Presswatch / Pack Pessimism

...By contrast, the New York Times gave critics of the neighborhood plan plenty of space to air their complaints, but it didn't use the buzzword as its own...

...Take the recent use of the words "pessimistic" and " r e a l i s t i c " as applied both to the budget President Reagan proposed last January and its accompanying economic projections...

...For example, Sophie reveals her past to Stingo not once but several times, in increasing detail...

...16,000 illustrations, including 12,000 in ful color...

...Sophie, the beautiful Polish Catholic survivor of Auschwitz, is sitting up in bed while Nathan, her handsome American Jewish lover, leafs through one of her books...

...More Comprehensive than WorldBook...

...The question is whether the board was seeking a return to a policy of segregation...

...In the process, they are challenging some of the most cherished beliefs of both the right and the left...

...Styron never comes right out and says that Sophie is attracted to Nazis, but the bulk of her story points in that direction: from her rejection by a domineering, Nazi-sympathizing father to her erotic nightmares at the camp...

...For those very reasons, however, the budget is far more realistic than the first two that Reagan submitted...

...Not so in the Washington Post, however, which asserted flatly that the plan would "resegregate" 18 schools...

...The Academic American Encyclopedia succeeds brilliantly at brief biographies and topics of current inCollier's Americana Wodd Book +' 9++ ++' ,' "T +T Britannica 24 $1,249.~ 30 $800 3o I =. All prices ate for original 1981 editions " " This price includes supplermn~l educational rmterlaJ...

...Her ruling passion, while imprisoned there, is supposed to have been her concern for her young son...

...And he'd better not forget to be pessimistic, either...

...I L i 1 i B =m iB n lib u nB ii mB iiB i i i n mB II U IB mB IB n n i l l U i i i i n i I THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1983 29 e9m ergence of a small group of scholars, journalists and military specialists who have started to look afresh at the war . . . . For most of these scholars, their re-examination is not to prove whether Vietnam was or was not a 'noble cause,' in President Reagan's phrase, but to find out what really happened and why...

...What the critics are saying about Academic American...

...To be pessimistic was to be realistic...

...Let future administrators turn them round yet again...

...And, "the 1968 Tet offensive was a disastrous military defeat for the Communists, as Gen...

...separate Index volume witb 200,000 listing...

...Now there is a man who has grown into his job...

...Donnelly, and other pretigious mapmakers...

...The neighborhood plan would make ten of 28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1983 the city's 36 elementary schools virtually all black, and 18 would be predominantly (more than 70 percent) of one race...

...It amounted to being treated as frontrunner without the compensating satisfaction of actually being in front...

...Needless to say, this sentence is well past the snapping point...

...It includes: *28,500 subject enlrtcs--160~ more than Worm Book...

...This news was billed, for example, in a Washington notes column on the second page of the business section of the New York Times...

...Before telling us why she plans to offer herself to Hoess, Styron regales us with her stunning blonde beauty 30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1983...

...In January, justas his presidential campaign was unlimbering, Glenn was the subject of a well-reported, nicely written, and highly unflattering piece in New York magazine by Michael Kramer, ,,an excellent political reporter with a deservedly growing reputation...

...But judging from the favorable.press coverage, pessimism was entirely warranted in Reagan's case...

...He reads no Polish, but when she identifies the book as a translation, he enthusiastically recites the opening passage in the original English...

...More Comprehensible than Britannica The 1981 edition of the Academic American Encyclopedia, offers substantially more coverage than the popular World Book Encyclopedia...and easier readability than Encyclopedia Britannica...

...His memo being nearly ten years old, the clarification it witlessly proposed may now occur any day, and Exploding Patrol Dogs become routine hazards...

...mmCallTOIIF cellent...

...And, "under the restrictions imposed by the Presidents, some American generals knew' almost from the start that they could not win the war...

...The bibliographic,, list both standard and recently published work...

...Those who have read Styron's other best-seller, The Confessions of Nat Turner, in which the rebel slave is portrayed as motivated by a secret passion for his white mistress, may detect a similar theme in Sophie's Choice--namely, the psychology of victims who become sexually involved with their oppressors...

...Norfolk is 35 percent black, but its school system is 61 percent black, up from 40 percent when the busing plan was put into effect in 1970...

...Conservatives may find the lengthy article in the New York Times Magazine on "The New Vietnam Scholarship" to be excessively evenhanded, though I didn't...

...Ron came into office all gung-ho for action, but his current phraseology holds out hope for us yr He's learning to talk just like a bureaucrat writing...

...The new budget, said Time...

...67,000 cfoss-ref~eoces Academic American provides thorough coverage of standard topics as well as timely subjects--such as OPEC and acid rain--not found in other encyc Iopedias...

...What book is this, which means so much to the war-ravaged heroine and Holocaust-obsessed hero of the film Sophie's Choice...

