BOOKS
Corwin, Phillip & Riemer, Jack & Deedy, John & True, Michael
diverse actions and become all things to all men. This universality made such abstractions useful not merely for American liberals but those of Europe as well. Hence its complexity and...
...He does so, however, by neglecting their very real achievements...
...MICHAEL TRUB THE HARD-BOILED DETECTIVE: STORIES FROM BLACK MASK MAGAZINE, 19201951...
...Why did God ask why...
...His chapter on Eliot concentrates on Eliot's later work, while the chapter on Malraux is exhaustingly inclusive...
...But these are the problems---or rather the opportunities --about which the bishops should be consulting theologians, social scientists and "political" thinkers of various sorts...
...It is the kind of art that draws us, pains us, and makes us grateful...
...To watch over a person who grieves is a more urgent duty than to think of holy things...
...JOHN DEEDY THE POETRY OF CIVIC VIRTUE: ELIOT, MALRAUX, AUDEN, by Nathan A. Scott Jr...
...There is much more within the story...
...18]: The Declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith has set forth reasons why "the Churchdoes not feel authorized to ordain women to the priesthood...
...And it made the American detective story a genre all its own, one in which language danced and, in Ruhm's words, "individual conscience, wit, or cunning triumphed rather than any social order...
...For what he has really done is take the midrashim, the thousands of disparate, disorganized, disjointed commentaries on the biblical stories that are scattered all through rabbinic literature and weave thorn into hauntingly beautiful and coherent psycho-biographies and ADULT VOCATIONS special program for men over twenty-one...
...Even if his pain comes from God, his pain gives him priority...
...For that reason one might say that his "main currents" are not AC but DC...
...014~ USX Commonweal: 221 roughs...
...To be able to do that, to make us see ourselves as we really are by means of the ancient words, is no "simply," no "merely" as we thought at first reading...
...Notably, the words civilization, civic and city all come from the same root, and are all intertwined in Scott's conception...
...He says: "Midrash is to Bible as imagination is to knowledge...
...Finally, Burne Hogarth...
...Why was one depressed...
...has written a highly intelligent and difficult critical study of Eliot, Malraux and Auden, who, he says, "state a kind of case . . . that the vocation of literature is to celebrate not the various and sundry commissars who tyrannize us but the City which they betray...
...IIV...
...Edited by Herbert Ruhm, Vintage, $2.45...
...It featured such writers as Raymond Chandler, Erie Stanley Gardner, Peter Collinson . . . . Peter Collinson...
...No doubt he was doing other things, perhaps holy things, at the time, as Wiesel puts it, but when your brother is suffering no one has the right to think of better things, even of holy things...
...The word and picture "scribblings" of yesterday were, in sum, not so artistically contemptuous as once pegged...
...Fortress Press, $8.50 Professor Nathan Scott Jr...
...Their resurrection as latter-day paperbacks comes partly as a result of cyclical nostalgia crazes, but also in belated realization that in that magazinc fiction and those pictorial images resided a distinct art form--not the art of Inness or the form of Poe the mystery writer, but an art form worth a second look and a second enjoyment, if not more permanent enshrinement...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 IN BRIEr STRONG, LOVING AND WISE: PRESmING IN LITURGY, by Robert W. Hovda, The Liturgical Conference, $6.95...
...He has simply transmitted some of the many tales that the Jewish tradition has woven around the biblical figures...
...All we have is a couple of lines: that they were brothers, that they both brought gifts to GOd, that GOd favored one's gift and not the other's, that one became depressed, that they quarreled, that one k i l l e d the other, that God asked him why, and that he became an exile forevermore...
...How grateful we must be to them for doing that, for two reas o n s - f o r showing us how to begin again, and so that we can now be the descendants of Seth instead of the children of Cain the Killer or of Abel the Victim...
...they illuminate with a harsh, uncomfortable glare...
...What did the first death feel like...
...That is all we know, and we a r e left with more questions in our souls than there are words in the story: Where were the parents...
...Although unnecessarily generalized and theoretical, it is still the best writing by an American on the subject...
...It is we who have kept silent, we who have been violent, we who are now in exile...
...If Jesus' humanity is thus limited to maleness the humanness of all who are not male is put in question...
...or 14.09...
...His book looks like an anthology of previously published material...
...Biannual sessions...
...Allow 6 weeks...
...My conclusion from all this is obvious: the consultative process in the Church must he extended and strengthened...
...Its pages can be read at two levels, as commentary on the ancient words and as commentary on our own situation, and perhaps they are the same...
...Let's hope that the next manual includes practical proposals and concrete alternatives, with a multiplicity of liturgies, chairs, and models...
...They diminish the concept of Jesus as fully divine and fully human_9 They equate the humanness of Jesus and of the Risen Christ with maleness...
...Diocesan congresses...
...Scott uses the word City both in the literal and spiritual sense...
...He means the Human City, as well as the urban centers where people gather to build civilization...
...Like numerous writings on education that recommend student-centered curricula, however, R fails to provide working models of just what the teacher does from day to day, and could have been strengthened by specific references to individuals and communities that have already succeeded in accomplishing what Hovda challenges us to do...
