Spectator's Journal / True Believers
McGurn, William
SPECTATOR'S JOURNAL TRUE BELIEVERS Jtiver wonder why most literary awards these days seem to go to the same people? Why those who parade down the aisle to collect their prizes seem to have...
...The first winners will be announced this December in Chicago...
...Not a "new" magazine but deserving of mention is Policy Review ($15 per year...
...lacking a ghostwriter, he takes full responsibility for everything, "from split infinitive to misused noun...
...Box 495, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556...
...It is just this degree of nonconformity to the prevailing winds that makes the Rockford publications-Chronicles of Culture, Persuasion at Work, and the Rockford Papers-so refreshing...
...OK: bright red cover and all, it's a bit much, heavy on earnestness...
...20002), whose latest issue introduced both a new, full-sized format and a new editor...
...Chesterton...
...Schuster charts the outlines of this American century, guiding the reader through two world wars, the Vietnam fiasco, and various D.C...
...Of course, coming from Mr...
...Think you that the establishment would look kindly on any effort to encourage writers not of their mold...
...The Rockford Institute, you see, is not neutral on the great questions (neither is the New York Times, but that's another story...
...tome, with the implausible title of Believing in America ($13.95...
...Baker", I suggest they include an American flag on the dais this December...
...by William McGurn Why, it is that somehow, possibly through some CIA right-wing chicanery, the good congressman has prevailed upon William Morrow & Co...
...A more recent arrival to the fray is Ralph Mclnerny and Michael Novak's Catholicism in Crisis, a journal of lay opinion published out of the University of Notre Dame's Jacques Mari-tain Center (P.O...
...When compared with the world around her, America sparkles...
...The secretary for the prize committee, Leopold Tyrmand, pointed out that "the main cultural malaise, if not the disease itself, is located in fiction today...
...Also commenting on the bishops' letter and other trends in the Catholic Church are such well-known names as Hilaire Belloc and G.K...
...A hough the publishing business has never let its official anticapitalist line ever stand in the way of raking in the dollars-in the process significantly cheapening the quality of the offerings-this is not to say that no real standards exist...
...What is the congressman's crime...
...Put out by the League for Industrial Democracy in cooperation with the International Labor Program of Georgetown University, Workers Under Communism has already run several articles by Solidarity members-including an interview with Lech Walesa-and will feature new articles on slave labor in the Soviet Union as well as on the export of Vietnamese workers to other Communist countries...
...In other words, contra our American bishops, this congressman is audacious enough to believe that the U.S...
...Eliot Award for Creative Writing and the Richard M. Weaver Award for Scholarly Letters-were instituted to "reward high talent that has not found favor in the reigning cultural climate and bring to public notice works worthy of wider attention...
...may be slightly more moral than, say, the Soviet Union...
...Yet Congressman Schuster's new book is only part of what must appear to IPS analysts as a grim trend in the world of ideas...
...scandals...
...Baker such confusion is perfectly understandable...
...In the Byzantine world of book publishing, there are innumerable laws governing what shall be permitted written form, the transgression of which laws is unpardonable...
...Much to the chagrin of those fierce patriots who occupy the editorial desks at the Nation, Rep...
...Bud Schuster of Pennsylvania has committed a major no-no...
...Mr» Tyrmand, however, knows that there will be little applause...
...to put out his unabashedly pro-U.S...
...In the current issue, there is an interesting symposium about what the Canadian bishops are up to, and according to Scully future articles will cover conditions in El Salvador and various aspects of the continuing economic debate...
...Given all these ghastly developments, our friends on the left may be forgiven for the unease caused by the following deduction: if ideas truly do have consequences, then conservative ideas have . . . Guess...
...Finally, this summer saw the birth of Cogitations, a quarterly covering the developments on the legal front...
...The two awards-the T.S...
...214 Massachusetts Ave., N.E., Washington, D.C...
...Far from it...
...William McGurn is assistant managing editor of The American Spectator...
...Why those who parade down the aisle to collect their prizes seem to have disconcertingly uniform opinions on questions like socialism, the Third World, feminism, wheat germ, and Ronald Reagan...
...In this book, populated with the real people of America who would all be exotic fare at any of Manhattan's literary soirees, Rep...
...As O'Sullivan notes about the new format, "Now we look as good as we read...
...As Institute president John Howard said, "If all lifestyles are equal, then life has no meaning...
...10001...
...Editor John O'Sullivan is returning to Mother England to assume a senior position at the Daily Telegraph, to be succeeded at Policy Review by Adam Meyerson, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal and a former managing editor of The American Spectator...
...Schuster has to report is by and large so sensible it is usually overlooked...
...In fact, he is rather pleased: The thesis of this book is that the good so vastly outweighs the bad that America stands alone-pre-eminent...
...But that's aesthetics, not substance, for what Rep...
...If they really want to be noticed by Mr...
...10028...
...275 Seventh Ave., 25th Floor, New York, N.Y...
...Not likely, and indeed the esteemed Russell Bakef in a gentle column expressed his befud-dlement at the recent" popularity" of Mr...
...Publishing will never be the same...
...Among these newcomers is This World, a scholarly journal put out three times a year by the Institute for Educational Affairs and the American Enterprise Institute ($16 for 4 issues...
...It was our feeling even before the emergence of Solidarity that questions of workers' rights are at the heart of the future of Communist countries," said editor Arch Puddington, "and everything that's happened in Poland since then has confirmed this...
...Schuster is not at all disillusioned at the country he finds...
...All of this might be bad enough, but there's more...
...Published by the Heritage Foundation, Policy Review has played no small role in the shaping of American opinion during its seven years of existence...
...Apparently ignorant of this sacred code, Rep...
...Eliot...
...Why writers like Norman Mailer and Mary Gordon receive favorable reviews no matter what schlock they put out...
...Keeping General Jaruzelski up late at night is )Vorkers Under Communism, a quarterly journal devoted to workers' rights and workers' conditions in Communist countries ($10 per year...
...Mclnerny reports that future issues will carry a column by the Spectator's Tom Bethell on the press, as well as contributions from various congressmen...
...Edited by Jonathan Emord and published by Mark Weinstein, the magazine features a lively format, with contributors ranging from Charles Rice to Morton Kondracke...
...Last summer, in fact, in just its second issue, the magazine caused something of a stir by publishing a remarkable poll of American theologians-revealing among other surprises a stout one percent of theologians who don't believe in God...
...Believing in America comes with a cover full of plugs-including one President, several well-known authors, and even one astronaut...
...That's more responsibility than Tip O'Neill has taken for over two decades, and as for the message, it is so sensible that one could believe it might even penetrate the mind of Colman McCarthy in one of his rare lucid, non-vegetarian moments...
...This is the journal that first published Michael Novak's calm and eloquent letter to the American bishops, taking issue with the pacifism and push toward unilateral disarmament inherent in the early, much publicized drafts...
...Edited by Michael Scully, This World proposes to analyze the religious and cultural underpinnings of current social and policy debates...
...Apparently someone has been wondering about this for a while, because on May 19 the Ingersoll Foundation, in conjunction with the Rockford Institute, announced the creation of two new literary awards, each in the amount of $15,000 and each destined to send our established literati to their poison pens...
...Why writers with more traditional values rate nary a mention in these circles...
...210 East 86th Street, 6th Floor, New York, N.Y...
...Or even why the political views of our poets and novelists come to have such significance when these awards are being made...
...Specifically, the last year or two has witnessed the launching of a number of new magazines that come as a lively challenge to the hitherto comfortable orthodoxy of our leading publications...
Vol. 16 • August 1983 • No. 8
