.' And only by a cultivated solipsism canparts of the middle class keep saying 'Wemade it on our own, why can't they...
...After all, Phil Brent, the sublime "errand boy," is all the things that Wills finds hateful in Richard Nixon...
...who had requested the use of the room on behalf of California Congressman Ren Dellums, the Fonda-Hayden sponsor--withdrew his request after he found out what the room was to be used for...
...And for that he will forgive no one, least of all himself--or Horatio Alger, Jr...
...military targeto by "ordering the mass destruction of enemy civilians, in the face of the certainty that it would be followed by the mass slaught~ of Americans" (1970 R~port, p. 122...
...Ora pro nob/s...
...We read full-length books (not comic books) that tingled with excitement,--Frank Merriwell, Nick CsDcter--or the books by Horatio Alger, Jr...
...For us the twv-for-a-nickel movie h~mse on Houston Street was what we could (more or less) afford, and what we desirecL _I~_ ~ng, like eating, grows with the al~ petite...
...It will be noted that young Bianchi was not at all "sycophantic," anymore than was Phil, the pretotypal "errand bey" in Horatio/tiger's story...
...No one makes it on his own _9 . . [this is] a cruel hoax...
...s/ona/Recor~ June 30, 1972, p. S 10967...
...a one-tin~ st~lAut of history named Henry A. Kissinger has also warned us that "the danger to the equilibrium is never demonstrated until it is already overturned" (A World Restored [1964 ecL], p. 163...
...The runt had to be able to read, too, without mouthing the words too loud and i n t o r r t ~ Our reveries as VC'il)iAm Farnmn--no stereotype he of a William S. Hart or even a latter John Wayne--tracked down the villain on Zano Greys "purple sage...
...all such he left to his ~delivery boys...
...But it was not for us, not only because we could rem~ but because we could not afford to enter a movie palace where the admission was ten cents (for adults) and a nickel (each) for minors between five end twelve...
...Actually Miss Fonda and Mr...
...Duberstein, incidentally, for those who aren't up on the Washington scene, was listed by Cosmopolitan magazine as one of Washington's most eligible bachelors and Duberstein has seen fit to list this "recognition" in the Congressional Staff Directory...
...Kissinger stated during the congressional briefing, ~must be seen as a political event of some m a g n i t u d e . . , any country which contemplat0s a hupture of the agreement or a circumvention of its letter and spirit must now face the fact that it will be placing in jeopardy a broad political relationJJ~ip...
...Newhouse notes in one of his more analytical moments that an arms control agreement may be either stabilizing or destabilizing, depending on the motives of the parties...
...He curled them between his" palms at whiles and swallowed them softly...
...committee meeting room...
...cit., p. 205, and cf...
...Kiminger's trust in the Soviet coua~itment to detente unshaken...
...Kissinger) he has attacked the "asmu~ destruction" p ~ t u r e for its lack of flexibility, asking whether he ought to be restricted to responding to a nuclear attack--presumably meaning an attack directe~J primarily at U.S...
...The following news item tells us something Wills never understood about America and something he doesn't understand to this day: ~Pips amounting to more than $50,000, including a fortune in old silver, were disclosed yesterday to have been the reward of a supermarket delivery bey who befriended an elderly widow who l i v e d alone on Manhattan's East Side" (New York Tim~s, December 11, 1973...
...Neither does he ~allenge the final argument for SAL...
...It remains to be seen whether the damage to the strategic equilibrium wrought by SALT I will fie rectified or reinforced by SALT H. James E. Dornan, Jr...
...Crumbs adhered to the tissues of his lips...
...But Wills never delivered a message to anybody that bode anyone good, only the dry seeds of dead fruit garnered from a twisted tree in a lifeless desert...
...indeed, while defendi~ the accords during his post,SALT congressional briefing, Kissinger emphasized that the primary strategic result of the agreements was to ensure the mutual vulnerability of each power, and expressed his hope that SALT II w~dd produce an agreement that w~ald rrm...
...were admitted for a half a dime, the more affluent proffering three cents to the skinniest runt on the street pleading, ~Who's got three...
...The Administration cx~d therefore adopt the SALT agreement with enthusiaswr c.nd employ false arguments concerning the present and future military balance in defending it--because NLxon and Kie~inger believe, in accordance with the dictates of the MAD strategy, that only at some vague and undefined level do weapons disparities between the tWD powers assume military or political significance...
...A sweetened boy's breath...
...Oh, there wor 9 "talking pictures ~ for the older ixnmigrants, who had arrived too late to learn to read with ease the w~rds imprinted on the screen...
...I was ten when I read all the 286 pages of The Errand Boy, and from there could go on to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner...
...The boy's ~Ame is John Bianchi...
...Now, in the environs of the Post (any Post, Washingtonor New York) he has become a well-paid "earner," which not only makes him feel cheated, but a cheat...
...NLxon's views are nmre ambivalent...
...But such "sweet" boys do not join the renghand-tumble games of their schoolmotes, nor wore they taken in to our two-for-anickel movies...
...But until this year the President had not seriously attempted to persuade Congress to appropriate funds for the kinds of hardtarget weapons which would provide other options...
...Yes, two boys (we never took girls along, Gloria Stoinem, so eat your heart out...
...Most committee chairmen will usually approve~such requests, with the expectation that the member requesting the room will exercise proper judgement in deciding for whom to request space, and how the space will be used...
...In this literature the .word ~like" was either a verb or a prepceitior~ a word fixed in space...
...He had come to do small chores for her, to tend to her when she was too ill to go out...
