Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro
Langguth, A J.
to her irreproachably ascetic maleprep wardrobe. She has disavowed what is inevitably drawn as her soul sisterhood to Dorothy Parker, and so she should; Fran would snort with refreshing...
...It would be interesting to know more about the circumstances of other countries...
...Reagan has become a "victim" because of her vulnerability as the wife of a President who is seen as too amiable a man to attack...
...And-his critical approach to the stories themselves, though sometimes penetrating, is usually little more than a tweedy surface "appreciation" of the Christopher Morley variety...
...IJV .~t~.dT of smashing British braces/exciting American ~ . . ~ J suspenders...
...Lebowitz's rake-offS on conceptual art, for instance, are amusing, but no sillier than conceptual art itself --because it is impossible for anything to be sillier than conceptual art itself...
...he are we...
...Don't avoid Social Studies on the basis of these ponderous quibbles-especially if you can wait for a paperback...
...Reagan a debt of gratitude for catching the ire of those who have chosen to forget America became great due in large part to women just like Mrs...
...Reagan . . . . --Arla J. Tracz Falls Church, Virginia --'Bullish on Braces?7-~'--" "l~at's right--big comeback to braces/suspenders...
...Saki makes up for these shortcomings, however, by providing a 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1982 meticulously researched and on the whole well-written account of Munro's intriguing career...
...It's a shame that I.ebowitz dicln't immerse h e r s e l f in Wilde ~i little deeper...
...Forgive me, but I needed the money...
...but one returns this time with an enhanced understanding of the complex emotional forces at work within Munro's fiction, an achievement for which A.J...
...A new career where you can help (:hange the future of America...
...Business is business...
...In my case, the teacher was more or less on the mark...
...It is Oscar Wilde whom Lebowitz confesses as her idol...
...If y o u ' r e going to do something, do it halfway...
...defeating (but not destroying) Rommel, courtesy of a superiority "not much greater than that of his predecessors...
...it could be a lot...
...If vou answc, red "Yiis" to all three qllestions , . . we wmlt to talk to you IIOD,' a h ( l l . l t a l l ex(:itillg IIOW ( : a r e e r . A new career that will put ,,'our talent and backgrou ut to full use...
...Mail this coupon and your resume 'to Dept...
...Be bold/show U'~rn off...
...Langguth deserves high praise...
...On the contrary: it is only the continued puffs of the press that keep such a ragged balloon aloft, as Mr...
...There are certainly plenty of goodies, like her "Tips for Teens"- lt's fine to argue politics with your parents, she advises, but "unseemly to do so with your mouth full--particularly when it is full of the oppressor's standing rib r o a s t . " And t h e r e ' s "The Fran Lebowitz High Stress Diet and Exercise Program," enlisting equipment like lawyers, landlords, and cigarettes in the fight against fat...
...I know someone who can answer you'll keep it conf'idential...
...Cohen's review itself demonstrates...
...Indeed, it is the very existence of such authority, whether invoked or merely implied, which serves to set the typical Saki story in motion...
...Langguth's outstanding new biography Saki: A Life of Hector Hugh Munro...
...JA, % The Viguerie Co...
...It seems more likely Nancy is being attacked with so much hostility because she r e p r e s e n t s what the liberal (feminist) press has come to dislike and s c o r n - - t h e traditional woman...
...BERNARDO 2400 Westhelmer, # 10~V (T), Houston, TX 77098 ~_~ [] Do you have writing talent...
...metropolflan area...
...Saki's limitations as an author stem directly from his inability to get very far beyond this theme and a few basic variations on it...
...l~,.,n~ ' For d~ss/bus~r~sss: ~so toctay's ~ Uvfng: Wear ~I/v"AP'~ with slacks/sperts ~acket...
...Wattenberg's crowing about how wrong the predictions were does not explain why they were wrong, or in fact dispose of the great likelihood that it was recognition of the trend by certain countries like China and India that, for those countries at least, changed the trend . . . . --Joseph Burlock Poquoson, Virginia She's a Lady Fred Barnes's Presswatch "Kicking Around Reagan" (TAS, March 1982) seems to accurately sum up President Reagan's status with the national press at this time...
...De Ropp, who is attacked and killed, by Sredni Vashtar, the pet ferret and" (literally) idol of her ten-year-old charge Conradin, chiefly because she found b u t t e r e d toast too much trouble to serve at teatime...
...J ~ s t hold the laurels, if not the laughs, for a curmudgeon who ends her final essay: " T h i s piece is too short--much too short...
...CAN YOU PASS THIS TEST...
...Do you have 3 to 7 years of advertising, ~_~ public relations, or business experience...
...There is today THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR MAY 1982 ~9...
...Joe Cobb Executive Director U.S...
...Consider the fate of Mrs...
...for Saki, despite his obvious appeal, is no author to hand out casually to impressionable children...
...Munro, and the reasons for its absence--thoroughly documented by Mr...
...India, with less means for coercion but with equal will, has had a more qualified success...
...The rest!lts could be deadly...
...Langguth--can b e found in the details of Munro's life...
