Who's on First

...Although Islam certainly believes in murder for correct reasons, it takes a less sanguine view of rape and robbery, in which the criminals, in their more lenient moods, also indulged...

...I | Send $5.00 (US...

...Or perhaps Bolgin secretly admires National Review, and denounces it only to maintain appearances...

...New authors welcomed...

...Thus, they fall back on generalities...

...Oakes is no mere fop...

...A good part of the novel's attractiveness derives from its protagonist, CIA operative Blackford Oakes...

...Their crimes notwithstanding, they will be up for parole in 1981...

...In suspense novels, as in real life, ingenuity and audacity frequently carry the day, but Communist regimes discourage both attributes...

...Write A A. Lee...

...Only national publicatton covering Senate and House as well as presidential races...

...Wolfe recounts the years of Project Mercury, at the conclusion of which I was nine years old...

...The answer is: not much...

...In the crepuscular world of espionage, no possibility, however remote, can be summarily excluded...

...This declaration, however, is not as laudatory as it might otherwise appear, inasmuch as I always read thrillers in a single sitting...

...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...

...What did these men have that others didn't...

...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...

...That they stifle these attributes is, however, merely the least of the Communists' many sins...

...422 First St SE...

...If not, the outcome raises several questions, not least important of which is: Can our society deal effectively with terrorists when powerful voices try to justify crimes--no matter how heinous--as long as they are committed by a "repressed minority" ? [] -FR conservalive news weekly If you're a conservative, you should discover HUMAN EVENTS, the National Conservative Weekly (the only one) Essenttal thts election year...

...38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1980...

...He is less astute in his pronouncements on the moral corollaries of this fascination...

...ceived the essential emptiness of the occasion by yawning while the grownups fired confetti at John Glenn's proud head...

...Its characters are credible, its plot is ingenious, and, though its tone is anything but didactic, it has a serious point to make...

...Money back if not pleased AIIow'6weeks, | I~ F]f~]~ T~ A~II~ k~ POSTOFFICEBOX668AS Jl t y Jr ,.l~J~,J~, J., ~L~.'J~ ESSEX...

...And yet we perMitchell S. Ross lives in De#pit...

...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...

...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 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...

...and they are unable to analyze its argument, since a thriller usually has none...

...Vastly more important is the fact that, to put it plainly, Communist regimes are profoundly evil, with oceans of innocent blood on their hands...

...Fluent in many tongues and related to--among other luminaries--the Queen of England, the young Oakes is at once effortlessly cosmopolitan and deeply patriotic...

...A quondam victim of Stalin's purges, Boigin is a man of regular THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1980 37 habits: He never travels without his capsule of cyanide, and he never goes to sleep sober...

...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...

...I do remember being bored...

...Pitted against Oakes is the wily KGB Colonel, Boris Andreyevich Bolgin...

...Despite the killers' fervent avowals, their religious commitment is somewhat suspect...

...Reports from the deep inside Capitol Hill Hot news -- olten not printed anywhere else Tough writers FREE sample...

...My schoolteachers had us huddle around the tube and observe the mighty doings...

...foreign policy...

...In the end, only the conscientious efforts of two detectives, and an unfounded fear of imminent capture on the part of one of the criminals, led to the group's arrest and conviction...

...9 Dulles, crotchety, shrewd Nestors whose conversations light up the novel with wit and charm...

...The voice of mission control was a dreadful drone...

...I SAVE YOUR GAS!' BEAT INFLATION...

...CT 06426 U.S.A...

...they cannot say much about its characters, since these, in all but the be~t novels, are little more than what Ian Fleming once called "cardboard boobies...

...The work of the astronauts could mainly be done by simians with superior haircuts...

...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...

...If ever a public event was likely to excite the imaginations of schoolchildren, space exploration was it...

...Buckley's point is a good one: Despite, or rather because of, their strict regimentation, Communist societies simply don't work well...

...One is at a loss to imagine who on earth such an accomplished character might be modelled after...

...Having qualified my enthusiasm somewhat, I can safely proceed to assert that Mr...

...Obviously, Buckley is no fan of predictable denouements...

