Books
Malin, Irving & Murphy, Roland E.
rice President Kennedy immediately hiked Eisenhower's final Pentagon budget by 6% and that overall, on conservative estimate, military outlays increased by 15% from 1960 through 1962. Tobin...
...The infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke, no matter what their historical character, would seem to contradict this, from a theological point of view...
...Tobin correctly points out that federal nondefense purchases rose faster than defense outlays from 1961 to 1965m $5.2 billion as opposed to a reported $2.3 billionmbut he neglects mentioning that in 1965 the level of Pentagon spending was still triple that of civilian spending ($50.1 billion versus $16.8...
...But he cannot control his disturbing fears of sodomy...
...What exists is far-reaching...
...He prefers instead to say one thing---choose one role--and then another...
...7:23-24...
...He knows what to say, what to wear, what doors to open and close...
...Slocum is not an ordinary neurotic...
...If he could only control their changes, he would be happy...
...He does not pursue the thought...
...But I'm not he...
...Although he fears entrapment, he finds strange comfort in his claustrophobia...
...he perceives his perceptions...
...323...
...Something Happened JOSEPH HELLER Knop/, $I0 IRVING ~IALIN Bob Slocum, the narrator of Joseph Heller's new novel, is obsessed by doors...
...He does not like strangers in back of doors,'in back of him: "I am infiltrated and besieged, the unprotected target of sneaky attacks from within...
...Obviously, Slocum is a "maladjusted" man, but he perfectly adapts himself to other disturbed men...
...He shuts doors on them...
...I think he may be hiding inside my head with all the others I know are there and cannot find, playing evil tricks on my moods and heartbeat also...
...The final chapter on "the future of Israel" ineorporates many of the insights offered by the author in previous writings...
...Ferkiss' work by quoting more fully the two passages from which came phrases linked by me: 1. "This new world culture, despite its varied traditional components, *ill end the dichotomy between science "and humanism, mind and body, matter and spirit, East and West, tradition and 20 December 1974:274...
...he wants another pane of glass to distort the past...
...He may think that it's his father's suicide or his incomplete flirtation with Virginia (when he was 17-years-old...
...But neither does a study of Old Testament theology (conceived, as this book properly is, on the level of historical criticism) provide adequate perspective for analyzing the roles of (and even the definitions of) unity and discontinuity in biblical theology...
...His style perfectly reflects his concerns...
...The Israelite experience of Yahweh is put into their "God-talk" or theology, and the theologian of the Old Testament is directed to the "totality of the utterances...
...The chapter on wisdom (Proverbs...
...The treatment of the cult provides more or less the data supplied in McKenzie's earlier Dictionary o~ the Bible...
...Revelation" is interesting, although there is no dialogue with J. Barr concerning the validity of this category, and it ends with an introductory thumbnail sketch of each prophet...
...Slocum is "suspended...
...He dreams about sex constantly...
...FATHER ROLAND E. MURPHY, O. CARM., teaches in the Divinity School at Duke University...
...He does not know what others are doing or saying behind them...
...But if he has not chosen to do this, he has clearly and ably summarized his views on Old Testament theology in the volume under review...
...VICTOR FERKISS Reply Pittsburgh, Pa...
...McKenzie indicates that he would not share Childs' views about continuities .between the two Testaments: "the unity which exists in continuity does not exist and cannot be shown" (p...
...Does he dare to defend himself...
...He [ears measuring his universe's limits...
...Slocum is always filing things...
...Thus when" his wife and children try to appear as persons--with ambivalent motives and needs--he retreats into his mental ofrice...
...He cannot really allow them to be fully seen...
...McKenzie's claim is to have written an Old Testament theology "as if the New Testament did not exist" (p...
...He multiplies questions and metamorphoses...
...Economists can play a modest role in this process...
...And it is the final irony that Slocum, who seems so uncontrolled, finally "gains command...
...The development of "anti-wisdom" is possible precisely in terms of the problems that confront wisdom...
...But he also sees doors at home...
...He uses such words as "spirits" and "apparitions...
...It is ironic, therefore, that Slocum returns again and again--the novel circles compulsively-to the "scene of the crime...
...If they behave as the New Economists have, however, advising their powerful superiors within the .~onstraints of what the latter will find "agreeable, and prepared to serve big business and the state on any set of policy premises, little of long-term constructive value will be contributed by the profession...
...it is what lies behind the doors which really terrifies him: "Even at work, where I am doing so well now, the sight of a closed door is sometimes enough to make me dread that something horrible is happening behind it, something that is going to affect me adversely . . . . " Slocum associates doors with work...
...This no doubt involves a "judgment" on both the nature of the Vietnam holocaust and the importance and worth of the faceless Indochinese victims of the American juggernaut, but the evidence of large scale and systematic criminal behavior was as public even in 1965 as the facts about the crematoria...
...he refuses to go through doors by suicide...
...He underscores the fact that a basic personal reality, not a system, emerges from the Old Testament...
...The same can be said of his efforts to dismiss the employment and income impact of high military budgets throughout the postwar period...
...Suicide...
