BOOKS

...His most recent book is This Man Jesus (Doubleday...

...Callahan is at present too diffident about its possibilities, but the hope remains that in the future he will make his own valuable contribution to it...

...The struggle against resentment and recrimination consumes energies...

...The problem is not that Christians are being asked to acknowledge Israel's right to life or even that they declare themselves pro-Israel over against France or Soviet Russia or the Arab states: many if not most American Christians have seemingly accepted those propositions...

...B. EERDMANS zo9 PUBLISHING CO...

...He charts his reactions to his wife (who compels him to find pleasure elsewhere), his girl friend aboard ship, and the two men involved with them...

...He is after bigger game: "And structure--verbal and psychological coherence--is still my largest concern as a writer...

...it challenged the order of reverence and justice...

...It seems PEACE CORPS & VISTA NEED YOU...

...As is true of all genuine scholarship, this bit of it will offer scant encouragement to extreme views...

...Is the ship going anywhere...

...Because the Dutchman tends to be in the "middle" of things-- think of his involvement in sexual triangles--he circles around events...

...The pious American Jew who deplored the blasphemy of an Arab attack on Israel "when all the people were in synagogue" must know that on that day the beaches near Netanya or Herzliya doubtless held a greater attraction for the average Israeli than did the rites and prayers of shul...

...But literary abuse is crueler still...

...A revelation, in other words, a grace...

...Davies finds no evidence that any of the New Testament documents that we now possess reflects a geographical interest that has any genuine connection with the Land...

...In the one world as in the other, perhaps both tendencies on the left can once again join in a common stream...

...Love comes after law" (clearly Rieff despises St...

...0 0 0 0 0 0 000 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 203) U.S...

...I am adrift...

...but he deliberately puts us into his novels as he violates our rational, waking conceptions...

...He rightly dismisses from consideration any mythical concept of the Land in the Old Testament: the Land was not holy because inhabited by a holy people but was a holy gift of the Lord, a gift delivered in promise, to a non-autochthonous people...

...In contrast to the "proud, elitist culture of Israel," Christianity and its successors directed a terrible hatred "at the highest, the noblest aspects of human achievement...

...His novels deal with dream-like deformations, meaningless violations...

...Throughout the novel the Dutchman proclaims that he is at a midpoint--he is either between "islands" or states of consciousness...

...02167 Commonweal: 221 ea ~< ' . [] 1 to me that they are identical.' " I think that this comment--even if it is not really said by his wife---captures the special flavor of the novel...

...Rieff is apparently so stiffnecked as to be irrevocably opposed to such a project...

...There are many dreams--in one the Dutchman walks across a "field of blood"--which dazzle me...

...Besides Washington politics, there is also literary politics...

...Honestly facing the short-comings of the church's response to matters of sex, Rinzema discusses the biblical view of sex, the anti-sexual tradition in Christian theology, and Victorian morality...

...Hawkes writes a philosophical thriller, a dream work which, like the white whale, eludes our rational comprehension...

...Nothing is more annoying, of course, than a person "right from the start...

...We find here no clear demarcation between "life," dream, and fiction...

...Above all, his clear penetration of Puritan cant, which has unleashed upon him a righteousness as old as Salem, singularly exposed the mixed motives of New York literary life today...

...I also wander...

...A great many persons who began the sixties as conservatives, or as apolitical, became "politicized," "radicalized," or had their "consciousness raised...

...Perhaps it is sentimental to believe in justice...

...The same Jew who finds his sensibilities offended by Jesus Christ Superstar has the additional vexation of knowing that it was filmed on the soil of Israel with the blessing of the Minister of Trade and Industry...

...I appreciate the cleansing anxiety it provokes...

...I quote another of his statements (published in Massachusetts Review, 1962): "the experimental fiction is an explanation of psychic materials which come to the writer all readily distorted, prefigured in that nightly inner schism between the rational and the absurd...

...It may be remembered that Clemens Kopp called our attention several years ago to the lateness of the "traditions" on which most modern Holy Land Tours depend: the earliest Christians were simply not interested in tracking the authentic traditions down...

...I stress assault...

...He refuses to write tidy plots, simple case histories, "epic" works...

...He does so without trying to disguise the non-negotiable differences...

...The three --another triangle!--merge so subtly that we cannot at any one "magical" point say: the event is "real...

...It is painful to endure a year or two in jail...

...There is not, he finds, in either biblical or postbiblical Jewish tradition any single doctrine of the Land, but rather a multiplicity of ideas unsystematically entertained...

