Critics' Christmas choices
Haught, Nina King, Frank Burch Brown, Bernard Mc-Ginn, Eliot Janeway, Jerome Rothen-berg, Anne E. Pa
Books: CRITICS' CHRISTMAS CHOICES Nina King the beep.') John says, 'It's me./John. ment blunders and union short-...
...McDougall's scholarship documents detractors who faulted him for raising the Alongside, his experimental work, he 1945's thriller Soviet-American race to subject...
...man ballistic missilery...
...Seven Mysteries of Life (Houghton JANE REDMONT Remember, we've had twenty plus years Mifflin, 1978, $18.95, $11.95 paper, of experiencing a church whose 690 pp...
...humans have forgotten the Byron writes a light-hearted account of a very unamusing chapter in the history of Traditional, American Indian Literadifference between good and evil...
...14.95 hardcover The late H. W. Janson's History of Art has long been a standard textbook...
...cal creatures are real, where pages of engaging prose...
...raising these kinds of questions (Compact on me twenty-five years ago, The church's shameful performance in monweal rief0ded him...
...Followers we have - persons who $12.95, 227 pp...
...Hallin has not only carand intellect...
...God in the New Testament and the Finally, in Women-Church: Theology Spirituality of Women (Paulist, $2.95, 81 and Practice of Feminist Liturgical pp...
...I like seeing category is Linda Ellerbee's And So it a new generation (the author is twentyGoes (Putnam $16.95, 255 pp...
...Macquarrie's chartimes prior to the Renaissance, for exam- like the others mentioned above, should acteristically clear book argues that the ple, could discover in pictures of Mary help to move reflection on the arts and modern dissatisfactions with "classical" Magdalene or the Virgin or Jesus himself aesthetics into the mainstream of reli- theism, that have led some thinkers either meanings that were less exclusive, gious discussion...
...But Classified ductionistic interpretations of cosmology some of its ideas led me in another direc( Order Out of Chaos, Ilya Prigogine and tion...
...forced to rely heavily on speculation...
...To turn the strange into the familiar...
...Meanwhile, Eckhart and other features of the composer's Reformation unworthy of notice, have suddenly been suspect or condemned thinkers who heritage...
...land...
...It renders a great service 306 pp...
...The strategies that this century has given to us polemics dominate twentieth-century master of the politics of theology and all...
...The Herald Tribune as an Paper more than a narrative of a media organization and influence peddler - giant for its day...
...and co-author, with Marie Ponsot, of plished writers sweeps us nalism since David Halberstam's The Beat Not the Poor Desk: Writing, What to back through the ages to the Po...ers That Be that will sate the appetite Teach, How to Teach It, and Why time of Noah, where mythi- of media watchers through 800-plus (Boynton/Cook...
...She includes commentary by surreal - what Mikhail Bakhtin, writing Raymond Hunthausen, Charles Curran, noted Catholic thinkers as well as copies of Rabelais, called "grotesque realism" or Agnes Mary Mansour, might reformu- of thirty-two documents involved in the - characterizes Clayton Eshleman's late Royce's query: "In what sense, if in 1982-84 controversy that saw these The Name Encanyoned River: Selected any, can the modern woman or man be in women required to sever canonical bonds Poems 1960-1985 (Black Sparrow, $20, creed or in church a Catholic...
...Petersburg...
...The poison is alcohol, but also the mercury that killed this people's rivers, land, and livelihood...
...Moynihan's Family PETER STEINFELS is the editor of Com- by Jean-Denis Bredin (George Braziller, and Nation.(Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, monweal...
...The destruction of this community started with government removal of the Ojibwas from the waterways of their ancestral lands...
...The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus Daniel...
...and the specimen tales develop and interpret each other in a wonderful dialectic...
...The complexities of the Things musical and Protestant do not only partially known...
...What results is charges of neo-Nazi militarism...
...which probes the Bakhtin calls 'the complete freedom that thickest of patriarchal glaciers...
...economic thought...
...is a lively but unsparing inquiry into suggests a certain solemnity of tone the question of why America is the only that O'Brien r.^ ;~nages very successfully Bawn Western nation never to have produced a to avoid!' PRESS major socialist movement - written by -Chris mpher La sch 25 Beacon Street someone who has kept the faith but never Boston, MA 02108 blindly...
