Old Glory: An American Voyage

...Although O/d Glory contains some fine reportage and much fascinating river lore, the author's neurasthenia comes close to turning it into a Woody Allen film...

...He who has wanted everything and has had faith in no one must be ready for the great passage from Matthew when shortly before their marriage Merry recites it to him: "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink: nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on . . . . " It is not a question whether Simon is worth saving...

...It belongs, he says, to "the bold second thoughts on the door of the front steps after the event is over...

...The obsession suggested a trip and a book proposal worthy of the Master, RLS himself...

...But now Mr: Freeman is more concerned with the causes of that growth and its consequences for the American way of life...

...According to Freeman, the "seeds" of the change from the welfare state to the redistributive state were planted during the New Deal, when the radically egalitarian notion " t h a t all shortcomings in human beings or conditions are the fault of society'and environment," not of individual choices, was planted in the brains of those "who later became the shapers of public opinion, the makers of public policy decisions, the educators of the next generation...

...Judging by the sighs from Greenwich Village, no one here at home has the energy to bay at the moon or embark on a Whitmanesque tramp...

...Silent at the time, he now composes an anguished liberal sermonette in rebuttal: "Racism is another two-handed sword which cuts right and left, and you really swung it hard at your end of the sermon...

...Each town brings a fresh batch of a c q u a i n t a n c e s and interviewees, though hardly the longueurs of Raban'~ dream...

...in the Christiafi economy the worst of us are, which is good news but does not...

...256 pages...

...Nevertheless, thefact remains that, in constant dollars, the federal government in 1978 spent 4 p e r c e n t less for defense and 822 percent more for domestic services than in 1952...

...of government taxing, spending, and employment from 1952 on...

...Tomorrow, Capitalism explains in layman's language how the economic trailblazers in the vanguard of this revolution--Gary Becker, Ronald Coase, Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and F.A...

...Thus, when a Grand Old Partisan writes to correct, not to denounce or dismantle, the American welfare state, he is reflecting a remarkable change in public opinion...

...Charles Hartshorne characterizes this book as "an eloquent and insightful presentation of the claims of Buddhism to the attention of thoughtful people in this country, especially those aware of the widely influential process philosophy and process theology of Whitehead...

...Six miles downstream one can understand why the New York Times has tagged Raban as a "brilliant tragic-comedian of t r a v e l . " In Lock One he nearly capsizes in the wake of a barge, prompting an enraged lockman to shout: "N'Orleans...

...On the upper river t h e r e are moments of huckleberry transcendence-moments when he can fish, or sing, or pull into a slough and read John Cheever...

...There a r e time breaks between episodes, but once we are in a n e p i s o d e , and Simon's cancer of the consciousness takes command, absolutely everything that comes to his a t t e n t i o n , including sounds of all sorts, is reproduced in words...

...For solace, he reads Laurence Sterne or croons an advertising jingle from home: In foreign climes there are at times Some moments quite appalling...

...9.95 paper Thoughts on Freedom Two Essays by LORIN McMACKIN...

...There is "Garfish," the lockman who takes the Englishman to inspect his ham r a d i o , gun collection, and wife, who keeps a notebook of St...

...This is a very sophisticated analysis of the concept of freedom...with flashes of inspired common sense phrased in felicitous language:' -Sidney Hook...

...But where does what Merry Allen calls " t h e marvelous verbal life" come from...

...Across the water, of course, the vitality is even lower...

...MasterCard and American Express cards acceptod...

...Louis on the verge of sniffles...

...Maybe Sally was right, and it was a streak of cowardice that impelled me to do both...

...In every single year from 1952 tO the p r e s e n t , Congress has increased the dollars spent for domestic services, while in eight of those years, including the war years of 1969, 1970, and 1971, it has cut the dollar amount for defense...

...Here the defeat of a black judge provides grist for some bothsides-now moralizing...

...16.95 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1982 33 I know very little of writers, but people I do no...

...His imagination is crammed with information about that world in all its categoi-ies: sports, politics, literature, drama, religion, history...

...The kid sniffs Raban's pouch and backs off in disbelief...

...As a consequence, he covers most of the stretch between Memphis and New Orleans as a guest aboard a pair of tows...

...You're watching people from under your eyelids and spinning that pen a r o u n d . . . Just like Tom W o l f e . . . " As his a d v e n t u r e s accumulate, Raban develops a bad case of the shakes...

