BOOKS
Malin, Irving & Remini, Robert V.
In the meantime, this is one of very few volumes in the immense Marian literature addressed to the educated general reader. It is a pity that it is not better. The Takeover MURIEL...
...He wished to say that he was glad to see so much essential agreement...
...The American Republic will in my opinion never celebrate another Centennial," wrote an embittered young freshman at Princeton University...
...And they each do it in a unique and interesting way...
...Gore Vidal resumes his fictional narrative of the adventures of Charles Schermerhorn Schuyler, begun so winningly in Burr: A Novel, with Schuyler's return in 1876 to America, after an extended stay in Europe, to recoup his fortunes by arranging a marriage of convenience for his daughter and negotiating his appointment as United States Minister to France...
...But in different ways they each seem to carry an identical message: .that the year 1876 was a disaster in American history, and that we need to look back at it because we appear to be uncomfortably close fo it in this our Bicentennial...
...These vignettes are often short, some less than two or three pages, and hardly more than extended notes...
...What was more important was Governor Wallace's electoral vote total...
...That young freshman was Woodrow Wilson...
...It must be added, however, in all fairness, that in these short vignettes, Bergamini packs a great deal of factual information and not a few historical judgments about the United States and its people during its Centennial Year...
...So much for dire predictions about the Republic...
...And to acquire i t - - indeed to amass fortunes of hundreds of millions of dollars--became the raging passion of many who did not hesitate to affront any decency if they thought they could get away with it, including stealing the presidency...
...It is not something you read in one sitring, or even two...
...he takes over the "divine" task of passing judgment on his "cruel" employer...
...OOOOOOOOO CORRESPONDENCE (Continued/rom page 3) proximately ten million popular votes, Mr...
...Dean Hopko, who is on the faculty of St...
...So labor and wealth are represented...
...Maggie, the heroine, is a wealthy lady who owns (or tries to own) houses, people, and antiques...
...His most recent book is The Achievement o/ William Styron (Georgia U. Press...
...For the most part the books are charming and pleasant and superficial...
...The book opens with President Grant celebrating the New Year in the White House and goes on to such things as Bell speaking his first words into the telephone, A. T. Stewart, ~he multi7 Janum~ 1977:26 millionaire New York merchant, dying, Jacques Offenbach arriving in America, Brigham Young celebrating a birthday, Wild Bill Hickok being shot dead, the presidential nominating conventions and the election...
...Nixon's plurality was 223,346 votes---then neither he nor Mr...
...Although he tells his delinquent believers --hippies, oddballs, and con-men---that he understands the true faith, he is only another false prophet who, like Maggie, refuses to see through money...
...He convinces himself that he is descended from immortal Diane...
...But Maggie cannot completely "take over the world" because she cannot control superior, mysterious forces...
...Maggie is "stupid...
...Only money mattered...
...I f we merely accept the "mad" goings on--the pairing of servants and masters, the odd speech-patterns of foreigners (English, Italian, and American), and the shifting powerplays--we are inclined to dismiss them as an odd jumble or mistake...
...pseudo-mystical concepts, prophecies, and earthly life...
...It opened with an original but uninspired musical composition by Business was booming in postCivil War America and . . . the rich and especially the newly rich were accumulating and spending vast fortunes...
...He pointed out that the Indians in Maine had a Jewish lawyer...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Sgetnfeh (Cont...
...however, if California had gone to Senator Humphrey--and it could have since Mr...
...Besides, he is rather naive as to what history is all about...
...She controls the moneyflow...
...THOMAS ].,ASK rose to order...
...A GENTLEMAN rose to protest that Mr...
...The Takeover maintains that only one kind of truth can comfort us--to play with the title of her first nov.el--and that heavenly wisdom can barely be glimpsed in earth-bound texts...
...Although it seems made for Hollywood--the casting of the jet-set characters would make a movie in itself--it is underneath all the glittering and showy details, a meditation upon the relation of art and religion...
...I suppose somewhere, in Heaven perhaps, there is a Platonic history of the world, a precise true record...
...She reminds us, as she did in her first novel, that she as writer is on uneasy ground...
...Send ~:~[~.~.p or...
...Poor Matty...
...The things he has suffered even after death...
...But Spark must lie in order to crea~e truth and to instruct us about spiritual life...
...she is (he materialistic queen...
...She implies that many readers will settle for cosy coincidence, delightful reading and forget that her novel pursues other directions...
...1876 included other shockers...
...Nixon would have had a II Vou Love Words, y ou:!l Io~ VERBATIM, The Lanouage Quarterly .oqm~mg...
...Spark is concerned with possession--all kinds of possession...
...Once we do, we see that it deals with the passing of eras, religions (save one...
...John D. Bergamini weaves through the major political and social events of the year with an almost day by day account of what was going on, like a Commonweal: 25 diary, hopping from place to place around the country (and sometimes outside the country) and dropping in on such diverse figures as Mark Twain, Henry Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Brigham Young, William Dean Howells, Woodrow Wilson, Emily Dickinson, Peter Cooper and many others...
