". . . And Ladies of the Club"
Grenier, Cynthia
My favorite in the silliness category is a statement Alf Landon made in the 1936 campaign: "Wherever I have gone in this country, I have found Americans." As for scurrility, it is hard to find...
...Our goal is to get it exactly right, and our readers expect no less...
...No less distasteful to these critics doubtless is the strong sense of patriotism underlying the book...
...That, Miss Santmyer, I think you need not worry about...
...The inscription on the head is in German--Cincinnati used to be a German town--and it was presented to some long-dead burgher on his Geburtstag...
...Most are poor, struggling to maintain themselves in a society in which they are largely marginal...
...Reading Ladies is rather like being transported by a time machine to witness the daily life, small dramas, and occasional tragedies of another age...
...Each issue is a work of art in itself...
...Please start lmy subscription immediately...
...There is a sense that war is a terrible thing, bu~ that sometimes it is necessary to risk dying for your country...
...Nasty charges designed to put off as many readers as possible--charges, interestingly enough, that are without foundation...
...If the subject's Georgian silver, the writer's M. E K. Fisher...
...But Manny Farber...
...lidt.lllt,~ and exclusive-us(" fi)re.stlands, ciipllal Iorillatil~ll, trade p.lick, s. and t'onst,r\'alion...
...But there must be something wrong with an aesthetic theory which lumps all the rest of us under the wastebasket term "Sociological...
...The $36 price is, believe it or not, a bargain: ten issues on the newsstand would cost $60...
...This is a heavy-duty piece...
...Marjorie Farber San Francisco, California Raising Canes T. John Jamieson's essay on the welldressed conservative ("Dressed to Kill: The Conservative Exterior," TAS, August 1984) did well to mention that important article of apparel, the cane...
...Agatha Pinney, elderly schoolteacher addicted to landanttm who chooses suicide, masking it as an accident in a desperate effort to end with dignity...
...The man who so famously said, "What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar," was Thomas Marshall of Indiana, the Democratic vice-presidential I candidate in 1912...
...They come alive on the page with an extraordinary vividness...
...WET) LOVE FOR YOU TO JOIN US If you'd like to join our discriminating, lively readership, simply clip out the coupon and return it for a full year's subscription...
...As for the charge of anti-Semitism it comes down, we find, to the onetime use of the term "huckster" on page 93 to describe the profession of a minor, sympathetic Jewish character...
...Coming Next Month Books For Christmas forth quite simply her intentions: She felt ready to go to work on the book she had set her heart on writing: a long one, covering several generations of life in a small midwestern city: the sort of thing that had been popular a few years back, like Jean-Christophe and Remembrance of Things Past and The Forsyte Saga...
...I f there can be no easy solutions, the characters know how to bear their troubles with courage and dignity...
...Almost without exception they are women--women who sometimes die young or live out very long lonely lives...
...Presidential Campaigns is more accurately a volume of Americana than one of politics or history...
...Well, then," said she, "will you please leave your affectation in the hall...
...Scandinavian paper...
...Primarily Miss Santmyer is concerned with reflecting as faithfully as possible the sensibilities and mores of another age...
...hi~t.r...
...I)EI)A'I IR'I'H GARI INER Pi+liii%%llr ill ~lkrflfllJltll'~ll E1411lil[lllt _9 I Iniver~il$ i lt Califi irnla, J laxi~ 21tll I ~ _9 ISBN i l - ~ Illi-391.9 t I.ih -, a $.11 ~llo ISBN tI.148 tto.;(~.t1-7 I'~ l~-r .ca, $II 95 171 order, o r f o r a t'alahll~ o f pulilit'allOn~, lllt.~l~t, t~, rill...
...Every month we invite a host of people-some experts, most n o t - t o join with us in exploring the full range of beauty and craftsmanship and controversy that make up the world of art and antiques...
...We discover that it still simmers...
...Our group needs old clothes...
...In our pages it bursts into open flame...
...One can only wish Miss Santmyer many years to enjoy this late-coming fame and good fortune...
...their marriages to Civil War veterans, their children and grandchildren...
...46 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984 The bor@ closes with two thoughts, one from Marcus Aurelius: "What a small portion of vast and infinite eternity it is, that is allowed unto every one of us, and how soon it vanisheth into the general age of the world...
...SIGN ME UP FOR A YEAR OF ART & ANTIQUES...
...But 1 still, when the spirit moves, swing it happily down the street...
...Her critics, secure in their unassailable sense of virtue, manage to ignore these admirable portraits of the injured, lonely, and damned...