...And from these dry bones he...
...and for Wlxon and 'Ki~mingor, this assurance in turn ultlrrmtely restson theunshakeable conviction that ddtente is a reality...
...These were real books, fullbodied books, with full-bodied sentences...
...Arriving amidst the fanfare trumpeted by the Washington news media and cast in the rolo of a romantic folk hero and people's lobbyist, this past week actress Jane Fonda and her accomplice (husband Tom Hayden) arrived in town.~aanks to the generosity of an accommedating faction of the membership of the House, Miss Fonda and company have taken up residence in a Judiciary subcommittee room, courtesy of the United States taxpayers, where congressional staff personnel will allegedly be educated in the facts of life . . ."---thus spoke Congressman Robert Price about the arrival of Crazy Jane's Salvation Show, an amusing occurrence save for the fact that American taxpayers picked up the tab...
...That is why he could endorse Phil Berrigan's cruel condemnation of our tortured returning POWs as %vat criminals...
...They are cramped, full of pretense, diminished-Richard Nixon...
...But contrary to the District committee's policy, the Fonda-Hayden seminars were not open to the public, and a number of congressional aides (including myself)were even refused admittance...
...At least they did on the lower East Side...
...Who's got threeT' He had to be skinny or he'd never be able to share the narrow seat provided by an aggrandizing entertainment entrepreneur...
...Thus it once again becomes clear, as I have arguel at length elsewhere from a different perspective (see ~ NLxon Doctrine and the Primacy of Ddtente," Interco//eg/a~ Rev/ew, IX [Spring, 1974], forthcoming), that ddtente is I x ~ the wellspring and the ultimate goal of the Nixon Ach~nistration's entire foreign and military policy...
...The viability of MAD ultinmtely rests on the belief that deterrence will never fail...
...Stephen Daedalus (in U/ysses) observes with compassion one such boy in his classroom: "A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel...
...that glowed with promise...
...Ours was a lean literature made for boys who knew the joys of catching a ball on the fly or playing stickball on the streets...
...in fact, it .is well known that on several occasions the Administration decided not to go ahead with a hard-target warhead program as a gratuitous gesture of goodwill to the Soviets...
...Wills wanted him to be toppled before Watergate was translated from the Bible (Nehemiah: 12, 37) to Washington, D.C...
...that whatever their technical deficiencies the accords are worthy of support because they contribute to ddtente, and that ddtente, in turn, will in the last analysis ensure their viability...
...Self-made men are not bold, spontaneous, free...
...We were, mcet of us, tiny fiddlers, f u t u ~ Seschas, Tcechas, l~schas, Yasdms, and if not that, we were almost all of us "errand boy~ I was one, and the one book which I ~ mn~t~ in my present library of a th~m~nd volumes on philosophy, politics, art, and literature, m A]gees ~ ~randt~ywhieh be#m the way a book should--with the setting defined aud the hero introduced in the first sentence: ~ Brent was ploaai~j through the snow in the direction of the house where he lived with his step-mother and her son, when a snow-ball, moist and hard, struck him just below his ear with stinging ~ . ~ This is not.the way books earnmrksd for 20 The Alternative June-September 1974 readers aged six to eight or eight to ten in the New York Times Book Review are written...
...It is in the same tone that we read this denunciation of Alger in Nixon Agoniste~ ~The evil of Horatio Algerwas not that he made an apprentice hustle sycophantically in the wake of the millionaire, but that he distilled the poison that (only a touch of it) turns the s a i n t l y . . . into the sanctimonious, e.g., Richard Nixon...
...Horatio Alger and Garry Wills A Wz LEARNED TO READ early on New York's East Side...
...Did he who made Jane Fonda make thee...
...A Dellums' aide, Mike Duberstein, made it quite clear to us that congressional aides could attend the meetings upon invitation only--and we were not about to be extended an invitation...
...other Adrniniatration such as Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and Ikld, 81nrmed at the maaaive nnd continuing Soviet military buildup since SALT I, are increasingly doubtful...
...They go on to study the classics whence they emerge stuffed with nonsense like the palindromic Revilo Oliver, or they come out--Garry Wills...
...The widow's name was Ethel Field...
...Talking pictures...
...We sucked in the words onthe Silver Screen: We held our breath when the dark villainc ".hey were always " ~ a r t h y , " a dirty word in our y o ~ caught up with Pauline whose perils were our perils, but whose plight would have been augmented had we not been able, in a trice, to match words to action which is what reading is all about...
...It was not a literature for fat boys...
...Under House rules, however, any congressman can request space in a committee hearing room...
...he hates him because he sees him with the bloodshot eyes of the elitist fanatic who feels chronically deceived and denied...
...The point is that Garry Wills despises Nixon for his virtues, not for his frailties...
...Here is the essence of Alger...
...There is simply no compassion in the man...
...There, on Clinton Street, there was a conveffi~vd theater where, in the box on stage-right, was ensconced a gentle~q~ interlocutor who read the men's portion of the silent dialogue, while a woman, stage-left, spoke the wc~ls Clara Kimh~l Young poured Imseionately into the ear of Francis X. I ~ n The accents'were sufficiently inflected to mal~p _9 understanding the strange language almost completely intelligible...
...counterforce strategies impossible for both sides...
...Nixon Agon/stes...
...Crazy Jane's Salvation Show A READING FROM the spicy pages of the Congressional Record...
...to comfort her, and to take her %ips...
...Hayden were not able to conduct t h e i r lobbying activities in a House Judiciary subcommittee room...
Vol. 7 • June 1974 • No. 9