...General Ulysses S. Grant was reluctantly concluding two terms in office as President of the United States, much to the relief of .the American people...
...Thomas Hopko The purpose of this book is to enrich our knowledge and awareness of the Holy Spirit by infusing them with the learnings of the great tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church...
...There is an odd--and, I must add, an ancient --battle between art and divine truth...
...Hubert is perhaps more dangerous than she...
...He cheered up...
...There were bright moments like the performances mounted by P. T. Barnum and the publication of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer...
...Perhaps the best way to grasp its central meaning (and pattern) is by studying its title...
...ROBERT V. REMIIql teaches in the history department at the University of Illinois...
...wnn ~w _lgL:~'UI .of language...
...Nothing holds it together...
...1876 A Novel GORE VIDAL Random House, $10 The Hundredth Year: The United S t a t e s in 1876 JOHN D. BERGAMINI Putnam's, $12.95 America in 1876: The Way We Were LALLY WEYMOUTH Designed by Milton Glaser Vintage Books, $7.95 ROBERT V. REMIN...
...Lally Weymouth, in a profusely illustrated and over-sized paperbackm necessitating the naming of the designer of the book as joint author on the coverwprovides pictures and text to eight of the most significant developments of the Centennial Year...
...She refuses, except toward the novel's end, to admit ,that she is simply another "servant...
...The Takeover MURIEL SPARK Viking, $8.95 IRVING MALIN Muriel Spark is a disturbing writer because she refuses to offer plain sermons...
...Then he felt dejected again...
...SOMEONE observed that the best minds of the New York intellectuals were deceased...
...In some ways the Weymouth and Glaser book is the most fun of all...
...This was the first World's Fair held in this country...
...But disputes over the returns from Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida and Oregon were allowed to go before a congressionally-created Electoral Commission and after an incredible amount of bribery and skullduggery, the election was snatched from Tilden and handed to Hayes...
...It ends in New York, on December 31 with James Gordon Bennett getting drunk...
...Public and private morality was appallingly low...
...Hear, hear...
...She is usually correct...
...Also he was determined to peddle that old chestnut about Martin Van Buren being the illegitimate son of Aaron Burr...
...she never underlines her articles of Catholic faith...
...John Bergamini is even less successful than Vidal in treating the Centennial Year...
...It is difficult to imagine a worse year than 1876...
...The author provides generous excerpts from the writings of the great fathers and saints of the Eastern tradition-writings not easily accessible to the Western Christian---as well as thoughts from modern Eastern theologians...
...Nixon received 301 electoral votes to Senator Humphrey's 191...
...They lack original research in the scholarly sense and therefore have nothing new or profound to say about the Centennial...
...Former social position, good birth, good breeding went for nothing...
...He has no skill in understanding or communicating the problems of the lower classes...
...Gone were the great days of the Livingstons and the Van Rensselaers in New York, the Carrolls in Maryland, and the Byrds in Virginia...
...Scandal enveloped the government...
...It cornpels us .to search beneath the painted surface...
...Nixon's election was with 43.4 percent of the popular vote---the lowest percentage for a winning candidate since Woodrow Wilson's election in 1912...
...Bribery flourished...
...America in 1876 Richard Wagner, and included the appearance of President Grant and Dora Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, who started the giant Corliss steam engine, 1,500 horsepower monster, which was the principal attraction of the Fair, despite the demonstration of Alexander Graham Bell's new gadget, the telephone...
...nothing else...
...the raucous snarl of "fraud...
...The novel is, then, a battle for ownership---over people as well as house-but it does not stay on one comic level...
...The year 1876 opened with a heartfelt cry for "reform" and ended wifh OOOOOOOOO REVIEWERS oEonoE A. LmVeEc~ is professor of theology at Yale University...
...Kramer's presentation was itself McCarthyist, and that the honorable speaker had made it difficult for an innocent bystander like himself even to wear a red sweater without explanation...
...Her new novel is, however, especially troubling...
...c o , . . . . , usa THE SPIRIT OF GOD The Very Rev...
...The debate having reached so ,highly intelligible and amiable a point, the CHAIEMAN (Mr...
...The Takeover is, strangely enough, a fake...
...MOney back If not ple~led...
...The big celebration, however, to commemorate the Centennial was the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufacturers and Products of ~he Soil and Mine which opened in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on May 10, 1876...
...At least under its present Constitution and laws...
...Every conceivable device to steal, defraud, and abscond was brazenly practiced at all levels of business and government...
...The pictures include paintings, lithographs, portraits, cartoons, photographs and posters, and the contemporary writings range from novels, letters and newspaper accounts to diaries, memoirs, reminiscences and other historical documents...
...also the stolen election, along with the Centennial Exhibition, what it calls "The Western Empire" but is mostly Custer's Last Stand, Washington, Barnum and Tom Sawyer...
...the saloons of the city glittered with jewels and rustled with costly fabrics...
...and magnificent equipages whirled through the streets with a dash that made the 'old citizens' fairly hold their breath...