...Cane-owning is not without problems...
...NAME ADDRESS CITY...
...The men who experienced it forever feel its traces, remembering it not as a time of glory but as a time of testing of their souls...
...Ariana, minister McCune's daughter who runs away with a circus hand only to return to die tended devotedly by an unmarried middle-aged woman in that woman's one act of true charity...
...lJt'~t'~ ht'ld ])~, i'~ilIcht'l'~, i.ll)t't ~11) dtqll+lll~ll'~ilt'- lhdl lilt' ~t'll'll/It'l t"41 l~tl~lJ~ o l lilt' h l l t , r l l l l J )t'llArllllt'lll it.i)t,,llt,d] ) b i t l t k t ' d l h c ; i ~ i ~ q i l l l t ' l l l ill ])n\~ilt, i ) l ( q ) t q l ) nt~lll> i - tilt, i d l l ~ t ' dt,~plh, lilt' ill)~t'llt't' llI ,ill) l l u b l i t ~ l ~ ( l - qLl~ihllt'~ ~lllt't' lilt' I~ill(] h~i> I)t't,ll rt'l~llllt'd h) lilt' ~tl\t'l'lllllt'lll...
...It is perfectly clear from the context that no defamatory intent is meant, which makes criticism of the author on this point not merely excessive but in downright bad faith...
...The memory of the.Civil.War,hovers over the whole story...
...The Sociological Critic Two cheers for John Podhoretz's refreshing men culpa as a movie critic "Confessions of a Critic" (TAS, September 1984...
...The last President to write his own speeches was Herbert Hoover...
...YES...
...Doubtless few candidates ever had it as rough as Jefferson in 1796, when he was called an "atheist," "anarchist," "demagogue," "cowa r d , " "mountebank," "trickster," and "Franco-maniac," and whose followers were called "cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amidst filth and vermin...
...In the same category belongs a cane I found on the Ponte Vecchio, which conceals an ivory dice box in the head...
...I.IBEC.\I' I-;., . , . d b~ /~ L...
...I did...
...He could follow this by getting hold of the 1981 AMA publication "Sexual Problems in Medical Practice" where he will learn that a considerable number of homosexuals "wishing change and who remain in treatment [can] become exclusively heterosexual...
...And once the people get the idea that the government has an obligation to support its citizens, there'll be no end to what they will demand...
...B5 San Franci.~co, {'..li 9 Iliig I.OCKIN...
...UP T I l E R-LN(;E Federal I.and Controls and Grazing l~ G.\R'~ II...
...She laughed at herself ruefully: she was no Galsworthy, much less a Rolland or a Proust...
...Some hostesses also worry about carelessly wielded sticks sweeping away their chachkas...
...it only goes with tails...
...th~tli~llig ~1 i~llD i iI lilt' Illllt'atitr~lt'L T h t ' c llllflltl J)t'l\%t'tql l~lllt Jlt'I k, tqlt Ill illlllt'lllllh~l~, ,illd lilt' hllt,ill~r J It,l)~lltllit.ill lit lilt' ltt~lls It'lit't 1> lht'>t' tl illl llllllll~ IXl>l t l indll I( ills alRl t d l l i iIl[) t)t' ]R'rllldll('Dll\ rt'r.~kt'lt l h l l l t l ~ h lilt' I-t,tll~qllllllil ifl ilt';ll p r l l l ) t ' l l ) lllit'~ Ill lhllt~t, who tl~t' lilt' land...
...But let us hear from you today...
...ART&ANTIQUES ART & ANTIQUES is published by Allison Publications, Inc...
...177 I o~,i Nlreel, licpl...
...I am a Zambian engineer, both a Christian and a conservative...
...But she would like to write an answer to Sinclair Lewis, whose Main Street had made her so angry after a decade she seethed when she thought of it...
...AND LADLES OF THE CLUB" Helen Hooven Santmyer/Putnam/$19.95 Cynthia Grenier The summer of 1984 was certainly the appropriate time to publish " . . . And Ladies o f the Club," celebrating as it does several generations worth of " r o c k - r i b b e d Republicans" in Ohio, the state which has given this nation seven distinguished Republican Presidents...
...One thing seems sare: She at least will not have to despair like her 82-year-old heroine faced with the election of FDR, " I don't want to die and leave the country in the hands of the Democrats...
...I have enclosed a payment for $36 (a savings of $24 off the newsstand price of $60...
...The women remain keenly interested in politics throughout the long book...
...I would like to try a full year (10 beautiful editions) of ART & ANTIQUES Magazine...
