Editorial
CORRESPONDENCE _9 S p l i t t i n g Hairs New York, N.YI To the Editors: Ronald Christ, reviewing Suzanne Jill Levine's translation of Manuel Puig's The Buenos Aires A//air (June 24)...
...And though some reports of grievous and systematic violation of human rights----of forced labor, for example, and of required mine-field sweeping--are not always backed by hard documentation, they are nonetheless based on persuasive accounts from foreign news reporters, reputable observers and from refugees themselves...
...WASHINGTON REPORT KILL HIM, SAVE IT It's understandable why there should be a certain amount of shock and horror at presidential and congressional backing for the neutron bomb...
...We call on you to release any individuals who are held purely because of their religious or political convictions...
...Something more is in order than a unilateral declaration from Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City that all is blessed and free in the new Vietnam...
...We call on the government of Vietnam to facilitate onthe-spot inspection by the United Nations, Amnesty International or other independent international agencies in order to assure that those in the government's charge are treated in accord with international covenants regarding human fights...
...On the other hand, how can one dismiss as illusionary so many accounts of human fights violations...
...This may indeed be the aspect of it that Bahr, as a German, finds shocking...
...By that logic, and in the wake of unrelieved reports of human rights violations in Vietnam, the "calls" of the American peace community of last spring are as valid as ever, and merit repeating: "We eaU for a complete public accounting of those detained or imprisoned indicating, as well, the charges for which they are held...
...The great virtue of the bomb is that it kills ~eople, leaves buildings mostly undamaged in its kill zone...
...More sadly, the contention was defeating in terms of its essential topic matter, for lost in the welter of words were the problems of a substantial number of Vietnamese...
...The government of Vietnam responds that it is being victimized by propagandists, that those who opposed the Thieu regime now occupy "well-deserved positions in the new society," that human fights are not being violated, and that "being detained are only those who had done so much harm to the people and the country and now continue to sabotage activities against the laws and the peaceful life of the people...
...On the other hand, when we remember the German destruction of Coventry Cathedral, of Warsaw and Lidice, it is easy, too, to understand the sheer bafflement of a German at the idea of not blowing up all the buildings available, Unless you have Sam Peckinpah directing the camera and the editing, pictures of buildings blowing up are much 19 August 1977:516...
...Readers and translators of Latin American literature, including myself, have long admired Ms...
...Copyright ~) 1977 Commonweal Publishing Co., Inc.~S and Canada: $17 a year...
...In either event, to the punctuation...
...To further state that the sole grammatical error "erupts . . . like a clinker in a coloratura aria" can only lead to a rather smug smile...
...National Serials Data Program No.: ISSN 0010.3330...
...Your reviewer may indeed relish his role in the translation police force...
...For instance, the leaky boats crammed with Vietnamese on high sea and open ocean are no phenomenon of a sudden urge to travel for travers sake...
...JAMES O'GARA: Editor JOHN DEEDY: Managing Editor RAYMOND A. SCHROTH: Associate Editor ANNE M. ROBERTSON, Editorial Assistant COLIN L. WESTEREECK, JR.: Movies JOHN FANDEL: Poetry FRANK GETLEIN: Washington BRIAN WICKER: Groat Britain ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome DESMOIfD FISHER: Dublin EDWARD S. SKILLIN: Publisher Staff: LIND& F. KAYLER, PAMELA J. FITZGERALD, HARRIETTE BALSKY COMMONWEAL 232 MADISON AVE., NEW YORK: N.Y...
...Any one of a number of typists or typesetters could have easily dropped the preposition or mistaken genuinely erred...
...These problems were--are still--too apparent to be ignored, too widely reported to be easily discounted...
...537 ILLUSTRATION: Front cover: Adapted/rom Blaine, Hamilton Spectator, Ontario...
...The first is a single instance of "comma splice": that speck of mispunctuation, known to induce fits of indignation in junior high school composition teachers when they discover it, as they often do, in classics of English prose...
...This time, however, he has simply collared the wrong person, and no amount of rubber-club bludgeoning will uncover any guilt...
...How can one minimize such unnerving incidents as the self-immolation of 12 Buddhist monks and nuns in Can Tho Province last November in protest against administrative orders redefining and drastically restricting their religious practice...
...We call for government recognition of the fight to open and free communication...
...Need we remind such a martinet of the written word that a clinker does not erupt...
...Commonweal is Indexed In Reader's Guide fo Periodical Literature, Catholic Periodical Index, and Book Review Digest...
...Perhaps Ms...
...asked Bahr...
...300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Mich...
...10016 Telephone- (21.21 MU 3-2042 A review of Public Affairs, L/terature and the Arts...
...CORRESPONDENCE _9 S p l i t t i n g Hairs New York, N.YI To the Editors: Ronald Christ, reviewing Suzanne Jill Levine's translation of Manuel Puig's The Buenos Aires A//air (June 24) accuses Ms...
