Marco Polo, If You Can
Hart, Jeffrey
that recently has forced popular attention to the role of faith in the economy. George Gilder, in I~ealth antipoverty, and Pope John Paul II, in Laborem Exercens, each traced the roots of...
...The refinement of his own perceptions can make him a little impatient with people more attuned to the obvious...
...In it we try to undo what the liberal culture has done to contemporary American literature...
...WlUJAM $13fRON...
...The natural s t a t e of any garden is d i s a s t e r . "Magnificent gardens mean magnificent heartbreaks...
...The President resumed his agitated walk behind the table, his mind obviously reverting to the alternatives he had faced shortly before midnight the night before...
...There is indeed a sense in which all of the James Bond novels are jokes, rather good jokes...
...But Ian Fleming was not funny in detail...
...The ends don't justify the mea~s" is a very tricky cliche, slithering around on the various meanings of that word "justify...
...He keeps going on about how, one of these days, he will cut down an early mistake and grow roses on the stump...
...S t i l l , his greatest contribution to the well-being of lesser gardeners is philosophical and cosmic...
...I myself would be happy( if the Agency were always as successful as it is in this novel...
...Attacking the utopian illusion with which many of us first take up the trowel, he tells us to forget the idea that if we just do it right, we'll have a garden that looks like the seed catalog...
...His contempt for Nikita Khrushchev is total...
...The Peace rose, for example, he dismisses as designed to please "anybody who has longed to grow the largest turnip in the world...
...The narrative moves from the Oval Office to Soviet Central Asia, Berlin, and the Lubyanka prison...
...Why not join our growing list of readers...
...This book assumes, correctly, that no, t h e r e ' s an obvious difference: Our ends differ from theirs--relative freedom and political decency versus tyranny...
...Despair is readying an ambush...
...It is, a f t e r all, t h e principal KGB office outside of Moscow...
...Thematically, the book addresses i t s e l f to two large and serious matters, one general and one particular: the means-end relationship and the role of agencies such as the CIA...
...Is his writing an attempt to create literature or does he siml~y put together attractive ideological tracts...
...At one point here he flashes the famous grin, and then snaps to his subordinates that this is the last time they are going to see the grin for a while...
...Peregrine Worsthome, associate editor of London's Sunday Telegraph, says: "1 always benefit from reading The Rockiord Pape~ which seems to me to include some of the best conservative writing of recent times...
...Faith in the future inspires some men to make extraordinary new strides in development...
...GOI~ VIDAL Is the author of Myra Breckinridge a brilliant obsewer of manners-as the liberal cdtJcs want us to believe -- or just an astute muckraker see~Jng the annihilation of the conventions that f&m the rudiments of civilization...
...He lapsed again into silence, looking down at his desk...
...A New York, NY 10005 212-344-4288 Serving, Wal/ Street area since 1895 utopian bearing, assuming a world in which all means must be and can be pure...
...A system based on no growth assumptions can never enrich the world...
...dollars only, please) (please ~nt) ADDRESS CITY STATE Z~ ASRPI 37 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1982 the president's wfice turned to ice-coated steel--"l said, 'What did you say?' "The fellow looked at Kroocheff, mumbled something, Kroocheff mumbled back--fellow couldn't look me in the face this time--but he said: 'The Chairman's words...
...We think THE ROCKFORD PAPERS" new sixpart senes will give you six reasons to put us on your permanent reading list...
...e sedes is called "The /V~numental Literature of Dwarfs...
...The President's eyes very nearly popped out...
...Everything grows f o r e v e r y - body," Mitchell assures us, adding, "Everything dies for everybody, tOO...
...nol.-io-~-w re, turn= to read ~ ROC/O~ORD P/U~.R& Our writing on such issues as the Coki War, liberalism, education, the media, the New Right and the Moral Majodty has brought favorable mention in publications as diverse as the Washington Post, New Oxford Reuiew and the Congressional Record...
...In the May issue, Virginian James J. Thompson, Jr., reflects upon the conflict between the guilt and the ambitions of a writer who turned his back on the South...
...To start with the mundane, some of us need to be told primal truths about gardening...
