BOOKS
Carey, James W. & Wood, Peter & Cohen, Stu & Vellucci, Dennis & Heidenry, John
AGATHA CHRISTIE Dodd, Mead, $7.95 JOHN HEIDENRY I sometimes wonder whether the people who buy such things in bus sta-tions and off drugstore racks as westerns and Gothics, romances, science...
...But despite this truth, it is not at all clear that the form of communication signaled by a phrase like the right to know-journal-istic coverage through canons of ob-jective reporting in the secular and re-ligious press-is the most desirable arid efficacious way to organize com-munication, to link the church to-gether in shared knowledge and be-lief...
...The other dunenstan of secrecy is external, the willingness of the church to open its meetings and to share its deliberations and financial statements with the wider community...
...His arrogance made him insist on defending him-self though he had no legal back-ground, and he made many errors of judgment that probably affected the outcome of the trial...
...On this point Ostling is partially correct: this historic gulf between the hierarchy, clergy and laity must be bridged and the community must be brought into a Ml, knowledgeable and influential role in the church...
...The "atmosphere" of a Christie who-dunit seems to be its weakest point...
...This is natural, for Marchetti's experience was at the upper echelons of the agency...
...That day Agee formally resigned...
...Ali has "one of the cagiest inner circles since Cardinal Richelieu...
...And I must finally complain that the method by which murder is committed in this instance is just about the most far-fetched in the annals of crime...
...Clay, "Don't let them get bigger than you...
...He has investigated Ali thoroughly, or as thoroughly as can be expected...
...By January, 1970, he had begun working on a book about the CIA...
...We have before us then an impor-tant and reasonably well written book...
...This too is missing...
...Though Parker's argument is overstated and his lengthy explanations of New York criminal law and the Kinsey statistics on oral sex are not really relevant to the Chessman case, this is an interesting analysis of a unique and tragic trial DENNIS VELLUCCI...
...On page 41 I had changed my mind and reversed mur-derer and victim, but on page 69 re-turned steadfast to my original posi-tion...
...to isolate Cuba and reduce any So-viet influence in the hemisphere...
...So the kind Of Ali we get is still up to us, a reflec-tion of what he thinks he sees in our faces...
...But even if we grant the legitimacy of the doctrine, why should it be ap-flied to the church...
...The concept of the public's right to know, even in a strictly secular con-text, is less an articulate doctrine of clear import than a semantic beacon paraded out by publishers at any hint of criticism...
...Sheed's prose, in contrast, is vibrant and amusing...
...He is like a little boy watching the action from a knot-hole in the wall...
...I could work die whole thing out if I were to put in the effort of a lifetime: but only pathological illiterates have the neces-sary vocabulary to perform the task effortlessly...
...After approach-ing every-major publisher in the United States, all of whom demurred, a small, new publisher, Stonehiil, was found and die book finally appeared in print here...
...For myself I am like Lamb and have a curiosity about everything in the form of a book...
...In October of 1971 he decided to speak out and sent a letter to the Uruguayan leftist periodical, Marcha concerning CIA meddling in Uruguay-an elections...
...He further argues that the right of privacy, historically supported by the church, has led to a pro-secrecy bias that' often sacrifices the common good to this right...
...He studies Ali's re-lationship with his father...
...It must do this simply to survive as an institution, a rather important consideration...
...And yet, somehow, it doesn't complete-ly succeed...
...It concluded with the words: "Peter, if boxing is really what you want to do, I mustn't stop you, but remember, there can only be one Muhammad AIL" There can only be one Muhammad Ali...
...The first is secrecy relative to members of the church...
...So Ali, like a noble onion, has his many layers and it is impossible to strip them all away...
...AGATHA CHRISTIE Dodd, Mead, $7.95 JOHN HEIDENRY I sometimes wonder whether the people who buy such things in bus sta-tions and off drugstore racks as westerns and Gothics, romances, science fiction, detective novels, and just plain best-selling trash, ever feel curious about the volume in the next bin by Flaubert or Kafka...
...his use of Allah is likened to Catholic football teams "hastily whispering Hail Marys...
...the Everest of our profession...