...Langguth / Simon & Schuster / $14.95 Terry Teachout When I was a fairly young boy, an obliging English teacher furnished me with a volume of short stories by Saki, acting on the widely held belief that these fantastic, gossamer vignettes of Edwardian life were in some way suitable fare for bookish neophytes...
...often by more direct means, but always in a mere handful of casually lapidary paragraphs which, in V.S...
...Inevitably, reading Saki sends one irresistibly back to the stories themselves...
...Alonglwith this fact, she is lovely, loves her husband and family, admires and enjoys fashion and beautiful surroundings (just as a lady always has) and, most of all, she seems to prefer "virtue" to "vice" which is quite d a r i n g o f h e r at this time in our nation's experience . . . . I believe America owes Mrs...
...Walk through So ho with a lily in your hand today, and in a month People subscribers all over t'he country will rush to their locai mall to stock up on plastic lilies...
...he doesn't need to elbow his way through Xenon and Regine's...
...A new carc'er where you will work with the people who are making today's headlines...
...his father, a military policeman stationed in Burma, was forced to leave the three Munro children in the frigid care of two spinster aunts who made their lives miserable and who would be symbolically (even gleefully) pilloried in one Saki story after another...
...His industry has given us the first reliable life of H.H...
...Sentiment, however, is a quality conspicuously missing from the fiction of H.H...
...7777 Leeshu~g Pike, Falls Church, Virginia 22043 our employees are aware of this ad ASl L j Wild Theoretics I am moved to offer some comment on Tom B e t h e l l ' s article on the " P r o l e t a r i a n . E v o l u t i o n " (TAS, March 1982...
...Cohen claims that by pinning down German troops, Montgomery "paved the way for Patton's audacious maneuvers, much as Grant's slugging matches with Lee in the Wilderness enabled Sherman to slice through the heart of the Confederacy...
...Her first Social Study declares that "except in extremely rare instances, people are pretty much like everyone e l s e . " It's a nice point and well proven (she sums up conversation s~nce time immemorial in four convincing sentences, starting with "Hi, how are .you...
...1 am afraid he makes a number of errors of fact, and appears to misjudge the notion of what a theory is First, his comment on "The Asterhid and tlae Dinosaur," a TV program which to:him resembles the theories of Velikoysky, in that it promotes wild theoretics...
...In the battles around Atlanta, the opposed forces were of about the same strengths as those of Grant and Lee in Virginia at the same time...
...We are the Viguerie Company, a well-known nationwide direct mail advertising agency, headquartered in the Washington, D.C...
...The hardcover is pretty costly for an h o u r ' s read...
...Langguth's chronicle of Munro's life and work is not without flaw...
...Choice in Currency Commission Washington, D. C. Cutting a Minor Figure In his review of Monty (TAS, March 1982), Eliot A. Cohen claims that Montgomery's reputation suffers in this country from bad press...
...Let's see how well that works...
...Reagan is the ultimate, traditional woman no one will deny...
...W r i t e r s may remember the good times of their childhood," Mr...
...Interesting thought: one tart-tongued aesthete prodding a stodgy society from the posture of flamboyant effeminacy, the other snickering at Sodom with the sensibility of a Brooks Brothers buyer...
...I f genius is doing a thing perfectly," Mr...
...Baker can sum up the essence of Manhattan by describing a whole pizza lying mysteriously on the sidewalk it/front of his house one morning...
...Pritchett's apt phrase, "are done in cyanide...
...Langguth points out, "but they make use of the b a d . " Ironically, Munro traded the hated authority of his youth for the equally hated s t a t u t e s which made t h e sexual predilections of his adulthood a dangerous secret...
...The decline in Bangladesh, for example, might very well be for d i f f e r e n t proximate reasons from that in South Korea...
...moving his troops at one time " a l m o s t as fast as Patt o n ' s . " Such praise makes its own refutation...
...but it also limits her field of operations...
...What does Lebowitz make, I wonder, of "The Selfish Giant" ?) Of course, it was easier to run wild in late Victorian society, with the whole elaborate bastion just sitting thcre to be sniped at...
...Now, this may be true enough--in fact, it may even be a truism--but for the author of a major biographical study to offer it as the final summing-up of his work suggests at tile very least a certain lack of imagination...
...YES NO D FJ D E ~_@ Do you have a conservative, political background...
...But his slight to General Sherman (equires p r o t e s t . Mr...
...But of course no history book records that Sherman, by pinning down so many troops, enabled Grant to slice through the.heart of the Confederacy Only great generals "slice...
...His mother was kicked to death by a cow when he was less than two years old...
...Langguth tells us, "[Munro] was a genius...
...Langguth has successfully filled in many of the gaps left by sister Ethel's assiduous letter-burning and deliberate concealment, even turning up six uncollected Saki stories (none of which, it must be said, is very good) in the process...
...Wdle for ~. B I[, ',~ gralis presentaUon of Bemardo' s exteflsive colkctton ,I...
...B'ut this was a projection, and like all projections it indicated a trend to be heeded, not.an inevitability...
...If genius is doing all things perfectly, he was not...
...His "Population L o s t " (TAS, March 1982), however, was a disappointment...
