BOOKS:
Powers, Thomas & Weales, Gerald
The Political Stage feeling of pleasure that kept me read- works by participants-Harold Clur- MALCOLM GOLDSTEIN ...
...COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS: Now Book Sale...
...mination in many industries until World rather than a reporter, and his account Workshop of the October revolution, Ten Days War II, and that the early experience of eSPIRITUAL VENTURE GROUP...
...But they do not discuss what is happening...
...the rich man is apt to be treated as It is a landmark in forensic psychiatry neurotic whereas the poor man is la- BOOK and humanistic jurisprudence...
...Michael Novak (Cont...
...The from a quasi-official trip to revolution- of it again but Steffens, a deeper and result was an unparalleled growth in ary Russia and made the much-quoted more sensitive man, puzzled for the the wealth and power of the surviving remark that "I have been over into rest of his life over the difficulty incorporations, which, unchecked, were the future, and it works...
...1.745, Aransas Pass, Texas strom's best point is that suddenly, 78334...
...man, Hallie Flanagan, John Houseman The best thing about The Political -gives his account a second-hand Oxford U. Press, $13.95 Stage is the diligence with which Gold- look, the more noticeable for its presstein searched for material...
...20 September 1974: 508 eight years to writing a book about him...
...As the author of several stood only in terms of the Commuly into the period, Goldstein becomes books that cover too many plays in too nists and their wavering line and that fascinated with the shifts in the Com- few pages, I sympathize with Goldstein it made contributions that are still munist line during the 1930s and the in the task he set himself, but my easily evident in the theater today...
...Personal growth, that Shook the World, is a book of en- blacks was different in kind not only not encounter, Quaker Retreat settin Six week- in degree from that of other imminds, November-April...
...Both worlds find him elusive: a spectator but not 000 000 0 AND SUFFERING an actor in the drama of their shock and conflict...
...He of chaos...
...tury...
...7.95 at booksellers...
...his American drama in the 1930s, as Mal- association with prominent Catholic and colm Goldstein indicates at the begin- literary figures...
...10016 with remittance of $12.50 Commonweal: 509 pathetic" to the revolutionaries of effectual about Steffens between the gates was like seeing the historical America and Europe, never embraced collapse of the muckrakers' reform development of human government out their answer in any deep or personal movement and his death in 1936...
...This is an old probprincipal product of their astonishing Steffens published his Autobiography...
...his interests changed turn of the century who helped a re- published in 1904, buoyed him to the but his vagueness remained...
...For the most part a fragile monthly journal devoted to morality and monk and infuriating book, Stage Left is politics...
...AND "The way out of this situation can only come along the lines expressed and im"I have found that in actual practice IMPORTANT plied in Professor Arens' masterly book...
...All that remains of his quick dip into cently) approximated white patternsBooks Printed Russia between the revolutions is a in 1880, even more Irish families (27 BOOKS PRINTED from well-typed manuscripts...
...themselves but external discrimination growers and the Teamsters Union...
...His indus- entation of the facts with the passion Stage Left missing...
...After sevluctant public to see what the long top of the wave of reform which end- eral years of wandering through the post-Civil War industrial boom had ed with World War I, made him fam- university towns of Europe he drifted done to American life...
...the possibility of theater as a tool and The lively personal memoir of Frank a weapon...
...perhaps I should not criticize him on Elsewhere, when he writes about the these grounds, but his decision to beIf anyone were to run a content Group Theater, the Federal Theater gin on the Left and to move, chapter analysis of American drama in the and the Mercury, his dependence on by chapter, to the Right, first for 19301960s, he would probably find that, pound for pound, there was a greater percentage of social criticism, political comment and simple propaganda on the American stage during that decade than there was in the 1930s...
...It is difficult for me to understand lation to the other material in the names finally defeats it as both histor- why he bothered with a pseudo-history book...
...but when a crime is committed the situation is reversed: -Frederick Wertham, M.D., the rich man is exculpated as schizo- "New York Law Journal," July 19, 1974 Send your order now to PHILOSOPHICAL LIBRARY 15 East 40th Street, New York, N.Y...
...For the most part, his attempt faults...