...Calling for "a radical break with habits and customs of long (and 'good') standing" and recognizing the need for the training, time, and budget that any fundamental change requires, Hovda addresses many of the fundamental questions that Christians face in moving from doctrine-centered to people-centered religious celebrations, and his summary deserves a thoughtful reading by anyone seriously interested in religion...
...And to all these whys the midrash responds...
...they should keep faith with AI Smith's wise maxim--that the solution to the problems of democracy is more democracy...
...Messengers of God: Biblical P o r t r a i t s and Legends ELIE WIESEL Random House, $8.95 JACK RIEMER Elie Wiesers new work is a strange creative achievement...
...by opinion polls...
...They were as close as arm's reach...
...Nothing comparable is being done today, except perhaps by Harold Foster of the Prince Valiant strip...
...What did it mean...
...And perhaps this is the sin of which he, as we, was guilty...
...Why did God favor one's gift over the other...
...THE PULPS, edited by Tony Goodstone, Chelsea House, $7.95...
...Or if further argument is needed: Bread and wine are part of Communion, but either bread or wine contains the whole of the sacrament...
...One could go on...
...It is we whom God is asking, "Where is your brother...
...to the victor...
...9 . . They resemble Christ in his essential humanness and therefore are eligible for the priesthood...
...It means that they are only our uncles now and that we are not doomed to repeat their ways forever...
...You picked up your favorite pulp magazine or comic strip, and there they were: .tough, clean, quick, perceptive creatures doing honorable battle with forces in and out of this world, contending with evils as mighty as the mind could conceive, and facing perils that bordered on the unspeakable--except for a penny-aword and few-bucks-an-illustrated-strip nothing was unspeakable or undepictable, within prevailing moral decencies, of course...
...Why did he deserve to die, what did he do...
...These and many more whys come at us from every word of the story...
...Because it Was God's fault, if God had not given him free will and envy :and temper, and had not made weapons, it would not have happened, says another...
...How is it possible for those of us who feasted for so many years on the Tarzan comic strip to have been blind to the fact that the art in fact overwhelmed the story--or should have...
...And it expands the list of pulp writers to William E. Barrett, Richard LeGallienne, Paul Gallico, Edgar Rice Burroughs...
...Well then, how about Dashiell Hammett...
...The books here are a perfect sampiing of an earlier craft, beginning with Herbert Ruhm's collection from Black Mask, the magazine founded by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, no less...
...JOAN LOREtCrz Washington, D.C...
...Perhaps it was because of what he didn't do...
...They run in only one direction along a single circuit...
...Hence its complexity and simplicity at one and the same time...
...of l.anguage...
...they may shock some readers and make others yearn for the days of candlepower, when more options seemed still to be open, and the promises of American life were infinite...
...through the biblical tale...
...Don't miss those marvelous reproductions of the advertisements that dominated the pulps...
...ESSEX...
...There are all the future unborn generations that could have come from Abel who die with him when he dies, and who make his death such a sin, such a waste...
...But at another level the words "all he has done is retell" and "simply transmitted" in the preceding paragraph are colossal understatements...
...Lovecraft, Edgar Wallace, Max Brand, Thomas Lanier Williams, known as "Tennessee...
...To the Editors: Re "More on Women in the Church" [Feb...
...Nor so frivolous...
...As in Jungle Tales o/ Tarzan, Hogarth adapted Burroughs and developed story lines of his own...
...Far worse than the conclusion are the alleged reasons...
...Yes, Virginia, there was a time when you didn't have to travel in search of heroes, ~ la Joe McGinniss...
...And now see how gradually, imperceptibly, but surely the whole focus of our reading has changed...
...Women cannot accept the view that they are not "co-workers of God" but only "co-workers of men...
...JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN, by Burne Hogarth, Watson-GuptiU, $5.95...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 @ CORRESPONDENCE (Continued/rom page 195) essential change...
...Send [,4:tiJ Lu...
...Why did they quarrel...
...It has the feel, quite literally, of the old pulp-paper magazine--and, thanks to offset photography, the format...
...It would be ridiculous to have a concelebration representing every conceivable category at the altar . . . it just plays into the hands of those who think that women as priests are extraordinary...
...The pulps and the comic strip flourished in the 1920s, '30s and '40s...
...When someone close to you is suffering, he comes first...
...He means by that that the biblical stories are the base, the bare bones, around which midrash creates new realities...
...His chapter on Auden is the best, although he is not convincing in explaining Auden's withdrawal late in life from the theme of social responsibility that he pursued in his early poetry...
...The Cain and Abel story in the Bible is so brief, so cryptic, that we know almost nothing at all about its meaning...
...Exactly how...
...And the comic-strip artists had to have had unique talents--some of them, at least - - t o have achieved the renown that belongs now to many, including Burne Hogarth of Tarzan fame, honored with two major eihibitions at the Museum of Decorative Arts at the Louvre in Paris...
...to the victim...
...That capitalism and liberalism have f~liled us in many ways, Kolko demonstrates persuasively...
...An example may make the point...
...A two-chamber assembly...