...But Stingo is no Marlow, speaking in hushed, appalled tones about the heart of darkness...

...On and on he rattles about Sophie's great suffering, his own guilt and" identity as a white Southerner, his burgeoning literary talent as he struggles to write his first novel, and his elaborately disastrous attempts to score with a succession of neurotic young virgins...

...A first-class job of encyclopedia-making...

...Meanwhile, there was no parallel dissection of Mondale's life and thoughts, which may be a mark of the effectiveness of his campaign...

...And not only when polemicists, politicians, editorial writers, and columnists are doing the mixing...

...Maybe this is because Mondale is thought to be boring...

...Another omen is the fitful lust after clarity...

...Though elementaryschool kids would no longer be bused, junior-high and high-school students would be...

...William C. Westmoreland claimed...

...Fred Barnes is National Political Reporter for the Baltimore Sun...

...it doesn't assert, as Reagan has, that the American war effort was a "noble cause...

...Instead of the rapid economic growth that the White House had predicted incorrectly for 1982, the budget went this time with an extraordinarily low growth projection for 1983--1.4 percent...

...The economy is far from cured: it requires a lot more strong medicine...

...B e a u t i f u l l y I l l u s t r a t e d In addition to it~ superb coverage, Academic American features thousand~ of illustrations that are both colorful and informative, including many cutaway diagrams to explain the structure of complicated objects and processes...

...At least not segregated in the normal sense of the word, namely as it applied to the South when pupils were racially separated by law...

...There is nothing wrong with relating events from the point of view of a detached observer --sometimes, when the events are particularly grim, this provides a needed distance...

...Now there is a new twist on the coverage of schools and race--in the South...

...So is pragmatism...

...l was especially impressed by the set's unusuall) high degree of cmTency, the easy a nd efficient manner in which the contents are accessed, the plentiful and intelligently prepared bibliographies, and the many colorful and in forrnative visuak...

...The Director of the Bureau of Capital Operationst accordingly proposed to keep weekdays, 9:00-10:00 and 1:30-2:30, "meeting-free," and advised all staff to "keep these times open for actual tBy etymology these would pertain to the head, where mental health, such as it is, is situated...

...Ponder, by contrast, the example of President Reagan...

...If the foregoing bit on politics and language wasn't convincing enough, let me try again...

...tn the race for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination, a different trend has cropped up recently-going after Number Two, which means passing over the leader, former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, and concentrating on Senator John Glenn of Ohio...

...by Martha Bayles Few novelists have attempted to encompass such extremes within a single work...

...NOBLE BOOKSTORES IN(: I 126 Fifth Ave., Dept...

...10011 I 1054659...

...More succinctly, Newsweek said that "after the bipartisan drubbing that Ronald Reagan received last year when Congress summarily rejected his 1983 budget, the administration was careful this year to base its budget on realistic economic forecasts...

...Outside the South, there was discrimination and tinkering with school boundaries and other practices--but not segregation as such...

...For years, reporters have been writing about school "desegregation" in cases where the schools had never been segregated...

...Ten hours "actual work" a week...

...As chief surgeon, Reagan will have to be pragmatic, bipartisan and ready for any contingency...

...most private economists were predicting a much better year in 1983...

...The Washington Post reported this way on a decision of the Norfolk, Virginia school board in February: the board voted "to abandon the crosstown busing that successfully integrated public education in this port city in favor of a neighborhood enrollment plan that would resegregate half its elementary s c h o o l s . " The key word here is "resegregate...

...And who wants to be optimistic, hence unrealistic, hence bad...

...Only time, and a certain kind of silence, can begin to suggest the movement from hellish suffering to normality...

...Also featured arc more than 1,000 maps specially prepared by Rand McNagy, R.R...

...Of course it's possible that in 1946 such characters would be going into ecstasies over Wolfe's extravagantly dissipated prose...

...It showed that his budget--indeed, it showed that the President himself-was realistic, at long last...

...Heaven forbid...

...30 DAY MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE Every item you purchase from Barnes & Noble by mail must meet your stanOards...

...I " ~ " I ~ ' ~ "+a...

...This, most reports conceded, was a pessimistic forecast...

...12,0Q0 bibliographies--more than any other major encyclopedia...

...Someone writing for the Commander, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, re "Dog Patrol, Explosive (Your ltr, 17 Oct 73,)" protested lax words that would promote "a tendency toward confusion...

...Such a man should not be trusted with paper...

...But possibility is not verisimilitude...

...But the novel does not even refer to the boy's existence until after a lengthy account of Sophie's attempted seduction of the SS camp commandant, Rudolf Hoess...

...Easy to Use Academw American contains a completeb...

...Certainly Styron indulges himself...

...Angel by Thomas Wolfe will be high on the list...