...came more institutionalized, when theaters-amateur and professional- fascinating"* were built on social and political premAn extraordinary ises rather than aesthetic ones...
...of the proletarian dance and its worker ular Front admiration of American Jay Williams turns up in Goldstein's audiences and for his continuing invistas and sentimental regard for the book as the co-author of sketches for sistence on the youth and the enthusiordinary, `little' man," as though the the New Theater League and Cabaret asm that went into much of the American past and the little man had TAC...
...he was just passing through...
...POWELL HOUSE...
...Sic, thirteen times...
...dDOUBLEDAY story to story and never lingering to In his treatment of the black exprovide more than a sketch of what perience in Boston, Thernstrom beClassified happened...
...The polit- teaching, Sheed shares the many fond ical theater is not the whole story of - memories and experiences he has had in almost every phase of Catholic life...
...sour but, unlike his friend John Reed, reasons fOr not joining them were Steffens never advanced beyond the he could not accept the logical conse- vague and tenuous...
...way...
...ThernBIOGRAPHY PRESS, Rt...
...He makes his middle-of-the- ical re-creation and theatrical criticism...
...What he wrote quences of his own arguments...
...and when producers, play- Sheed-outstanding author, dynamic wrights and performers with no strong street preacher, theologian, eminent political commitment of their own publisher, raconteur extraordinary, one of the best-known figures in the found that, being mirrors as Hamlet Catholic Church today...
...He shows 54c, seven times...
...I effect on Leftist drama, but the fascina- sympathy kept getting smothered in am grateful to Williams for reprotion leads him occasionally to unneces- detail, much of which was already ducing what he identifies as the true sary conclusions, as when he sees familiar to me, and opinion which WLT version of Newsboy, for his use Oklahoma...
...grad Soviet "I was halted, as by a blow, by the stink of the mob inside, during World War 11, blacks became UFM over-represented as operatives in inand I could see the steam rising, as THE UNITED FARM WORKERS, led by Cesar dustry...
...lem but Steffens, for all his agonizing, expansion...
...will happen...
...into journalism in New York in 1892 tions had "rationalized" the major in- In the thirty years which remained of and found he had a talent for it...
...Chatham, N.Y...
...As a young man Steffens was one of the crusading journalists at the known book, The Shame of the Cities, vaguely literary...
...Fifty more than incidental interest now...
...The exigencies of so pervasive that he does not success.. some of the best recent Chris- their trade force them to skate on the fully "pass over" into views not his tian reconsiderations of suffering and dying...
...mental, and unreliable...
...or what should or with as just neurotic...
...the stuff of biography, and that is what socialism, but Steffens, while "symInsanity Defense By RICHARD ARENS With a Preface by Harold D. Lasswell "Writers in this area usually tell us what phrenic while the poor man is dealt has happened...
...it is far from being lazily reat factual presentation is simply a run- searched or carelessly written, but Stefthrough of familiar material, including fens never quite comes to life and it familiar errors (such as that Odets' is hard to see why Kaplan devoted Till the Day I Die was based on a letter in New Masses) which have long 0•..•.000 since been corrected...
...Like his friend Reed, Stef- comes immeasurably more sympathetic, fens wrote about the revolutions in detailed and-I fear-sentimental...
...I will still not been commonplaces of American up in Stage Left, except at the very go to Malcolm Goldstein if I want indrama ever since the nineteenth cen- beginning in which he explains, rather formation...
...Religious, Xmas, Vatican City stamps...
...At your bookseller or ever Wilhams sets out to recreate what THOMAS POWERS received the Pulitzer Speed and Ward (~~~ it was like to live and work with a Prize for national reporting in 1971...
...He went in April, 1917, not a "new" immigration from the COLLECT RELIGIOUS STAMPS...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...It was then that the social impulse, an important part of American drama from tug...
...The book has no obvious detail...
...and, above all, his ning of his book, but it is so vivid and thoughts on the Church as he has experivital a part of the whole that it is enced it...
...At years later it is hard not to see him the time, his fame made him seem to simply as a likable ditherer...
...is intended...
...mission to tell President Wilson how have been in Boston for generations, Books he might persuade Russia to remain in or were earlier urban in experience...
