CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Chesterton Rochester, N.Y. To the Editors: George Bernard Shaw called Chesterton a "colossal genius." Paul Claudel praised his "triumphant common sense" and his "joyous...
...for if the students don't, aren't they likely to acquire no more than an increase in the taste for pulp entertainment that Fader decries in our generation of TV-consumers...
...For the tragedy is that injustices exist and people continue to die--more than 1,900 alone since 1969 and the Bogside riots...
...I note with interest that Mr...
...Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...The late Sister Bertrande proposed challenging concepts concerning the role of Catholic sisters in the contemporary world...
...Finn'sandDuggins's attemptsto provide the settings and props of currentHookedprogramssuffer some from the perfunctory rhetoric of enthusiasm,the urge to programmatic conversion, typical of so many testimonials in popular educational journals...
...L/terature and fke A~s...
...My review, by contrast, criticized Chesterton's faults, praised his personal qualities, literary studies and detective stories, and ended positively...
...0 0 0 0 00000 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 PEACE FOR IRELAND If there is any small mitigating detail to the Troubles in Ireland, it is that the crisis there, if not absolutely self-contained, is not open-ended in the manner of crises in some other parts of the world...
...Pope Pins XI called Chesterton a devoted son of the Holy Church and a gifted defender of the Faith...
...JOHNDRUSKAis a writer currently teachins high school in Indianapolis.magazines cause both to replace the grammar texts and workbooks of time-dishonored usage...
...This last is a particularly cynical attitude, and unfortunately not an uncommon one...
...Now your reviewer [March 17] Calls him simplistic, incoherent, silly, prejudiced, banal, unrealistic, and ineffective...
...Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects treated in its pages...
...VI: Frank Getlein 324 BRITAIN'STHIRD OPTION: Desmond Fisher 326 THE CASE OF ALGER BISS---ZZZzzzzz:Peter Stein/els 328 A BAD IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME: Steven J. Heyman 329 WE OF THE BROKENBODY: Madeleine L'Engle 331 TBE TANGLED WEB r Richard Armstrong 3541 TELET/ISION: 'Boloeaust' As Doeu.Drnwsa: Philip Terzian 336 THE SCREEN: The Lady Killer...
...rre-reglsfrationnecessary...
...Secretary, The Chesterton Society Repig Mr...
...and his personal qualities of humility and universal friendliness...
...SCOTT,JB., is Commonwealth Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of English at the University of Virginia...
...Why has this Hooked been packaged under a cover even more pallid and archly-posed than the previous edition's (mug shots on the back of mad scientists...
...Social policy in England at the turn of the century was determined largely by aristocrats of the right or of the left...
...NATHANA...
...Coupled with this is a concern for those things that matter not to a few intellectuals but to the mass of the people, like a home and a family...
...N~aSON teaches Afro-American Studies at Fordham University...
...This neglectis unfortunate,because populist traditions enshrine human values that other ideologies have tendedtoneglectmvaluesthat couldprofitably be brought to bear on the making of political decisions...
...MICHAEL KAMMEN is Director of The Society for the Humanities at Corncll...
...Canovan brings out clearly GKC's relevance to our times: Besides the innumerable attempts at agrarian communes ....increasing numbers of people are emulating'the Distributists in trying to make themselves self-sufficient on small plots of land...
...139) e. resounding banalities, as quoted in my review: "There are only three things in the world that women do not understand;andtheyareLiberty, Equality and Fraternity" (p...
...Foreign...
...Commonweah 3Jl...
...monthly in advance for more than three times...
...his lifelong defense of the sanctity of marriage...
...9) b. incoherent: "populism as an ideology is incoherent" (p...
...southern Africa...
...Classified payable with order...
...In N.Y...
...For him, human culture took a decisive and irreversible turn around 1500when agrowing bodyof thought established the scientific attitude asa way of arriving at a unified world view...
...on page 48 she explains that GKC's writings give the impression not so much of logically developed arguments but of a particular way of seeing the human condition and showing it to others...
...Specie/two.year rate I;32...
...The working classes were a problem, an object of pity or of legislation;butitoccurredto scarcely any of the reformers to regard them as people . . . The tone is that of organized compassion for an inferior race of beings...