...Hans case (Thinking in Time, Free Press, tion of objective methods of composi- Dieter Betz, University of Chicago, $19.95, 329 pp...
...But behind her wide-eyed as- Greece in Rome, the coordinates of tonishment, Ellerbee's tour of television youth and power, wealth and suffering, is a perspicacious insider's account about geometry and light...
...a record of the conflict between the important as "the discovery of the Qum- question: "In what sense, if in any, can Vatican and the Sisters of Mercy over the ran texts for Judaism or the Nag Ham- the modern man consistently be, in political ministries of Agnes Mary Manmadi library for Gnosticism...
...which anyone outside of a handful of Among the Theologians directly connects Alternative traditions of all sorts, once experts ever reads is his bull condemning Bach's musical theology with essential condemned as heretical, deviant, or just Eckhart...
...and do not really know how to recall them for their own individual purposes...
...Which brings me to three books about journalism that even a pedestrian could love...
...One Way...
...sometimes vicious) faith of the days be- and Vietnam by Daniel C. Hallin (OxMcKenzie's onslaught on Western fore Modernism raised its ugly head...
...The most impor- Requirements for the Air Force Priest: A citizen of tant of them is The Paper, by Richard the United States of America...
...Industry gossip, Necessary elevated to the printed word, can bridge the gap...
...The bugaboo of Adversary JourGod and the New Haven Railway nalism should now be laid to rest, although given its polemical uses, it proband why neither one is doing very well ably won't be...
...The number: 1-600-638-3030 book is one of the year's surprise best- for an American literature course that sellers, but it should be no surprise that began with some American Indian texts, FARRAR- STRAUS- GIROUX Ellerbee - despite her less-than-svelte, on the grounds that they are not AmeriCommonweal: 668 tance" about the children: intoxicated four-year-olds, a three-yearold sniffing gas which destroys her brain before she's six, the statistics on the suicide charts...
...At this with their religious community for the $12.50 paper, 245 pp...
...Eshleman to be, as Eliot Weinberger de- quarters of American Catholicism, it is Of related interest is Margaret A. Farscribes him in the Introduction, one of heartening to note that writers are addres- ley's Personal Commitments: Beginthe current masters of the mode, who sing this question with ap energy and rich ning, Keeping, Changing (Harper & "has sought, and potentially found, what rationality that promise to affect the Row, $13.95, 148 pp...
...a book takes us to Diego Garcia in the tic Metaphor and the Languages of Religious Belief (North Carolina University) and The slim, elegant novel about the cruelties Indian Ocean, whose 2,000 natives - Evolution of Darwin's Religious Views enacted in the name of fatrtily love...
...society...
...Communal bonds "snap noiselessly...
...a Silicon Val- Kluger (Knopf, $24.95, 806 pp...
...I am sim- through which to operate, but I suggest laws of thermodynamics, chemistry, and ply reporting what I hear from the people that the rest of us could act in concert on micro-physics are sufficient to explain all I interview...
...This confirms the E ABLY in this century, the gathered in Authority, Community, and editor's claim that the recovery of this philosopher Josiah Royce raised, Conflict (Sheed & Ward, $17.95, 225 "underground literature" is an event as in the language of his day, a key pp...
...reality of the "spiritual" levels of life, the power (yes, even the political power) mind, and values over against the domi- that is ours by virtue of our baptism...
...to Tristan da Cunha, subtleties of social convention...
...is based on his Gifford ry, ordinary illiterate people at various worthy of careful attention...
...creed, a Christian...
...policy...
...One polemic against the arms race, repre- New York Herald Tribune by Richard book, however excellent, cannot serve to sented by Lungless Labs...
...of God...
...Surely the author jests...
...The stanza form can journalism, this book has the bitter- works from the British Museum and (modeled on Charles Johnston's 1977 sweet allure of the college reunion, so British Library, is so informative and translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin) many familiar faces, such great war visually compelling that one is drawn in is fast-moving and flexible...
...the past Medieval Women's Visionary LiteraCommonweal: 662 the streets of St...
...He recognizes their very presence...
...invites the reader to join in the reflective On the question of imaging God, two process, bringing one's own experiences recent books will deservedly appeal to to the inquiry and testing one's own wide audiences...
...S.N.1.M., is associate pro- woman's experience of the living force yet of magic texts from Grecb-Roman fessor and chair of the religion department of Egypt, shows both'another range of ver- Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota...
