Sideshow
Schroth, Raymond A.
ity than such a pioneer venture could warrant: But I am glad that they were produced and have been published under Through fantasies to SECRET RENDEZVOUS Kobo Abe Translated by Juliet Winters...
...When he looks for her, he encounters various disturbing obstacles...
...the arms race...
...He makes us work (as readers and believers...
...what they have done to the country is greater evil than we have done to any country in the world, and wholly without reason, except for 21 December 1979:729This Christmas: For the friend or relative who enjoys good reading and is concerned about political, cultural and religious affairs, Commonweal makes a most welcome Christmas gift...
...within the "notebool~s'" are charts, banks of information, and clues...
...Reviews of Neil Postman's Teaching as Conserving Activi~, Frank J. Sulloway's Freud, Biologist of the Mind, Richard De Lone's Small Futures, Mary Hanna's Catholics and American Politics...
...In brief SIDESHOW: KISSINGER, NIXON AND THE DESTRUCTION OF CAMBODIA,by William Shawcross, Simon and Schuster, $13.95, 467 pp., Pocket Books, $2.95...
...ls.ving Malin K OBO ABE refuses to write a conventional novel...
...But the very beauty and toughness of his novel lies in its refusal to take the easy road...
...like the hospital (or the narrator's mind) it is full of deceptions, conceits, and reflections-and it suggests that "reality itself" --that is, the world outside of the fiction-world is ultimately inexplicable...
...Mary of the West Seminary in Norwood, Ohio...
...Any university or trustee thinking of nominating Henry Kissinger for an honorary degree (probably to get a "celebrity" for graduation) -- indeed, anyone who still thinks Kissinger worthy of a shred of respect -- should read Sideshow, this painful story of how Cambodia has become, in Hanoi's truthful words, " . . . a land soaked with blood and t e a r s . . . heIl on earth...
...our nation's energy crisis and struggle with inflation...
...EUGENE H. MALY Commonweal: 730...
...Finally, what remained of the community accepted the official teaching of the Great Church into which it was assimilated, along with its writings, in the second century...
...He resembles Kafka in this respect (and many...
...The fictional structure is a labyrinth, a "secret rendezvous" of science and poetry...
...He offers few glib sermons...
...divine order--that final encounter by which we understand the meaning of our past and present "somersaults...
...walls, shoes, bodies and notebooks are made to dominate the world--and they make us assume that the salesman can turn everywhere with great ease...
...Give COMMONWEAL Subscriptions Special subscription rates are in effect until January 15...
...As we know, those responsible have not been strung up...
...Appropriate as this gift is for the Season, Commonweal will also provide an abundance of timely reading all through 1980...
...and Canada) Cit y,------S tate, Zip Renewal ?_3 ~ ~ Name ~ New ~ -- - ~ ~ City, State Zip - - -- - L,/.,i/79 New [] Renewal [] City, State, Zip 1 COMMONWEAL 1 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...90) to the diaspora, they accepted Gentiles...
...JI'he security guards are deliberate (.9), fascists...
...Probably moving now (c...
...55-85 A.D...
...The "Beloved Disciple" (not John) is the dominant figure throughout...
...RAYMOND A. SCHROTH THE COMMUNITY OF THE BELOVED DISCIPLE, by Raymond E. Brown, Paulist, $6.95 cloth, $3.95 paper, 204 pp...
...and the cruelty of American policy-makers-Nixon and Kissinger--who could not see their victims but--acting out the .Nixon "madman theory of war" (calculated to keep opponents off balance) and dedicated to the mystique of bombing as a show of manly strength--carried out the secret and illegal bombing and.dis,astrous invasion that brought on Cambodia's internal collapse...
...The assistant director is, for example, a centaur-like creature who can be potent only after a body-graft...
...They are described at" length--the novel perversely exaggerates objects...
...she cannot show many human feelings...
...This led gradually to a pre-existence christology that alienated "the Jews" who expelled these Christians from their synagogues (c...
...we cannot take hold of one person or event or object and call itreal The novel outmaneuvers us...
...10016 [ m m m m u n n m n m m m m m n u m m n m l m m our own benefit to fight against the Vietnalnese...
...If we assume that the salesman is offering a sane account of an insane hospital (world), then we are shaken by the cruel pattern of the labyrinth...
...There is another turn--another part of the labyrinth...
...Here is a scholarly but engrossing, ingenious but extremely well researched, ecumenical but committed study of "the life, loves, and hates of an individual church in New Testament times" (sub-title...
...And it's not too late to order Commonweal Christmas gift subscriptions...
...faith philosophical position...