...To make such a concession is risky...

...It probably does not work for those hasidic Jews who live as aliens in Israel, who refuse to speak its national language, and who shield themselves from what they regard as its heathen laws and practices...

...The passage is important...

...Th.e gospels were not good news, the ungospeled present has its supremely pleasant feature, the death of the church . . . . The Christian mystery-cult evolved into the most terrible rationalizing of transgressiveness ever to curse our culture . . . Christendom's love was a covert form of making war on culture in any form...

...Their structures reflect their ideas---they are, therefore, "self-contained," nocturnal, and claustrophobic...

...Rieff is too historically sophisticated and too tough-minded to accept the current myth of 'Judeo-Christian' values...

...The plot is, as the jacket note explains, about "a middle-aged Dutchman, his dissolving marriage, his involvement in two sexual triangles, his obsession with the murder he is accused of having committed on a pleasure cruise...

...Technology will be controlled and the slide of contemporary culture into barbarism will be halted not by any science of limits based on despair however fashionable--but only by a developed science of man based not only on that Christian hope implicit in the whole of Western history but also on a psychology and political theory which permit a reconciliation between the individual and society...

...It alerts us--by the way, the Dutchman's name is "clearly a repository for the English word ' a l e r t ' " - - to the confusion of movement and stasis...

...The Dutchman tells his story...

...Teachers, he insists, "are the real police...

...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Miehae| Novak (Cont...

...they also mirror these themes (or, better yet, images...

...but it should eventually help reasonable men to reason together reasonably...

...Here is an early example: "In the darkness the ship was rolling like a bottle lying on its side in a sea of oil...

...The reviewer recalls trying in vain less than a year ago to convince the mainly European editorial board of an international theological review that it could not in these days bring off a JewishChristian confrontation while simply ignoring the fact of the State of Israel...

...He shapes it so cunningly that although it resists thematic analysis, it remains a unique construction...

...Underdeveloped nations, Japan and Western Europe must compete for the additional oil that the U.S...

...And it cannot be denied that the doctrine was lost sight of, "spiritualized," or resolved into surrogates--Torah, for exampleat various stages in Jewish history, out of necessity or by choice, under the influence of dispersion, a developing individualism, or plain disenchantment in the face of political realities...

...Not only is the nineteenth-century pseudo-science of Freudianism a poor guide to understanding human psychological and social dynamics (one might as well discuss the uses of atomic power on the basis of belief in the "luminiferous ether" or genetic engineering in terms of the homunculi of the preformationists), but Freudianism proclaims the bad news of original sin without redemption, without grace or the possibility of channels of grace...

...20525...

...The mystery is thus greater than "simple" murder--it is the ungraspable nature of reality...

...It did not work, apparently, for the Sabras who several years ago were asked to identify themselves by one of the two terms we are discussing, and who did so: 58 percent said they were Israelis and only 19 percent thought of themselves primarily as Jews (23 percent were not certain...

...RVIIqc...

...Paul for more than his alleged antiSemitism), for "the human is a born criminal...

...But I have simplified the special pleasures of this novel...

...Institute in Marxist Thought June 24--July 12, 1974 "Socialism & Latin America" (Grad...

...But then again, European theology's vision on Judaism is not necessarily less clouded in the '70s than it was in the '30s...

...All Rieff, like Callahan, can do is plead for a "science of limits," regarding the possibility of which he is less sanguine than his disciple: "I see no promise for any rebirths of interdictory meaning...

...But there is an even deeper question: Does the novel move...

...Christians do wrong when they make light of this fact in trying to understand Judaism, as when they attempt to isolate Judaism totally from what they call "Zionism...

...Death, Sleep and the Traveler JOHN HAWKES New Directions, $6.95 IRVING MALIN John Hawkes is a demanding novelist...

...But ultimately we are left with nothing but rage and pride: "It is not in my gift to be positive...

...The Gospel, and the incipient Catholic Church, did these things...

...Information: Bruce Mazzie, ACTION, OCP Box P-5, Washington, D.C...

...Podhoretz already has his gloves on for the next round, and some will hate to see him win again...

...Why it should have invented such things is not clear, but the lack of clarity is not Davies' alone, nor is it ever resolved...

...The first step toward its creation, however, is for all of us to abandon the illusions and break through the repressions imposed on us by Freud and his disciples...

...The Gospel for Christianity replaced the Land as the Torah could never for Judaism...

