Testing the Current
Buckley, Reid
TESTING THE CURRENT William McPherson/Simon and Schuster/$15.95 Reid Buckley Oh, this is a good book! Testing the Current, a first novel by journalist William McPherson, is one of...
...dull literature...
...I believe in fact the Conimodities Futures Trading Commission inTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 43...
...Someone told me that Hunt lost $1.5 billion in the silver crash of early 1980...
...Another note on the same page reads: "All very well, but I miss narrative dynamism...
...McPherson evokes time and place so effortlessly that now and then there is surfeit...
...Box 520 Garden City, MI 48135 L_ THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 41 re-creates a period of American history that is now as quaintly of our past as a Norman Rockwell stavepost cover, and with such authority that any coeval of Tommy (I am one) will exclaim, "Yes...
...Thus, "forced labor camp" became "joy camp...
...McPherson's brilliant ambiguities in this allimportant conflict between infatuation and love, sensual attraction and duty, deceit and truth...
...These are people whose taste in decor, way of life, aspirations, complacency, and depneumatized social protestantism are as canned as canned can be...
...Ah, how I wish there were the space to conduct you through Mr...
...G. Scot Hasted, Room D, Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, MI 49242...
...They will be calling on those certitudes before long, when the storm finally breaks over their head to end all such summers forevermore...
...What is remarkable about Testing the Current is Mr...
...which, come to think of it, is curious: There seems to be almost no church-going in this book...
...The state denied individual freedom through the most severe means...
...You could see its teeth and its hard pink tongue, the color of Mr...
...But I (Mr...
...Steer are country club liberals, typical of their class and time also, and the issues that define their politics are, of course, Roosevelt and Spain...
...Tommy occasionally uses words or thinks concepts that are unlikely in a boy his age...
...I find even Wallace Stegner (The Big Rock Candy Mountain) tedious on that dreary period, which has produced some crashingly (woops...
...Or is it...
...Steer, who is one of Tommy MacAllister's special adult friends, is almost inevitably Scandinavian...
...She ceases being a goddess, true...
...Soldiers conquer villagers in "wars of liberation...
...That's the way it was . . . . That's just .exactly how i t was...
...That is the difficult thing...
...It was so well air*conditioned that you needed your jacket...
...tn order to contr"~ speech and thought, government developed a new language wrapping misleading pleasant words around very ugly things...
...and Mrs...
...Single copy: $8.00 Five or more copies: $6.00 Each Please include $1.00 for postage and handling on orders less than $10.00 Michigan residents add 4% sales tax (Payment must be included with your order) Name Address City State/Zip The Puebla Institute P.O...
...No fear on this score about Testing the Current, though the reviews have tediously harped on its implied social criticism...
...At one end of the tent there was a flurry and glare of TV lights...
...Sedgwick liked~o point out the bullet hole over the spot where its heart had been...
...On the other hand, there is also almost nothing in poor taste, vulgar, or straining of one's credulity, which are the sins of contemporary fiction...
...Hillsdale College Hillsdale Michigan For further information regarding the availability of a full series of these short, informative essays, 49242 contact Mr...
...Among the manifold virtues of Testing the Current is that it furnishes grounds for a rousing good shouting match over the virtue of Emma MacAUister...
...Hear ye all: I will knock down any man (and stick a jalapeno pepper on the malicious tongue of any woman) who asserts that Tommy's mother actually consummated an adulterous relationship with that serpent, that Lucien (what a name...
...Any rebellious word, deed or even facial expression was punishable by torture and death, enforced by the ever-present "Thought Police...
...and Mrs...
...bunch of geese (when they would be dashing madly out of the blind to secure the cripples, of which, we are told, there are several...
...The novel teems with beautifully imagined passages--the gripping (and fatidic) introduction of Tommy tO the furnaces in his father's steel mill...
...McPherson's almost flawless command of his materials, especially in his handling of the central crisis of the book, which is Tommy's mother's love affair...
...the moving description of the guests to Tommy's parents' 25th wedding anniversary ball, dressed in tuxedos and long gowns, booming out 0 God Our Help In Ages Past as they row across the lake to the mainland...
...And citizens are herded to polls to vote in "elections" in which there are no choices...
...If you stepped on the dusty bearskin--something Tommy always tried to avoid--its nails clattered dully on the wooden floor...
...For readers of my age, then, there is the special reward of dear familiarity, but people who were not brought up when Hershey bars cost a nickel and doubledip ice cream sodas at the drugstore just a dime will be captivated by the quality of the observations and the cumulative spell of Mr...
...Reader) do not...
...David I particularly liked...
...When I read that the summer "cottages" were hung with the mounted heads of does (as well as bucks), I blink...
...He is caught in that fix of second sons everywhere and in any age, seeking to define himself as different from the paragon firstborn while also being a Reid Buckley is a novelist...