...Among its many other virtues, Marco Polo, I f You Can is often very funny: "Now," said Reynard, his voice audibly excited, "now--watch t h i s . " The s c r e e n showed 63-65 Unter den Linden, from a discreet distance--"You c a n n o t , my d e a r S e b a s t i a n , place a camera too close...
...Buckley also brings in Allen Dulles, Dean Acheson, Nikita Khrushchev, and other historical characters very deftly...
...I d o n ' t know...
...plus $2.00 delivery charge first bottle, 50 cents each additional one...
...Sayeth the Liberal: The CIA does dirty tricks...
...IF_ L DOCI'OltOW...
...But if you will the end, you must also will the means--or else you are a dangerous fool (viz., the Kennedy-J ohnson policy in Vietnam...
...At n,y lodge...
...As it happens, I had myself to do a great deal of work on Eisenhower in connection with a forthcoming book and either BuckIcy knows the recent scholarship or he has correctly intuited the truth...
...These are not the sinuous, uncoiling sentences of Buckley's discursive prose, distinctive in its own way, but economical and fastmoving sentences that often possess both elegance and verbal inventiveness...
...sir, which he insists I translatc directly, are: "lke, you should watch your language...
...The structure involves interlocking narratives woven together in short, tightly structured chapters, the various narratives finally converging in a surprising climax...
...Marco Polo, I f You Can is also a kind of Valentine card to the CIA...
...His aesthetic is too recherche for masses of red geraniums against white walls...
...at best, it can reshuffle the dwindling stock of inherited capital...
...Sla~ my one-y~" (six bimonthly issues) subscription to THE ROCKFORD PAPERS with your Ma 9 issue on William Styron...
...8end to: T'PJE RCX3CFORD PAPERS 934 Ninth Main Roddord, IL 61103 n EJ~lO~d is $7~00...
...it cannot accommodate the sacrifices men make for their families, or the risks entrepreneurs take for the sake of an innovative idea...
...It's the kind of writing that earned us the Freedoms Foundation's 1981 George Washington Honor Medal...
...First of all, the high spirits, the humor...
...T h a t ' s good news," Blackford said...
...The one that appealed to me most was to walk right up to him, eye to eye, then knee him one right in the crotch, then sit back and tell the interpreter to tell 'Nicky' to watch his language...
...But, is the CIA in fact this effective...
...All four of the Blackford Oakes novels possess the ingredients for successful m o v i e s - - i n t r i g u e , violence, adventure, sex, exodc locales --and it seems to me inevitable that in due course Oakes will make it to the screen as an American James Bond...
...Rufus's scheme is brilliant, it works...
...the KGB does dirty tricks...
...People were misled as to Eisenhower--and politically led--by the famous friendly grin...
...I-1 Bill me for $7.00...
...At my presidential retreat...
...But a man capable of the Mitchell prose may be allowed his crotchets...
...It is a cliche of SAVE UP TO ON PERFUHES We've created our versions of Opium, Bal A Versailles, Joy, Oscar de la Renta, 1000, L'Air du Temps, Chloe, Shalimar, Norell, Halston Night, etc...
...What's the difference...
...Send your coupon in today so you don't miss a single issue of our new series...
...T h i s book is a collection of columns Mitchell has written as the Washington Post'sEarthman since he came to Washington from Memphis 12 years ago...
...When he is angry, Eisenhower's voice is "ice-coated steel...
...Everything grows for you...
...Oh, I thought of a few alternatives...
...H e ' s never Tennyson brooding over the flower in the crannied wall...
...and nonfiction...
...We need to be warned that too many t r e e s will make everything else impossible, deflecting sunlight, using up the moisture in the soil, and crowding out hyacinths with their bulky roots...
...It encourages others to have more children, safe in the knowledge that, doomsayers notwithstanding, "the earth's ecological economy" will supply the needs of the new generation...
...An economic system predicated on selfishness can never go further than individual interests lead...
...But don't be fooled...
...What g a r d e n e r s have to look forward to is not static success but the stern existential joy of "pitting hope against destiny again and a g a i n " so the unknowing can say, "You have favorable conditions here...
