Summer Reading / Ban the Soleil
Stillman, Whit
"Summer Reading / Ban the Soleil" Reform has been such an important and persistent force in the course of America's first two centuries that American history is often taught as a succession of reform's significant...
...Like Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, he was subjecting himself to an ordeal (exposure in his case...
...Andre's resolve to fight them hardened, and he put aside any remaining concern about possible loss of privacy...
...His purpose: to prove that sunbathing was harmful...
...Andre went to see Laura, taking the paper with him...
...There were some people who later charged that Andre's action on the beach had been publicity-seeking...
...1864—Sherman's March Through Georgia...
...From reading Orwell he could see a parallel between his situation and that of the veterans who returned from World War I to a society that did not have room for them...
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...The American Spectator August/September 1978 39...
...ERNEST VAN DEN HAAG (The New School for Social Research) A Note on the Sentencing of Criminals...
...Later at South Beach he found himself sitting near a group of 15-year-old girls whose skin was so thickly oiled that it glinted in the sun...
...there's no doubt that she was bludgeoned...
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...Grease is the word...
...1901—Roosevelt's First Hundred Days...
...Back in his cramped room he stayed up nearly all night adding notes to what he had now provisionally titled "Down and Out in Vineyard Heaven...
...But she was not bludgeoned until after she had already died from exposure...
...He carefully went over what he had discovered, and thought she was following his account of how the woman—unconscious, her skin unprotected and subjected to a full day's sunlight—had suffered fatal sunburn trauma...
...perhaps in part it was...
...For social and political reasons Andre didn't particularly admire summer resorts...
...That probably sounds decadent to you...
...1934—Taylor Grazing Act...
...One night Andre told her about how hard and depressing job-hunting in New York had been, particularly as he wasn't sure what he wanted to do...
...Andre asked Parke...
...The distinction between "unemployment" and "very long summer vacations" often becomes blurred for college students in the period following their graduation...
...Everyone who visits a resort becomes a participant in its class function...
...Although, as a 1976 hit, "Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel" was not a particularly "golden" oldie, WPRO played it dozens of times...
...they didn't think it was true...
...Stamps marked "A" are first-class postage...
...He had bought a paperback copy of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and had become completely absorbed in it, finding that he could identify much more closely with Orwell's plongeurs—the underpaid and overworked dishwashers and kitchen servants in Parisian hotels—than with his smug, tennis-playing Edgartown contemporaries...
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...please print) Name Address City State Zip Date of change X71 Announcing a New Quarterly Journal of Public Policy Published by The Heritage Foundation Policy Review Policy Ilevkkw Summer 1977: ROBERT MOSS (The Economist) The Specter of Eurocommunism...
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...One afternoon reading the Times they came upon a short item that the maimed body of a young woman had been found on a beach near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina...
...A Rehobeth Beach, Delaware, widow wrote that the circumstances surrounding her husband'sdisappearance five years before now seemed to point to a sunburn death...
...Blackford had the American republican's innate aversion to servility...
...To Andre, summer resorts showed the class basis of American society in its extremest form...
...Certainly she was bludgeoned...
...BAN THE SOLEIL (continued from page 4) out before him was not without bleakness...
...disco and tax reduction are the fevers...
...Vineyard Haven was a typical upper-middle-class white resort town, which also functioned as a market and transportation center...
...He put himself under a doctor's care, requesting that he first be treated with the "sunburn pain" sprays and lotions so frequently advertised on the radio...
...Senate) The, Most Important Decision-Making.Process...
...Linking these facts and some others, Andre prepared an article which he submitted to Parke Wilder at the Gazette for publication...
...The "bludgeoning" had the opposite reaction from what those who planned it had probably intended...
...20002 (202 546 4400...
...UTLEY (The Daily Telegraph) A Reappraisal of the Human Rights Doctrine...
...the Slump followed, then the period of the "Phoney War," after which the whole world seemed to take "time-out" to beat Hitler...
...There were marks all over her body...
...Ban the Soleil Whit Stillman July, when he decided to spend some time by the ocean...
...Negotiations...
...II On the weekend of the Edgartown Regatta, Martha's Vineyard became the site of a gruesome incident which in the press was quickly classified as a "freak" death, although for those who know anything about the sun's rays and how they work, there was nothing freak about it...
...Laura would put prescription salve on the part of his back he couldn't reach...
...His "Maman" loved him dearly, but because of the circumstances of her second marriage she could not see him on a regular or an irregular basis...
...Lists of "official" dates such as this also neglect reform's personal side—the fact that what later might become a sweeping reform usually begins as one person's solitary insight, his or her perception that some state of affairs is "terribly wrong" and dream to change it...
...he was through with college and, although reluctant to admit it to himself, at loose ends in the adult world...