...153) e. silliness: "the ~bsurdi,ty of his dreams of a land of'free peasants" (p...
...Edited by Sister Beatrice Brown, D.C...
...no Third World-First World tension...
...ROBERT KNILLE Eastern U,S...
...Write: DIG...
...N.Y, 10016 TelepINme: (212) MU 3-2042 A review of Public Affairs...
...MarriedPriests CORPUS--NationalAssociationReslgned/Marrled priests and friends--Box 21~19, Chicago 60690...
...Canovan gives a summary of Chesterton's importance on her page 79: . . . Chesterton's writings did answer a need, and articulate importantandneglectedhuman feelings...
...VXCTORFER~JSS teaches in the Department of Government at Georgetown...
...An Equal Opportunity Educator and Employer i, Media SpeeiaHst Activist minority organization looking for skilled...
...This is yet another example of his simplistic thought, his silliness and his prejudice...
...CWJ Hicksville, N.Y...
...Copyrifkt 0 197B Commonweof Pab/isb/og Co., Inc.---US and Canada: $11 a year...
...1, 19E41 fe dote ava//ab/e tkroogk University Microfilms...
...his profound and astonished wonder at God's creation...
...Duncker Metsger,Mowry,Murphy-O'Connor,O...
...moreinformation, contact Nancy De La Rosa/ ChicanoEducationPrelect,Denver, Colorado, 303-~-6371...
...Meyers read, for example, GKC's essays"TheTelegraphPoles"(from Alarms and Discussions)and "About the Telephone" (from As 1 Was Saying...
...Meyers's article is not only totally false and misleading as a book review, but is also a shameful attack on one of the greatest Christian writers of this century...
...It's good to be reminded, via the middlesectionsofthisedition,of Hooked on Books' success...
...Meyers states that Chesterton's populism was based on an "impractical social ideal of a self-governing peasant nation which would recreate his vision (inherited from William Morris)of the Merrie England that had been destroyed by Protestant capitalism...
...For box numbers add 60c per insertion...
...Also, "Insofar asmodern inventions could actually help men to be independent and self-sufficient,Chestertonwelcomed them...
...committed, end creative Medle Specialist...
...9-10) Also, Mr...
...These are simply lies...
...Write: Director...
...Awide-ranging and contemporary analysis,the book offers examples from both sidesof the Atlantic of current approaches to psychoanalyticliterary criticism and the dynamics of creativity...
...Second class postage paid at New Yerk...
...Meyers states that "Many of the issues he wrote about..,are now dead," and he uses such words as unrealistic, ineffective, and impractical...
...Meyers...
...small holdings, intensively cultivated, instead of large-scale farming run as a business enterprise...
...It is a heroic vision of the world the reader finds here...
...One sentence, in the middle of the second paragraph of my review, wasincorrectly printed and nearly unintelligible...
...JOHNDRUSKA OeeeeO000 CORRESPONDENCE (Continued Jrom page 323) Chesterton and to Canovan's presentation of him...
...Knille is guided more by ~anatic~al loyalty than by critical judgment...
...After all, haven't there been Troubles of one sort or another in Ireland for 400 years, for 60 years, for 10 years, depending on the length of one's historical perspective...
...This workshop is offered to provide an initial training experience for persons interested in the helping process attheparishlevelRegistrationis limited...
...Workshop i The School of Socia WorkLoyola University of CU~icaqo presentPARISH ' OUTREACH WORKSHOP June 19 through June 30 1975...
...His insights and perspectives make this book a landmark in our understandin8 of the Federal Government's most successful social program...
...And...
...Individuals mus...
...66c, three times...
...He heatedly asserts that these are lies and my own inventions...
...MlcroEIms gram Yei...
...His quarrel with the modern world was simply that machinery was being used not to free men but to imprison them, to make their lives less interesting and more circumscribed than before...
...Canovan is "forced to concede" that Chesterton's ideas are "simplistic and incoherent, vitia,ted by silliness and prejudice, and conveyed throughresoundingJbanalities...
...If the Irish insist on fighting, well let them...
...In defiance of values like these, Chesterton developed a political stance that was thoroughly radical while being utterly opposed to socialism...
...Printed In tke USA and pnblisked b/-week/F by Commonweal I~bllsb/nll Co...
