BOOKS
O'Rourke, William & McWILLIAMS, WILSON C. & Deedy, John & Gaughan, Norbert F.
The Gun aid The Olive ]~ramch DAVID HIRST Harcourt Brace, $12.95 [367 pp.] Romor The Promise ROBERT F. DRINAN Doubleday, $7.95 [250 pp.] WILSON CAREY MeWILLIAMS Every day's newspaper reminds...
...Anne Fremantle says best, in writing on Augustine, what makes a saint a "favorite" two things: "One should be drawn to him as a person, and he should 'speak to my condition...
...Jews 'were also told not to take Hitler seriously, and in reaction lsraetis .have preferred to err in the direction of ,giving Arab rodomontade more credit than it deserves...
...Few people read about them...
...Nevertheless, Drinan does not condone the injustice done to .the Palestinians, and he argues (~vi.th Arthur Waskow) that to reject a Palestinian s~aee means "permanent war...
...This book on "favorite saints" is a mixed bag...
...Yet as Hirst concedes, the years of exile have made the Palest,inians ruthless and have accentuated their rigidity...
...In one of the novel's least elegant patches of prose we learn (after a homosexual encounter in a Bowery shelter): "Somewhere around this time, Eugene stopped going to Mass and to the Sacraments, not as a conscious decision, but out of perplexity...
...The fiftieth anniversary observances of' the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti have rekindled interest in the case, as have the 1977 Report to the Governor [of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts] in the Matter of Sacco and Vanzetti, and Governor Dukakis's subsequent proclamation removing "any stigma and disgrace . . . forever" from the pair...
...unbelievable people are drawn in dead stick prose, but the plot they till is thick with impo~ant issues and events: contemporary ,Irish and American politics, terrorism and the IRA, the complicities of Church and State, splashed on the grand canvas, where the world's a stage...
...Candida Lund says Joan of Arc pleases her because "Joan is more woman than lady...
...He no longer had any sense of where he stood among men and GOd, and the placement bureau within him seemed to .have shut down without no~ir162 The novel begins wi~h a Good Friday procession, which Eugene photogral~ hs, that erupts into a melee, ending with a murder and a theft (the murder of a teenage boy Eugene had developed an interest in, and the theft of his camera with the pictures of the parade and perhaps of the killing...
...Actually, Eugene seems more in the need of a therapist, than a priest...
...Most of his work is a chronicle of Israeli barbarities and acts of violence, and his argument, though one-sided, is persuasive up to a point...
...Joel Wells identifies wRh Thomas/t Becket because the saint stood ,for a principle that would not yield or bend in the face of force...
...But, that, and a great many other ,things ace beyond Fat, her Tom...
...At best, his argument is rationalistic, relying on the military weakness of Arab states relat.i~e to Israel, while security is a matter of feeling...
...As The O//ering is profligate In Such Dark Places is chaste: its prose is careful and clean...
...If qualm I have with Bentley's imaginative mix, it is with the introduction by Boston University professor Howard Zinn...
...Zionists wanted peace, but committed to a national home ample for the in-gathering of all the exiles, they were unwilling to set stable, premature limits to their own expansion...
...naturally the writing varies with the style of each author...
...Patriok and seize upon him as an apostle of the missionary spirit needed today, the spirit MacEoin shows in his writings...
...Which may be why saints are not popular today...
...But Hi rst is wrong to discount Israel's fear for her survival...
...Of course the timing helps...
...The O]]ering is a potboiler of the worst sort...
...He has taken Upton Sinclair's, hefty documentary novel about the celebrated Sacco-Vanzetti case, hefted it further with new introduction, old photographs and recent documents relar to the case, and packaged the whole in a three-pound, 872-page single volume...
...To accept even a demilitarized state, which Drinan suggests, Israel would need very reliable guarantees indeed...
...It's an imaginative combining of near fiction and hard fact, and it works,--perhaps evdn better for Bentley in 1978 than the novel, in two volumes, did for Sinclair in 1928...
...And John Deedy espouses Francis de Sales for his love of books...
...This book helps make them so...
...Priests are cenCral characters in both and whenever there is a priest in fiction there is the possibility of a great fall (for he is a figure elevated with lofty assump-tions...
...Only glittery voyeurism will do, and Mr...
...He is right, for example, to debunk the notion that "Arab leaders" were responsible for the flight of the Palestinians in 1948...
...The Transcript is dead, but long live Boston, Boston...
...This book then could be the first course in "Remedial Hagiography...
...But was there even more to it than that...
...James Reid, in The Offering, a ~all ugly edifice that collapses...
...The Offering caused me to laugh out loud a few times, w~hen it rose to heights of self-parody, though the parody is not deliberate and The Offering is not funny at all...
...As Hirst obsewes, Israeli leaders sometimes imply that peace will never be possible except ~at too great a price and that Israel 'is doomed to permanent war with her Arab neighbors...
