I the Supreme

...thought to which we belong...

...WHO DO AMERICANS SAY ROBERT JONES works for a major publisher THAT I AM...

...I do not speak to myself...

...We read wonderingly by sewing but a sense of transcendence...

...the ventriloquized per- years, who developed his nation's re• Trinity Bookstore formance of Paraguay's nineteenth- sources and sealed them from external 74 Trinity Place century "Perpetual Dictator" (from contact, who achieved fame from books Mail or Phone Orders 1816-1840...

...Craig- case - to use the Spanish title of this vast archival material collated by Roa head's Red Thread Catholicism - I did novel as an example - there is a trinitar- Bastos...

...In B EGINNING back in 1969 with The sciousness," the eschatological visions Person/Planet (Anchor, 1978), an exMaking of a Counterculture and of Herbert Marcuse, Paul Goodman, and tended midrash on E.F...

...Benedict's churches even as surveys suggest that the interMonastery in Snowmass, Colorado, where he est in spiritual values has increased...

...Every textual fold is flourishes side by side with Spanish, and Commonweal: 314 literature is as much oral as printed...

...I the Supreme demands concentra- tions...

...Paper, S10.95 (Tentative) whose books include The Zen of Seeing, and Echoes from the Bottomless Well (Vintage...

...stranger than fiction that nobody knows Knopf, $18.95, 448 pp...

...City, State, Zip That's right...

...Or is his critique of consumer culture all that different from Christopher Lasch's, or 11-IssueS--for $9 Alasdair Maclntyre's...

...and educators-anyone concerned with increasing the effectiveness FREDERICK FRANCK is an artist and writer of church ministry...

...technocracy has been based on a quest to understand the "true size of the mind...

...In each is a novel that attracts by repulsion all the woman, a mother, the Earth...

...This is participating in an ongoing, Vatican- intriguing investigation of religious values sanctioned project of Christian-Buddhist offers significant and timely information for church officials, pastors, dialogue...

...THE WESTMINSTER PRESS DAVID TOOLAN, S.J., is an assistant editor of 925 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19107 Commonweal...

...The iconoclastic against what Lewis Mumford called the "pentagon of power" - the nationstate, mass mechanization, one-way Commonweal's styles of management, and the consumer paradise promised by mass-marketers...

...A tattered portrait of the dictating his country only to keep them captive for • Gift Shop, Trinity Church B'way at Wall St...

...arcane, wizened, "white-trash" crone spitting Augusto Roa Bastos absurd, and (mostly) accurate annotation tarlike tobacco juice into her, the Translated by Helen R. Lane and quotation...

...G Francia agonizes over his astounding praising portraits from Sir Richard Bur74 Trinity Place life's performance, is sometimes ton and Thomas Carlyle...

...As we -Henri J.M...

...continues to choose broken and written portions) are beautifully, co- vulnerable people to bring us good news" gently presented by the publisher...

...A truly Paraguayan writer, then, must A Spiritual Biography to simultaneously write in two languages and, at the same time, appear not to be Nourish Your Faith writing at all...

...The typo- l'Arche communities all over the world and will come to see graphical intricacies (including hand- in a new way how God...

...as well as fact so much "papist" child's eyes...

...The strange mix in Francia, embodied YOUR COMPLETE Whichever may be the case, this is a in the novel's tiers of texts, conversaprofoundly spoken novel that is impossi- tions, notes, and commentaries, also reTHEOLOGICAL ble to imagine as being spoken, a sort of flects the truth of Roa Bastos's country, BOOK CENTER political As I Lay Dying by way of Tris- where the Guarani Indian language tram Shandy...

...The I manifests itself only stretched our sense of the tradition of incredible factuality (such as the many- through the He...

...The fifteenth-century Zen poet Ikkyu, for sure which evil lurks in the mind of abbot of Daitokuji, Kyoto, an eccentric what possible man - or even the correct lover of women in the ultra-puritan line Ronald Christ date (1766 or 1776...

...The collision of data and views, like Ethics, Spirituality Instead, he has "compiled" a sum of the tension between spoken and written Classic Literature fragmented texts, by and about the dic- word, is the equivalent of the book's Greeting Cards & Gifts tator himself, that we must recognize as plot...