...We'll never know...
...In describing the conflict between Ali's career and his religious convictions, Sheed writes of Ali "the celebrity creature": "Some day Muslim wisdom may drag him from the limelight, but it won't be easy...
...He refers to Ali as the "Renaissance Man" and dotes upon his "diamond studded pelt...
...These, however, are comments about what the book is not...
...So catch him now, like a cat, purring and lick-ing his whiskers...
...The facts that the "red light bandit" never kilted anyone and that he was never successful at any of his rape attempts were obscured by his ob-noxious personality...
...Mailer's boxing prose tends to thomp and thwack...
...However, Sheed senses that Ali "could make a formidable spiritual leader...
...and read a book or two apiece by Le Carre', Chandler, Spillane, Ross Macdonald, Carr, Ellery Queen, and Dame Agatha herself...
...Throughout, Sheed also maintains a simple fluidity, a form which is appealing, a quality which is enjoyable...
...can church, particularly as it regards church finances...
...We have long feared these truths...
...First, by examining secrecy as it is currently practiced by the Vatican and the Amer...
...Nevertheless, what Sheed does re-veal is fascinating...
...He worshipped- st the shrine of fame for a long time before he heard of Allah and he still bows in that direction every time he sees a Brownie or a typewriter...
...He has succeeded in blowing away much of the Ali-grand-illusion and, in its place, cultivated a sound understand-ing of Ali as a breathing reality...
...The church must maintain a structure of communication and a notion of truth and participation quite at variance to that signaled by the right to know...
...To him I was going to be his next little Caucasian drawing-card-his next slugger with muscles like little ripe pumpkins...
...Second, he contrasts this secrecy with what he takes to be a sixteen century tradition of the church of openness and sharing...
...Sheed's Catholic background shows...
...Wilfrid Sheed does not give us the answer...
...As the church has become less central to and increasingly powerless in society, the power of the press has been enhanced and the role of the newsman elevated, if not by trade-though that is worth considering-then by coin-cidence...
...you are there...
...For the most part Sheed's admoni-tion for Ali is tempered and balanced...
...On the other hand there is the time pressed highbrow who is still only half way through that paperback by Nietzs-che and just beginning a new biography of Henry James- both uncomfortably read under the volcano of fourscore un-opened books he recklessly purchased every time he got with five miles of a bookstore...
...Agee traveled to Montreal, to Paris in search of a pub-lisher and to Cuba for research ma-terials...
...Inside the Company: CIA Diary PHILIP AGEE Stonehill, $9.95 STU COHEN Thanks to two disillusioned CIA of-ficers, a former state department em-ployee, and a series of Congressional investigations, the American people are beginning to learn about their "invisi-ble government...
...Like St...
...The descrip-tion of his indoctrination is fascinating, especially the growing boyish pleasure in being a member of a "secret so-ciety": I'll be a warrior against commu-nist subversive erosion of freedom and personal liberties around the world-a patriot dedicated to the preservation of my country and our way of life...
...Parker is most critical, though, of Governor Edmund Brown, an opponent of capi-tal punishment who did not grant clemency because it would not have been to bis pefltieal advantage at the time...
...he argues that the curtain of secrecy was drawn only with the birth of the printing press...
...Secrecy to the Church RICHARD N. OSTLING Harper d Row, $6.95 JAMES W. CAREY Ostling's book is sub-titled "A Re-porter's Case for the Christian's Right to Know...
...The, most exciting revelations, how-ever, have come from a man who spent 12 years as an operations officer, on the line in Latin America, Philip Agee...
...Sticking every institution into the coarse blender of the right to know merely enhances the monopoly of the newsmen and the homogeneity of society...
...He suggests that the church would receive better treatment on school aid questions if it were more open on financial matters...
...Any other aspect of this book, or judgment thereupon, it would be an inconsequence to dwell upon or pronounce...
...Per-haps the fact that these latter books never seem, to these piranhas of pop-ular literature, to be bought, while their own fare is ever being freshly restocked, is substitute enough for a critical attitude...
...The excellent book by Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, explores the structure and policies of "the company" (as it is known internally...