...ity than such a pioneer venture could warrant: But I am glad that they were produced and have been published under Through fantasies to SECRET RENDEZVOUS Kobo Abe Translated by Juliet Winters Carpenter Knopf, $8.95, 179 pp...
...The hospital is suggestively made up of sex and violence...
...These shoes enable him to do' 'effortless somersaults without a flying start, like a trampoline acrobat...
...If we assume that the salesman imagines the hospital, the disappearance and reappearance of his wife etc., then we are reading an obsessive projection of a fantasy (or series of fantasies...
...It is a tale of unmitigated cruelty: the cruelty of Khmer Rouge soldiers (mostly teenagers) who chop up and disembowel their enemies and display their severed heads on a table...
...One still lives comfortably in San Clemente...
...the Third World and liberation theology...
...By isolating the salesman and the reader, Abe suggests that only by accepting an underlying pattern to existence, can we conclude (or even begin) our earthly endeavors...
...FATHER RAYMOND A. SCHROTH, S.J., formerly associate editor of Commonweal, is now academic dean of Rockhurst College in Kansas City, Missouri...
...She disappears into an odd, mul#structured hospital--it is clinic, torture-garden, anal "home"in which nothing~j~or everything) appears planned...
...Jews who saw Jesus as the Davidic Messiah were joined by others stressing a Mosaic figure...
...He gives us a series of "notebooks" (and epilogue...
...But the salesman discovers that he can barely find his wife (and his feelings about their marriage...
...presidential primaries and the election...
...Coming soon: A special issue on Contemporary Theology, reports on Soviet writers, Chile's new labor laws, abortion and the media...
...Abe is, thus, giving us a violent and nightmarish work...
...each ~ additional, $15 (Add $2 for postage St--~eet outside U.S...
...The other is teaching at Georgetown...
...others): he paradoxically affirms the hidden order of the universe by dwelling on secret, ominous, ghostly passageways...
...FATHER EUGENE H. MALY is a membefof the faculty of Mt...
...Or you can wire or phone your order (collect) 212-683-2042...
...IRVING M),LIN teaches at CCNY...
...He writes a testament, a document of faith, even when he seems to mock belief in all solutions...
...The community of the hook's title is traced from its origins before the Gospel was written through the period of its composition and later through the period of the Johannine epistles and finally to its dissolution in the l~.st-epistles period...
...This is the development, in abbreviated form...
...Throughout the complex development issue was constantly being taken with the "world" (non-believers), "the Jews" (leaders opposed to the Community), followers of the Baptist, crypto-Christians (Jews privately, not publicly, believing in Jesus), "Jewish Christians" (believers with a low christo!ogy), apostolic Christians (Jewish and Gentile heirs of the Christianity of Peter and the Twelve...
...The coming year brings many challenges that are of concern to Commonweal-- and its readers: the plight of American hostages in Iran and the rising antagonism of the Moslem world...
...MARY PERKINS RYAN is the editor of PACE (Professional Approaches for Christian Educators), published by St...
...m m i I 1 mn I CHRISTMAS ORDER FORM 9 i i i i m i Please send these friends a gift sub- Name scription at the special Christmas Rates: 1 Subscription, $20...
...He is the author of The Eagle and Brooklyn (Greenwood Press...
...He deliberately mingles fear and pleasure to force us toward a non-official auspices as a many-sided contribution to serious thought and discussion about "faith and sexism...
...His secretary was a test-tube baby...
...100...
...I do not mean to imply that Abe is a "salesman" of faith...
...Clearly the Johannine eagle soared"with talons bared for the fight" (p...
...He is coeditor of The Achievement of William Styron (Georgia University Press), among others...
...His hero is a salesman of jogging shoes...
...Mary's Press, Winona, Minnesota...
...If you mail your instructions now, your gift notification will go out in time for Christmas (we will use Special Delivery when necessary...
...A continued high christology led to excessive interpretations by some members (proto-docetic, proto-gnostic) who then became the secessionists berated by the author of the epistles (c...
...the salesman discovers finally that the perverse roles--his wife is at one point the Masked Woman in a scary, funny festival to celebrate the hospital's founding--and insane transformations are the underlying pattern...
...tensions in the church...
...The "secret rendezvous" is, in one way, the unforeseen meeting with fate, destiny, REVIEWERS MARGARET WIMSATr lives in New Haven, Connecticut...
...The initially dispassionate reader will come to agree, at least emotionally, with Congressman Pete McCloskey, who said after a 1975 visit to Phnom Penh, "If I could have found the military or State Department leader who has been the architect of this policy, my instinct would be to string him up...
...We are, therefore, put into a mirror-p0sition with the salesman...
Vol. 106 • December 1979 • No. 23