...McPherson wonderfully NICARAGUA I:ImI BJMtB tlNBEi Flg A Special Report - by Humberto Belli "This is a ~ document o f exceptional interest and importance~ there is nothing quite like it . . . . It provides much information generally unavailable for the American public...
...Good old Bunker was laying on quite a party for the National Conservative Political Action Committee...
...Q u i t e right: There is nothing novel or even original in this book...
...Slips, niggling flaws...
...In it, he imagined a society in which a socialist state controlled the economy, TV and newspapers, religion, sports--everything...
...Mercedes and Lincolns, well-watered pasture, white picket fences, and everyone milling about out of doors with open-air booths and kitchens serving Mexican-style hors d'oeuvres on china plates and cocktails in great chunky glasses--no plastic or paper ~ here, folks...
...In Nicare~lua: (]lhristians Under Fire, Nicaraguan sociologist and lawyer Humberto Belli, a former Sandinista and an editor of La Prensa, examines the Sandinistas' fundamental ~ commitments, their human rights record, and their escalating struggle with the Christian churches...
...Are we to make something of this...
...But this in no way mitigates the fury of those who accuse him of having "manipulated" the silver market...
...They are atheists (natch), and the professionally unconventional Mrs...
...Sedgwick, vocal rightwingers, abhor Roosevelt and snoot their noses at Wally Simpson...
...Do you remember those wonderful bygone days when luncheons and suppers were spent fiercely disagreeing about, say, the motivation for Heathcliff's shameful treatment of Isabella, or about why Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov unexpectedly chooses to have the body of his saint, Father Zossima, putrefy...
...I kind of wonder how much Mr...
...I bumped into my friend Jon Utley...
...Maybe I was in a bad humor, because on second reading (oh, yes: you are richly rewarded when you turn from the last page fight back to the beginning and start over), I wasn't bothered...
...I went over to inspect and couldn't help noticing how placid and calm he looked as he was quizzed by the florid, perspiring Douglas Kiker...
...The government slogans "War is Peace," "Freedom is Slavery," and "Ignorance is Strength" were examples of the new language, which Orwell called Newspeak...
...Sedgwick's plate--that's what he called his false teeth, which he often had t6 fumble with behind a napkin at dinner while everyone pretended not to notice...
...Weigh them against such a passage as this: The Sedgwicks had a bearskin rug too, stretched out before the fireplace...
...We must guard against the abuse of both...
...He wore a nametag: "N...
...Even though it was still plenty hot, most of the men were wearing jackets and ties and kept them on...
...1984, of course, is fiction...
...It was quite a sight to see, by the light of the setting sun...
...Reports have come from many whose sympathies are with the right or the left--but often from individuals who have a slight acquaintance with the country...
...It takes place 1938-39...
...They can be counted on for the most bigoted rendition of the dominant politics of their class...
...She might have...
...PAUL HOLLANDER Author, political Pilgrims Behind the headlines of revolution and counterrevolution, a deep and sometimes violent conflict has been growing between the Sandinista regime and the Christian churches...
...Tommy lives for the moment, sure...
...Steer is reading, Anticipating the Eventual Emergence of Form (which is also a strange lapse into pomposity...
...Half the world now lives under Communist governments which resemble Orwell's state...
...I do not want to suggest torpidity, but it can be likened to one of those endless summer afternoons of recollection, when the cicadas zing in the back of the mind, wherein Mr...
...I can hear you thinking it: Well, what's new and different in this novel...
...The bear's head was like a rock, its nose dry and rubbery, and its mouth was opened in a perpetual fierce snarl...
...Testing the Current, a first novel by journalist William McPherson, is one of those triumphs of evocation that you will want to place on a special shelf alongside such as Evan ConneU's Mr...
...I know...
...Even in our country, Newspeak seems to be taking hold...
...Oh, she was dangerously close, as they say, to toppling over the brink, but she did not...
...Great...
...In Vietnam and the Soviet Union, prisoners are sent to die in "rehabilitation" and "relocation" centers...
...Tommy and I, who love her, know she did not...
...But any blackguard who avers that she actually did it (including the vile reviewers in the New York Times and Time, who blandly presume her guilt) has a fight on his hands...
...They brink on World War II, which, in the words of one of the more perceptive female characters, will "change everything," as indeed the war did, but they are as a whole impervious in their Midwest isolationism (let the frogs dip themselves out of their own bouillabaisse this time), and none can conceive of a future when there may not be a big fat lovable Negress called Ophelia in the kitchen of the country dub, nor scullery maids of Indian origin in their own kitchens (the Irish have just graduated from the servile state)and Indian handymen (loafers) on the offshore islands where all of Grande Riviere repairs during the summers...
