THE WORLDS OF HARRY TRUMAN
Davis, Kenneth S.
BOOKS THE WORLDS OF HARRY TRUMAN KENNETH S. DAVIS Plain Speaking: An Oral tally...
...The song whispered across the The end is inevitable...
...Thus he writes of the "progres- ELLIOTT WRIGHT is on the staff of Resives" that they were "on solid ground" ligious News Service...
...no other man can be other civilization on Earth) lives and taught to throw it...
...Four is the the cardinalate, and finally, in a mo- Moby Dick have I so enjoyed an Amerinumber of wholeness...
...But it does this sists he had no trouble making it and Seldom are two books issued simul- so emphatically that its excesses are never had second thoughts about it), to taneously and independently which readily discounted by any reasonably aid European rehabilitation with the more perfectly complement and supple- well-informed reader...
...Some of us struggle hired gun of peace, whose only wea- jamin exorcises him of this "holy spirit" to become pure spirit, others pure pon is the love of the dead Carolyn in the following words: "I command beast...
...For Hamby reminds us of big a crook as we've got anywhere in things Truman had no wish to rememthis country," said Harry Truman (John ber and which he consequently failed F. Kennedy was then in the White to mention in his conversations with House), "and I don't like it that he Miller-of Truman's political cronyism bought his son the nomination for the with such as Harry Vaughan, who used Presidency...
...Of Henry uniformly low quality of Truman's the first that Wallace, "I don't know . . . if you'd Supreme Court appointees (Truman himself calls his appointment of Tom really zeroes in say he was a liar so much as that he didn't know the difference between the Clark "my biggest mistake...
...to order troops into and, like Terkel's work, is an offshoot among us...
...of the carried one state [in 19601...
...useful to state and to Church, and he you have written more than a novel...
...Boston University Ohio University), much of it a flat reporting of what liberal journals said WALTER M. MILLER, JR., is the author of SELMA 1965 of Truman and his Fair Deal at the A Canticle for Leibowitz, and is currently THE MARCH time...
...BOOKS THE WORLDS OF HARRY TRUMAN KENNETH S. DAVIS Plain Speaking: An Oral tally valuable document he has now "dejuiced" by those who helped him Biography of Harry given us...
...7.95 bear...
...The subtle creative tension which sand like a sad sigh and then was Willie's defeat is brought about not characterized their relationship was a lost in the constant mourning of by the ancient institutions of Western healthy one...
...Truman emerges for us, early rather too ready to fight, or at least too a national television network...
...career in the history of baseball...
...to back civil rights Plain Speaking, as everyone must whose "memory . . . has never been legislation in the face of Dixiecrat deknow by now, is of the "oral biogra- brighter than it is now, a time when fection in a year when his reelection phy" genre pioneered by Studs Terkel menacing, shadowy men are everywhere seemed impossible...
...civilization, but by that venerated schThe loss of the father forces the ism deep in the heart of western man, The Last Western mother into prostitution, and Willie that Manichean split between the spirit grows up in ghetto poverty, but with and the beast...
...dictable unfeeling cruelty...
...he's just a coward...
...western hero...
...And as Dean Acheson, conducted in 1961-1962 a biography that is, considering the way he does so we are reminded that he by Merle Miller and intended as raw of its making, remarkably solid and seemed to many of us at the time to be material for a series of broadcasts over complete...
...side of his own nature, the side that blems of the world at some ghetto But of course the exorcism is only is shameful and frightening to him, equivalent of an OK Corral...
...No net- in the book, out of small-town mid- inclined toward an impulsiveness work would buy the series, however America and from a family whose grounded in irritable impatience, as he (one suspects the TV moguls may have Democratic political tradition was pre- dealt with the Russians-a "seeming" deemed Truman's expressed views "too dominantly Southern (his mother seems which the young New Left revisionists, controversial" for popular or commer- to have remained an unreconstructed to whose criticisms Merle Miller appears cial sponsors' consumption...
...And yet to be whole, a man must and a preternatural gift, walking alone you in the name of man to be man find the courage to face the unwanted to meet his destiny and solve the pro...
...crybaby...
...But power exercised by a whole man, by Man is beast, but man is spirit...
...The schism, perhaps, is THOMAS S. KLISE a great pitching arm and a talent as nurtured, because it produces men who a peacemaker...
...Korea...
...to proclaim and act ment one another than those here re- will certainly understand why Miller upon the Truman Doctrine...
...The trouble with Eisenhower and re-fight-the philosophical assump- frailty...
...by Charles E. Fager language is sometimes more than it can 12 pages of photographs...
...write and edit them...
...Willie knelt by the grave and Abused, and Utterly Screwed-Up to a shared , . . commitment to freedom, put his hand on the place where assist him instead of the cardinals in equal justice, and equal opportunity) they had lowered his father's body matters of high policy, and especially Writes Hamby in his closing paragraph: into the soil...