...Next month R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., returns to weigh the achievement of Kissinger...
...on most mornings hardly a dollar to last him until Parke Wilder, a classmate working on the Vineyard Gazette, could cash one of his checks, which were likely to bounce at any moment...
...He also asked her why she was spending her vacation in Edgartown...
...most influential were the huge suntan-oil advertising campaigns conducted on youth-oriented radio stations like WPRO...
...Tennyson Russell Kirk Stephen J. Tonsor John Lukacs Donald W. Treadgold Thomas Molnar Dale Vree John T. Noonan, Jr...
...the men were taken by his slouchy informality, which managed just the necessary ration of deference owed by the young to their elders, without any suggestion of sycophancy, or any presumptive commitment to the bizarre notion that because he was young, he was any less competent, in his own disciplines, than they in theirs...
...DANIEL PATRICK MOYNIHAN (U.S...
...The pain Andre experienced in the next weeks was far worse than anything he could ever have imagined...
...My summer job fell through and—as this is about the last chance I'll have for a long stretch of time in which to read and think—I decided just to take advantage ofit...
...1891—General Sherman Dies...
...Also, Laura already had a "date" for that weekend, a sailing tennis-player from the mainland...
...WEST (Carleton University) Tuition Tax Credit Proposals: An Economic Analysis of the 1978 Packwood/ Moynihan Bill...
...The dead should be allowed to rest in peace...
...A few days later he stepped off the ferry Island Queen onto the Vineyard Haven dock—like any vacationer, except for the bitterness inside...
...Both religious and secular issues are addressed...
...He had seen that there was some...
...At the beginning of each shift they would prepare several gallons of iced tea and consume it by the quart in the course of an evening, sweating it out as they worked...
...A sentence he had read in Orwell's book came back to him with particular force now: "There is no doubt that women never, or hardly ever, condescend to men who are much poorer than themselves...
...During the weeks following his day on the beach, Andre and Laura were able to spend large blocks of their free time together...
...One Williams College graduate had spent his vacation in Manhattan up to midWhit Stillman is publisher of The American Spectator...
...1893—Sherman Silver Purchase Act Repealed...
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...It's obviously very important to some people that this look like a bludgeoning...
...No...When I was between my freshman and sophomore years I thought the same thing, but since then I've found that large blocks of free time often crop up unexpectedly...
...Two reporters watched...
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...her head was bashed in...
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...1935-1935 Banking Act...
...Bloomington, Indiana 38 The American Spectator August/ September 1978 journalists, and officials who owned seaside real estate...
...They didn't dare...
...Twenty-two is not "old," but Andre felt that a gulf of experience separated him from them...
...The question was, how much longer was this going to be allowed to happen...
...Payment enclosed...
...They were enjoying their summer vacations, marking time during the years before college...
...When Laura Ingalls—an atN.B...
...Johann Sebastian Bach is the most popular composer of baroque music...
...ALFRED E. KAHN (Civil Aeronautics Board) Airline Deregulation: Getting From Here to There...
...Orwell's words haunted him...
...the circumstances of this and previous deaths cast serious doubt on the healthiness of sunbathing...
...sunbathing had become the center of a billion-dollar industry...
...First, he had almost no money...
...3Winter 1978: ERNEST W. LEFEVER (Ethics and Public Policy Center, 1 Georgetown University) The Trivialization of Human Rights...
...He realized that in the sunbathers' language he was a "paleface"—someone who doesn't have a tan...
...In the course of their conversation, Andre asked Laura about her reading, and told her about his experience with Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London...
...Or maybe they hardly played it at all, and Andre just noticed it more...
...the newspapers and radio stations with extensive beach-related advertising...
...Before he had finished, however, Laura interrupted: "But she was bludgeoned to death...
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...They were found to be of no significant value in the treatment of severe burns...
...Later they were swept up in the twenties boom in time for the Crash...
...That day on the beach Andre proved his contention: Sunbathing was extremely dangerous...
...The vista which he sensed stretching (continued on page 37) 4 The American Spectator August/September 1978 tive blue eyes, and easy manner...
...DANIEL ORR (University of California, San Diego) Toward Necessary Reform of Social Security...
...When he was nine they were divorced "for personal reasons...
...Ai dawn two mornings later Andre stretched out on a towel on a secluded portion of South Beach adjacent to Katama Bay...
...2 Fall 1977: WALTER E. WILLIAMS (Temple University) Government Sane-• tioned Restraints That Reduce Economic Opportunities for Minorities...
...PETER BAUER & JOHN O'SULLIVAN (The London School of Economics and The Daily Telegraph) Ordering the World About: the NIEO...
...House of Commons) The Crisis in Southern Africa...