...become one immense and winged to the mystery of existence, one of great paltry $9.95, will open many eyes to that pomegranate, carrying three overlapping profundity...

...and George O'Connell BARBARA A. BANNON is the former editor- Foreword and Aftcrword by Robert H. Schuller in-chief of the pre-publication book review According to Robert H. Schuller, "Palls and section in Publishers Weekly...

...and ever including biography, bibliography, Thread, the umbilical cord that binds since, politics and literature have re- anachronistic history, meta-fiction - it even the most spiritualized ascetic to a peatedly attempted the same...

...cent barbarians in the streets, but essen- at the mystifications of big bureaucrats, tially were about what the book under big technocrats, hidden corporate interDavid Teelan review calls master ideas - for in- ests, and well-funded experts suffering stance, the "myth of objective con- from Newton's one-eyed sleep...

...economy, he indicted urban-industrial sed first the shock, then the mainstream- However deafened we were when such dominance and bigness as such - as ing, of sixties populist movements in the ideas took the form of blocking commut- inimical to the wellbeing of the planet culture...

...Or the elegantly powerful Wisdom icon in which a majestic owl dominates black-silvery cosmic hieroglyphs...

...But let the reader beware: this is no easy read, no page-thumping, quick- WHAT CHRISTIANS study course in Latin American history CAN LEARN r'ROM REVIEWERS WILLIAM V. SHANNON was for many years a Washington-based member of the New York OPINION POLLS Times editorial board...

...ether evidence suggest that niany Americans FATHER THEOPHANE BOYD, 0 C.S.O., is a are not being served adequately by their Trappist monk residing at St...

...He dic- the present book - Roszak's hostility to tity and control (including self-control...

...Consistton meteor Francia chains to his desk for I listen to myself through Him...

...Theodore Roszak Contrary to the popular impression, From the outset a David against these were not books celebrating inno- Goliaths, Roszak has been hurling stones Pantheon, $17.95, 238 pp...

...A labor, great & severe Equally moving is the word-picture of sheer evil, in which Meinrad relives a I THE SUPREME pleated by sumptuous wordplay...

...After ently - and this is no less true of his being a runaway in the cosmos), and a all, Francia may well ponder, perhaps he critique of "the cult of information" in many-ended detective story about iden- wrote the pasquinade himself...

...5/23/86 jeremiad against conspiratorial bigness, ----------------------------------- explored in Unfinished Animal (Harper Commonweal: 316...

...Their precursors, he has not er traffic, Roszak clearly thought the and the individual...

...A BLESSED WEAKNESS Equally impressive, his translator, Helen R. Lane, commutes the conflicted The Spirit of Jean Vanier narrative brilliantly, punishing every pun and I'Arche with an avenger's glee, cultivating all the MICHAEL DOWNEY rhetorical flowers, adding her own explanations to the annotations and glos- "Jean Vanier's message cries out to sary (printed at the back) that she has be heard and heeded: each individual gleaned from Milagros Ezguerro's is sacred: each is a gift of God...

...Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de reviling his reign of terror and inspired Trinity Bookstore...

...of the dictator's of great Zen masters, coined the term birth...

...tated most of this novel...

...Dept...

...He now teaches history and journalism at Boston University...

...not find a single conventionally "Chris- ian procession between the maker (Yo or Roa Bastos himself disappears behind tian" symbol in her iconography - I), the made or addressed (el - punning the screen of "Compiler" - like Descommunicates in her language of word el here - or he, him, the other), and the cartes's God after winding up the uniand image a universal religious attitude mode of recognized effect (Supremo or versal clock...

...Behind the scenes he both Supreme One...

...The novel gets its start when a vilthe most magnificent work, most magni- ifying pasquinade is nailed to the cathe3 Manhattan Locations ficently translated, to come from Spanish dral door about this strange figure, a dic The General Theological Seminary into English in almost a quarter of a cen175 Ninth Avenue (20th St...

...Nouwen S13-95* read and study Roa Bastos's novel for At bookstores I f Harper &Rc?w years to come - and we will - we will or call TOLL-FREE San Francisco increasingly learn about the art of transla- (800) 638-3030 'Suggested cowFsumer ari tion, for this triplex, Yo el Supremo, has emerged as a twin masterpiece - in our language as well...