...Mark Twain fans will prefer the Duke of Bilgewater and the Dauphine, the Long Lost Looey of France...

...However this might be, "Income support [by the government] . . . multiplied tenfold in constant dollars between 1952 and 1978," while transfer payments as a p e r c e n t a g e of personal income quadrupled...

...But the river demands constant vigilance and Raban is a long way from suburban Connecticut...

...While one journalist plays at being Huck Finn, another plays at being Alexis de Tocqueville...

...On the secorid one, he meets a character worthy o f h l s dreams, someone he can look up to...

...Tomorrow, Capitalism The Economics of Economic Freedom by Henri Lepage " . . . a remarkable tour de f o r c e . . , comprehensive, accurate, and yet accessible to the general public...

...There i s a n o t h e r problem with Simon, who though he is not a figure in a realistic novel is still displayed as a particular person with a history in the " r e a l " world...

...In a bar in the mean, flea-bitten town of Houma, he comes close to finding it...

...TOMORROW, CAPITALISM The Economics of Economic Freedom by Henri Lepage A Conservative Book Club Selection $14.95 From...

...Martin Blumenson refers to this book as a "sensitive, beautifully written personal memoir," and calls it a contribution to understanding, "particularly to Americans who know little of how World War II and its immediate aftermath disrupted the lives of those who survived the defeat of Germany...

...Hayek, and members of the "Public Choice" School--have reshaped the science of economics into a comprehensive ap- . proach to the study of human problems...

...he steps into a bar and has his hat snatched by a group of Hells Angels...

...Anyone doubting this is invited to draw up a list of travel books written during the seventies that bear rereading...

...Feeling sheepish as usual, Raban does as he is told...

...The result often is a regrettable lack of staging, so that comic moments, of which t h e r e are many, tend to blur into one another_9 One is reminded of F. Scott F i t z g e r a l d ' s distinction between novelists who like himself are leaver-outers and novelists like Thomas Wolfe who are putter-inners...

...Like its p r e d e c e s s o r , * Roger A. Freeman's Wayward Welfare State demonstrates the enormous growth *The Growth of American Government (Hoover Institution Press, 1975...

...By late November the Mississippi is too rough for Raban to ride with any d e g r e e of safety...

...Paul tells the Romans it must be, without dissimulation...

...For one thing, the seventies are over, Raban's n e u r a s t h e n i a is losing its charm...

...Aflerword by Jack M. Holl...

...You trying t.o get yourself killed...

...and, similarly, almost anyone out of a job for almost Sarkes Tarzian Inc...

...just when the Wiir on Poverty was declared, pollThere o r t u n i t v opp " Ameri IH c a I. ticians seemed to lose interest in the numbers of the enemy...

...If riding the river was like anything else in life, it was like writing . . . One needed a degree of disengagement to do either...

...There are just too many paper clips in the jar and Simon, the overreacher, wants them all...

...In need of diversion, the author pulls into Memphis and becomes caught up in a b i t t e r mayoral cam"The role of poseur seems to be the accepted role among Simon and Schuster travel writers...

...In the absence of information on income distribution, Mr...

...With his cancerous consciousness he often suggests a frenetic polymath...

...To write this detailed account of...

...Bloomington, Indiana Tin California, the formalization of disability has gone so far that law and ad...

...Worse still, this change was accompanied by a loosening of laws and administrative practices which had once required proof of genuine and otherwise irremediable need as a condition for receipt of benefits...

...my specialty was the quiet exit through the back door, sneakers across the lawn and the relief of the cool air outside . . . But coward...

...If he is to write another travel book, for s a f e t y ' s sake, let it be about French cookery...

...A Mississippi river pilot who plays 12-string guitar and can quote Raban a five-minute selection from Longfellow...

...He apparently believes that a C h r i s t i a n ' s faith in metaphor should be in analogy with Merry Allen' s faith in Christ...

...No, that's something Aunt Polly or a John Leonard might do...

...Toward the end Simon himself refers to...

...There are some problems here...

...Freeman makes his case in overwhelming detail, of which I can give only a whiffhere...

...Franklin Roosevelt, for example, claimed that he came to bring work, not the dole...

...Tile alternative may well be a knife in the ribs...

...More likely, Twain would kick Raban in the shins for disgracing Huck and the memory of Robert Louis Stevenson...

...Mercifully, Raban becomes somewhat adept at dodging barges and logs...

...Along the way, Raban manages to do a good bit of adventuring ashore...