...The family relationships are warm and very real...
...There must have been 250 tables, each with linen napkins and several bottles of wine...
...This all sounds pretty dreadful, and it would be save for the precocious recall of Tommy MacAUister, who adores his mother (Emma) and his 22-year-old eldest brother (John), who loves but is wary of his stern father (Mac), and who maintains a splendid state of war with David, the 20-yearold moderately rebellious second son...
...We had our usual discussion about tax rates in the Third World, and then, gesturing at the lavish scene around us, he said that this was how many Europeans imagined that people in America live: Cadillacs, cattle ranch, the idle rich...
...Tax increases are called "revenue enhancements," and advocates of increased government control are called "progressive" or "liberal...
...Was there ever a bearskin rug like this in fiction...
...Bridge, Robert Taylor's The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, and other joys in story-telling that you hope your grandchildren will be moved by Heaven to pause just one moment over before tossing them (after your portrait) into the dustbin...
...It's there, but it is beside the point, because this wonderful book belongs to the sharp eye and dauntless spirit of eight-yearold Tommy MacAliister, third son of a steel mill owner in Grande Riviere, Michigan, whose upper bourgeoisie are of the Midwestern smokestack variety, which is to say, country club-dull, conventional, and rife with the prejudices and politics of their class and time...
...Tour de force...
...There were steers and stage coaches, and museumpiece Conestoga-type wagons...
...Now, Depression literature isn't my cup of tea...
...McPherson knows about hunting: He speaks of the kick of a .410 causing Tommy's shoulder to hurt all day (there is no kick), of Tommy's father and cronies pausing for a leisurely alcoholic toast to their success after mowing down a Word Games Ok ver 25 years r ago, George Orwell wrote a terrifying little book called 1984...
...McPherson has Tommy speaking*of the carbide lamps of miners (he would think of them as headlamps), or recalling that an uncle described a certain piece of silver as repousse, or most improbably committing to memory the title of a book that Mrs...
...The winter that precedes the climactic summer ball of 1939 is recalled in every salient, beginning with Thanksgiving and running through Christmas, New Year's, the explosion at the mill that so depresses Tommy's father and sends him away for prolonged periods, Tommy's eighth birthday, a n d . . , not Easter (is it too cold for the Easter bunny up in Michigan...
...At one point during the yuletide preparations I noted impatiently on the margin, "Gets discursive: a fine, difficult, dangerous line...
...Bunker Hunt," and he seemed like a very unassuming fellow to me, especially a few minutes later when he came blundering back through the half-dark tent, tripping over chair legs and sticking out his hand to introduce himself most disarmingly to totaLstrangers...
...Testing the Current is slow, besides, about getring itself started, and oh so apparently casual about unfolding...
...someone no doubt mistakenly calculated that they could be wooed by kindness...
...Nothing...
...He speaks of his father following "spoor," when more likely he would have used "droppings...
...It is not words which threaten our freedom, but the political power behind the misleading words...
...You can bet your bloomers, however, that Mrs...
...and so many waiters on hand that you were served within a few seconds of sitting down...
...Daily life was monitored through TV cameras...
...For some reason the media had been admitted...
...We were ushered into an absolutely enormous tent, or marquee as they say in Europe, for dinner...
...Meanwhile, departments in Washington maintain an average of 15 files on every American...
...Intentional...
...Do not on that account delay in treating yourself to this book...
...Nelson Bunker had put in 'an appearance for the cameras...
...Wolfe...
...She did fib to Tommy in telling him (he was only six) that she was 22, the trusting assertion of which eighteen months later causes Tommy to make a fool of himself, and she did in other ways practice little (unexplainable to her son) deceits, the opening of his eyes to which brews a great uproar of bafflement and pain and outraged protest in his soul, the vortex he must survive in order to graduate intact from the innocence of childhood...
...He had shot the bear someplace, a long time ago, and it looked as if it had been a long time ago...
...1 7 6 . . . . ~ 1 7 6 . . . . * . . . . . _9 . . . . . . * . . . . . . . . . CAPITOL IDEAS (continued from page 11) turned out to be 2,000 people at the Circle T Ranch...
...Only rarely are there misses...
...Sedgwick would be brushing up on her curtseys were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor to announce a visit to Grande Riviere...
...elsewhere Mr...
...little jealous of (and mean to) the baby of the family...
...McPherson's details (he cites Stendhal: "Plus de details, plus de d ~ t a i l s . . , il n'y a d'originalit~ et de verit~ que dans les d~tails"), which he disciplines within the compass of his 8-year-old protagonist...
...There is no Santa Claus in the 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 MacAllister Christmas, either, an omission that demands explanation...
...She was too wonderful, too good, too loving herself, for that...
...Texas is more formal than one might think...
Vol. 17 • October 1984 • No. 10