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...Andre placed a call to an acquaintance of his on the staff of Fortnightly magazine in New York...
...1933-1933 Banking Act...
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...As the hours passed his mind began to wander...
...On Martha's Vineyard's northeastern shore three towns form a resort crown...
...KENNETH L. ADELMAN (Stanford Research Institute) The Runner Stumbles: Carter's Foreign Policy in the Year One...
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...In recent weeks The American Spectator has mailed several hundred thousand letters soliciting new subscriptions—a major effort on our part to build the circulation and influence of this magazine...
...How many more bodies are going to be bludgeoned...
...The Vineyard Gazette not only carried a substantial amount of suntan-lotion advertising, but, perhaps even more importantly, its prosperity—and, hence, its revenues—were inextricably linked to the future of Martha's Vineyard as a summer resort...
...R. DAVID RANSON (H.C...
...STEPHEN HASELER (City of London Polytechnic) Visas for Soviet "Trade Unionists...
...Second, he did not see himself as a standard Edgartowner...
...Brunet" complexion notwithstanding, he was gravely sunburnt...
...1890—Sherman Silver Purchase Act...
...L," 6013 Lawton Ave., Oakland, CA 94618...
...Washington, D.C...
...Yet it was the romantic aura surrounding Edgartown because of Laura's presence which had brought him to the island...
...ROBERT CONQUEST (The Hoover Institution, Stanford University) Why the Soviet Elite is Different from Us...
...tractive 17-year-old with obsessive reading habits—arrived at Williams as a freshman, he thought that "heaven must be missing an angel," as a popular song put it...
...but when a romantic couple approached the house next door, he left...
...At the beach he put suntan lotion on Laura's back because she couldn't reach there...
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...The vast quantities of tea, his fatigue, the numbing quality of the work, and the music on the kitchen radio often set Andre's mind racing...
...Two facts in the newspaper report of her death stood out: The woman was "red-haired" and "her body showed signs of exposure to the elements...
...Heaven Can Wait is the movie...
...You'll find quality articles and reviews by such well-known people as: Peter L. Berger Michael Novak Dante Germino James V. Schall John H. Hallowell Paul Seabmy Jeffrey Hart Whit Stillman James Hitchcock G.B...
...As sometimes happens, deprivation of maternal influence had made his attitude toward women excessively romantic, if that's possible...
...Several lawyers wrote that they were researching the grounds for possible class-action suits, and requested information...
...Millions of Americans flock to the beaches, seashore, and ocean...
...He did not except himself from this rule, although in fact his situation was utterly different from that of the Edgartown people...
...Significantly, that afternoon on its news reports, which were sandwiched between suntan-lotion commercials, WPRO stuck with the bludgeoning story...
...The suntan companies' advertising and marketing approaches were ingenious: "Coco tanning butter" would not, he thought, have been nearly as popular if it had been called "coco tanning margarine" —although that was the more accurate term...
...No one's disputing that...
...1933—Roosevelt's Second Hundred Days...
...thing terribly wrong in our society, and this insight had swept him into a historical movement much larger than himself: the dream of social change for the better...
...The closest thing they had to a formal date was the afternoon he took her to The Flying Horses in Oak Bluffs...
...KENNETH W. CLARKSON & ROGER E. MEINERS (The Law and Economics Center, The University of Miami) The Spurious Increase in the Unemployment Rates...
...COLIN S. GRAY (The Hudson Institute) The End of SALT...
...At first he experienced just the same sensations he had when he had sunbathed in the past: boredom, discomfort, a feeling that he was wasting his time...
...Fifteen days after his beach experience Fortnightly published its article, "The Sunburnt Man," which began with an account of his experience, and went on to survey the growing amount of evidence of sunbathing's harmfulness...
...He could see some parallels between his situation and that of George Orwell...
...CHARLES LONGSTREET WELTNER (Atlanta Judicial Circuit) The Model Cities: A Sobering Scorecard...
...But lists of dates such as this tend to be dry and "official...
...Preface It is the summer of 1978...
...The American Spectator August/September 1978 37 made a person "unhealthy looking," "a paleface...
...But he was not entirely comfortable with his growing public role...
...Another reason why he felt he did not fit into the Edgartown class role was that he was not actually living there, but in a rooming house between Oak Bluffs and Vineyard Haven...
...He had preferred the camaraderie, hard work, and iced tea bouts of his kitchen job and his anonymous experience of resort life's underside...
...1900—Senator Sherman Dies...
...They emphasize political rather than social reform, and they fail to show how one major social reform can affect many aspects of daily life—for instance, how early in this century feminism, by helping women feel free to smoke in public, led to the introduction in the 1960s of "slim" cigarettes designed especially for the burgeoning number of women smokers...
...Oak Bluffs, the middle jewel, is a black community with picturesque "gingerbread" houses...