...But--"Guy's lorst his hayt" --they won't, which leaves him feeling sour and resentful...

...Connoisseurs of the type will want to follow Raban's American Voyage with a look at American Journey, Richard Reeves's pretentious retracing of Tocqueville's 1831 itinerary...

...After grinning through six departure takes for a local TV station, he finds h i m s e l f alone on the Mississippi...

...Had Bob Kelley been around to observe it, he might well have r e t r a c t e d his endorsement...

...Mano writes as if he takes metaphor Over I00,000 copies sold worldwide...

...Although a majority of reviewers (including the normally sensible Mitchell S. Ross) would love to see him do it again, I wouldn't advise it...

...Sad to say, the exhaustion is most pronounced among the literary bohemians, once a flourishing and exuberant tribe...

...S h i t . Why you keeping it in this f...

...I'm telling you, man, you get to N'Orleans, you can send me a f-----' postcard...

...Storms and high winds force him to hole up in a s t r i n g o f w a t e r - 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1982 front bars...

...Simon the great dissimulator must be seen as aware of the irony that he has been saved by a love that is, as St...

...Freeman to quantify than the shift away from arms...

...You look like Tom Wolfe . . . . I know y o u ' r e not Tom Wolfe, because Tom Wolfe wouldn't be in Dubuque...

...c i t y . " Then t h e r e is the Dubuque divorcSe who sizes up Raban in a flash...

...Freeman analyzes a variety of income support programs: Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, five work-incentive programs, disability insurance, unemployment insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, public housing and renters' subsidies (but not food stamps or any agricultural programs...

...Indeed, as Raban hits St...

...You were condemning both of us to the dirty charade of white versus black, head versus heart, male versus female . . . I have no right to talk to you like this, but please wake up...

...those too old to work became those over 62 years of age...

...An intelligent survey of economic ideas that promises to improve the "wealth of natioos," Tomorrow, Capitalism is about the very foundations of a free society...

...The voyage ends on a note that can only be called near suicidal, and vintage Raban...

...The book now clips along on a nineknot c u r r e n t . The Englishman encounters boils of turbulence and trees ripped up by t h e i r roots...

...Amen, brother...

...la Calvin Trillin, he sniffs at hot dogs at the Minnesota State Fair, has his first t a s t e of s q u i r r e l in Wisconsin, attends an Iowa pig roast, goes coon hunting and meets up with a skunk in Illinois...

...John 6f the Cross...

...The question is whether in the novel the saving is ruined by g r a t u i t o u s n e s s . I d o n ' t think it is, but Simon's coming home is a long and sometimes exasperating haul...

...The real trouble started, however, not when welfare benefits began to expand, but when the goal of welfare policy became redistribution...

...those too young to work became those unqualified for "good jobs...

...In Raban's mind, "The book and journey would be all of a piece...

...You know, when you think about the Cajuns, that 'Evangeline' just about says it a l l . " On a night watch approaching New Orleans, the two swap tales and general palaver...

...He also encounters a pair of armed men in a fast boat who check him out, then let him pass...

...The man implores him to install one, so as to know what the tows are doing in the chutes...

...Already translated into six languages, Tomorrow, Capitalism is an international best-seller...

...F o r t u n a t e l y for his e d i t o r s , the author becomes r e s t e d enough to break up housekeeping and get back on the r i v e r . This is done with a requisite amount of breast beating...

...But perhaps the marvelous verbal life should be taken as a given, the _9 important thing being that Simon's passage from the obscene to the sacred is a triumph of metaphor...

...This difficulty derives in part from the f e d e r a l government's refusal since 1964 to specify how many Americans there are in each bracket of personal income...

...A knife is p u l l e d - - ' 'You pull your f- . . . . ' gun on me, man, I'll cut y o u . . . " "Look, please"--and laid against the author's lapel...

...ministrative practice allow drivers' licenses to people who are legally blind and legally quadriplegic...

...paign...

...It's hard to imagine Simon ever sitting still long enough to read anything--certainly not that great punster, Shakespeare, with whom he is so familiar...

...Actually, we know that armed services were c u t for Welfare programs in 1969, 1970, and 1971, because that is what our p o l i t i c a l leaders said they were doing...

...This is the second book in which Jonathan Raban has put himself on display as a piece of human driftwood...