...But to pursue such values through abstrac-tions like the right to know is to chase illusions...
...Unfortunately, it is not a very good case...
...As anyone vulnerable to pub-licity already knows, in Curtain the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot solves his last case and dies...
...for "discussions...
...When I got home my father must have misinterpreted my in-toxicated smile for genuine enthusiasm, because the following day he placed a solemn note upon my bed...
...If the church still has faith in itself, it will create a style of participation and a form of communication, a sense of truth and freedom, consistent with its Own traditions and doctrines...
...You can-not express emotions merely through exclamation points...
...A British publisher, Penguin, with a solid interest in the third world, gave him a contract...
...The Dominican adventure, the use of U.S...
...He finally fled to London and began utiliz-ing the resources of the British Mu-seum...
...He radically underestimates the hostility toward the church except as its beliefs become indistinguishable from those of the larger community, though his own book testifies to the irritation provoked when it marches indifferent to fashion-able doctrine...
...Hie characters operate in a sterile landscape that only those who have seen Mar-garet Rutherford in such glorious sleuthings about as Murder Most Foul are able to make allowances for...
...His work at the Olympics is apprecia-ted by the chief of the Mexico City station, Winfield Scott...
...But whether such a doctrine and the at-tendant procedures increase knowledge, excavate the truth, improve communi-cation, or aid the church in its spiritual and pastoral mission is moot...
...Mu-hammad All is sparkled with beautiful rows of color-velvet photographs covering Ali's Olympic yean up to the present Nuance of action and delicate photographic statement of each plate lend an added pleasure, an added in-terest All in all, Sheed has done well...
...Ostling at-tempts to make a case for the Chris-tian's right to know in three ways...
...It has been said that if Muhammad Ali had been written by a street-kid like Jimmy Bres-lin or a professor of humbug like Mail-er, the book would have been as predic-table as one of Ali's fights...
...The Quito CIA station launches a campaign against a leftist minister and suddenly, "Araujo's out...
...His family was visited by company representatives...
...Fame was always what it was all about" he says to explain why Ali became "a champion who refused to sit still in his robes and make like an archbishop...
...Not anything equivocal either like toppling over the edge of the Retchenbach Falls...
...Finally, he makes a "case for candor," a moral justification for the right to know, and brings all Christian churches under its imperatives...
...So now the press uses its moral stricture-"the right to know"-to bring other institutions in line with journal-istic need and imperative...
...As Parker puts it, "Chessman seemed prepared to throw out the rule book and every-one else followed suit...
...However, oae thing still remains uaclear: Vyhatfs really lying down there within the basement of Ali's soul...
...MUHAMMAD ALI WILFRID SHEED Crowell, $19.95 PETER WOOD I remember the day Well...
...He vali-antly and unconvincingly argues for greater openness on the part of the church-a virtue, to be sure, though not for the reasons put forward...
...It is about the best we can get in secular matters, but it is not fertile ground for the Holy Spirit and that after all must be a Christian con-cern...
...Marines to assure the defeat of Juan Bosch's popu-lar constitutionalist government at the military's hands, was an opening chink in Ague's cold war armor...
...What it is is a frighteningly clear window on a world supported by public funds for longer than some of us have been born...
...Wilfrid Sheed has said the same thing to me, only in his book- written because "Even writers on eco-nomics and botany [are] tempted to have a whack at him [Ali...
...Now we know them beyond any doubt What shall we do with the knowledge...
...After Watergate we know that jungle telegraphy may be the only reasonably reliable system of reporting...
...and those who wish to see just how pure their deductive capabilities are will find the opportunity here...
...Convicted on seventeen counts in-cluding robbery, kidnapping and "un-natural sex acts" (the 1948 euphemism for forced oral sex), Chessman was not a typical criminal...
...He fancied ' himself an American Francois Villon, Parker writes, "to rebel by robbery...
...He quotes with approval Monsignor Vincent Yzer-mans' statement that it "is merely to state the case that newsmen only make mistakes when the sources of informa-tion are closed to them and they have to revert to the 'jungle telegraphy sys-tem of reporting...
...However, there are two di-mettsions to secrecy...