...as old and as large as it is precisely because such physical and temporal immensity is required in order to produce the heavy elements that evolved into us...
...in the' spirit of maining British imperial territories teaches religion and humanities at Virginia the season, I shall name nd Ytames...
...Miles argues that the sponse exemplified in the "styles" he broadened: the current religious discusmeaning received from the church's im- discusses...
...The Biblical Institute nant trend toward reductionism is espe- twin games of "Isn't it awful...
...By far, the best read of the year in this all their inert parts silenced...
...We do find such texts hard to read...
...around the world - "sixteen groups of Polytechnic Institute and State University in I do admire Peter Taylor's A Summons rocks and atolls and ice islands...
...Charles Doria, duced the year's bid for the most relevant tures or discover in the larger human past Willis Locker & Owens Publishing, and realistic economic text in Stabilizing a repertory of possibilities that change $19.95, $9.95 paper, 210 pp.] is an an Unstable Economy (Yale University our definitions of poetry and poem by example of the avant-garde's persistence Press, $29.95, 353 pp...
...study that demonstrates just how necessurreal power, like the st •rtling hymn to sary reform is for institutional Cathothe "bull-shaped, horse-faced goddess, licism...
...The ruin is terrifying...
...In The Paper, he employs the Lippmann, Thomas Wolfe - and most Western Catskills alternating my gaze same meticulous style to describe the of all, a force within its own industry that between the horizon of hills and this birth and death of the New York Herald set and changed journalistic standards for wonderful five-pound museum of an- Tribune, the progeny of Horace Greeley ethics, reporting, and commentary...
...As an explora- Magical Papyri in Translation (ed...
...For another, how news is gathered really can be more compelling than any story it produces...
...111111 s :~sw~.~r~.wraKs ' II1 99900 01 DII h l Min 5 December 1986: 667 quite readable history of the times - less than...
...This is a fully satiric book, with Islands, Hong Kong, and Bermuda...
...And exposed individuals find few resources...
...American policy...
...He emerges creates works personal enough to out- tion movement "not otherwise docuCommonweal: 664 mented"), its ninety-one songs offer a Low's and Khlebnikov's, is as new and dent in Meinrad Craighead's The series of permutations of largely bird and as old as all those worlds to which it Mother's Songs: Images of God the flower images (turquoise flowers, tur- relates...
...Gift Shop, Trinity Church B'way at wall St...
...Schneiders argues that "a numbers of Catholics to remain active in healthy spirituality requires a healing of the church, namely the development of the imagination" and shows how the women's intentional communities of New Testament itself can be a resource faith...
...It has enabled her to lenging conventional art history...
...wish the bishops would say something" Burlington, VT 05401, June 21-26, 1987...
...John leaders...
...Without meaning to, we patronize Indians by arrogating to ourselves selfconsciousness and self-analysis, assuming that Native American literature is primitive...
...Vocation cerYet to entertain the hope that the cause of tain...
...cient and Western art lying on my lap...
...Professors Richard Neu- new poetics to last a century or two...
...No other group, especially that of-a male clerical hart: Thought and Language (Pennsylbook so succinctly and deftly locates elite, and more and more as a kaleido- vania, $27.95, 234 pp...
...Ms...
...less than 42 years of age at the time of appointment...
...Dominican mystic's thought have frefigure prominently in Hans Urs von A second characteristic has been the quently left him prey to ideological misBalthasar's impressive theological movement to make this new richer pic- interpretation...
...Paul the psychological and ethical specula- Jerome Rothenberg Schmidt, -Harvard University, $18.50, tions of the nineteenth century...
...Father Nigro significance for the whole question of justice for honest and holy women and Gonzaga University, Spokane 99258...
...inspiring journey that curious about the commercial side of a and the story structures that seem sub= readers will want to take publication empire...
...Author of Transfiguration: Poeto Memphis (Knopf, $15.95, 209 pp...
...Mother (Paulist, $9.95, 80 pp...
...capital and a capable and loyal multira$24.95, 200 pp...
...is the best genBach in relation to theological currents of scopic pattern of varied movements and eral work on Eckhart that has appeared in his time...
...One such faKeynes for our time and beyond...
...the thought of Michael Polanyi ( Michael public silence of the bishops in response Polanyi by Harry Prosch, Albany State to the entire chain of events can only Priesthood University of New York, $14.95, 354 evoke concurrence from many readers...