...112 pages, paper $1.95 THE BAY CHURCH by R0nald Enroth and Gerald E. Jamison Established to meet the spiritual needs of the homosexual, gay churches are growing throughout the country...

...He is trapped, as it were in dreamcircles...

...2%5 3EF~'s ~'S,r)N AVF S E GRANO ~AP]DS MICH 49502 Commonweal: 219 the Muslim members of the Knesset...

...The knowledge was startling...

...At one point in his voyage of nondiscovery, he repeats the comments of his wife: " 'Allert,' she asked me once, 'how can you tell the difference between your life and your dreams...

...His conclusions, and his approach to such related matters as homosexuality, abortion, and premariLal sex, are firmly founded in traditional Christian values...

...At the same time, the Land did and does remain the single identifying fact that has most impressed itself on what we know today as Judaism...

...It is probably also worthy of note--not necessarily a note of approbationthat in modern times what has passed for "biblical archeology" has been, in nine cases out of ten, Old Testament archeology...

...Publisher's Weekly 144 pages, paper $2.95 cloth $4.95 WM...

...oil consumption within its production capacity for crude oil...

...but I am confident that this fiction (about fictions) will continue to enlighten me for a long time...

...But the fact that this narrator is untrustworthy (if not triad) upsets my convenient retelling of the plot...

...would import...

...Expenses paid-medical, travel, vacation, living...

...Nothings would be instantly everythings by imposing a love that was utterly mendacious...

...In the one world as in the other, justice is in short supply...

...In a more quiet time than ours, his polemical thrusts will be granted the honest vision they represent...

...He is less hopeful than Callahan perhaps because he is more clear as to where, from the Freudian viewpoint, the real root of modern evil lies: in the nasty hopefulness that came into the world with the Incarnation, the ultimate basis of all utopianism...

...He has said in an interview (published in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature, 1965) that he fights the true enemies of the novel--plot, character, and theme...

...corresponding event, recurring image and recurring action, these constitute the essential substance or meaningful density of my writing...

...I do not really know why and when (or i/) he kills the girl...

...A surprisingly good and objective account of the brand new and snowballing phenomenon of homosexual churches and religious parishes . . . an admirable early work on a subiect that will doubtless draw other writers...

...There are the recurring, brilliant images of water, mirror, and animal...

...And not all have yet conceded publicly that more often than not Podhoretz was right, substantially...

...Although Hawkes writes a maze-like work about maze-like reality, he surely does not remain a passive creator...

...National energy policy should encourage conservation through incentives to keep U.S...

...Join the universal struggle for human dignity--through education, skilled trades, agriculture, engineering, business, urban planning, medicine & other fields of community development...

...Credit) Inquire: Oliva Blanchette, Director BOSTON COLLEGE Chestnut Hill, Mass...

...One of the non-negotiable differences, it would seem, is the attitude towards the Land...

...In reading it I meet "various unfamiliar shadows," "psychic sores," the batlike terrors of sleep...

...I am, consequently, very grateful to Hawkes...

...Scratch an Israeli and find a Jew: scratch a Jew and find an Israeli...

...Davies' book, therefore, is one whose time has, as the saying goes, come...

...Hawkes not only writes about violent, insane actions-can they ever be clearly motivated...

...Since I know only what he tells me--and what I read between the lines--I cannot be completely sure of his actions...

...To praise the infantile is to praise criminality...

...Repression subserves interdicts, and interdicts, "what is not to be done," are "the primary forms of high culture," rather than the arts and sciences...

...It is a work of massive scholarship, a quality which, together with its price, will not guarantee it a large readership...

...Thus the common inability of Callahan and Rieff to provide any guidance in our current distress has theological as well as scientific roots...

...This doctrine of the Hexateuch appears only in refracted form in the prophets even though it was translated into dogma by rabbinical Judaism...

...Christianity found itself severed from the Land of its origins almost from the beginning, and from its internal genius if not yet in its emotions and aspirations...

...But it seems that, in time, Podhoretz will receive a more just and appreciative evaluation of his talent, his insights, and his courage...

...Many of these nouveaux gauches hated their past and had to expel immense self-hate: Podhoretz, refusing to undergo conversion, bore more than his share from those trying late to be lefter than he...

...Hawkes forces me to question the very foundations of my belief but in doing so, he puts me in the position of the Dutchman...

...He moves from past to present so erratically and slowly that he avoids dramatic progression...

...then becoming current...

...Davies is at pains to tell the Church what it has lost from its spiritual severance from the Synagogue...