...The parables, the jokes, and the paradoxes play an essential part in this, and are not merely frivolities decorating an essentially independent argument...
...Twelve words minimum...
...Must FbeooreXperlenced in print end electronic media...
...ROSEMARYU...
...the Horn of Africa...
...it has simply been more neglected and less influential...
...Paul Claudel praised his "triumphant common sense" and his "joyous acclaim of the splendour and powers of the soul...
...his great concern for the poor...
...His most recent book is The Irish Comic Tradition (OxfQrd/Galaxy...
...This is simply untrue, if one considers the growth of the Chesterton Society throughout the world, with active chapters from France to Japan, the widespread influence of the scholarly Chesterton Review, the several new Catholic colleges in the United States with adistinctlyorthodoxChestertonian orientation, and the growing popularity of GKC's economic andsocial ideas in the "small is beautiful" movement...
...The essence of his objection is nay statement that Dr...
...87) d. pre}udice: his "distrust of foreigners" (.p...
...45) 26 May 1978: J.SO...at the same time that he foughtagainstsocialinjustice, Chesterton also denounced the social reforms by which the upper classes were imposing restrictions and regulations on the lower that they would never have accepted for themselves...
...sympathy with the peasants of the Third World rather than with its modernizing elites.(p...
...IQ016...
...IJorowitz...
...So Fader saturated the Boys School curriculum with paperbacks, magazines and newspapers, and diffused the responsibility for requiring and teaching functional literacy through faculty in every subject...
...His defense of equality and human dignity, of home and family, of property and privacy, was important in his own time, and continues to be so now, because it gave articulate form and intellectual respectability to values thatcorrespondtowidespread human sentiments, but that were in danger of being submerged beneath the tide of educated opinion...
...Collins...
...41106...
...63c, six times...
...cloth, $20,00...
...149) Also, the growth of interest in Chesterton is shown by the fact that, from 1970 to 1977, there were published twelve books about him and three anthologies of his works, as well as a republication of two of GKC's books and a new volume of his hitherto uncollected essays...
...NITY, 3719 Sixth Ave., Suite F, San Diego, Ca...
...200 N. Zenb /lead, Ann Arbor, Mlck...
...especially since Fader has always advocated using the covers of books as barbs on the hooks...
...Ease in understanding newspapersand pleasurein reading 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 CnITXCS JACK MILESis a New York writer and editor...
...VlVIANMEnCIERis professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara...
...What is less frequently noticed, however, is that populism also has its characteristic virtues,and ofthese Chesterton's writings are a shining example...
...Actually, Margaret Canovan's book is an incisive, well-reasoned, and positive analysis of Chesterton's Unique writings in the social, economic, and political areas, and she shows how his thinking was derived from his strongly held religious beliefs...
...intermediate technology to help small farmers and craftsmen, instead of industry to throw them out of work...
...his opposition to political or economic tyranny...
...It's a "luxury" crisis in a sense...
...But on page 21, Canovan states explicitly that "Very often . . . his paradoxical statemerits really do bring out a neglected truth...
...Few havearticulated thosevalues moreclearly and persuasively than G. K. Chesterton...
...n~LSAMis a staff psychiatrist of the Yale Student Health Services in New Haven...
...For information call the Office of Continuing Education at 312470-3014...
...The Middle East, for instance...
...CORRESPONDENCE Chesterton Rochester, N.Y...
...And, even after being re-Hooked by Fader's new edition, several questions linger: When in their courses, and how, can our schools help their students grow from saturation-diffusion literacy to an acquaintance with the qualities of books...
...Canovan makes no such "concessions" anywhere in the book...
...In the midst, today, of a bogus "basics" crisis, Fader does bring us back to the basics of language: When the goal of the English class is redefined in terms of rhetorical ease and willing expression,the ancient methods of schools become as irrelevant to the subjects as they have generally been to the students...
...his prophetic and practical metaphysical insight...
...As Canovan states: To a modern reader, the most conspicuous feature of Edwardian discussions on social policy is the assumed gulf between rich and poor...
...But Meyers does not refer to the rest of Canovan's paragraph, which states: These defects of populism have often been pointed out...
...One of the subsidiary purposes of this book is to stress the obvious but often forgotten truth that radicalism need not mean socialism, and that a disbelief in Marxism need not imply acceptance of social injustice...