...THE WAYWARD WELFARE STATE Roger A. Freeman / Hoover Institution Press / $35.00 THE NO-RISK SOCIETY Yair Aharoni / Chatham House / $25.00, $12.95 paper John Wettergreen Only recently has the welfare state, with all its problems, been established here...

...Because these increases were financed by the various progressive income taxes, Mr...

...No one, at any rate, quite like Jonathan Raban...

...The woman called Raban a coward, and Raban f e e l s . . , badly...

...Thus, at the same time that the federal government has been trying to do more to improve the American way of life, it has been doing less to defend and Sustain that way...

...He later attempts to ride the river by night and is nearly sucked under by a barge, which leaves him blubbering in shock...

...The doldrums led to an obsession with an image from his boyhood reading, the image of Huck Finn on a raft on the Mississippi River...

...Perhaps --like many reviewers--Mark Twain would coo over Raban's vulnerability and award him a cookie...

...Maybe Jonathan s h o u l d n ' t have cont r a c t e d to write while posing as a piece of Mississippi driftwood...

...In the next paragraph Raban concedes the weakness of his sermon...

...And, as recently as the presidential campaign of 1964, even liberal Democra,s sneered at the notion that the central government ought to provide cradleto-grave security for everyone, howJohn Wettergreen teaches political science at San Jose State University...

...You are a good man to ride the river with, Jonathan Ravan...

...But keep that gun on h i m . " Like Raban, his book limps into St...

...Simon's diarrhea of the mouth is an impressive virtuoso display on the part of the author, but'it is also why the novel is so long...

...For another, Raban lacks the survival instincts of a true Huck Finn...

...No one gets around much anymore...

...Knocking on a door for help, he finds himself covered--"Let him in, I guess...

...Freeman concludes that every increase resulted in the redistribution--that is the equalization--of incomes...

...Each time he begins feeling too comfortable, he is attacked by mosquitoes or a squadron of dive-bombing birds...

...Raban has been asked this last question so many times that one begins to wonder...

...Simon's associative t a l e n t s , especially his visual talents, are remarkable," we are told by the omniscient observer, who of course displays the same talents in his own voice...

...But you look like Tom Wolfe, and if Tom Wolfe was in Dubuque he'd be doing what you're d o i n g . " "What am I doing...

...second, welfare programs have been financed by cuts in national defense...

...your local bookseller or: - Open Court Publishing Company Box 599 La Salle, IL 61301 Toll-Free Number: (800) 435-6850 VISA...

...Shortly after completing his Arabian book, Raban found himself in the doldrums, unable to write...

...Crisis Contained The Department of Energy at Three Mile Island By PHILIP L CANTELON and ROBERT C. WILLIAMS...

...The result is a significant history that shows how scientists and politicians tried to deal with a highly technical event in the glare of television lights and under the inquisitive and fearful eyes of the public.g17.50 Buddhism and the Contemporary World Change and Self-Correction By NOLAN PLINY JACOBSON...

...In Buffalo, Iowa...

...34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1982...

...In the hundred years since Robert Louis Stevenson penned his magnificent essay, "An Apology For I d l e r s , " much has happened to dampen the spirits of British bohemia...

...M i l t o n Friedman The last 20 years have witnessed a stunning revolution in economic thought...

...Where the river meandered, so would the book . . . . Everything would be left t o chance_9 T h e r e ' d be no advance reservations, no letters of introduction...

...While lighting a pipe, he is accosted by a kid who mistakes his tobacco for "shit," and Raban for a federal narc...

...The r e a d e r must be willing to accept Simon's associative talents as an adequate preparation for, even an anticipation of, the breaking in of lawless grace, and if he cannot he will be put off by the lack of parity between Simon's beginning and end...

...The shift toward redistribution is more difficult for Mr...

...stuff, man...

...The topics are important and diverse, and the authors bring clarity, precision, and insight to such issues as respect for life, medical paternalism, population and economic growth, preferential treatment, rights of children, and the value of more choice.,-lames E Childress, University of Virginia...

...k la Charles Kuralt, he pokes his nose into houseboats and Lutheran church services, buys a Jackson Pollack-like fishing lure, sleeps in AI Capone's Dubuque hotel, dates a grade-school teacher, shoots abysmal pool...

...OLD GLORY: AN AMERICAN VOYAGE .Jonathan Raban / Simon and Schuster / $16 95 John S. Peterson There is no denying that AngloAmerican travel writing has become a spent genre...

...With each mile, the lower Mississippi becomes an increasingly risky proposition...