...Perhaps we hear mostly about its fiascos...
...Six critics re-examine the work and reputations of a group of celebrated modem authors...
...U.S...
...at $15.00 per oz...
...3Otfft URDIKE...
...One of the most successful characters in the book is none other than President Dwight D. Eisenhower...
...Can the author of The Coup and A Month of Sundays be taken asa .morally responsible novelist or only as an astute literary stylist...
...Betsy Clarke writes on perhaps the most-hyped contempora~ authoresses...
...Know what the son of a bitch told me last night...
...Send for free sample and fragrance list...
...Books containing characters named Odd Job and Pussy Galore are certainly not solemn...
...They shine as down-to-earth advice, as revelations of a rich, finely tuned sensibility, and as examples of how an artist can use the English language...
...In his most eloquent passage, Mitchell asserts that it is not a green thumb but a spirit of defiance that s e p a r a t e s the g a r d e n e r s from the soulless tennis players and indoorsmen...
...In a key scene, the Soviet dictator gets drunk at Camp David, and Ike's account is both high comedy and fine portraiture: Everyone knew the President was on no account to be interrupted...
...A s t r i n g e n t though his wisdom may be, it is never sour...
...Is he merely a pale shadow of Faulkner...
...Gary Vasilash begins our series with a look at a litterateur never well explained but always well sold by the liberal reviewers...
...r3 Enclosed is ,~.00...
...And, certainly, we need an effective organization of this kind...
...He said, 'Ike, you should watch your language.' Called me 'lke...
...He is a matchless guide to small, subtle appreciations...
...Named after my grandson...
...It was Andre Malraux, I think, who observed that the appearance of the smile in archaic culture reflected the birth, of the human soul...
...They reflect his experience in the 40- by 100-foot suburban garden where he is both Le Notre and stoop labor...
...It's just that, while he is discussing mulch or aphids or the best climbing rose, suddenly, the r e a d e r ' s mind is on God and the waltzing stars...
...Who else would describe opium poppy seed pods as "beautiful and ingenious little architectural follies" ? From what other vocabulary would the blooming of portulaca emerge as "taffeta explosions" ? Besides, the Essential Earthman is indeed concerned with essences...
...Another thing you admire about Marco Polo, I f You Can is the tautness of both the prose and the narrative structure...
...He said--now, I quote him e-x-a-c-t-l-y...
...Is he a great writer or a great fabrication...
...He meant that the smile represented the taking up of a certain position of distance from the here and now, of being serious, yes, but never submitting to the golden calf of solemnity, because there is more to existence than this transitory world...
...It is comforting to realize t h a t , like the rest of us, Henry Mitchell is so in love with May that he is forever in danger of neglecting the p o t e n t i a l i t i e s of other seasons...
...Could be...
...Warning his readers not to expect the impossible, Mitchell invites them to luxuriate in the magical...
...1 thought it was in Washington.'" It seems to me that there is an interesting point to be made about the presence of humor in this and other books by Buckley, both fiction Jeffrey Hart teaches English at Dartmouth College...
...The Soviets intervene in Poland and Afghanistan...
...George Gilder, in I~ealth antipoverty, and Pope John Paul II, in Laborem Exercens, each traced the roots of economic growth to their source in individual souls, to the individual's innate desire to create...
...For him, obviously, the texture of crape myrtle bark makes up for many a camellia bud bitten off by frost...
...Still, the CIA did have successes in Guatemala and Iran and no doubt elsewhere...
...It involves a brilliant disinformation operation conducted against the Soviets, a product of the fertile brain of " R u f u s , " who may be modeled on James Angleton, featuring Oakes as a captured U-2 pilot...
...The Kennedy-CIA plots against Castro were not very impressive...
...Any g a r d e n , " he says, " i f you see it at just the right moment, can be confused with paradise...
...Joseph P. Schwartz examines ~ books of Ulxlike...
...t Doubleday I $13.95 Jeffrey Hart The reader notices a number of interesting and impressive things in this fourth novel about the adventures of Blackford Oakes, the intrepid Yalie and CIA operative...
...Stephen Macaulay studies this prolific author of best sellers...