...No coward afraid to fight was Beyond The New Deal: tim quotes, with a minimum of exposi- the Harry Truman who placed upon Harry S. Truman and tory and interpretative writing of his the Oval Office desk his famous motto, American Liberalism own...
...Willie turns peacemaker and ter that greatest schism of the west...
...Peter Celestin V ) brilliant, even the minor ones (as were it is therefore restrained by the warm who was dragged down from his moun- Melville's ) 14 June 1974: 338...
...This minimum, expertly done (in- "The Buck Stops Here" and then lived ALONZO L. HAMBY deed, the whole book is carpentered up to it in a series of the toughest deciwith exquisite skill), shows Miller to sions any President has had to make: Columbia University Press, $12.95 be a wholly uncritical, even adulatory the decision to drop the bomb (he inadmirer of his subject...
...histori- lished memoirs were, as Miller says, deeply informed than his, were conse14 June 1974: 336 quently "made up" with more difficulty when they "attacked some of the men and tentativeness...
...feels as he does about "old Harry," the Berlin airlift...
...he states his questions in ing acid increased-by Miller's selection Putnam, $8.95 italics and reports the answers in verba- process...
...And such readers Marshall Plan...
...His pub- men whose minds, more complex and terial at hand the fascinating...
...The short it to each other, and like Moby Dick the world and the four races of man...
...Not since the first time I read in the image of that child...
...And in that wholeness, that unity, stirs is used by our institutions with pre- You have written a revolution, and the divine child...
...At the not for long...
...of the would be in jail...
...And here we have the man named Grayson in the book, and aration, rather than a marriage, of the Western archetype: the lone hero, the he speaks in strange tongues...
...General period...
...He reiterated tions and political strategies of the "Fager's careful retrospective this sentiment again and again...
...Western ternatural gift, like the fast draw of a civilization (which has supplanted every WALTER A. MILLER, JR...
...My son and I read parts of parents came from the four corners of conclave elects him pope...
...to order viewed...
...J. Robert Oppenheim- around Truman" but that "there was er, for instance, who "turned into a more to their viewpoint than attacks...
...The Kirkus Reviews 09900 0000 Alonzo Hamby's Beyond the New "Fager does an important serDeal: Harry S. Truman and American REVIEWERS vice in recapturing what will be Liberalism is a much less exciting read- lost in the history textbooksthe dramatic detail of one ing experience than Merle Miller's KENNETH S. DAVIS, author of FDR: The place, one time, in one of the book...
...here the "juice" S. Truman Miller's method has been to let Tru- is not only retained but also (inevitably) MERLE MILLER man and Truman's friends speak for concentrated-its percentage of tart, bitthemselves...
...existed . . . in a manner which rein- You've got a lot to live, There is to be a day of universal forced each other's tendency toward And Pepsi's got a lot to give...
...Hamby writes for the most part Beckoning of Destiny (Putnam's), is now great human movements in a standard plodding professorial prose at work on the second volume of his American history...
...he is associate professor of history at Roosevelt project, to be entitled FDR: The -Howard Zinn, Years of Destiny...
...He of electronic media journalism...
...and Adlai Stevenson, who " He says that Truman "tore into had trouble deciding "whether he had the Russians" when he talked to adto go the bathroom or not...
...Moreover, the He describes the `miracle' of book, as James MacGregor Burns has new hope among disenfranoverweening egotism and vanity chised blacks in Alabama's when Eisenhower let McCarthy get said, "regains a perspective on the post- Black Belt with a power that is away with calling General Marshall a World War II period that we have lost not diminished by his honest traitor, why that was one of the most in recent years, and will be indispen- portrayal of the issues-and shocking things in the history of this sable to anyone who wishes to rethink- the leaders both black and white-in terms of human country...
...The girl he forgot to an uncarved block such as Willie, can dawn of consciousness, he saw himself love with words is killed in a ghetto heal by the remarriage of spirit to matdimly as the son-daughter of the father riot...
...sad pontificate of Pope Willie I re- it reads well aloud-the best test of His intellect seems dim because it is still hearses that of the old hermit Pietro good prose...
...When he essays interpretation, the working on a novel about a guerrilla chief THAT CHANGED THE SOUTH strain placed upon his command of the and a goddess who happens to be a horse...
...love and forgiveness...
...Marshall was Truman's great hero, responsible and invigorating...
...a set of programs killed in an accident...
...to fire Gen...
...We have, further, valuable portions of this book...
...G), SCRIBNERS Commonweal: 337 Truman comes out well in Hamby's beast, without guile, and immune to tain in 1294 A.D...