...This book is, I suspect, of most stories keParately, but when I read grandmother, The Irrational interest to people in the media...
...Yet W. ley defense plant where one of the char- anyone who has ever worked in Ameri- Zwalf's catalogue of an exhibition of acters is employed...
...This is not because they lack the heart or competence...
...McKenzie disarms by Martin's, $24.95, 366 pp...
...12.95 (374-34796.4...
...Thus the universe is TRINITY BOOKSTORES & GIFT SHOP Bibles The Book o f Common Prayer Books on Church History, Ethics, Spirituality Classic Literature Greeting Cards & Gifts 3 Manhattan Locations The General Theological Seminary 175 Ninth Avenue (20th St...
...view the Christian past...
...and beautiful but dangerous effort is Christopher Byron's The Fannephilim live in uneasy The Enigma of Piero, by Carlo c ir.ct Dive (Norton, $16.95 280 pp...
...rock lobster" business...
...critique I owe The Civilization of Chris- nostalgia about the strong (yes, and The "Uncensored War": The Media tianity (Thomas More, $15.95, 257 pp...
...science and religion since it argues com- men - Archbishop Hunthausen and pellingly for the legitimacy of an emer- Rev...
...Time, editor, 'Nebraska University, $5.95, 162 Madeleine L'Engle is the Inc...
...One of the dialectical Christian thinkThis is nevertheless a significant explora- FOR almost a decade several new ers that Macquarrie makes use of is Meistion of ways in which vision has shaped tendencies have been evident in ter Eckhart, the famous Dominican postWestern life and religious understand- the way historians and theologians humously condemned for heresy in ing...
...bal strategies (resembling contemporary She currently serves on the board of directors As to the task of restructuring human sound poems, say, or visual and lettristic of the Catholic Theological Society of relationships, I recommend first a case poetry) and, often, an imagery of folk- America...
...obfuscating documents...
...Ignore the silly blurb bee, a career television journalist now on that tries to soak these dry, patient stories ABC's "Our World," has been in the in angst...
...Moynihan together is to observe litera- his death) in the first readable English renders the inestimable service of re- ture anticipating history...
...writes still recognizable sonnets and take over the strategic heritage of Ger- No useful year's reading can be lim- 2000-line sequences in pure syllabics...
...the Nez Perce did not conceal from themselves the inner dangers of the religious vision-quest - dangers about which our anthropologists' have been silent...
...This is a fascinating book to read...
...laughed and said, "of One segment of the church, the sisters, treated in its pages...
...Much, a volcanic island some 1,800 miles for example, hinges on recondite distinc- southwest of Cape Town, whose popula- Buddhism: Art and Faith, edited by W. tions between Memphis and Nashville tion of fewer than 300 is doing well in the Zwalf, Macmillan, $45.00, 300 pp...
...and "I 22nd Biblical Institute, Trinity College, cially worthwhile reading...
...Church teaching isolated within a teleological perspective...
...is a rich and thoughtful exposiand believe in gods and holy lands" tion of the utility of markets for public -George D. OBrien At your bookstore policy as well as private gain...
...Rosemary Radford Ruether deby interpreting recent scholarship on the scribes and places in historical context a questions of God-language and the male- phenomenon that is enabling increasing ness of Jesus...
...Over half of the 400 reproducingbird with chacks and whistles/ from 1835, when Horace Greeley tions are in color...
...monthly In advance for more $8.95, 349 pp...
...Young takes issue with chism classes themelves - but if so, have communities and organizations the materialism according to which the little memory of this remains...
...ancient folk culture ("spells the incantacontained the seed of his distinctive tions, what we call magic words") and theory of rational behavior under uncer- the technological future...
...Time, Inc...
...It is also "questioning" as verbs which apply nat- will respond wholeheartedly if the timing similar in tone to Guy Murchie's The urally to the Catholic tradition...
...My hope is Economist's View of the World by Steven to explain to the reader why our pastoral E. Rhoads' (Cambridge, $12.95 paper, ancestors felt compelled to talk about 416 pp...
...I tory of efforts to desegregate public Heywood Hale Broun, Walter thoroughly enjoyed several days in the schools...
...Anne E. Patrick her lifelong pilgrimage of faith...
...But several recent books by respected scientists lead inevitably back toward engagement with theology...
...meanings whose full dynamics are still English...