...In his attempts at reconstructing the past for his novels he goes to a great deal of trouble to get it right...
...KRAMER with all possible respect for the gentleman in the red sweater, replied that ideas with the power to kill were being disseminated through journals --buggery, for example...
...Hubert rereal"ks to himself at one point: "Eras pass . . . . They pass every day...
...Sometimes these pieces form a continuum, but more frequently not...
...An UNIDENTIFIED GENTLEMAN rose to say that the Jewish cats in the Thirties and Forties hadn't done anything that Mr...
...He "takes over" his flock, but he is seduced by his own words...
...1876: A Novel is not nearly as successful as Burr: A Novel probably because Vidal was more passionately involved in the latter, work on account of his anti-Jefferson bias...
...These old families had fallen before the spirit of the new age . . . . Fine houses, flashy and showy, sprang up on all sides...
...We must reread such passages to see that Spark moves beyond easy irony about Hubert and plants seeds of spiritual truth which bloom unexpectedly...
...Thus she provokes Spark's satiric thrusts: she lives in rich darkness "hardly needing her flashlamp...
...But what we think to be history is nothing, but fiction...
...paperbound) $3.50 Please send check with order, adding 75r postage, to Morehouse-Barlow 78 Danbury Road Wilton, Connecticut 06897 Commonweal: 27...
...Mr...
...Applause...
...But The Takeover surmounts most of its difficulties...
...MICHAEL NOVAK rose to order...
...mVlNO MXLm teaches at CCNY...
...Unquestionably, Tilden won the election...
...In his novel, Gore Vidal provides a fairly accurate portrayal of one stratum of American social and political life during this outrageous year...
...Phillips) called the meeting to a close...
...Cries of "Come, come" and "Leave off...
...Thus, he has one character say, "We cannot know any history, truly...
...Spark subtly suggests that art itself is her underlying subject...
...It rather lends itself to repeated perusal to discover hidden nuggets in the cartoons or newspaper commentaries...
...Money became the standard of social excellence...
...Gore Vidal...
...Hubert, the sometime secretary-advisor-enemy of Maggie, is also a cunning fool (if we can unite these opposite words...
...He wants truth...
...Thereafter, the President was known as "Rutherfraud" B. Hayes...
...Novak declared that the evening had been both coherent and intellectually invigorating...
...If we can return to Hubert's words about the falsity of language, we can see that Spark uses these not only to point her accusing finger at his ill-conceived plots but at her own artistic struggles...
...He certainly had the popular majority...
...Not that the year was a total disaster...
...would the New York intellectuals do about that...
...These three entertainments celebrate, in a manner o f speaking, the Centennial Year in American history...
...Mr...
...He felt dejected...
...Mr...
...But unlike the Bergamini book, which encompasses more than it can justly handle, America in 1876 examines the Centennial Year from the perspective of only eight subjects...
...His 46 electoral votes reduced the available number from 538 to 491 with 270 needed for election...
...It saw the "massacre" of General George A. Custer and his troops by Chief Sitting Bull and his Sioux warriors at the Little Big Horn, and the execution of twenty Molly Maguires, Irish coal miners accused and convicted of murdering their bosses...
...And unlike Vidal's book, which concerns itself with the socially and politically powerful, this illustrated tour of the United States considers the plight of the poor...
...His is a fragmented history...
...Superficially the plot concerns the role of money...
...Allow 6 weeks...
...He even founds a religious community to praise the primitive goddess...
...he speaks in metaphors and myths, recognizing that he can clothe his materialism in striking words: '~ concepts of property and material possession are the direct causes of such concepts as perjury, lying, deception and fraud...
...She assumes that we will get her slanted messages...
...He presents a series of interesting vignettes, widely ranging in mood, significance, location and activity...
...But he is only concerned with the wealthy and influential...
...Vladim/r's Seminary, also quotes from each of the Orthodox Church's sacraments, as well as from the Bible...
...1876 witnessed one of the great constitutional crises in American history: the disputed presidential election between Samuel J. Tilden, governor of New York, and General Rutherford B. Hayes, governor of Ohio...
...Herman Melville hadn't already done by 1850, and that maybe the New York intellectuals weren't as worried about the Indians in Maine today as they were about Israel...
...The oil shortage, the computerized accounts, the "mysterious and intangible" transformations of property--the novel is filled with reproductions and fakes--are examples of unpredictable and unknown ,aspects of the pattern that she believes she creates...
...It is a combination picture book, running narrative and extracts from contemporary writings...
...In the world of symbol, and the worlds of magic, of allegory and mysticism, deceit has no meaning, lies do not exist, fraud is impossible...
...Stirrings and noises...
...She is, after all, the owner of all of her cheracters--she possesses them--and she has to fight the very principles of lying and decei~ they practice...
...a . I .my .here) for a one-year muoocrlpuon, lUWllrl~ WNI1 the curreflt 18sue...
...Obviously, Vidal is a spoiled historian as well as a failed politician (at least he tried) and a successful writer...
Vol. 104 • January 1977 • No. 1