...I don't know, and I don't think we should mirror current secular structures unthinkingly, and I realize serious thought must be given to the teaching office of the bishops, and I etc., etc., etc...
...The priesthood is not changed by allowing gentiles, Chinese or women to be priests...
...mxwhem) mr a one-year suoecrlptlofl, ~llllng wlth the current issue...
...It is art, and creative achievement of the highest order...
...Why did God let it happen...
...Somewhere in this book Wiesel has a metaphor about what midrash does to Bible that also expresses what Wiesel has done to ,midrash...
...The problem with this book is its relentless pedantry, which produces an anguished prose that is not only difficult to read, but ironically, exemplifies the very alienation between thought and expression that Scott would ridicule...
...Money back If not plimled...
...The sentence with the phrase from which the book's title is taken, for instance, runs to 135 words, and employs a syntax as unnatural as Heidegger's...
...no philosopher knows why...
...As the fifth in a series of manuals published by the Liturgical Conference, this sensitive, informed discussion focuses on the celebrant's role in "the ordinary Sunday celebration in most local church units...
...He has had enough of the radical solitariness preached by so many modern writers, and he examines an alternative...
...But forget those yarns and look again at Hogarth's art: the human figure, the animals in motion, the exotic, phantasmagoric jungle growth...
...Between the lines, between the letters, there is God who does bear part of the responsibility, who accuses and is accused...
...They should be preparing for a May meeting that does not abandon the process that was their own brave innovation...
...Because he didn't realize what killing was, says one midrash...
...Any school child knows what happened...
...There are the old parents, Adam and Eve, the world's first parents, who come back on stage at the very end of the story, and bury their child, the first parents to ever have to do that, and who then go on to make love and give birth to a new child, whom they name Seth...
...Suddenly it is no longer an interesting ancient legend, as the Greek myths are...
...Tarzan was, to be sure, the brainchild of Bury.cu:!i 0ovo ygnl.ATIll, The La~uage Ouerter mmuLng.wl!n ~u Ispe...
...And Abel...
...To read this book is an esthetic and an intellectual experience, but much more than that, it is a voyage of self-discovery and self-recoguition...
...Tony Goodstone's book gives this, plus more...
...At one level all he has done is collect and retell old legends...
...The author, a longtime member of the Conference, cites with understanding and appreciation the essential writings of Victor Turner, Herman Schmidt, and David Power, and provides a good introduction to the problems facing any man or woman who presides in liturgy or wishes to train those who do...
...Check these three books and see for yourself...
...We are not judging Cain or Abel, we are seeing ourselves, exposed faster than any analyst's probings could...
...PHILLIP CORWIN 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 S t e | R f e ~ (Co~ot...
...The practitioners of the pulps had to be good to have made it as many did, into fashionable literary circles-MacKinlay Kantor, for instance, Ray Bradbury, H.P...
...The text says that Cain's face was sad after God rejected his gift, and then it goes on with the story...
...CONN...
...Here, moreover, is a footnote to an ex.pression so common that it need not be quoted in the first place: The phrase is that of an eyewitness of Cranmer's martyrdom (as recorded in John Foxe's Book o] Martyrs), quoted by Anne Ridler in her Introduction to Charles Williams's The Image o~ the City, p. xlvii...
...Why did Cain kill...
...Nonetheless, there is no doubt that participants quickly abandon much of the detail of their positions in an atmosphere like Detroit's...
...Need one say more...
...These reasons thus destroy the self-worth of women who still want to believe in Jesus, who believe that they are cepable of "imaging" God and Jesus...
...That suggests that Abel saw his brother, the only brother he had in the whole world, sad and depressed and he did not say anything...
...He simply remained aloof, indifferent, unconcerned...
...It responds with answers which themselves become questions, with becauses which lead to new whys...
...x r ~ , ~ t ~ a * l l v ~ a POST OFFICE BOX lS?CX VI~,~.D~/$.J...
...Or perhaps because he wanted to shame God or shake God or pay back God f o r what He did to Adam is another possibility, or perhaps it was out of economic, or sexual, or religious rivalry, the very sa~e reasons that people have killed forever since, or perhaps . . . perhaps after all these possible reasons, and in spite of all these reasons, and because of all these reasons we simply do not know why he did what he d i d - - o r why we do it too...
...I find this dual-sex ingredient another fad that only discredits the full human priesthood of the man or woman consecrated by the Church...
...it is our life and the meaning and measure of our days that we are reading about...
...Abel did nothing, and this was his sin, as it is ours...
...Write: ADULT VOCATIONS Box 41N, Commonweal into models and mirrors of ourselves...
...Suddenly we realize that we are not just playing detective games with a cryptic tale or doing intellectual exercises with a rel April 1977:220 silient text--we are confronting ourselves in the biblical-midrashic mirror...
...The result is flawed, not because it reflects some wild and unrepresentative swing to the left or the right, but because the careful crafting of recommendations becomes impossible...
...Such language as is in the Declaration saps the energy of women, makes their identification with the Church an 1 April 1977- 222...
...Indeed, they loom light years ahead of much of what passes today as "serious" work...
...We are on stage, on trial, with them, with God...
Vol. 104 • April 1977 • No. 7