...Even when Martin Feldstein, the chairman of Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers and the author of the pessimistic forecast, quickly repudiated himself and latched onto a more optimistic projection, it scarcely attracted notice...

...intended for high school and college user', are also given farreaching coverage...

...Pragmatism was the situation ethics of politics...

...But the article, written by Fox Butterfield and published in February, is an important event, both because it appeared in the Times and because it was so brilliantly reported and packaged...

...To repeat the point, the thrust was that pessimism was called for, hence realistic, hence good...

...NY and NJ...

...I --I f ~'~" 9 ""--" me "Abundantillustrauons(75%oflhemmcolor)areex- I ~ _ .J...

...For a straight news account, that is hardly a neutral word...

...I , # ' ~ t " ~ /~/~J~ ~')Ll~J~ "Although most olher encycJOl~dias ha~e generally I[ ~L~--.~.,J.r -good indexb'ag...

...the problem of transitions is too great...

...Try to shovel them away and people get hit...

...Some assume that this is the legitimate role that political reporters are supposed to play in a democracy...

...That would be ominous, save that he r e q u e s t e d "feedback" at subsequent meetings, which can be expected to ooze into the meetingfree hours...

...Special Offer--Save $300 The Academic American ts an out,;tanding value at its list price of $450...

...For a limited time only, Barnes & Noble is offering the complete 21-volume set at the low price of $149.50--$300 less than the original puhlisher:s price...

...And while Mondale was credited--by me, among others--with uncorking a smooth campaign operation, Glenn was faulted for alleged tardiness in organizing and ineptitude in fundraising...

...It contains so many ill-executed shifts back and forth between competing time frames, that when we learn the final truth about Sophie's Auschwitz experience, it seems more like an afterthought than a revelation...

...And as for the "choice" of the title, we learn about that even later, when Sophie finally tells Stingo that upon arriving at Auschwitz she was forced to choose one of her children or allow them both to be gassed...

...Nothing should ever be done with public messes save turn them around...

...Please send me Ill 2t-volume Academic American enli cyclopedia set(s) at the special mail order price of only $149.50, plus $1000 for shipI ment via UPS and insurance (This 21-volume set wull be shipped separately I in 2 cartons...

...You know, it gives people a chance to see the fellow's warts before he becomes President...

...Some blacks, understandably wary of relying on assurances from whites, were skeptical9 At any rate, the matter was arguable...

...Styron provides a rationale for withholding such crucial facts: Sophie is so traumatized by guilt she has repressed the memory, Stingo is penetrating ever further into horror, and so forth...

...Authored by some of the world's foremost scholars the articles are well-written, concise, and informative with difficult and controversial issues made clear for the average reader...

...The literate filmgoer may think of several possibilities, but I doubt whether Look Homeward...

...There was another child, a daughter, added fourfifths of the way through the novel, just in time for her own demise...

...It is clear after careful review that the Academic American i~ an innovative, forward-looking encyclopedia which has the wherewithal to become a major presence in the reference and information field in the 1980s...

...William Satire, the columnist for the New York Times, seized on these to nick Glenn...

...Good news, it appeared, was barely news at all...

...It was that simple...

...and these are elements which Styron most emphatically does not know how to use...

...Here you will find htlormation where it logically belong,;, instead of under obsolete headings like tho,,e used in older encyclopedia...

...This means that students who arc beginning to explore a topic have an excellent chance of finding the ,;ource,, in their local or school library...

...better than an~ other encyclopedia...

...But the effect of this timing, in such a loosely constructed novel, is to reduce the children to a couple of expedient stage props, tossed in to provide Sophie with a motive nobler than saving her own skin...

...For example, "as opposed to the public caricature of him as a warmonger, Lyndon Johnson was actually reluctant to become more deeply involved in Vietnam," Butterfield noted...

...Now it's an even better buy...

...All the articles in Academic American have running heads or subheadings to provide fast, ca,q, access to specific informatkm...

...On the contrary, the enormity of Auschwitz seems to bring out his garrulous side...

...erest...

...Slack are the sentences, and slack is the overall organization of this novel...

...There once was a time when pragmatists were seen, by some at any rate, as folks without any abiding principles...

...Read those two sentences again and you may conclude that some scholars are close to saying, roughly, that the United States had just about won the war, at which p~int it pulled out and lost...

...If not.., return it with0n 30 days for a full refund or credit to your charge account...

...THE TALKIES 9 STREEP TEASE It is a tender scene...

...the" new findings" of the scholars...

...Rather, it noted, "Opponents of the neighborhood school plan, many of whom are veterans of earlier civil rights battles, charge the real intent is to 'resegregate.'" Ever since Edmund Muskie took a drubbing from the press after he emerged as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972, the idea has taken hold that political reporters go after the leader of the pack in a presidential contest...

...Among the superficial elements that Time liked in Reagan's State of the Union speech was its offer of "compassion rather than rigid ideology" and its "pragmatic tone...