...tion, a welcoming rhetorical palate, and, and unsewing this crazy quilt of muti- The point was not just that he helped us I suggest, a browse through an ency- lated documents...

...in New York City...

...profile...

...Is he stuck, one sometimes wonders, Offer for New Subscribers in the romance of the primary group...

...If exists fully only in relationship to all...

...In the name of parfailed to point out, were early American iconoclasm of the time deserved articula- ticipatory democracy, Roszak protests utopianists, circuit-riders of the Great tion and a hearing...

...each Spanish publication of Yo el Supremo...

...Available at your local bookstore or direct from the publisher RONALD CHRIST, managing editor of Sites, (please include $1.00 per book for postage and handting)recently translated Manuel Puig's Under a Mantle of Stars...

...dictator dictated...

...by George Gallup, Jr...

...the author pretends to compiling the book -Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Chair ("pretends," because the "Compiler," of the Special Olympics too, is another less than supreme figure in the book), the translator collaborates in " i rejoice that through Michael Downey's book many producing not merely a translation but an more people will hear about the hope-giving work of English-language edition...

...tion...

...The difference seems to lie, so far as I can figure it, in the ------------------------------------ models invoked toward a solution...

...tananda and Thomas Merton...

...No more than the re- understand flower children and SDS clopedia's entries under "Paraguay" and cording author can the supreme dictator (maybe), but that in reviving, for in"Francia...

...On the other hand, this max- answer directly the question of who he is...

...10016 modestly, Lasch and MacIntyre appeal to For the enclosed $9 send the next 11 issues (6 months of Com- Aristotle and the virtue-inducing kinds of monweal) to: work of the Athenian city state - Name whereas Roszak's latest model is derived from a medieval Benedictine monasAddress tery's ethos of "pray and work...

...One hopes that this treasure, ever underrated and misunderstood realancestral faces, crowned with a raven's which Paulist managed to produce for a ity: a specifically feminine spirituality...

...More Commonweal, 232 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y...

...Which is why he has pursued the more The abdication of judgment seasoned Hair generation as it moved (with side trips to psychokinesis, THE CULT OF INFORMATION Awakenings, and the Romantic critics of apocalypticism, and Tarot) from LSD THE FOLKLORE OF COMPUTERS AND industrial modernization - Blake, and Marcusean politics to Swami MukTHE TRUE ART OF THINKING Wordsworth, Goethe...

...Inverting and further en- contradicts and confirms the dying Frantangling this inextricable cavalcade cia's confessions and ruminations, which (what used to be called its "aspiration") were either dictated to his bumbling or TRINITY to monstrously logical complexity, the fiendishly clever secretary, Policarpo BOOKSTORES exiled Paraguayan writer, Augusto Roa Patino, recorded in the dictator's own Bastos, has composed, literally, from ledgers (where he credits his good & GIFT SHOP some 20,000 documents and his own in- thoughts and deeds, debits the bad), or Bibles spiration, what he describes as neither pronounced in a "Perpetual Circular," The Book o f Common Prayer the fictionalized biography nor narrated his personal encyclical to instruct the naBooks on Church History, history of a real-life dictator...

...For the other side of 0 I prefer a full-year subscription at $28...

...23 May 1986: 315 and politics, no One Hundred Years of This Supreme - just like the rest of us - premise, one he obviously shares, is that Solitude fantastic circus for readers of all produces powerful, not absolute, solu- what is repressed in our culture is not sex ages...

...Roa Bastos inventively triumphs over both challenges...

...Because whatever else I the SuRed Thread Zen for his brand of Zen that I N the beginning God dictated light, preme may be - and it is many things, did not repress but stressed the Red land, water, and creatures...

...tator who welcomed notable visitors to tury...

...The latter extolNew York, N't 10006 perplexed as to whether his own or his led him as a "sovereign of iron energy (212) 3494376 astute dummy's lips are doing the talk- and industry, of great and severe labor...

...stance, the Romantic protest against a imal novel delights with a learned play- "One can only speak of another," he reductionistic rationalism, he may have fulness, a sophisticated modernity, an says...

...Schumacher's Where the Wasteland Ends in 1972, Norman 0. Brown, or the political mean- plea for a decentralized, human-scale Theodore Roszak has tracked and asses- ing of William Blake's prophetic poems...