...The problem with limited crises such as Ireland's is that parties in a position to contribute to a settlement of contentions--in this instance Washington and members of the European community of nations---tend to look to more urgent crisis points, where the threat to international peace is more immediate, the stakes larger...
...The trend is typified in Britain by the periodical Resurgence ....which advocates smaller political, economic, and social units...
...Father Ronald Knox called him "one of the very greatest men of his time...
...Fore;go $20...
...On page 91, Canovan states" "...he emphasized the fascination and romance of machinery, and its potentiality for increasing the power and independence of men...
...The Troubles could go on for as many years into the future as they extend back into the past, or they could be settled tomorrow in any of several ways, and the world would continue in its orbit with no particular reordering of national, political or economic alignments...
...paper, $7.50 PSYCHOANALYSIS, CREATIVITY, AND LITERATURE A FRENCH-AMERICANINQUIRY Alan Roland, EdRor These authoritative essaystrace the context and substance of the psycboanaJytic movements in Franceand America...
...WALLACEFOWLIEisa professor of French at Duke...
...Her work left its influence across America...
...enclosepayment,Instilulions may requesl billins Ackbessfor orders: ]36 SouthBroadway,Irvintton, NewYork10533 Commonweal: 349 Canovan points out certain "vices of populism"inChesterton'swritings (and he enumerates these in detail...
...Canovan's book will, I think, refute Mr...
...conservation instead of pollution...
...11801 (516) 622-5700[ Prepay $5.50 plus 75r P&H...
...resounding banalities...
...his vigorous opposition to self-centered and prideful attitudes...
...Mr...
...Because Jeffrey Meyers's review of Margaret Canovan's book is so unbelievably bad, a refutation of it is in order...
...Must be able to work w|th parenh and travel...
...It should read: "It would have been profitable to explore the significant influence of The Man Who Was Thursday(1908)on1984,though Orwell, in "The Road to Wigan Pier Diary," criticized the naively idealistic Chesterton . . ." JEFFREY MEYERS English Department University of Colorado InternationalYear of the Child1979 Classified RATES: 70c a word, one time...
...Mr.MeyersnotescorrectlythatMAGIC, SCIENCE, AND CIVILIZATION Jacob Bronowski "Bronowski dwells (here) on the dislinction between science and magic...
...Commonweal /s bdexed h Reader's @aide te Periodical Literature, CarlYle Per/ed/rIndex, Index of American Periodical Verso, and Bank Review Digest...
...In fact, Dr...
...JOHN AHEgNis a professor of Italian at Stanford University...
...Canovan again defends GKC's populism: Populism is not in fact any more incoherent than other more academically respectable political ideologies...
...The tragedy is compounded by the fact that often they die as a result of bombs Commonweal: 323 still largely available Only to the skills of literacy...
...page 329: A Legal Guide to Self Defense~Liberation News Service JAMES O'GARA: EditorJOHN DEEDY:Manag/eg |d/tar RAYMOND A. SOHROTH: Associate EditorANNE M. ROBERTSON: Edfter/of As~Peof COLIN L. WESTERBIECE, JR.: MoviesJOHN FANDEL:Pantry FRANK GETLEIN: Wasklngfee BRIAN WICKER: Groat Jrifo|nALAIH WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAE: RameDESMOND FISHER: Dub/In EDWARD S. SEILLIH: Pob//skerRUTH E. TAYLOR: Advert/oh E Mamlger Sta#: LINDA F. KAYLER, PAMELA J. FITZGERALD, HARRIETTIE BALSKY COMMONWEAL 232 MADISON AVE., NEW YORK...
...i theological studies A Quarterly Journal June 1978 Tenth Aamiversity of Humanae Vitae Ecclesiological Issues JOSEPH A. KOMONCHAK" Humanae Vitae and Its Reception JOHN C. FORD and GERMAIN GRISEZ: Contraception and the In/allibility o/ the Ordinary Magisterium WALTER E. CONN: The Ontogenetic Ground of Value 25 book reviews25 shorter notices Single issue: $3.50 Special offer: one-year subscription (4 issues plus HumanaeVitae issue 9.FREE) : $10 U.S., $11 foreign Order (erLclosing check) from: Theological Studies, Box 1029, Georgetown Univ., Washington DC 20057to be impressed by the claims of wealth andcleverness...