...He has pondered vigorously and independently upon biblical data and he never fails to express himself in a felicitous prose style...
...He is excited' by details...
...He chooses his words with care...
...I have a universe in my head...
...319...
...He hates women (the mother...
...Slocum is an outline himself...
...He has to keep them hidden...
...Ferkiss believes in a God well known to historians of ideas, the God who withdraws as men then set about engineering their own salvation...
...His clincher, that "defense spending actually declined in the years 1962-65," is disingenuous: reported Pentagon expenditures rose from $44.9 billion in 1960 to $51.6 billion in 1962, after which they leveled off to a 1963-65 average of $50.3 billion annually...
...Should anyone care, my personal assessment of the relationship of Christian belief to the human future will be set forth in the December issue of the Lutheran journal Dialog...
...Each of these five people is afraid of four people (excluding overlaps), for a total of twenty, and each of these twenty people is afraid of six people, making a total of one hundred and twenty people who are feared by at least one person...
...Tobin defends the New Economists' silence on Vietnam, their unadulterated growthmanship through the 1960s, and their tardy interest in matters of the environment and income distribution in terms of the political constraints on policy advice...
...He even babbles (to himself...
...Those who have read his earlier works will recognize the same attractive qualities here...
...Who isT) He tends to be a symbolist...
...Tobin contends that the position of the New Economists should be regarded as strictly a matter of "personal commitments and beliefs" and that it is not clear that "any national interest" would have been served by their dissociation from government...
...And his statement that "subsequent increases from 1965 to 1971 in federal civilian outlays were even more substantial: $9.4 billion" is made without any mention of the fact that during the same period military spending rose by $21.5 billion...
...I had expected some reviewers to nail me for my traditionalist natural law heresies (indeed, one sociologist who termed the book "brilliant," denounced this section as "naive metaphysical theology...
...McKenzie disclaims any attempt to write an Old Testament theology on the scale of W. Eichrodt or G. yon Rad (p...
...By 1971 the federal government was spending a reported $71.6 billion per year on the' military and $26.5 billion on the civilian public sector...
...Not a single one displayed the moral courage of a J. F. terHorst, despite far more severe provocations...
...He is the organization man...
...He hasn't the will to kill them...
...He makes doors metaphysical entities...
...Seven categories are suggested as the ways in which Israel experienced Yahweh, and these form the chapter headings: cult, revelation, history, nature, wisdom, political and social institutions, the future of Israel...
...Ben Sira is barely adverted to) and critical wisdom (Job and Ecclesiastes), or "anti-wisdom...
...He's me...
...Slocum continually asks himself the" question...
...He wholly neglects the educational and opinionshaping role of economists and other intellectuals, The solution of our basic economic problems is going to require a new awareness of relationships and possibilities of change along with a significant shift in values by mainstream America...
...It is perhaps even more minimalist and critical (rightly so, in the reviewer's opinion) of Old Testament messianism...
...The possibility that part of the civilian increase was derivative, necessary to placate labor and some minority group leaders and allow Johnson to pursue his main business--military victory in Vietnam --would hardly enter Tobin's mind...
...Slocum manages, however, to stand his ground...
...He stands at times outside of his activities...
...A Theology of t h e Old Testament JOHN L. MCKENZIE Doubleday, $7.95 ROLAND E. MURPHY One always learns much from the writings of Father McKenzie, who is presently professor of Old Testament at DePaul University...
...From mid-1965, of course, military spending took off and climbed past the $74 billion mark by 1970...
...He does not have the will to answer them once and for all...
...Eccles...
...Perhaps Slocum fears homosexuality because it symbolizes one commitment which he refuses to make...
...Even Qohelet, that representative of "anti-wisdom," admitted: "I said, 'I will acquire...
...He is, finally, something that happened...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 REVIEWERS RICHARD DUBOFF is a professor of economics at Bryn Mawr...
...it is part of wisdom...
...One may express regret over this, since there is no one on the American scene more gifted and more able than he to offer an interesting challenge and option in this area...
...The word haunts him...
...EDWARD S. HERMAN teaches in the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania...
...Is it because his father killed himself7 Would he like to become his father...
...IRVINO MAUN teaches at CCNY...
...Although we admire his crafty transformations, we also note, as he secretly does, his mad passivity...
...Johnson began bombing North Vietnam in February 1965, war contracts were being let in late 1964 and early 1965, and the stimulative expectations of military escalation were already being felt...
...He is invaded by dark forces who alter his controlled speech...
...267...
...They scratch and stick me...
...Perhaps even less convincing is the final tribute heaped upon the New Economics--that the serious problems that faced us in 1957-60, "stagnation, unemployment, and frequent recession," have been "substantially solved...
...he recounts nightmares...
...He tells us in his very first words: "I get the willies when I see closed doors...
...but it was beyond me...
...How did he get this way...
...The reviewer is unhappy with the category of "anti-wisdom...
...Paradoxically, this totality is something that no Old Testament writer experienced, but it is synthesized in the Commonweal: 273 logical discourse which is "biblical theology...