...T~here are some disconcerting similarities...
...No one would read Harold Robbins if he wrote about the poor...
...Anti-semitism was a nemesis, teaching that even the most favorable appearances hide terrible dangers...
...For both however, the Middle East is a caricature of politics where old policies are bankru~ yet .the antagonists rumble on, avalanche-like, mocking human imagination and will...
...The Gun aid The Olive ]~ramch DAVID HIRST Harcourt Brace, $12.95 [367 pp.] Romor The Promise ROBERT F. DRINAN Doubleday, $7.95 [250 pp.] WILSON CAREY MeWILLIAMS Every day's newspaper reminds us that the Middle East is a torment to human pride and gJod will...
...If Israel is to trust us with her survival, she must rely on our "unwritten pledge,"a sense of kinship with Israel that goes beyond secular reasonings...
...Zinn's credentials are perfect for his assignment...
...I regret this...
...His sympathy for Israel lets Drinan accept the fable that the P.L.O...
...The ideal of a _9 restored Jewish life in the Holy Land inextricably ties Judaism to the land of Israel...
...even common sense is unreliable to a people which has seen senselessness elevated to a murderous dogma...
...Boston is a steal at $15...
...He strives to do so by drawing a parallel between the America of the 1920s and the America of today...
...there the poor are always...
...But suddenly 1920 and 1927 are as yesterday...
...is an "organ of the Arab governments...
...The boundaries of the novel are small (~he lower Eag Side is not lefr and what climactical acts occur are committed upon stmdry bodies, since they are the~-novers true territory.- The most compelling character is the priest, Fa.ther Carusone, only because he, ~t lea~t, is always saying the unexpected...
...At least I was a couple of days ago...
...Moreover, Israel's emphasis on force at the expense of the softer arts has offended many Western sensibilities...
...Given the pattern of reciprocal violence and the thenrecent massacre of Deir Yasin--tolerated, de facto, by Zionist leaders---the Palestinians were afraid, and with reason...
...The plot turns' imo a detective story (Will the camera be recovered7 Will the killer be idemified...
...Israel, however, has never completely surrendered to that logi c . The Prophetic tradition which sustained the hope of return ranks justice above repatriation, and Israel was builr on the ideal of a rebirth in which memory would inform but not control the present...
...Father Tom (who is something of an Uncle Tom) collects money in America for ~ IRA---and as portrayed, a murderous lot of shanty Irish are they--and ~,hen is...
...But inevitably, Palestinian Arabs did resist their own growing expatriation, and Arab violence inspired Jewish self-defense and retaliation...
...Negatives spoken, let me say that I am thrilled that Boston is back in print...
...The Arabs, Hirst concedes, dogmatically rejected even favorable compromises, and their visible rigidity concealed the reluctance of Zionists and Israelis to define stable frontiers restricting their own ambitions...
...Each reveals facets of his own personality in speaking of these saints...
...It is still unredeemed by the middle class...
...Joseph C.aldwell, a playwright whose first novel this is, has constructed a-delicate machine that ,ticks...
...Even if Israel has had little to fear from the Arab militaries, Arab 21 July 1978:474 threats have sounded alarming...
...Sinclair writes with insight and passion~style and wit, as well...
...lohn 7. Delaney, Doubleday, $7.95 [205 pp.] Charles Peguy says in his play on Joan of Arc, "All the saints have always borne the glory of God in the folds of their cloaks," and about patron saints, "One is always from somewhere, one always belongs to something and to someone in Christendom...
...And botch Hirst and Drinan hope, somewhat despairingly, for a way out...
...I don't know what I am now...
...But what occurs, the aotivJty itself, is the clich6...
...Jude, and to see Gary MacEoin deJfish St...
...As he had lain there in the nighttime dark, ehere came to him as well his wish from the Saturday procession, that Johnny thrust all his strength, not at the cross, but at him, so that after his orgasm of fury _9 the youth would lie conquered and spent, helpless and defeated...
...Reid follows suit, except he does what no writer of violence shor do: his descriptive powers fail him in the middle of a gory murder, and, even though 'I reread it several times, I could not figure out how the physical feat was accomplished...
...Those documents are reproduced here...
...There are fewer resemblances than differences in the novels and though neither is very good (The Of/ering is dreadful) they do illustrate a curious fact...
...Zionism--ds'namic and aiming at a relatively homogeneous Jewish homeland-increasingly encroached on Palestine's Arabs, culturally as well as territorially...
...The curious fact these books illustraee is this: the hack writer will more often appropriate large powerful events to fuel his crude machine, whereas the caxeful, delib~ate craftsman, such as Caldwell, will seem to be limited by his prudence and be left with the smaller bite of experience his own life has provided...
...I challenge anyone not to chuckle at his portrayal of the Boston of the Brahmins and the old Transcript, the newspaper that served the city's most proper...