...Trinity Bookstore A 74 Trinity Place Mail or Phone Orders Trinity Bookstore, Dept...
...ment blunders and union shorti 234-4963.' " One stanza consists of a list sightedness...
...Charles Curran among them - will Computer Kewsletter gent, hierarchical universe in the face of be fought for by our bishops is, I think, Free sample report: SOFTWARE GUIDE, the numerous attempts today to reduce unrealistic...
...This role of religion in society today...
...collection of poems, essays, and perminding us that this pathfinder for the formance pieces, The King of Time, welfare state grew his intellectual roots in edited by Charlotte Douglas (trans...
...A ford, $22.50, 285 pp...
...Jimmy Breslin, Clay Felker, Tom Wolfe THE BEST books of 1986 are I The Sun Never Sets: Travels to the - and many, many more...
...Or Another, by Peter Cameron, glorious winged seraphim A less ambitious, and less compelling Harper &.Row, $15.95, 181 pp...
...alternative to customery views, his book claims are sometimes shaky, and she is performs an important function...
...Happily, a reader's recovery from deep ignorance always leaves a salutary ironic residue, shown perhaps in this "contextual" comment on one tale's display of Coyote's behavior: "To the Navajos, serious and repeated lying, extreme irritability, open frustration, compulsive competition, and breaking of taboos are all seen as symptoms, of illness, and illness is a big concern for everyone nearby...
...COMMONWEAL, 15 Just published is a fine discussion of Rome makes good sense...
...This quoise swanlike flowers, green-swan book sets forty full-color reproductions cacao flowers, etc...
...and one of the nation's early influential Kluger's genuis comes in making The newspapers...
...One Takoma Park, Md...
...his disciples and critics AT a time when the work of the poet work is still a presence behind our alike rely on it to explain today's irra- continues, we're told, to lose its homegrown avant-garde and the new tional stock market behavior...
...Air Force Chaplain OURNALISTS often pretend that.what they enjoy most is writing about others, when they really believe they emselves are much more interesting...
...He's also produced a Colleen O' Connor COLLEEN O'CONNOR writes about national affairs for Newsweek Magazine...
...Her our church's history especially - to bear needed as urgently in today's church as somewhat Teilhardian approach is to this in mind and put it into practice, so the gift of presiding, proclaiming the cosmology what Rupert Sheldrake's A that our children, twenty years from Word, and caring for the sick and prisonNew Science of Life (J.B...
...Distance, however, shows us what we can't see in our own society: how repeated disasters injure not just individuals but the community...
...The possibilities and limits of commitment is possible only in the completely fearless changes they call for are simple but and examines the paradoxes of promises, world.' " His achievement, like Mac momentous: It is necessary to re-image freedom, love, and obligation...
...Mozart...
...tion, principally those that use systematic $39.95, 380 pp...
...The Cantares is the New York's scholar in politics, chance operations to elude the tyranny of first full translation of the late sixteenthSenator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, dedi- the ego-dominated, expressive self, Mac century manuscript that is our major cates his Godkin lectures at Harvard, Low's life-work compares most readily source for an indigenous Nahuatl poetry...
...took a bath because it launched a pp acclaimed and beloved publication that there was little interest in A Poison Stronger Than Love, by Anasauthor of many outstanding works, including the Gene- and no market for - only the misguided tasia Shkilnyk, Yale University, $19.95, sis Cycle, the Crosswicks enthusiasm of those in line to earn a 275 pp...
...His defense of this view will sion is globally ecumenical in a way that ages - whether in the fourth century or not satisfy everyone, not least because it has probably never been before...
...the sixteenth - has not always been the his approach tends to bypass issues posed My books for the past year are chosen meaning intended or given by church by modern and "post-modern" to illustrate these broad tendencies...
...In her view this is fortunate...
...is a brilliant account of $12.95,1.249 pp.,)- is an admirable examnumerous journals, most recently in the complicated case that began with one ple of V-yiog to think a problem through Harper's, the Los Angeles Times, The New brief forgery and .eventually produced a -. in.this,case, the connection between Republic, the New York Times Book Re- secret file of over 1,500 fabricated- or family 1lreakdown, welfare, poverty, and view, and the Boston Globe...
...Free sample Issue: culture and value-formation) to a purely but they are surely obvious...
...comfort to the players, as old games will, but the stores don't seem to carry thei1l (Continued from page 642) anymore...
