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...
...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...
...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...
...Blackford Oakes felt only this," Buckley writes, "that there wasn't any alternative for those few who did understand, or thought they did...
...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...
...Should the practice of death as punishment be abolished...
...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...
...38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1980 Stylistically, he shows signs of improving with age...
...It hasn't, of course...
...What was important was their having the appearance of uniqueness, and so endless energy was applied to the propagation of appearances...
...Or perhaps Bolgin secretly admires National Review, and denounces it only to maintain appearances...
...THE SATURDAY EVENING CLUB'S ORDER FORM Please send me my very own American Spectator Tee Shirt...
...In the estimation of my classmates and me, Space Days were better than spelling quizzes but less fun than filmstrips...
...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...
...Obviously, Buckley is no fan of predictable denouements...
...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...
...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...
...I do remember being bored...
...My schoolteachers had us huddle around the tube and observe the mighty doings...
...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...
...Medium...
...or $5.50 (elsewhere) for a I- I I year subscription, starling with the current is- | | sue...
...foreign policy...
...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...
...It is also an affirmation of certain values--courage, cultivation, freedom--and a condign indictment of Soviet oppression...
...I | Send $5.00 (US...
...Though Bolgin and Oakes are relentless adversaries, their relationship is by no means a straightforward "zero-sum game...
...Do you ever read the National Review...
...Large...
...he asks a subordinate at one point...
...here than previously...
...If ever a public event was likely to excite the imaginations of schoolchildren, space exploration was it...
...Political Buttons at $1...
...So place your order today...
...Should these individuals who have improved be spared the lightning...
...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...
...Roam the world by freighter at savings of a t least 50% . . . Deluxe accommodations I TravLtips I Dept...
...The preparations were undertaken by batteries of technocrats...
...It is edited by this young bourgeois fanatic . . . . I always read the National Review, it makes me so funny-mad...
...Home of the Corn Palace...
...The exploration of outer space marked the nadir of the history of heroism...
...That book--Buckley's finest, in my opinion--was both a superb thriller and an oblique criticism of U.S...
...But in his description of the matter itself he is unsurpassed...
...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...
...No purchase necessary, but it can't hurt...
...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...
...habits: He never travels without his capsule of cyanide, and he never goes to sleep sober...
...They had, living in the same world, to do something...
...ceived the essential emptiness of the occasion by yawning while the grownups fired confetti at John Glenn's proud head...
...And yet we perMitchell S. Ross lives in De#pit...
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...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...
...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...
...Our growing line of products also includes American Spectator Turkey Jackets, "Nuke The Whales" Tee Shirts, and a variety of bumperstickers and buttons...
...The result was a fat volume called Of a Fire on the Moon, an incredibly windy and tedious effort which depressed me horribly...
...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...
...The slogan...
...Vastly more important is the fact that, to put it plainly, Communist regimes are profoundly evil, with oceans of innocent blood on their hands...
...I do not remember anyone feeling patriotically uplifted...
...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...
...In suspense novels, as in real life, ingenuity and audacity frequently carry the day, but Communist regimes discourage both attributes...
...P.S...
...Buckley's point is a good one: Despite, or rather because of, their strict regimentation, Communist societies simply don't work well...
...Have You Slugged Your Kid Today...
...Indiana residents please add 4% sales tax) NA ME A DDRESS CI TY S TA TE ZI P PLEASE PRI NT THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1980 ~9...
...Both place their consideration of the ultimate sanction within the larger framework of criminal punishment and its traditional justifications...
...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...
...I SAVE YOUR GAS!' BEAT INFLATION...
...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...
...What did these men have that others didn't...
...Would you then change your-views on the subject...
...Nuclear Plants Are Built Better Than Jane Fonda Total Enclosed...
...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 completely agree...
...Nuke The Whales...
...It is in that spirit that The Saturday Evening Club has expanded its line of merchandise...
...Blackford Oakes understands this quite clearly...
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...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...
...No writer in our time has conveyed better the effects of abundant technology on the American mind...
...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...
...In the crepuscular world of espionage, no possibility, however remote, can be summarily excluded...
...Hundreds of marvelous phrases remain: Lyndon Johnson "oozing protocol...
...He understands the giddy exhilaration of men spellbound by gadgetry...
...Enclosed is $7 per shirt, three for $18...
...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...
...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...
...I am tired of reading that one...
...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...
...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...
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...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...
...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...
...A l l of this is the stuff of comedy, and Wolfe has captured it well...
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...There is also a more judicious employment of ellipses and exclamation points, which have tended in the past to become annoying...
...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...
...While Bolgin and Oakes clearly dominate the book, it contains a host of interesting minor characters as well...
...The right stuff" suggests a combination of qualities inherently unique...
...Wolfe recounts the years of Project Mercury, at the conclusion of which I was nine years old...
...The voice of mission control was a dreadful drone...
...Devotees of the genre, needless to say, have reason to celebrate...
...Paris Green on White...
...Caution: I Speed Up For Small Animals...
...9 Dulles, crotchety, shrewd Nestors whose conversations light up the novel with wit and charm...
...If we use it in our ad, we w i l l send you a free American Spectator Turkey Tee Shirt...
...New authors welcomed...
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...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...
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...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...
...That they stifle these attributes is, however, merely the least of the Communists' many sins...
...The work of the astronauts could mainly be done by simians with superior haircuts...
...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...
...Nixon's The One--in 1980) Please send me these bumperstickers at $2 each, 3 for $5...
...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...
...Send us the name of your f a v o r i t e c i t y and its slogan...
...This is but the converse of the question frequently put to abolitionists on the issue of deterrence...
...CT 06426 U.S.A...
...It is evident, then, that in Buckley's skilled hands the thriller becomes something more than a clever yarn of adventure and intrigue...
...The answer is: not much...
...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...
Vol. 13 • June 1980 • No. 6