...In sum, military Outlays played a critical role in the JFK-LBJ economic "boom," and Tobin's attempt to downplay their importance is at best unconvincing...
...Such questions trouble Slocum...
...This proceeds from a faith position and its validity is then to be tested by its methodology, whether it is an honest assessment of meaning and dialectic between the two Testaments...
...Tobin is understandably defensive on the role of the New Economists in the Vietnam war...
...The reviewer is as little impressed with this strain of thought as the author is, but it is present...
...These are convenient, if not compelling categories around which to organize the abundant material...
...Slocum fears "letting go...
...But he does not know what happened...
...Tobin later asserts that "through July 1965, perhaps longer, defense was not supporting the [economy's] recovery...
...it is deep, very deep: who can find it out...
...He ends his narrative in command, knowing that his "victory" is merely another sentence of death...
...Yet as the book progresses--~an we even say that it does?--hr allows the imps to jump out of the sentences...
...In the epilogue the author takes issue with Brevard Childs of Yale, whose Biblical Theology in Crisis (1970) appeared apparently too late to be used in this work...
...he does not understand where he begins or ends...
...He recognizes other workers as his reflections...
...He is no longer himself: "I miss my mother again when I remember how poignantly I missed her when I woke this morning...
...000 000 000 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued ]rom page 251) looking into the visible works of God, including themselves, find the guidance they need for the creation of the good society and the good life on earth" (page 127...
...Ferkiss is not an atheist, but I stand by my reading of his work: God has no place in his world...
...at the same time, he laughs at it...
...Childs' concern is biblical theology--the theology of the entire Bible, both Testaments, analyzed from an unabashed Christian viewpoint...
...I will not easily forget Slocum and his doors...
...Ferkiss believes is a creator who then departed and left men to work out their own destinies unhampered by further manifestations of His power or by reminders that only He, in time's fullness, can perfect all things...
...Slocum is so obsessed by doors that he tends to regard others as shadows behind frosted glass...
...Nevertheless, he shrewdly understands that plans, charts, and files contain, like distorting glass doors, the outlines of life...
...Yet there are statements that need nuancing, such as the claim that "there is no messianism in the New Testament which is derived from the Old Testament" (p...
...He lacks the will to commit himself...
...We would also contend that deliberate mass murder on the scale of the Vietnam war left no more room for doubt on the morality of high level government participation than would helping improve the efficiency of the German regime in 1944...
...Things stir, roll over slowly in my mind like black eels, and drop from consciousness into inky depths . . . . I am infested with ghostlike figurines (now you see them, now you don't), with imps and little demons...
...he does not know what lies outside it, 20 December 1974:272 what awaits him in some outer world...
...There is room for both approaches, McKenzie's and Childs...
...He is the co-editor of The Achievement o/ William Styron (Georgia U. Press...
...The God in whom Mr...
...The statement that military outlays were not aiding recovery until mid-1965 or after is indefensible...
...He makes Happiness Charts: "Nobody in the company has yet been killed in an airplane crash, and this is highly mysterious to me, for we travel a lot by air to visit other offices or call on customers, prospects, and suppliers in other cities and countries...
...It is also interesting to see Tobin confine himself to "any national interest" as the sole criterion for determining an appropriate personal stancemthe vaunted "internationalism" of economists sometimes looks thin indeed...
...He sees Old Testament theology as the analysis of an experience (a collective experience of about a thousand years of history and literature) through the study of the appropriate written records...
...Person," for example, is just another word...
...History and nature are surely areas where Israel experienced the Lord, and here the exposition picks up in pungency and implications...
...he won't stay put...
...He is confined to his decaying body...
...I find that I have been so seduced by Slocum's personality that I have not bothered with his voice...
...Unfortunately, no notice is taken of G. yon Rad's important study of 1970, Wisdom in Israel...
...It fails to assess the wisdom movement in Israel as a multifaceted affair, a growth...
...although he would prefer to remain in his study, he is shocked to find his family--his wife and two childrenmwanting to enter...
...he plays with causes only to dismiss them, like his family, as shadows...
...I can show the spirit which pervades Mr...
...To the Editors: I am willing to agree that Mr...
...He is, however, so controlled in his speech that he forgets--or, better yet, neglects-the content...
...He speaks imagistically...
...But for a supposed historian, writing in a traditionally Catholic journal, not to be able to relate to what I was saying only illustrates the fact that the future is dark indeed and it is not the allegedly totalitarian villains like myself who are making it so...
...He does not want to perceiv e clearly...
...But Tobin does not mention the vigorous, positive support given the war by many of the New Economists--the "guns and butter" sales pitch of Walter Heller and his successors on the CEA, their willingness actively to mislead Congress and the public on the economic effects of the war, and their backing of the 1968 income surtax whose only purpose was to finance further military escalation in Vietnam...
...The doors, at least, are definite...
...He kills himself every day...
...He tells us at one point that he is one of the few people who know what "lurid" really means...
...I miss the forsaken child...
...He speaks in a flat, repetitive, charted way: "In the office in which I work there are five people of whom I am afraid...
Vol. 101 • December 1974 • No. 10