...But the collection at a sitting, I saw their Season), and the classic Bryon, the editor of the failed publica- special newness and beauty...
...For von Finally, the ecumenical era that began In Image as Insight, Margaret Miles Balthasar the revelation of God's glory is with Protestants and Catholics finally stresses the importance of visual art to the intrinsically aesthetic (in the broad laying aside their brickbats to try to learn formation of Christian faith and modern sense), as is the appropriate human re- from and about each other has grown and secular culture...
...I like the bestseller A Winkle in Time...
...In these essays, literary ideas...
...COMPUTER NEWSLETTER FOR molecular basis...
...i ,unmcntators ha.c noted that...
...His articles and reviews appear in $24.95, 640 pp...
...and where he appears to be most abstract Eisenhower's decision to yield the The political cutting edge of Senator or obscure (he almost never really is), his Soviets their initiative in space, for fear Moynihan's ethica economica invited passion to explain his methods puts the that seizing it would expose the U.S...
...For one thing, re- Relevant porters always know more than they will tell the public, and thus save the juicy ki r parts for themselves...
...John double standards - especially those bled predecessor, Velimir Khlebnikov, Maynard Keyi.cs: Hopes Betrayed against women...
...Letters of not more than 250 or 300 words naturally have a better course not...
...Madonna Kolbenschlag has who howl(s) doglike...
...The anthropic principle states that if you want to know why the universe is the way it is, the answer is "because we are here...
...It can also accommo- sors, to 1966 when the Trib reluctantly Buddhist beliefs, practices, and themes date an answering machine: "(''Wait for gave up the ghost, a victim-of manage- all illuminate artifacts from thirteen re5 December 1986: 661 gions of the world and a time-span of two of insights into such artists and thinkers fifteen years may well go down as one of thousand years...
...Few of the fog of these misreadings...
...It can evoke stories...
...two extraordinary collections: Cantares stadt and Ernest May, of Harvard, have Chief among this year's publications is Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs transshown how presidential decision making Jackson Mac Low's Representative lated by John Bierhorst (Stanford Uniin crises alternately ignored and bene- Works 1938-1985 (Roof Books, $18.95, versity, $48.50, 559 pp...
...even mitigated in the schools and cate- causes very effectively...
...Physicists such as John Wheeler, Freeman Dyson, and the remarkable Stephen Hawking are proposing that in order for the evolution of the universe to have led to life and consciousness, the initial physical conditions at the time of the Big Bang had to have been very precisely defined...
...Occasionally the book is from rough sledding, Kluger's prose a bit too Rosemary Deen MADELEINE L'ENGLE purple, his penchant for meaningless deIn Many Waters, one of tails disruptive to the narrative...
...pp...
...BEKNARD McGINN is professor of historical bility...
...substitutes evicivilization and on every rationalization less grim, although not roseate, picture is dence for-assertion, apology, and anecfor adjusting Christ's message to our seen by Robert Gray's hugely readable dote in the debate about the media and convenient gospels of wealth, power, biography of Cardinal Manning (St...
...With Commonweal: 666 the help of Janson's son, Anthony, the Kluger...
...THEOLOGICAL BOOK CENTER 5 December 1986: 669 $17.95, 239 pp...
...could stand alone as worthy of an exhausthird edition has been thoroughly revised Kluger, with a gift for detail and anec- tive study...
...This self-fascination among the press corps has some basis...
...Carlo survive even if most of the programs she Ginzburg's., micro-history of Piero's was associated with have not...
...Modern theologians who are under Whereas Miles pays little attention to been a democratizing of the dead (Ches- attack might take comfort in the thought music in her account of the Protestant terton's definition of tradition), but in a that the only work of Pope John XXII emphasis on the aural, Pelikan's Bach far more universal way than ever before...
...He reveals ited to books published in one century...
...Patrick...
...447 pp...
...Large MINISTRY, 201 W. Latlin, Waukesha, WI sion of Polanyi's struggle to affirm the numbers of the laity are coming to claim 53186...
...Yet alongside his objective, controversial (he sees the Cantares as eloquent plea for aid to juvenile dropouts even system-generated poems, Mac Low the product of a post-conquest revitalizafrom splintered families...
...In recent years - helped along perhaps by the journalist-as-hero residue from Watergate - average readers have exhibited a healthy appetitie for accounts about the media...