...shameful side, and embrace it, and His talent as pacifier is of course Thomas S. Klise, whoever you are, marry it, and become whole again...
...no institustill vexed by the wound which the after time, earns Willie the flashiest tional power, not even institutional separation of opposites has left behind...
...closely followed by Dean Acheson...
...and Rebel to the end of her days-a little to me unduly sensitive, have of course though this fact was financially embar- boy who read all the time, was "blind elevated to the status of doctrinal truth...
...At the age deadlocked conclave and crowned ship between the Fair Deal and "liberal- of four he climbs a ladder and gives pontiff, bringing with him into the curia ism...
...truth and a lie...
...Richard M. Nixon "is dubious character of oilman Ed Pauley detailed a shifty-eyed goddam liar . . . [and] I whom Truman sought (in vain) to inside storycan't see how the son of a bitch even make Secretary of the Navy...
...in the matter of bringing immediate "Thrown into partnership by a whim Then he sang the song his father peace and justice to a used, abused, of history, Truman and the liberals co- loved: and utterly screwed-up human race...
...His fast ball with its are easy to govern and exploit: Divide Argus Communications, $8.95 upward breaking curve seems a pre- et impera, applied to the soul...
...His useful- I say to you "Right on, brother, right Willie comes to us already whole, ness results in his rise to the episcopacy, on...
...MacArthur...
...thing to be more or less than man...
...visers in April, 1945...
...increasingly advanced progressivism...
...Pope Willie brings but . . . a persuasion built around a in the Silent Servants of the Used, belief in human reason and dignity...
...The ability to strike dies not in its institutions but in the Down at the core of being, we are out twenty-seven batters in a row, time hearts and minds of men...
...ty, and lazy selfishness, joined to an ly during his first term...
...sky spirit and the mother earth beast, eventually priest...
...He was inordinately proud of public...
...and had such But there was nothing sissified about sion anxieties and regrets...
...Abruzzi mountains...
...advisers from his own rag-tag order term is justified, I think, by his defini- His father, a migrant fruit picker, is of religious irregulars, hermits from the tion of it as "not...
...rassing to David Susskind, producer of as a bat" without glasses, played the Certainly Truman viewed himself as the show, and personally so to Miller, piano hours each day, and, as he frank- a straight-from-the-shoulder "fella" who who grew to love his interviews- ly told a child who questioned him in was also a "cantankerous cuss," tough though it was also an implicit humilia- Miller's presence, "always ran . . . if and peppery, whom no lying crook or tion of a former President of the United there was any danger of getting into vicious bully could safely "monkey States-it was fortunate for the reading a fight...
...Man cannot be anything but man...
...He stops riots, even There is a one-sided, spirit-dominated but our civilization commands a sep- revolutions...
...Truman's plain speech would man of himself as a boy, "I was kind his "decisiveness" and his freedom (he certainly have been drastically edited of a sissy...
...General MacArthur "was his White House position to help friends a dumb son of a bitch . . . but that's who were having trouble with Governnot against the law for generals...
...by cardinals of a final summation of the uneasy relation- the bullshit of educators...
...He on the scene...
...The author's bold use of the latter a drink to a plaster Jesus on the cross...
...Truth to tell, said Truman the with...
...Its gen- What we have here, then, is primary speaks of these decisions-tells in salty esis was a series of filmed and taped source material of the greatest historical language of the remembered experience interviews of Harry S. Truman and importance which is also, as seldom of making them-in some of the most several of the friends, notably the late happens, fun to read...
...As for "the fella that hasn't made one right decision that I Fager, himself an activist at succeeded me" in the White House, can think of") ; and of the numerous Selma, re-creates the developTruman loathed and despised him for inconsistencies and even outright con- ing scene with a good reportmoral cowardice, intellectual dishones- tradictions of Truman policies, especial- er's objectivity and fairness...
...Such blunt crudities of expression, All the same, this, too, is a valuable wherein harsh judgments are passed on book, and its value is enhanced by famous figures of recent history, abound being read in conjunction with the in this book...
...is clear, cool and welcome...
...If it ment agencies and then accepted expen- "Compellingly was, half to three-quarters of them sive gifts from those he helped...
...Old Joe Kennedy is as Miller work...
...Publishers Weekly...
...Willie's grand- ment of miracle-inspired madness, a can novel...
...Rioters briefly effective, and man will do anyand the courage finally to court this respond to him, as to no other man...
...the wind...
...claims a total freedom) from post-decibefore being broadcast...
...The characterizations are united with the rest of his being, and Murrone (Pope St...
...He was conbroadcast been made, Miller would Truman the man who stands before temptuous and uncomprehending of probably not have shaped of the ma- us self-revealed in this book...
...old Benspirit and the beast...
Vol. 100 • June 1974 • No. 14