...Sacco and Vanzetti were electrocut.ed August 23, 1927...
...IN BRIEF SAINTS FOR ALL SEASONS, ed...
...Mr...
...Yet surely the .Israelis feared that Eastern Jews, like so many of their European brethren, v~ould recognize too late the threat to their existence...
...Addicks, "the perfect family servant," answers the door and turns to James, a Thornwell son-in-law...
...Why not...
...One cannot take too seriously Father Tom, who protests, after a series of disastrous mis-steps, "Look I'm a priest...
...Sadat's initiative has, to some ex.tent, upset .that pattern...
...Murder, 21 July 1978:476 thought Eugene, jealousy, revenge, all aroused by sex...
...Eugene, the novel's elliptical protagonist (we rather sketchily, but never sa~dsfa~torily, get his history) is an aspiring photographer, a iust uncloseted homosexual, and--more puzzling--a recent faUen-away Catholic...
...The South Braintree robbery and murders charged to Sacco and Vanzetti occurred on April 15, 1920...
...He's an old warrior of the civil-rights and anti-war movements, precisely the person to put Sacco and Vanzetti in a relevant coni l l l I ~ ~ - Commonweal: 475 text...
...Anti-Zionism is anti-Jewish, and Drinan--following Freud--sees anti-Semitism, at root, as anti-Christianity...
...The only rightful basis on Israel's claim .to Zion, God's promise, also demands that Isi'ael take every reasonable chance for peace, showing mercy and walking humbly...
...Israel, Hirst argues, seized the excuse of war to drive out the Palestinians...
...The novel is told in practically unlapsed time which provides needed momentum...
...but it pales, or rather, falls into the shadows cast by Caldwell's fastidious rendering of the quotidian...
...More to the point, you'll enjoy renewing contact with Upton Sinclair, that intense, junior Bernard Shaw with the American-Socialist vision...
...James," says Addicks, "there are three reporters and a gentleman from the Transcript...
...Along the way Eugene's sexua$ity is confronted and he grapples with the loss of faith and the gains of carnality...
...So, Dan Herr likes Thomas More for his sense of humor...
...And perhaps, given the escalating violence of the Middle East, such ~nxieties were reatistic...
...the characters depicted are marked individuals, lives judiciously examined...
...But Drinan, as an anti-war activist, was not overawed by our commitments...
...Fulton Oursler, Jr., writing about "the unknown saint" finds mystery in the simplest life of the simplest Christian...
...He, unfortunately, .is not the main characr it is" Eugene, who carries the unhappy flaw of a protagonist who is not as i~telligent as his author...
...Drinan is barely concerned with the Middle East except as it affects the West...
...It follows that loyalty to Israel is a test of Christian fidelity...
...However, that resignation was also an act of hope, affirming God's order and promise...
...It is an extremely important study, specifically of the juridical processes attending the case...
...NORBERT F, GAUGi'iAN...
...shocked that a million dollar -"contribution (a~ranged most nefariously by the State Departmerit) he has received is a gangster's t~}im.t~d mp~l~Y,, ~m..: .he, figNe_ously, intends to return it, setting off a domino theory of murder and mayhem...
...And peace to Upton Sinclair's heroes...
...Leaving the past aside, Hirst is certainly right to insist that the Palestinians have become a people distinct from other Arabs...
...Caught up in the Saceo-Vanzetti cause, Cornelia Thornwell provides a fascinating glimpse into a type person that, thankfully, is not lost to America, Nota, Mrs...
...Hirst emphasizes .those moderates who are willing to accept some accommodation with Israel but--like Zionists dealing with Irgun's terrorism--Palestinian moderates are unlikely to do more than chide their militant cohorts, especially given the pure pragmatism of Fatah's political ethics...
...For Drinan, Israel is intimately .bound UP with Western culture and religious life, so that our attitudes toward Israel are a reflection of our own spiritual health...
...In any case, Israel is a la.nd shadowed" by memories...
...John I. Delaney of Image Books fame persuaded twenty Catholic authors to speak of the saint to whom they feel they belong, from whom they l.ike to think they come...
...Drinan is advocating support for both sides of that ~promise, He hopes that unambiguous American commitments to Israel would give us a better right to be critical of Israel's policies and would make Israel less anxious and more inclined to take chances in the pursuit ot peace...
...Interesting, almost every author here comes to his or her saint through books...
...Sooner or later, calamity was inevitable, and Judaism prepared the soul ,for it...
...The "roots of violence," Hirst argues, lie in the nature of Zionism and its impact on Middle Eastern life...
...The Offering's priest is Tom O'Neill, tall and handsome, though we learn late i.n the novel that he has never kissed a girl, until he meets the I*RA tootsie Mara MecRa~ond (modleled ~ a wacky way after Maria McGuire, author of To Take Arms: My Year With the IRA Provisionals...