...the war...
...beacon...
...many Box $4, Camillus, N.Y...
...10533...
...He insisted he was periphery of events...
...of the period when he could have decade division because he senses a His description of Elmer Rice's failure written a personal book-strengthened change of mood around 1935 (1 think in We, the People and Judgment Day by the recollections of the people he the stirrings of optimism began early might stand for his own book: "it is talked to-and still have made the in Roosevelt's first term) and because the unfortunate result of the panoramic points he wants to emphasize: that that presumed change coincided with style, in which so many characters take there was as much fun as politics in the growth of the Popular Front...
...CC, Columbia well-intentioned, but came to nothing...
...and On the Town as "carry- was too often derivative or unsupport- of Edna Ocko's marvelous recollection overs into the new decade of the Pop- ed...
...S7c, three times...
...S. U. STAMP SERVICES, Washington by June 26 on a nutty migrations of European peasants...
...THE MYSTERY is a harmless reactionary...
...Although both of these books have their virtues, .IDOLBLEDAY PubtiahwaVYeekly it was a sense of duty rather than a Commonweal: 507 35, then-in reprise-for 1935-1940, where and when and for how long, ticularly when he leans for support on makes it difficult for the reader who The Political Stage will continue to be reminiscences, such as those of Will must constantly reorient himself in re- valuable, but its vast accumulation of Lee...
...Old during literary and historical value...
...As a gathering of who did what foolishly, that 1930s theater "all seems to be forgotten" and that he will recti- Lincoln Steffens fy that imaginary oversight...
...vivid journalist's account of the Petro- percent) were female-headed...
...belled schizophrenic...
...The problem of organization try can be seen to advantage in the JAY WILLIAMS chapters on the Theater Union and on in a book like this is tremendous and the variety of productions among the Goldstein never really solves it...
...Still, the 1930s retains its image as the preeminently political decade in the American theater-and rightly so...
...Funds should be sent to UNITED FARM WORKERS of America, Watching that mass meeting of dele- had before then kept them out...
...more profound than the tinkering obvious, the appalling human cost of Steffens' career was certainly the which the muckrakers inspired...
...12134...
...Mercy Warren's eighteenth-century political farces), be- enlightening...
...Williams' JUSTIN KAPLAN book covers much the same ground his many faceted view will be Simon and Schuster, $10 savored by the many readers of the that Goldstein's does, but in a rather late Merton's best-selling books.- casual way ("I am romantic, senti- Publishers Weekly THOMAS POWERS "Excellent source book...
...A AFL-CIO, La Paz, Keen*, Calif...
...Known for his said, they could hardly help but re- wit, vitality and knowledge of Church flect the world around them...
...The recent Carnegie Commisporter An Image Book, $1.75 their personal histories read like the sion volume on the subject, by contrast, newspapers of the time, skipping from is far more successful...
...The commerce in the age of the robber stuff of history but it is not necessarily readiest alternative, of course, was barons...
...Twelve words minimum...
...He made speeches and wrote wanted change and agreed, in a theoret- This is first-rate journalism, but it is articles defending the great Russian ical way, that the revolutionaries offer- also the observation of a man who is experiment even after it began to go ed the best hope for change, but his only a kind of professional witness...
...Mexico and Russia but, unlike Reed, main points are well made...
...lives of journalists...
...a rrx)ratastkc trlU3ate valuable, particularly in the sections on GERALD WEALES is professor of drama at Edited bs- Brother Patrick Hart $8.95 the Workers Laboratory Theater, when- the University of Pennsylvania...
...him so well, that he was too completely were too confused and shallow to have There was something dreamy and in- a product of the discredited past...
...country's complacent boom psychology larly identified with events greater than ciety demanded some sort of change and pointed out what should have been themselves...
...Write for free catalogue: Dept...
...Since Scribners, $8.95 small Leftist groups, for these are the I have no happy solution up my sleeve, GERALD WEALES best-the fullest, that is-I have seen...
...The difficulty, as both Goldstein's and Jay Williams' works indicate, is that too often the vividness and the vitality of the subject fail to rub off on the From the publishers of The Jerusalem Bible books about the period...