...your q u e s t i o n s , but I'm I'm e n c l o s i n g my resume s e n d i n g you the name of and work historv...
...Munro ever to see print, one not likely to be bettered in the near future...
...seeing a suitable t a r g e t , Clovis Sangrail or his equivalent steps in to scramble the orderly, complacent lives of "innocent" people r e p r e s e n t i n g this a u t h o r i t y - - sometimes by lethal epigram, less Terry Teacbout is jazz critic for the Kansas City Star...
...So fill out this coupon and mail it to us today...
...Social Studies, then, may seem weaker not because it's an inferior collection, but simply because it's more (or slightly less) of the-same-and Fran Lebowitz's same d o e s n ' t wear well...
...He makes us laugh...
...This is an extreme but nevertheless characteristic example of what can happen in the world of Saki when adults invoke arbitrary authority to disrupt the lives of children...
...eeooeeeoee*oesoooB=eoee=eoo=e41e=oo= CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 29) free-market price...
...in its sharp edges and easy use of paradox, it bridges the gap between the older, more formal diction of Oscar Wilde and the postwar work of Noel Coward, an avid Munro fan whose plays are in some ways merely Saki sentimentalized...
...Moreover, even the half-_dozen undeniable mgsterpieces have about them a curiously obsessive quality that unsettles as it provokes laughter...
...Loose Projections I followed Ben J . Wattenberg's television series on American business with interest and respect...
...she might have progressed more from one book to the next...
...As a rule, the humorists who would be tolerable on a desert island are those who see the quirks as clearly as the cliches: Thurber, . g r e a t - h e a r t e d Woody Allen, and even on occasion the journeyman Russell Baker...
...Wilde, a f t e r all, produced letters and stories of heartbreaking humanity as well as decorative literary icicles...
...YES, YES, YES to all 3 ~ No, 1 c a n ' t answer Yes to Questions...
...Yes to them...
...I've included my home and work phone numbers...
...though many of the stories sailed right over my head, I was immediately taken by Saki's talking cats, cheerfully maltyclient children, and snappy repartee, and I acquired a taste for the doings of Clovis Sangrail and his languid friends that has lasted to this day...
...His book, needless to say, is not for children--but then, n e i t h e r are the slight, often ephemeral, sometimes perfect stories of Hector Hugh Munro...
...A /1~'~'~, Bemardo exclush~: tnit~ or rm~ engraved on l / , ! ~ - brass hardware, Own wardrobe/gifts...
...the rest, no matter how g l i t t e r i n g the poison-pen wit with which they are written, are little more than extremely amusing period pieces which e i t h e r follow the O. Henry formula or stick to exchanges of dialogue between a dandy and a foil...
...His various r e f e r e n c e s to Munro's homosexuality, for instance, tend to be a trifle twee: "For the initiated," he coos at one point, " a n added charm to the stories was an occasional word to suggest that Reginald refused to play by the rules of the Marquess of Queensberry...
...and so it is no wonder that his best work should revolve endlessly around a single theme and a single emotion...
...In subsequent years, however, I have sometimes wondered whether that teacher of mine realized just how much of a risk she was taking with the moral development of her students...
...Munro's arch, "camp" dialogue, which still sounds startlingly modern today, is an obvious giveaway...
...That Mrs...
...However, I disagree that Mrs...
...The'Chinese decline in the rate of population growth is the outcome not of inevitable forces but of an arduous and a u t h o r i t a r i a n campaign to discourage large families...
...t h e r e is a genuine sadism beneath the civilized verbal violence with which Clovis invests his conversational salvos, and one cannot read very much of Saki without feeling that the grisly denouement of "Sredni Vashtar"--however atypical in its intensity'--tells us far more about the secret concerns of its author than the high comedy of, say, "The UnrestC u r e . ' ' The tension between Saki's frothy surfaces and his darker preoccupations is a highly suggestive one, ahd it will hardly surprise close readers of his work to discover that H.H...
...He rightly apologizes for seeming ironic in listing the " g r e a t " achievements: having conducted a divisional retreat...
...depending on 5'our talent and experience...
...I was glad to hear from Mr Wattenberg that world population is not zooming out to infinity as predicted a few years ago...
...minor figures "slug" and " p i n . " - - Wilham Vesterman Pzscataway, N.J...
...Munro, a foreign correspondent and political s a t i r i s t who took the pen name of "Saki" when he turned to fiction-writing, was a homosexual-the principal "revelation" (it was for years an open secret) of A.J...
...This program is anything but Velikovskian...
...Fran would snort with refreshing contempt at P a r k e r ' s maudlin bravado...
...l tow much will we pay you...
...Does it matter...
...Occasionally," Evelyn Waugh observed in his introduction to ?'be Unbearable Bassington, "seven or eight times perhaps, the theme, by chance, it seems, exactly fits the prescribed dimensions and the result is a m a s t e r p i e c e . " Saki's best stories invariably run to about seven pages and deal with authority defied...
...It's considerably harder to satirize in the classic tradition a society t h a t ' s already balmy...
...SAKI: A LIFE OF HECTOR HUGH MUNRO A.J...
Vol. 15 • May 1982 • No. 5