...Waving the Constitution and hurling about charges of "racism," the ACLU and its allies managed to bring to a halt a police search program which might have led to an early apprehension of the criminals...

...or $5.50 (elsewhere) for a I- I I year subscription, starling with the current is- | | sue...

...It is edited by this young bourgeois fanatic . . . . I always read the National Review, it makes me so funny-mad...

...I do not remember anyone feeling patriotically uplifted...

...The right stuff" suggests a combination of qualities inherently unique...

...Buckley's novel, though not quite up to his highest standards, is still an entertainment of the fu'st rank...

...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...

...What was important was their having the appearance of uniqueness, and so endless energy was applied to the propagation of appearances...

...he asks a subordinate at one point...

...By using the latest techniques of Synanon and est or by employing a new method of behavior modification, the mental health people so prevalent in San Francisco's psychobabble culture may well succeed in restoring the criminals to model citizens by the time of their release...

...But in his description of the matter itself he is unsurpassed...

...While Bolgin and Oakes clearly dominate the book, it contains a host of interesting minor characters as well...

...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...

...It seems that their secular inspiration must have come from the Black Panthers across the Bay, whose leader had shortly before been anointed by Jane Fonda as the only man who could be trusted in America...

...He understands the giddy exhilaration of men spellbound by gadgetry...

...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...

...They are not permitted to divulge the book's plot, since that would relieve the suspense novel of its raison d'dtre...

...Do you ever read the National Review...

...According to Powell, the prisoners have shown no repentance and like many of their kind probably view themselves as "freedom fighters...

...They had, living in the same world, to do something...

...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...

...Roam the world by freighter at savings of a t least 50% . . . Deluxe accommodations I TravLtips I Dept...

...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...

...No obligation...

...Otherwise, I find that I lose track of the plot...

...The exploration of outer space marked the nadir of the history of heroism...

...atmosphere and the author's style, pronounce the plot plausible or implausible, and, should they wish to bestow the highest accolade, declare that they read the entire work "in a single sitting," so enthralled were they by it...

...The San Francisco police attempted to apprehend the criminals, of course, but groups like the American Civil Liberties Union continually frustrated them...

...Though Bolgin and Oakes are relentless adversaries, their relationship is by no means a straightforward "zero-sum game...

...Blackford Oakes felt only this," Buckley writes, "that there wasn't any alternative for those few who did understand, or thought they did...

...They discuss the book's Joseph Shattan is Policy Director for the Coalition for a Democratic Majority in Washington, D.C...

...There is hope, however...

...Blackford Oakes understands this quite clearly...

...No writer in our time has conveyed better the effects of abundant technology on the American mind...

...WHO'S ON FIRST William F. Buckley, Jr...

...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...

...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...

...Devotees of the genre, needless to say, have reason to celebrate...

...Doubleday / $9.95 Joseph Shattan Reviewers of mysteries and spy novels are apt to find themselves in an uncomfortable bind...

...The preparations were undertaken by batteries of technocrats...

...In the estimation of my classmates and me, Space Days were better than spelling quizzes but less fun than filmstrips...

...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...

...The result was a fat volume called Of a Fire on the Moon, an incredibly windy and tedious effort which depressed me horribly...

...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...

...Devoted in equal measure to vodka and the Russian classics, Bolgin also follows the Western press...

...A l l of this is the stuff of comedy, and Wolfe has captured it well...

...10001 | you'll love VERBATIM, The karguage Qua- 1 l terly dealing with all aspects of language...

...That book--Buckley's finest, in my opinion--was both a superb thriller and an oblique criticism of U.S...

...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...

...A "perfectly proportioned young American male" with an "inviting informality of manner" that women (not unnaturally) find irresistible, the Yale-educated Mr...

...It is evident, then, that in Buckley's skilled hands the thriller becomes something more than a clever yarn of adventure and intrigue...

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...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...

...Washington, OC 20003...

...On the contrary, he was trained as a nuclear physicist, he gained renown as a fighter-pilot during World War II, and he reads the geopolitical works of J ames Burnham for relaxation...

...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...

...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...

...It is also an affirmation of certain values--courage, cultivation, freedom--and a condign indictment of Soviet oppression...

...As it happens, I read William Buckley's latest spy novel in a single sitting...