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...in the Midwest, the large sand distributors...
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...Andre knew that there had been many cases of death from sunburn shock, but invariably they had been hushed-up and forgotten...
...1933—Roosevelt's First Hundred Days...
...A man in Carmel, California, wrote that he had found a mosquito or some other bug squashed under the cap of a brand-name suntan oil...
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...Religious, cultural, and political affairs are discussed from the perspective of the traditional values of Western culture...
...He thought that the sun's effect on his skin might not be that harmful, as he had the complexion of a person with brown hair...
...To keep track of experiences like this Andre began jotting down notes under the provisional heading, "Down and Out in Edgartown and Oak Bluffs...
...SUMMER READING R.eform has been such an important and persistent force in the course of America's first two centuries that American history is often taught as a succession of reform's significant dates: 1890—Sherman Antitrust Act...
...About Edgartown, the island's Old Town, known for its pretty streets, whaling history, and houses dating from the Revolution—and for its wealthy summer population—Andre felt much less sympathetic...
...His first morning on the Island he sought to buy some suntan lotion in an Edgartown shop, simply to protect his skin from the sun, but discovered he could not afford any...
...That's awfully convenient for them to think, isn't it...
...He drew double duty at work, and had neither the right clothes, attitude, nor connections for yacht racing, or for the parties which would inevitably come after...
...He would wonder why lying on a beach with one's skin well-greased so that the sun's rays could slowly poison it red or brown was considered "natural" and "healthy"—while protecting one's skin Sheldon Vanauken Priestesses versus the Incarnation March 1978 ISSN 0149-4244 Attention: Cultural Traditionalists "a first-rate theologicalcultural-literary periodical" —NATIONAL REVIEW (editorial) Discover this unique 32-page monthly magazine published by orthodox Christians...
...Next came the age of affluence with its terrible erosion of values and family life...
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...He decided to look for temporary employment and was lucky to find a part-time position working in the kitchen of The Manor Inn, a job actually quite similar to that of Orwell's plongeurs...
...What evidence do you have for that...
...As Andre saw them, the facts were these: A person was dead...
...He had counted on getting the brass ring enough times to afford both their tickets, but he didn't, and had to borrow money from Laura to pay her way...
...Andre Burton was the son of an American banker and a French-born housewife...
...JOHN HOWARD (Rockford College) The Responsibility of College Trustees...
...The next day Parke returned the article to him, with an encouraging rejection note from "Scotty" Reston...
...The following is the story of such a dream, treated in a contemporary way...
...JULIAN AMERY, M.P...
...poverty and hunger in O.'s) in order to arrive at a truth, whatever that might turn out to be...
...Wainwright and Co...
...If this happens to you—please don't send it back to us with a note explaining that you already subscribe...
...Laura Ingalls came to the beach that morning wearing one of the exceptionally close-fitting, stretch, one-piece bathing suits which were popular during the summer of 1978...
...After work on the night of the Regatta dance he strolled around Edgartown for a time and, when it began raining, found himself under the shelter of a tree near the Ingalls' house...
...Arrayed against him were what could be called the sunbathing interests: the large beach towel companies, the unguent manufacturers, "Big Suntan Oil"—but also the politicians, There is opportunity in America...
...Changing Your Address...
...As with Blackford so with Chairman Bill, the gifted writer who for three decades has defended the wisdom of the adult with the gusto and wit of brilliant youth...
...Why did the Gazette really not want to publish this piece...
...For those who are not aware of it, the skin of people with red hair is extremely sensitive to sunlight...
...Various points of view are represented...
...Sarkes Tarzian Inc...
...Write: New Oxford Review, Dept...
...Most gratifying to Andre were the letters people all over the country sent him as a result of the article...
...Heaven, Vineyard Heaven: The clergymen of Vineyard Haven tell their summer congregations funny stories about receiving mail misaddressed that way...
...Harold L. Weatherby A year's subscription is $6...
...he asked...
...Be sure to include the line of information above your name...
...For even some of those with the most to offer this vacation extends through the winter months...
...That week Laura and Andre spent a large block of their free time together, mostly talking...
...A young woman's body was found near secluded Blue Mailbox Beach in the middleof the island...
...1863—National Bank Act...
...U.S.—U.S.S.R...
...Andre, not interested in acquiring a suntan," was still wearing his shirt and trousers as he walked over to where she had spread her beach towel...
...A New Yorker wanted a national sunburn victims' organization, and suggested "you've got it made in the shade" as its slogan...
...Fashion and peer-group pressure were partly to blame for these attitudes...
...On Regatta weekend Andre was not able to be with Laura...
...About it Andre had nothing particularly critical to say...
Vol. 11 • August 1978 • No. 9