...This is Agee's great failing-the book is cold...
...Every so often, however, it squirts out and seems to drip off the page...
...But in all fairness, Ali's soul, like his face in the ring, might very well be untouchable too-just another elusive target, which also floats like a butterfly...
...The last sections of the book are taken up with some of its most ex-citing moments-the writing of the manuscript, itself...
...He brings in morsels of elegant humor and reading him is like tasting little hors d'oeuvres ("Snapping out jabs like a wet towel...
...He fit in easily and worked very effectively until April 28, 1965: "I don't quite understand this invasion of the Do-minican Republic...
...Real diaries are full of ephemera-little flashes of stuff which, although unimportant in retro-spect, give the work flavor and body...
...An assignment to the 1968 Olym-pics in Mexico City comes up and he snaps at it as a way of making poten-tial job contacts outside the agency...
...And yet so rarely, I find, with any real grace...
...Frank J. Parker's well-documented book is not an argument for< Chess-man's innocence, but a criticism of a legal system in which the abuses that are permitted to exist can cost a man's life...
...But one would be hard-pressed to argue that such is the product of the right to know, for our secular press is a tissue of distortions, lies, propaganda, pub-lic relations and even occasional truths...
...But, when he goes one step further and tries to un-cover Ali's soul Sheed begins to stum-ble...
...On page 35 I had guessed the iden-tity of the murderer, by the next page knew the victim, and on page 112 de-duced the motive...
...he has inspired more good writing . . . than anyone in the current sports world...
...Are they accurate...
...I understand the forbid-dingness of the New York Chancery Office, but how does it contrast with the imperiousness of the New York Timert I think Ostling is correct in arguing against certain aspects of clerical privilege and secrecy but is news-men's privilege and secrecy, which but-tresses "the right to know," another case...
...Not only because some of the names belong to Presidents, senators, police chiefs, or high ministers of state but because the inclusion of such names helps corroborate the events re-ported...
...Sheed's book is, indeed, good writing...
...Perhaps if westerns and Gothics and romances are seldom popular with ser-ious readers, white detective fiction continues to be read in every quarter, that is because almost uniquely in literature it calls upon the analytical powers of the mind...
...If it has lost this faith then the cosmetic surgery of a notion like the public's right to know won't do it any good...
...Even when he mentions emotions (rarely) he is of course writ-ing of reconstructed feelings...
...I should mention the graphics...
...The suspicion, therefore, arises that Ostling's use of the "Christian's right to know" will serve largely to make the church easier for newsmen to cover...
...He desires to re-move all impediments to journalistic access, to streamline that old hulk along the lines of a modern public il-lations organization, to festoon it with briefings/ press conferences, back-grounders and press releases...
...This is mere whbnsy...
...When Agee's con-version comes we are emotionally un-prepared to accept it and it becomes difficult to accept at face value...
...And while Chessman's own behavior inside and outside the courtroom was responsible for his execution, the other principals in the trial can hardly be exonerated...
...The writing here never approaches real analysis and the attempt unneces-sarily clutters die whole...
...I do not underestimate the difficulty in covering a national bishops' conference, but it is scarcely a less iso-lated conclave than is Ostling's employ-er, Time Inc...
...As for motive I should think that Dame Agatha, like many of her colleagues, often cheated her readers-as here-by trespassing into the realm of science fiction...
...It has been fifteen years since Caryl Chessman was executed in California after a 12-year stretch on death row...
...Ostling's answer: because of the odiousness of secrecy...
...Nor is this mere stylistic quibbling...
...next week he will be in the desert fasting and scourging himself...
...In 1956 Agee was a bright, patriotic and bored college graduate looking for something mean-ingful to do with his life...
...Ostling argues that "full freedom will come when the secular press, the Catholic press, the laity and the gen-eral public insist on their right to know...
...Yet, for alt of his insights into the alchemy of this marvelous thing called Ali, I got the tickling, impression that Sheed felt timid, out of place in his new environment...
...I should say prick of con-science but that would sound elitist...
...His perceptions and aware-nesses, though detached, are sensitive and keen, not unlike the right anten-nae of a nimble ant Sheed discovers Ali...