...Start my one-yeer subscdp tJon to THE R~RD PAPERS with your May imu~ on winlam Styron -- and rush me your March issue on Kutt Vonr~gut...
...38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1982...
...It helps to know that he too is tempted to overcrowd limited territory with favorite irises when he knows p e r f e c t l y well that space is to a garden what punctuations of silence are to music...
...Know what he said...
...He speaks of the " h i g h d e l i g h t " of examining a wild tulip bulb, or savoring shades of garnet and blackgreen in winter azalea leaves...
...And that, the ultimate resource, is unlimited...
...Mitchell, a man who admits to having four forest-scale trees on his lot, is particularly vehement against ill-advised maples and hemlocks...
...tJRILYN ~ and , ~ t ' GOgDON...
...Men's colognes too...
...We intervene in Chile and E1 Salvador...
...In the real world, a considered decision has always to be made about means and ends: Are they in proportion...
...By the time he is through debunking that one, it seems a contemptibly vulgar ambition anyway...
...I couldn't kick out the interpreter...
...When an attempt was made to kill Sukarno of Indonesia, the late Wilmoore Kendall remarked that " t h e plot had all the earmarks of a CIA operation: Everyone died except Sukarno...
...But his portrait of Eisenhower is central and freshly imagined...
...But a system based on faith is limited only by the scope of the human imagination...
...And he is given to linking the homely details with intimations of the eternal...
...They involved poisoned cigars, lethal wet-suits, exploding sea shells, and a beard d e p i l a t o r y , as well as some broken-down Mafiosi...
...What makes him so covetous of t~e New York cultural establishment's approval...
...And other major contributors to the literature of special agentry, such as Graham Greene and John le Carre, seem mostly to specialize in a cigarettebutt cold-coffee atmosphere of gloom and lassitude in which no jokes are told because, after all, it takes a certain amount of energy to laugh...
...When Eisenhower ordered Lumumba off the political stage, the CIA failed and the problem had to be solved by Mobutu's toughs...
...Are their novels literature or feminist brochures...
...THE ESSENTIAL EARTHMAN Henry Mitchell / Indiana University Press / $12.50 I t ' s as true amid the pink and green ardors of spring as among the blight and borers of less clement seasons: Henry Mitchell writes about gardening rather the way Herman Melville wrote about whales...
...KUlCr VONI~E~JIT...
...On means-ends it takes what seems to me to be a common-sensical and obviously correct position...
...very dangerous opponent...
...There has never been a year in which everything did well...
...Beyond the immediacies of beauty and disappointment in a gardener's relationship with nature, he guides us to contemplate the nature of things...
...If capitalism is successful, it is not because it takes advantage of man's selfish desires, but because it encourages his nobler instincts...
...That would have left me alone with that grinning son of a bitch with no way to talk to him...
...and flowers, stones and garden tools...
...Without a covert capability, we are left with few options between passivity and sending in the 82nd Airborne Division...
...90 Water St., Dept...
...I t ' s all the same...
...I looked at the interpreter, I mean I looked at the son of a bitch and I said"-We Can Give You Six New Reasons to Subscribe to THE ROCKFORD PAPERS...
...They are the more appealing for Robert Borja's woodcuts of trees Anne Crutcber is a journalist based in Washington, D.C...
...There's nothing solemn or grandiose about it...
...Rudolph Abel, the high-level Soviet spy who was arrested in Brooklyn...
...The story will remind readers of Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot who was downed and captured by the Russians, and of Col...
...And faith in the future enables a few brave scholars to buck the popular trend with books like this...
...Such endearing self-deprecations make him the more effective as a practical counselor...
...Eisenhower was hard as nails, intelligent, completely unsentimental, a "If/ben the Going FYas Good: American Life in the Fifties, Crown...
...MARCO POLO, IF YOU CAN William F. Buckley, Jr...
...Stephen Tanner takes a look at the author of Ragtime...
...He knows the concrete and technical lore of horticulture...
...Essential Products Co., Inc...
...like a good watch, and Blackford carries it out with great eclat...
Vol. 15 • April 1982 • No. 4