...ELIOT WEINBERGER REPLY: Rereading my review (in(Continued on page 543) NEWS & VIEWS: 514 CORRESPONDENCE: 515 EDITORIAL: 515 WASHINGTON REPORT: K i l l Him, Save I t : Frank Getlein 516 UPSET AT THE POLI~: Desmond Fisher 518 A MEMORY AND A CONTRAST: Peter Steinfeis 520 LA UN-DOLCE VITA: lohn Ahem 521 THE BISHOPS PLAY III01VOPOLY: Daniel Morrissey 528 T I l E PRESS: The Night The L i g h t s Went On: Thomas Powers 530 THE SCREEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, It...
...Among Commonweal: 515 other things these sources also speak of as many as 300,000 persons being held in "re-education" camps, and of the arrest and detention of a wide range of people, including religious, cultural and political figures who had opposed the Thieu regime despite considerable personal risk...
...Since most people prefer people to buildings, at least if absolutely pressed to make the choice, the neuiron bomb strikes many as the wrong choice, an immoral choice, an Unnatural preference...
...Baez said: "I would rather err in unintentionally offending government officials anywhere in the world, to whom I would apologize later if I have been mistaken, than to offend one political prisoner whom I might now conceivably help and whom later I may never be able to reach...
...Fornllm S33.50...
...Second class postage paid at Now York, N.Y...
...Levine of "illiteracy," "tone deafness" and other sins, yet apparently is able to provide only two examples to substantiate these charges...
...An occasional translator himself, Mr...
...Rothco...
...Well, the neutron bomb is not in the class with' German death camps when it comes to killing ,people, we may as well freely admit, and it is the descendant of the German V-1 and V-2 which were used to kill masses of English civilians, but still the neutron bomb is basically designed to kill soldiers...
...in fairness to the government of Vietnamese it must be conceded that the bloodbath so many predicted after the fall of Saigon never did materialize...
...If this comment is accusatory of the government of Vietnam, and if it implies guilt where in fact there may be none, then some remarks of singer Joan Baez might be borne in mind...
...It is, no doubt, asking too much to expect any glimmer of delicacy or tact on the part of a German politician, b u t still, at least for the lifetime of people who can remember Hitler, it would be nice if prominent Germans would just shut up about other countries' weapons...
...Special two-year rate S29.50...
...If these "calls" seem imperious, they are in fact but minimal...
...Christ is surely aware that a manuscript passes through many hands between its first draft and the final printed form...
...Single copy 7Se...
...Is mankind going crazy...
...Last spring, on what seemed indisputable evidence that the new government in Vietnam was not living up to its proclamations and the hopes of its friends, the American peace community addressed an appeal to the government of Vietnam asking that it honor the concern for human rights which it had expressed both in formal agreements and innumerable conversations with peace activists...
...48106...
...Maybe this is so...
...Rather than embarrass the government of Vietnam they should challenge it to demonstrate to the world outside that this government is what it says it is...
...The second is the seeming misuse of the word "fornicate," which appears in the text as a transitive verb...
...20, and in view of its continuing and rightful demand for U.S...
...Microfilms from Vol...
...postwar reconstruction aid...
...1, 1924, to date avaUable through University Microfilms...
...Is this supposed to be the last progress...
...Levine claim that such lapses are indicative of illiteracy seems unduly harsh...
...Foreign $19...
...Challenged on her signing of last spring's appeal, Ms...
...It was a self-defeating debate for the peace activists, as no one stood to gain other than possible rhetorical victory...
...With bone~deep irony, such was the reaction of the German politician Egon Bahr of the Socialist Democratic party...
...532 VIOLET WEINGARTEN: Nancy Yanes Hoffmon 533 DESPISING HISTORY, LOllING PEOPLE: Ivan Sanders 536 BOOKS: Isidore Silver, Steve Lawson, Robert Phillips, Marie Augusta Neal, S.N.D...
...Levine's ability to transform the complex texts of Cortazar, Bioy Casares, Cabrera Infante and Sarduy (to name only a few) into remarkable English prose...
...000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 HI/MAN RIGHTS[ AND VIETNAM White House approval of a State Department request to admit 15,000 more Indochinese refugees into the United States, including 7,000 "boat people" living on vessels they used to flee from Vietnam, opens once again the disputed question of human rights in that land--this time, it is to be hoped, with results more positive...
...The appeal quickly spun off an acrimonious argument within the peace community about the purity of concerns and respective vulnerabilities to the claims and counterclaims of parties at interest in the Vietnamese issue...
...Just recently, Agence France Presse and Le Monde, the esteemed French daily, itemized additional repressions against the United Buddhist Church, against assertive publications, and individuals who obViously want a freer society than what the new government appears willing to give them...
...Printed in the USA and published bi-weekfy by Commonweal Publishing Co...
...This would seem trouble worth taking, assurance worth conveying--if it can---on the eve on Vietnam's' formal sitting in the United Nations on Sept...
Vol. 104 • August 1977 • No. 17