...For-tunately for Sheed, as well as for us, these romantic lapses are few and far between...
...It was a little earlier than I had expected...
...Yes, readers, Book Inspector Hei-denry is puzzled by this and almost every other detective novel he has read...
...Agee's most important decision about the book was, ". . . to name all the names and organizations connected with CIA operations and to reconstruct as accurately as possible the events in which I participated...
...Doesn't anyone read Simmel any longer on the positive values of se-crecy...
...I bless my stars for a taste so catholic so unexcluding...
...Excessively pious hopes, I think...
...The more you understand him today the less you will know tomorrow...
...Agee adopted a diary for-mat and Inside the Company presents itself as a (reconstructed) diary of the times it describes...
...It is in praise of the com-monsensical sons and daughters of the pioneers that they buy one book at a time and read it...
...No more hiding behind theory and hypothetical cases...
...Another weakness although less seri-ous, is Agee's occasional bursts of rhetoric...
...One year later Agee is back in Wash-ington, separated from his wife, work-ing on the Mexican desk at headquar-ters, and desperately looking for a way out...
...Perhaps the secret of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was that he was above all a gracious man of letters...
...We are at last dis-covering truths long known to those in countries where our "secret police force" plies its trade...
...He approvingly quotes Bernard Haring to the effect that the basic right of the community is to speech that is absolutely trustworthy...
...The reader doesn't experience a sense of immer-sion as one would, say, if it had been handled by other occasional boxing writers-like Mailer...
...He remains detached...
...each word seems to have been typed by a left-hook...
...Here, in fact, I am, quite willing to rub shoulders with the millions who for more than fifty years have turned to Dame Agatha Christie in moments of special loneli-ness like a train journey...
...But its uniqueness contributes to the good of the general society as well, for it is only where there are distinct, plural-istic institutions that freedom can flourish...
...The hearings have concentrated upon CIA activities within our borders...
...IN BRIEF CARYL CHESSMAN: The Red Light Bandit, by Frank J. Parker...
...Those qual-ities were to lead him into the com-pany, just as his sensitivity and changing conceptions of political mo-rality were to lead him out...
...Here we have, apparently, a chef ttoeuvre, written in the forties and or-ginally intended for posthumous pub-lication...
...He, a self-professed "ramshackle Cath-olic" sees aspects of Ali's crescendoing career through the eye-glasses of fan own faith...
...By September, the rift is widening: The more I think about.the Do-minican invasion the more I won-der whether the politicians in Washington really want to see re-forms in Latin America...
...Scott asks Agee to transfer to political work after the Olympics...
...On page 238 like a doornail is he dead...
...Miraculously, Sheed does stop short and refuses to classify Ali's perspiration as holy water...
...but also to produce great literature...
...Nelson-Hall, $8.95...
...Almost immediately an old friend front the CIA ap-peared with "advice...
...And I was always aware of Sheed , the intellectual, the outsider who poked and stabbed for the truth from afar...
...He further avers "openness increases respect for Catholicism in the broader society and enhances the influences of the faith...
...I've taken over my first operations and met my first real-live agents-at last I'm a genuine clandestine operations officer...
...Cassius success destroyed me," says Mr...
...However, till now his good writing has been exclusively "in and around the arts" where he is regarded as "the New York intellectual's ideal of a thinking man's Catholic...
...Anyone who can will the future, or fauinf that, invent the past is in business...
...Looking toward Ali's future Sheed re-alizes that Ali's "Quitting boxing has to be a sickening wrench" and "his first clumsy flirtation with retirement may not be altogether a hoax but more like dipping your toe in boiling water and yanking it out again...
...Sheed gets to the navel of the situation...
...I pranced home from the gym and bounded up the stairs like a little bullet "Dad," I said, flattery still purring within my veins, "Sid Martin wants me to go pro...
...The Constitution does not protect the pub-lic's right to know, only freedom of expression-quite a different thing...
...Martin, the trainer of Emile Grif-fith, had been watching me box and I guess he liked what he saw, (or thought he saw...
...He was befriended by a man and a woman who planted a bug-ged typewriter on him...