...I have elaborated these introductory remarks because they can help us to appreciate the complexities of his new novel--a terrifying work which is, in many ways, his most brilliant achievement...

...He confidently reads the same posture back into the life of the historical Jesus, which means that he must ascribe any contrary indications to the invention of primitive Christianity...

...The problem is that they are being asked to ascribe to it a character they ascribe to no other modern state and make a specifically Christian affirmation about it, incorporate it, so to speak, into their Christian eschatology...

...When we read Hawkes, we expect to be startled, if not assaulted, by the density of maddening details...

...Nevertheless, something very much like such a position has, especially since the Six Days War and its trauma, been proposed at times by Jews to Christians as the condition of continued dialogue...

...Paul may have retained an attachment to the Jewish apocalyptic 3 May 1974:220 geography centeredin Jerusalem which he had learnt as a boy, but when the issue was drawn he thoroughly deterritorialized the promise to Abraham (the classical rabbinical source of the Land doctrine) in favor of his panethnic Gospel...

...MALIN is the author of Saul Bellow's Fiction and editor of Saul Bellow and the Critics (New York University Press...

...One or two years...

...such rebirths would be aborted by publicity...

...per capita consumption of oil and most other natural resources is well above world averages...

...Much of what Rieff says is--if not necessarily valid--stimulating and worth saying: his shock at the ignorance of students and his anger at their desertion by their teachers, and also his condemnation of abortion, his arguments for capital punishment, and his deflation of the pretentious claptrap of black militancy...

...I realize that I am unsure of events--the Dutchman continually asks "Who is safe...

...I want to complicate matters (or rather try to see the complications offered...

...For the first time, two research sociologists examine and report on the many faces of gay religion in contemporary America, including homosexual theology, gay church outreach, and the conflict of spiritual with socialsexual goals...

...FATHER BRUCE VAWTER, C.M., is chairman of the Department of Theology at DePaul University in Chicago...

...Creative powers wither...

...For if Christians must be exhorted to try to understand the Jewish point of view, so must Jews be exhorted to understand the reluctance of their Christian brethren to enter into it, whatever their notion of the historical ties that connect the two religions...

...I accept its wise violations...

...Is it true, for example, as one American rabbi has argued, that the ancient Israelite claim to the Land was never abandoned--in contrast with Islam which, by declaring jihad against Jerusalem, set it beyond its own pale--and therefore has preserved for contemporary Judaism a legal title to possession...

...Davies' research would hardly support such a juridicism...

...It would be an error," writes Davies, "to elevate any one aspect of Judaism, in this instance the territorial, to a normative position for the understanding of Judaism and the State of Israel...

...And this, despite the fact that Judaism itself appears to be of no one mind on a "theology" of Israel...

...He delights in his maze...

...The formula will not work, obviously, for now that it9 in the open we need to understand and deal with it THE SEXUAL REVOLUTIOH by J. Rinzema A frank discussion of the dizzying changes in sexual morality that touch the lives of Christians everywhere...

...Perhaps the position is that of American Jews only, who of course are most Jews...

...An active development of 3 May 1974:222...

...But it is bound to exercise considerable influence on those who do read it, and among them will be the bearers of the word to the larger audience which requires instruction to inform its deep feelings...

...The off-again onagain application of rabbinical law that prevails in Israel's restaurants and transportation systems can easily be as annoying to the resident of Haifa or Tel Aviv--and as easily ignored by him--as it can be to the casual visitor whose way of life it has never been...

...Sweating in the night's heat, feeling in the flesh of my forearms the warmth of the ship's rail, and puffing on my small Dutch cigar and staring down at the phosphorescent messages breeding and rippiing in the black waves, suddenly I knew the ship was making no forward progress whatsoever...

...Volunteer your skills [ experience in developing nations overseas and U.S...

...Lies, exaggerations, innuendoes, uninvited expressions of contempt, the pure vitriol of hatred--these result in ostracism, laceration, inner shrinking...

...Related or 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 REVIEWERS VICTOR C. Fr~aKms teaches in the Department of Government at Georgetown University...

...The Gospel and the Land: Early C h r i s t i a n i t y and Jewish T e r r i t o r i a l Doctrine W. D. DAVIES U. o/Cali]ornia Press, $15 BRUCE VAWTER The distinction between Israeli and Jew, though recognized by the constitution of the State of Israel itself, is frequently blurred inside and outside Israel, and sometimes for self-serving reasons, whether pro- or anti-Jewish...

...After disdaining Making It, Wiifrid Sheed wrote The Hack...