...The word is being used in the longtime meaning o f peddler, i t i n e r a n t salesman...
...PACIFIC INSTITI'TE...
...Thank you.-- Wilson Synchollecker Simango, Livingstone Zambia BUREAUCRACYvs...
...Amanda Reid, spinster bluestocking who prefers the integrity of her lonely life to marriage with the bereaved widower McCune...
...89 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10~3...
...Victims or rebels they are to a woman unself-pitying, and if not always strong are most assuredly stoic in their attitude to life: Mary McCune, wife of the Reverend Mr...
...Like his previous book of similar design, Presidential Anecdotes, which was published in 1981, Boiler's Presidential Campaigns deserves a place on the shelf of anyone interested in American politics, especially those who write about it...
...57, p. 196, 1980...
...Are you hurt...
...Just as the changing fashions in dress and decor are meticulously recorded for the Gordon and Rausch homes, so are the sagging stockings, bustle-less gowns, and drab quarters described for society's orphans...
...8~ 1 io...
...Every inch of every page reviewed in minute detail...
...The second is the message the protagonist leaves to her great-granddaughter...
...We don't want you to miss a single beautiful page...
...Four color printing throughout...
...There's so much talk of socialism around here that those in power have v!rtually forgotten that we have had no rain...
...Regarding hepatitis, we pointed out that the B variety is now largely a homosexual venereal disease (consult the British Journal of Venereal Diseases vol...
...What he had was a keen painter's-eye (no great asset), a sufficient fund of common sense or humor, and a canny sense of who his mentors were Otis Ferguson (late of the New Republic) and Jim Agee (a friend at Time)--these were the true pioneers of American movie criticism...
...may even have been one--Manny was totally innocent of any such knowledge...
...People draw on their own moral strength or on religion to see themselves through difficult and trying times...
...Auden, I stumbled on a near-unknown English philosopher, R.G...
...we need powdered milk...
...HS01...
...m t i l l tilL' I / U " h,',,L" I . ,m i I, i I h . t . l l l d ~ I'1 l q . l t t It( fit I' IMIX ii...
...This is the category I would place myself in...
...His efforts to include others in his mistakes, however, are subject to correction...
...on page 1169, seven pages from the end of the novel, author Santmyer sets Cynthia Grenier, a movie producer, is a former senior editor at Ballantine Books...
...The 88-year-old author Helen Hooven Santmyer has been accused of being "insensitive," racist, and anti-Semitic...
...A NEW KIND OF ART MAGAZINE We operate on a simple premise...
...There is no golden glow of a more innocent past, nor is there any vision of a perfect utopia coming one day on earth...
...Podhoretz...
...Publisher Robert Giroux uncovers the only authentic like nesses of William Shakespeare...
...Happy Days Are Here Again" was sung at the 1932 Convention because some of FDR's advisers thought his choice of a nominating song, "Anchors Aweigh," sounded t o o much like a " f u n e r a l march...
...law and rulatt,d fields...
...I have a slimmer stick, of similar design, which will accompany a tux, or a Prince of Wales suit provided I wear a dark tie (or one that's bright red...
...The prize of the collection is a thick, black-shafted stick with a gold top, a present from my mother-in-law who found it in a Cincinnati antique shop...
...I T I I I . \ Ir T I I : , I I I : > L,,km;., I "p tk~ Ran~ dr'tall...
...lht' t..qOl t. ~ll lilt' [~Ul't'iltl IJI i.;IHd .'~ldtl,l~t'tllt'Ill It, t'\l),lll(] )l- lt':dtda till3, ~ltllhlllll~ {lll(t ~lllt'llU~llt' lilt' [)l'lt...
...Coterminously, in the early fifties, a forward-looking man (Pete Martin) decided to start a magazine devoted to the pop arts entirely.-This was City Lights (no relation to the later Ferlinghetti production...
...If you can, send your donations to: Attention--Operation Drought, Box 45, Simango, Livingstone, Zambia...
...l'ht.~ h . o k t~ a n I l l h I h i l u a l x'l m , ,t # a r c q u t l l t t ~ t i m / t tlllll "' -B...
...one asked me when I showed up to her party, cane in hand...
...Carrying a cane and an umbrella is clumsy, so I only take them out on sunny days...
...Speaking through a minor character...
...CE Jr)fiN.q( iN Phrcn',ml b 3 B /JE/.II ? ;R771 t ,. t/?/L\ P-h' Adopted an ~uild thv I ,.'n o! lilt' ~ cnlur...
...Now I would like to use The American Spectator to ask for help...