...Letters of not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better chance of being published.So Mr...
...Single caPF 7k...
...His books include The Poetry o/ Civic Virtue and The Wild Prayer oJ Longing...
...no crucial stretch of geography...
...Eleanor Fitzgibbons, IHM 232 UNIVERSITYPRESS BOOKS: CrltLes' Sei~etioam: Jack Miles, Mark Naison, Vivian Mercier, Nathan A. Scott, Jr., Rosemary H. Balsam, John Ahern, Victor Ferkiss, Michael Kammen 341 ILLUSTRATIONS: Front Cover: Adapted/rom booklet About Government by Channing L. Bete, Co., and distributed by the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee...
...According to Mr...
...As often as not they are the most innocent of victims: women in department stores, children at play, men at their leisure--Protestants and Catholics...
...At the heart of these virtues is a respect for the humanity and dignity of ordinary, shabby, ignorant people, and a refusal GLEANINGS Sister Bertrande Meyers, Daughter of Charity: An Anthology of Published Articles and Addresses...
...Knilte's li:bel: a. simplistic: Chestertonhas "the outsider's ignorance of the complexities of politics" (p...
...60c, twelve times...
...47) In the last paragraph of her book, Dr...
...In addition, I would add that Chesterton can be an important inspiration for us today, considering his exuberant zeal for the truths of the Faith...
...also---linked to this concern---thecoolevaluationof "progress" in terms of its impact on the common man, and the refusal to be stampeded by an elite whoregardthemselves asthe vanguard of history...
...Further:"students who learn to associate both pleasure and necessity withacts ofliteracy will learn 'to read and write...
...This is simply false, both in relation to (Continued on page 349)NEWS ~ VIEWS: 322CORRESIPONDENCEz 323 EDITORIAL:323 WASHINGTONREPORT:CrookBooks: Vol...
...327 PRESS: The Mauling of NL~on: Thomas Powers 338 VEII~E: Bernice Bunn Christman 3117...
...Iwould suggestthatMr...
...His latest book is Journal o/Rehearsal: A Memoir (Duke...
...they are the inventions of Mr...
...92103...
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...Senator Edward M. Kennedy$14.95 To order send check or moneyorder to ~IN...
...Meyers, Dr...
...9)and his "cheap jokes about pawnbroker's noses and sinister figures of Jewish plutocrats" (p...
...Meyers stated that Canovan is "forced to concede" that Chesterton's ideas are "simplistic and incoherent,vitiatedbysillinessand prejudice, and conveyed through...
...When being awarded an honorary doctoral degree by the University of Notre Dame, he was referred to as a "defender of the Christian tradition, whose keen mind, right heart, and versatile literary genius have been valiantly devoted to eternal truth, goodness and beauty, in literature and in life...
...Dignity "DIGNITY--an organization of gay and concerned Cathollcs--working for a more informed theology and pastoral approach to sexuality...
...20.0O SOCIAL SECURITY TODAY AND TOMORROW Robert M. Ball "Bob Ball is the most knowledgeable person in America about Social Security...
...153) Mr...
...Several brief quotations from Dr...
...152) and his "attraction to conspiracytheories, puttingall the blame for modern evils on a ring of international plutocrats"(p...
...In 81eaninp her I most vital thoughts are dynamically integrated | by a dedicated colleague.$5.50 I EXPOSITION PRESS,INC.--Bept...
...Knille, blind to his hero's weaknesses, makes no attempt to defend his fascism and anti-Semitism...
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...Kirkus Reviews$6.95 20TH CENTURY CHINA THIRD EDITION O. EdmundClubb A carefully up-dated edition of the book which the New York Times Book Review lauded as one that will "force its readers to think about China's place in the world and how other nations must adjust to China's dangerous and dynamic revolution...
...Serials Data Program No.: ISSN 00U0-3330...
...New York, N.Y...
...Canovan concedes that GKC's thoughts are "conveyed by tedious paradox...
...No East-West ideology is at issue, at least not in substantive degree...
...COMMONWEAL, 232 Madison Ave...
Vol. 105 • May 1978 • No. 11