...His effort was earnest and Against Daniel Moynihan, he shows Savings up to 1S% on nearly 400 different titles...
...His RATES: 40c a word, one time...
...Box 115, Irvington, N.Y...
...10014...
...obviously, not deficiencies in Chavez, struggle for survival against the com- from a herd of cattle, over those bined forces of the California lettuce-and-prape sweating, debating delegates...
...to radicals he certain man in the audience of history...
...Steffens also sensed the importance of grants...
...Stannard Baker and the other journal- wife, "I guess I am a success...
...His thumbnail discussions of Expressionism or labor REVIEWERS history are simply embarrassing, mak- JAMES FINN, formerly an editor of Coming one wonder for whom the book monweal, is now editor of Worldview, a thomas mexaton...
...when non-theatrical organizations-unions, 20th Century committees for one cause or another, the Communist Party-began to see Catholic life...
...His 475 Fifth Ave...
...not he may have a very uneasy grasp of so good...
...I guess Eventually Steffens concluded that ists whom Teddy Roosevelt eventually I'll go down in history now...
...Oddly enough, he does not turn Leftist theater of the 1930s...
...20 September 1974: 510...
...little wonder that it continues to attract both scholars who want to document the period and participants who want to remember what it was like...
...He did, his own efforts had been feeble and attacked as "muckrakers" punctured the as people sometimes do who are popu- ineffective, that the machinery of so...
...and in 1931, herent in trying to change a flawed peremptory with their workers and in- at the beginning of another period of social and economic system through different to the poverty which was a reform which ended with a war, when piecemeal reform...
...National Catholic Re- surface of events, with the result that own...
...Steffens, Ida Tarbell, Ray After its warm reception he told his brought nothing to its solution...
...The Political Stage feeling of pleasure that kept me read- works by participants-Harold ClurMALCOLM GOLDSTEIN ing...
...Reed went that a "pervasive belief in Negro inClassified payable with order...
...13031...
...13531...
...This was important work and Stef- seems to be the problem with Kaplan's Steffens is best known, of course, as fens had a lot to do with it...
...Huge corpora- ous and left him wondering what to do...
...When the - The Washington Post "hungry friends" of tap-dancer Bobby Justin Kaplan's biography of Mark Bruskin turn out to include Peter Law- Twain was so good that a reviewer of ford and Buddy Hackett, both of whom his new book about Lincoln Steffens would have been about ten years old finds himself searching for some adeat the time, one begins to suspect that quate way to explain why it is...
...Like part in the action that none is explored the movement, that it cannot be underalmost everyone who moves retroactive- in depth...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 to Russia and stayed, as a revolutionary feriority" fostered overt racial discriMadison Ave., New York, N.Y...
...that black family patterns (until reUniversity Press, P.O...
...He dustries, a nice term which means that his life Steffens again captured the drifted into muckraking, too, and found small companies in the oil, steel, coal, public's attention in an important way he had an even greater talent for that...
...24 Australian Xmas stamps I1S7 thru 1172 plus Rwandaise Popes Pius XI, took a look around, and was back in rural South, parallel to older rural imXII, John, Paul for 301t with approvals...
...railroad and other businesses had been only twice: in 1919, when he returned A lot of other muckrakers drifted out bought out or forced to the wall...
...Against Irving Kristol, ThernReligious Stamps the revolution but his commitment was strom shows that blacks in Boston are shallower...
...In this general "We have at present a kind of WaterA situation Professor Arens' book is a gate forensic psychiatry...
...OF DEATH Steffens' shallowness is typical of the Edited by Michael J. Taylor, S.J...
...For box numbers add S0c par insertion...
...He ad- too old and too firmly rooted in the tells us something, but not much, about vocated one sort of life and lived capitalist way of life which had treated what he saw, and his private reactions another...
...the beginning (v...
...It tells us what actually does NEW happen...
...His best- book...
...To great be at the center of things but now we Now in Paperback financiers he is a harmless radical," can see that in fact he was always on said a newspaperman who knew him the edge, a decent, feeling, but unin Paris in the 1920s...
...I New York r.7~I WJ theater group during the period, par- most recent book is The War at Home...
Vol. 100 • September 1974 • No. 21