...kt'it' c'litlllR'd It) t'llSUl-~ pt'rpelual llrllbt, t .~upt)lit'.~ ~illd plll~,ldt' I n ( h i M r ) ~llid t'lllllllllJlllt~' ':,t~tblllt3...
...It would be artistically misplaced to insert godlike pronouncements of a Yuppy sensibility into the narrative, lamenting, say, the plight of blacks (termed Negroes throughout in keeping with period usage) or yearning for affirmative action and quotas...
...But what surely convinced Miss Santmyer's adversaries that she is the enemy of the liberals is her passage on FDR--a passage whose spirit is echoed in Paul Johnson's admirable Modern Times: " . . . that Roosevelt...
...The main plot-line deals with two best friends, Anne Alexander Gordon, the doctor's daughter, and Sally Corcoran Rausch, the banker's daughter...
...At 6 ' 4 " , I rarely find one tall enough...
...It is thus not by chance that this book has been the object of reviews in the liberal press ranging from the mildly disparaging to the downright hostile...
...The situation here is desperate, and we will owe our lives to all who help us...
...We relish it, we celebrate it, we argue about it...
...To live happily is an inward power of the soul," one of the quotations from Marcus Aurelius used by Miss Santmyer, might well be the message of the book...
...I was given the near-hopeless task of working up a viable "aesthetic theory" for pop art...
...The author seems to understand these women intimately, viewing them with a compassion that never once falls into sentimentality...
...And if, for any reason, I am not satisfied with ART & ANTIQUES I may write for a full refund on all unmailed copies...
...The point about a threat to human life was a matter raised by the editor of Nature (March 8, 1984) who questioned whether this always fatal disease (AIDS) could become " a more generalized infection of people...
...You may have thought the controversy over Pollock was long over...
...And it appears in the bookstores with shrewd timing...
...We are building a dormitory for the enfeebled that will cost $45,000--we need to raise $26,000 from outside sources...
...AN ENVIRONMENT OF ASTONISHING BEAUTY Great works and great writers deserve a spectacular magazine, and we deliver it...
...Heresy...
...Since then, I have acquired several more...
...As for the novel itself, Proust it indeed is not, as its author is aware, but perhaps a comparison with Galsworthy is not far off the mark...
...Indeed, her writing in these passages becomes remarkably energized...
...C. Africa...
...Please read more carefully, Mr...
...America will be a long toboggan slide downhill to Socialism...
...Collingwood (Principles of Art, 1938)--which 1 recommend to Mr...
...Not your usual New Age pieties, by any means...
...ENVIRONMENT Robert T. Deacon M.Bruce)ohn.~L h,,,,,+.,,,,+ /g l ~ l i l t , ~ ' l l / i , l A ' t , x t ~ Itll I%%'II11 1"1 iilll PI gl I1 Pill Ill RI %1 tiN( It FORESTL.~N I)S Public and Privme E(iltud by R()BERT "[ [ )E.-\L'( )N find M. I'/RI...
...t 1, ,i h - ~ Iq 1~3 pACIFIC INSTITUTE I-OR I'L BI IL POI F . I RI b! \RL I I THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984 47 WAS JACKSON POLLOCK ANY GOOD...
...The author, who is reported to have worked and re-worked her material for over fifty years, is concerned more with "the relentlessness of time" than with producing a conventionally plotted novel designed to keep the reader turning pages ever faster...
...McCune, " a little grasshopper of a man," pregnant with her sixth child and dying from tuberculosis...
...More informal still is a black stick with a crocodile-shaped handle, and my former girlfriend's gift, now sadly corroded, but still serviceable...
...tl~t' l)11% lit'~t'> ,lit' I)Ult'~llltlflllt'~lJ]) ,l~>l~rllt'd ,llld 711u i l l h t T t , i l l k tlllCt'rhilii dill' lit lilt' ilarr( i...
...If we're looking at Diego Rivera's cubist paintings, it's through the eyes of Leon Trotsky...
...my italics) The omniscient voice of the author rarely intrudes upon the narrative of this book...
...Author Mark Helprin looks lovingly on our greatest public work of art, the Statue of Liberty...
...And Ladies o f the Club" is a serious, unsentimental, above all stoic look at life in the small Ohio town of Waynesboro from the immediate aftermath of the Civil War to the election of FDR, a span of 64 years...
...Kate Gordon, sister-in-law of one of the p r o t a g o n i s t s , independent farm woman who commits suicide when one of the young girls she has befriended runs off to marry...