...It is part of Father Tom's irking innocence .that he never considers that anybody's million dollar cont.ribotion would be tainted money----behind every fortune there is a crime, etc...
...In the age of imperialism, Zionists saw themselvs as "agents of civilization," and their concern for Arab rights did not include a right to resist "progress...
...But in this format, Boston takes on unusual Vitality...
...To Hirst, the moral weights are reversed...
...But fatatism, the nobility of the weak,, is callousness in the strong...
...Why novels of .this sort are filled with air travel, exotic locations, gobs of violence, is selfevident...
...Similarly, Hirst describes the role of j Israeli provocateurs in helping to terrify Eastern Jews into emigration to Israel...
...So long as I'm Carping, let me add disappointment that the volume's reading list does not include former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas on the subject of Sacco and Vanzetti...
...The fatalism which both Hirst and 'Drinan see in Israel's political culture is, in one sense, a traditional theme in Judaism...
...Peabody and Miss Lillian...
...They both traffic in a good deal of religious symbolism, if not contem...
...But I fail to find myself helped by literary leaps from the 1920 death of a Sacco-Vanzettilike anarchist in a 14-story fall while in FBI oustody, to a 1950s death in a 16-story fall of a scientist dosed up with LSD by the CIA . . . . Same with the invocation of the terrible fates in 1969 of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark...
...Hirst is almost exclusively concerned with Middle Eastern history...
...It will be, popular as an Image Book...
...Yet it continues to be overlooked...
...Unfortunately, it is not clear that America, seemingly leaderless and preoccupied wRh private goals, has the sense of pttblic honor required ~to give and keep so sacred a promise...
...Zinn demands of me intellectual gymnastics that I find impossible...
...It is interesting to know why the late Donald Thorman chose St...
...He went on record in a 50-page, 25,000-word preface to the reprint edition of the transcript of the trial [Appel, Mamaroneck, N.Y., 1969...
...David Hirst, the Middle East correspondent of the Guardian is as pro-Palestinian as Father Drinan is pro-Israel...
...A kind of c~stration, a gind of death...
...For those reading it for the first time, the story moves on two levels-that of the Sacco-Vanzetti case itself, and that of a wealthy Be*ton family that is touched by events...
...In Sueh Dark /qaees JOSEPH CALDWELL Farrar, Straus, $8.95 [229 pp.] The Offertnt/ JAMES ~F_~I~D Putnam's, $8.95 [223 pp.] WILLI ~AM O'ROIJRIKI~ The two novels ar hand deal with murder and de~th, corruption and innocence, love and lust...
...Newsmen rush to the mansion for the details...
...Sinclair's is a fascinating, if flawed work--baldly partisan pieces frequently arema cut below The Jungle and others of his books...
...Hirst's analysis is inadequate because it slights the European experience which shaped Israel's view of the world...
...Bosgo• UPTON SINCLAIR Robert Bentley, $15 [1872 pp.] JOHN DlgEDY Publisher Bentley has done an interesting thing...
...In Such Dark Places is set in New York City's lower East Side, the section which for a brief period was christened the "East Village...
...In recent negotiations, it is Israel which has seemed intransigent...
...Unfortunately, Zinn is trapped by his anger, and his essay, instead of clarifying issues and challenges, succumbs to tendentiousness...
...You'll like Cornelia...
...The central character on the purely fictional level is Cornelia Thornwell, wife of a Boston banker and matriarch of an esteemed branch of proper Bostonianism...
...But the blame should not fall on .his broad shoulders, but on author Reid, London-born, late a serving officer in the British Rhine Army, an advertising accou~t executive, an art dealer who recently has moved to the south of France and, according to his pubtis.her's jacket copy, is spending all his time (not, alas, a// ~his time) reconverting an old farmhouse...
...He knows that even explicit promises cannot be trusted too far, especially since America's material interests are increasingly at odds with loyalty to Israel...
...Hirst skips lightly over World War II even though some of his evidence indicates that the Holocaust led Zionists to a much greater emphasis on military forces and state power...
...Any weakening of American support .for Israel, consequently, is a matter of moral peril...
...Example: Cornelia's husband, a former governor, has died...
...He may exaggerate, but even Chaim Weizmann, who deplored violence, exulted at the "miraculous clearing of the land...
...even a partisan like Drinan worries that "militarism" may have become too much a part of lsraers life, Diplomatically, ,Israel is clearly on the defensive and, as Hirst suggests, she may be close to exhausting her reserves of moral credit in the West.~ Eager to avoid such a result, Drinan urges that, in return for Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories, America give a "very precise and unmistakable pledge" to defend Israel...
...I happen to share Zinn's ire about what happened to Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and I am as worried as he about the limitations of justice in America...
Vol. 105 • July 1978 • No. 14