...I suppose this is Styron's way of building up suspense, but it diminishes our respect for Sophie by making her look like a broad who enjoys getting drunk and talking about Auschwitz...

...It said it wasn't...

...And thus, there cannot be desegregation...

...The story of Sophie's experiences at Auschwitz, and of the Martha Bayles is film critic for The American Spectator...

...Pessimism is in, at least with the press...

...PACK PESSIMISM You don't have to be George Orwell to know that politics and the English language, when mixed, can produce some interesting results...

...they got little play...

...He is the sort of writer who takes on the heaviest themes, only to outweigh them with his own selfdramatization...

...Espc'cla]l) notable is lhc cutawa:, arlwork used to I C111~ C41FO r . . . . . - - ~ ~'~,a'" cxphmthestrucmrco+...di',erseob)ectsaodproce...

...Any bureaucrat who can frame so clear a question may even find out what he wants to know...

...And several weeks later, Glenn was forced to go before a Jewish group in Cleveland in hopes of defusing the controversy...

...Butterfield wrote about "the We're selling a 21-volume, $450.00 encyclopedia for o_wfl...

...As for the Congressional Budget Office, whose pessimistic projections in 1982 got lavish coCerage, it was largely ignored when it released a growth projection more upbeat than Reagan's...

...What the board said it wanted was to halt white flight, a commonenough phenomenon in cities...

...restdents, | please ar sales tax I I Check One: Payment enclosed I I prefer to charge this I purchase to: I ~ o I I Name I 9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . li Address I City I I mat...

...He just rolls it all together into the same ball of soft, waxy verbiage...

...It is we, written, conc~e, and informa6~,r without be- | ~ Z...

...AAE come~ clogcst to perfection...

...We inherited a mess," said he on 20 January 1983, "but we're turning it around...

...In Reagan's case, though, that turns out to be good, for when the President is "pragmatic" it means that he can't be "ideological...

...I think the real reason Wolfe gets a plug in this scene is because he is William Styron's favorite author, and the filmmakers wanted to indulge Styron--who, after all, wrote the best-selling novel Sophie's Choice...

...As a result, the United States was probably in a stronger position in Vietnam in 1972, just before the Paris peace accords, than at any previous point in the war...

...In selling the notion of an economy on the rebound, b y F r e d Barnes Reagan must be careful not to believe it too blindly himself," Time insisted...

...She responds in Polish, they smile at each other, and the camera pans backward through the rainglazed window of their Brooklyn 9r ooming house...

...For a few years yet, New York taxpayers may enjoy unregulated access to their own minds...

...And, "while successive administrations did not understand that the Communists' appeal had its roots in centuries of Vietnamese xenophobia, many antiwar critics--like Frances FitzGerald in her best-selling Fire in the Lake--over-glamorized the Vietcong, the Southern insurgents, and underestimated the role that North Vietnam played in leading the war in the South...

...And Stingo keeps bringing us back to Brooklyn with sentences like this: "Sitting there in the wan light, both Sophie and I had, I think, a feeling that our nerve endings had been pulled out nearly to the snapping point by the slow accumulation of too much that was virtually unbearable...

...No matter what other economists--and not just sanguine supply-siders, but unregenerate Keynesians like Walter Heller and Paul Samuelson--said...

...He listed more leftist beliefs than rightist ones that are now being discredited by...

...AFLC cannot identify any FSN to Dog Detection-Explosive or as WRAMA puts it in 17 Oct 73 letter, Patrol Dog/Explosive...

...Meanwhile let them on no account be shifted...

...bases all calculations on a set of predictions about unemployment, output and interest rates so gloomy as to make clear that if the economy is 'on the mend,' as Reagan proclaims, the mending will be excruciatingly slow...

...Finally, "after Tetmthough most Americans at home had given up on the war--the cumulative weight of American firepower and spending in Vietnam dramatically undercut support for the Communists...

...But Time worried, too, that Reagan might be inclined to slip back into his old optimistic, ideological ways...

...We cannot determine whether they want a dog or an explosive...

...JT~h.,' ing conde~.-ending or obscure...

...Yes, that's right...

...Kenneth KLster Encyclopedia Buying Guide "No other set is as consistendy up-to-dal...

...they're going fast...

...zip I I I Account # -- li exp.date _ _ I I signature | I 9 1983, Bames& Noble Bookstores, Inc...

...The piece had a strong impact on the political community, particularly because of its revelation of Glenn's statements in support of American talks with the PLO...

...A49 I New York, N.Y...

...progressive mental deterioration of Nathan, who tries to help her but ends up inducing her to commit suicide with him, are narrated by Stingo, a young Southerner who lives downstairs in their rooming house and bears a strong resemblance to William Styron...

...Topic...

...It often happens, unwittingly or not, in the normal coverage of events by the mainstream press...