...It is somehow possible to endorse Virginia Woolfs noble snobbery and yet want to remain a solid democrat...
...This format is valu-able and helps to impart a sense of immediacy to the events...
...For the first time, in Agee's book, we have a detailed account of the training of CIA officers...
...But there are also inherent defects...
...The letter, he admits, ". . . was a mistake...
...He understands the inevitable futility of such a search: "If Ali is an enigma, it is not because he hides things but because he shows so many of them and they are all different...
...Parker believes that Chessman's ex-ecution was a miscarriage of justice, regardless of whether or not he was guilty of the crimes for which he was convicted...
...Nor was this labor undertaken while I was on a trip, and needed to be amused, but in the gloom of my study...
...Prosecutor J. Miller Leavy displayed "a true killer's instinct," and Judge Charles W. Fricke, who sentenced more men to death row than any other judge in the history of California, was "a highly representative specimen...
...I think I may not have chosen the right career after all...
...But in teaming Sheed's class with Ali's sass, Sheed, the book promoter, like a fight promoter, has commanded ring-side attention...
...After 3 successful years in Ecua-dor, Agee is transferred to Montevideo, Uruguay, a step up the ladder...
...While Ostling, in the name of the people's right to know, pleads for an end to secrecy in the church and the elimination of clerical privilege, he tes-tifies, though implicitly, to the secrecy of the press and the privilege of the journalist...
...Once achieving the status of an op-erations officer and on bis first assign-ment in Quito, Ecuador, there is a growing sense of power, too...
...Sheedian insights glow on every page...
...Ali is almost as famous as Pope John...
...He is more than aware of the potential dynamite and personal danger inherent in the enterprise: "One word to the Mexican service and I get the one-way ride to Toluca-except it's a lovely way to go, disappearing down one of those canyons...
...As a result his wife refused to allow his children to come to Europe for a visit The agency thus hoped to force Agee back to the U.S...
...they are the verbal talismen of our time...
...As usual the plotting and clue-dropping is so preposterous as to defeat utterly the normal genius of the human mind...
...In Curtain Qame Agatha has written an almost exclusively mathematical skeleton of a novel...
...And, after all, have I not memorized my Sherlock Holmes, that Don Quixote of Edward-ian England...
...Therese of Lisieux he chooses everything...
...He placed more importance on his public image than on his life and was overwhelmed with the fame mat came with his trial and his subsequent books...
...Too many times sentences began with a limp: "What I sense is . . ." or "Does this mean . . ." or "But I wonder . . ." Sheed's intellect seems to have been humbled...
...The transformation of the First Amend-ments into a public right has proved to be a rather arduous undertaking for the courts, and whether the docI'm of the right to know is a better protection against tyranny than is ffee-dota of expression no one quite knows, though I eertainly have my doubts...
...It is only with Muhammad Ali that Sheed lends his talent to the under-nourished area of boxiana...
...Increasingly toward the book's conclusion the reader is lectured about politics, economics and the class strug-gle...
...It is this decision which gives the book its flavor and impor-tance...
...Not longr alter the vfcit Agee found himself followed in the streets...
...I share Ostling's desire to end se-crecy and to enhance openness, shar-ing and participation...
...The thought of more covert operations was repellent and, thus, "One more CIA career comes to an end...
...The fact that I was wrong on all counts at book's end did not affect my opinion that I should have been right...
...It does confirm, how-ever, what many of us have suspected -that there has been a reversal of roles of the 2nd and 4th estates...
...It is something like the same feeling I get when throwing aside a half-finished crossword puzzle...
...A great diarist, say Samuel Pepys, speaks not only of events but also of their emotional con-tent...
...This is less the beginning than the end of freedom...
...While Ostling chastises the 1947 Commission on Freedom of the Press for never really making a case for the right to know, he should mention that no one has made much of a case for it in the interim...
...As with groceries, what is good is fresh and what is stale is bad...
...And so it goes, recruiting and pay-ing agents, tapping telephones, writ-ing outright lies for propaganda pur-poses-and always with the same goals...
Vol. 103 • February 1976 • No. 4