...Of course, such figures alone cannot demonstrate that defense was reduced for the purpose of increasing welfare payments...

...Mano belongs with the p u t t e r - i n n e r s . Given his need to dramatize the unselective cancerous nature of the modern imagination cut loose from its theological moorings, the excessiveness is no doubt hard to avoid...

...There is the Jesus-haired cab driver b i t t e r over the breakup of his rock band and the fact of being stranded in La Crosse--"They're not too bright around here...

...But none too fraught to set at naught By a stiff drink mixed with Rawlings...

...necessarily make a good story...

...18.95 cloth...

...You t u r n e d me into a h a l f person and t u r n e d y o u r s e l f into one too...

...I think lie might have left out a lot, but he might respond, as Wolfe did to Fitzgerald, "that Shakespeare and Cervantes and Dostoevsky were great putter-inners--greater putterinners, in fact, than they were taker-outers and will be remembered for what they put i n . " And I must concede that, among other things, Mano puts in an astonishing number and variety of characters...

...On departing, Raban visits a black church and is n e t t l e d by what he perceives to be reverse racism in the minister's sermon...

...Disgusted by the seedy commercialism of the New Orleans French Quarter, Raban noses his boat into the bayous in search of a more appropriate conclusion...

...Tomorrow, Capitalism shows that if we are to solve the problems of poverty, unemployment, pollution, underproductivity, and crime we must work towards a true capitalism...

...The plot would be written by the current of the river itself_9 It would carry me into John S. Peterson is a New York writer at work on an essay collection entitled "Social IVork & Other 70s Fables...

...the blind and the maimed became those with certificates of disability...

...Lacking Dr...

...Beginning in the early 1960s, widows and orphans came to be thought of as .persons living with minors and without another person to support them...

...Because these programs were intended--at least, putat i v e l y - t o aid widows, orphans, the blind, invalids, the maimed, innocent victims of economic c a t a s t r o p h e s , and those too old or young to support themselves adequately, Congress could increase their benefits without serious opposition...

...Maybe Sally was right...

...Louis's talk shows to assuage his loneliness and then retreats to the suburbs for a c h a p t e r t i t l e d "Marriage A La Mode," one wonders wh&her he'll have the nerve to finish the trip...

...Without it, I doubt seriously that this book would have been written...

...19.95 Ethical Principles for Social Policy Edited by JOHN HOWIE...

...The volume under review is so much improved that it is an entirely different work...

...Captain Bob "Boom Boom" Kelley is seemingly everything Raban is not--crusty, eccentric, a man of distinct and forceful views...

...12.50 To Lose a War Memories of a German Girl By REGINA MARIA SH ELTON...

...his "Cancer of the c o n s c i o u s n e s s . . . . I can't pick up a paper clip but it's attached to all the others in the jar...

...The diarrhea is repeated in the narrative technique...

...At the same time, one wonders what Huck Finn's creator would make of the bedraggled Englishman...

...Near Cape Girardeau, Raban meets an engineer who is appalled at his foolishness in traveling without a radio...

...I hate this f...

...Some men are good at French cookery and putting up shelves...

...The growth of American government, he argues, is deformed in two ways: First, the purpose of welfare policies increasingly has been the "redistribution" of personal income, as distinguished from the amelioration of social ills...

...Hunter Thompson's finesse in such matters, Raban can only stand outside and hope the Angels will stop teasing...

...ever poor...

...These are the talents that lead others--Herman Wolff the producer, for instance--to call him a genius, but they also lead Merry Allen, in a moment of exasperation, to refer to his "diarrhea of the mouth...

...the Three Mile Island crisis, the authors relied on unpublished materials, including Jogs of scientists and governmenl officials, interviews with participants, and reports of government agencies...

...As Raban's boat is lifted off, Kelley slips him a note that leaves the Englishman tingling with gratitude...

...A capitalism where economic and social policies are decided in a free market unfettered by centralized and intrusive government...

...I would try to be as much like a piece of human driftwood as I could manage . . . And so, in September 1979, the dreamy Englishman arrives in Min~neapolis to pick up a 16-foot motorboat and begin his book...

...Please add $1 75 for shlpprng ano handling to all orders J as seriously as Shakespeare does: not as a game that enlivens the confining prison house of language, but as an indispensable access to a reality beyond...

...Not badly enough to write her out of the book, but badly...

...long pools of solitude, and into brushes with society on shore...