...But there was a chance that, after the depression had somehow been dealt with, some readers might still be interested in what she felt compelled to do: Old America changing, while New America seemed to be tumbling about one's ears...
...Through Sally's husband, Ludwig, an ambitious German immigrant, we venture out of the women's world into that of business and politics as he sets up and develops a factory for making rope, becoming in time a local Republican power broker...
...Fortunately following a hint thrown out by W.H...
...To us the world of the fine and decorative arts is joyful and alive...
...Edwards, and please learn to speak from a factual basis...
...Our "intelligent gu~s" ~)aaetr~a~5 the,raoalr of spread of the non-A, non-B hepatitis...
...gl wt'rnIlR?lll-lllilll{l~t'd forc'stlall(l...
...It is ignorant to equate the two: Warshow wrote and thought like a sociologist...
...With some friends I have formed a small group to help alleviate the severe drought this area of Africa is experiencing...
...Superseding all those real German sociologists--whose names began with "K" and who had all discovered Potemkin--the real birth of movie criticism was, if anything, antisociological...
...Happy Days...
...Richard Brookhiser New York, New York Cry for Help In my university days in the United States, I used to read The American Spectator for enjoyment...
...Tm~Ibt~u~s t'lilllparc's prlvatt, l l l a r k i ' t x t i l h public" I)tlrt, i l l l f r i l l l C filrt..~t Fllana/4eliit'iit and t'rllit'ally t . x a n l i i i t . s ...;ut'h tl)pit's its slate arid ft.dt_.ral rt'l~llatlon (if llnlbt'i lands, tlnlbt'r lax ~ind iilltiliti~t polities...
...About timd" declared others...
...The only cane I ever found appropriate for spring and summer was a Chinese bamboo, with carved animal heads peeking out of the shaft (their behinds are visible on the other side...
...Joining the fray in ART & ANTIQUES are Motherwell, Wyeth, Updike, Buckley, Warhol, Frankenthaler, Kristol and a half-score of others...
...Unconventional for an art magazine...
...It sounds like the decline of the Roman Empire to me: bread and circuses...
...Oversized proportions, like the great magazines of another age...
...You bet...
...STATE Z~ PLEASE CLIP AND MAIL TOART & AN~QUES DEPT...
...No," I said, "this is an affectation...
...cried some...
...Eclectic, t r a d i t i o n a l , even " l i t e r a r y " sensibilities--in every way opposed to the mere social sciences--these were the models which Manny Farber set himself...
...If he could correlate his boyish nostalgia for movies with his adult conviction that Cinema will never be an art-form, he may yet enjoy such classics as Children of Paradise and thus become a critic...
...The other from the Book of Job: "Out of the darkness He bringeth out to light the shadow of death...
...owevt'r, t'lilllp~tl't'd \~attl pnvale linlberlands, i)tll)llt" lalld.~ hart..~y.~tt'lllatlt'all) vqt llt'sged frequent and st.vt.rt, tlnlbt'r >tlj)[)l.v problt.lns...
...To others we leave the tasks of self-conscious criticism and art world orthodoxy...
...As for scurrility, it is hard to find one attack to beat all others...
...What makes Miss Santmyer's novel unusual, however, is not really what happens to her protagonists, but rather the way she presents so much of the lives of her secondary, often minor characters...
...CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 7) evidence of lifestyle changes, he could start by reading the article by the Pattisons in the December 1980 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry...
...53, p. 190, 1977 and vol...
...The book is a valuable resource, full of basic facts, quotes, and stories about our every fourth year indulgence in the now yearlong race for the White House...
...She hoped that times [1932] would be better when she had finished, or no publisher would look at it, nor anyone have the patience to read it...
...t~n\ irllnllR'lllal hazards,, add nlarkt,t IFt~;tablhtlcb...
...Beautiful magazines cost money...
...Featuring leading scholar:, in t't lllllllllit'N f.rt.st ~cience...
...1 don't suppose he's ever known a poor man in his life, and he's no idealist: he knows very well that there are many who would rather be poor than work, and he's promising that the government will take care of them...
...And if you're the kind of person who likes to examine, re-examine and crossexamine our culture, you will love ART & ANTIQUES...
...Of his three categories of critic (Consumerist, Academic, and Sociological) the first two are justly noted and dismissed...
...the form was pioneered by Robert Warshow and Manny Farh,~ Robert Warshow possibly...
...I got my first cane in college, as a gift from my girlfriend--a socialist, but with good instincts (she is now slightly to the right of me...
...The New Republic's Michael Kinsley bumps into Cranbrook furniture...
Vol. 17 • November 1984 • No. 11