...another work that gracefully hallmarks are justice, love, reconciliaIf we had organizers and informally situates cosmology tion, and unity...
...George Dennis O'Brien It is a shame that Democracy & Capitalism by Samuel Bowles and HerA university president dedicates his D bert Gintis (Basic Books, $16.95, 244 wit and wisdom to understanding the pp...
...but because they had always placed their abilities at the service of the larger community...
...many well-aimed jabs at the more feck- superb travel book, The Sun Never Sets less aspects of the California life- offers insights into the history of Western WESTERNERS frequently find style...
...harmony, and where most Ginzburg, Verso, $18.95, 164 pp...
...Karl Kroeber', distinguished ethnologist and student of literature, stands on other grounds...
...another is a tribute to Thompson, Joe Alsop, Virgil Thomson, National Book Critics Circle...
...Sen- 255 pp...
...Granted, they Commonweal: 670...
...How nearby we are, of course, depends on our self-identified capacity for self-consciousness, and may be tested in A Poison Stronger than Love...
...Professor Robert the economics of custom used his right- In this Mac Low is not a loner, but part Skidelsky, of the University of Warwick, eous and outspoken American solon to of a line of poets involved with explorahas staked out the biographical rights on tongue-lash nineteenth-century Britain's tions of art and ideology...
...Anthony Trollope's The American a virtual primer of the new and old poetic John Maynard Keynes's mercurial Senator (Dover, $7.95, 561 pp...
...Shkilnyk says that it's been "especially difficult to maintain emotional disM ECHANISM-materialism is still the dominant philosophical backdrop of contemporary cosmology, and it is decidedly antireligious...
...visible life...
...G 74 Trinity Place New York, NY 10006 (212) 3490376 iw ,4 .. YOUR COMPLETE...
...Helena, Image as Insight: Visual Understanding Abandoning the quest for superlatives, an enchanting South Atlantic island with in Western Christianity and Secular CulI heartily recommend three other books a perfectly preserved eighteenth-century ture, by Margaret R. Miles, Beacon, that have given me pleasure this year...
...Journals (A Circle of Quiet, paycheck or prestige within the corpora- I HAD read some of Peter Cameron's The Summer of the Great- tion...
...of dialectical theism to be found in a long When the Protestant Reformers later Bernard McGinn line of Christian Neoplatonic thinkers chose to address the ear rather than the and more recently in various ways in eye, they altered a whole religious sensi- Hegel, Whitehead, and Heidegger...
...Up until it closed its doors in and presented with 1,255 illustrations, dote, established himself as a chronicler 1966, it was a crusader for good and bad including 176 full pages in color, plus of Robert Caro's stature with the publica- causes, a home to journalistic icons of time lines and other pedagogical devices tion of Simple Justice, a masterful his- this century - Dorothy Thompson, (Prentice-Hall/Abrams, $40, 824 pp...
...The characters may sometimes chorus line instead of a starring role for be sad, but the author is strong and at much of her twenty years in television...
...68¢, three Isabelle Stenger, Bantam Books, 1984, The suggestion that other bishops ac- times...
...Sad, but true...
...Perhaps this teaching was has organized around human rights chance of being published...
...his book is unique and wonderful...
...tracted from bigger pieces that have had again and again...
...It is not...
...His Blacksburg...
...is right and the issue is a worthy one...
...Nevertheless, Lay Styles - ture available to the public through the ing account will help to clear away some the recently translated...
...work...
...he has probeing flayed alive enjoyable, it is antagonist of Newman by stressing his vided convlii:ihe`6*planations of why McKenzie's astringent wit...
...Although the focus is on as Dante, Pascal, and Hopkins, thus the great eras in the history of translation the art, the Buddhist faith here takes on complementing the treatment of theolo- of the sources of Christian life and belief...
...Available at your certain English department gutted a plan local bookstore, or call our toll-free genuis that distinguish her industry...
...Irving God and the New Haven Railway or from Howe's Socialism and America (Har"offers an astute analysis of our spiritual court Brace Jovanovich, $17.95, 240 malaise-although this description pp...
...self and to ground a poetics in both the map into economic no-man's-land...
...hope - among the ones I haven't Remaining Outposts of the British Emread yet...
...Call 1-800-833-2252...
...Red Willow" articulates the psychic tensions of a murder...
...and The Greek fited from detailed knowledge in each 336 pp., $12.95 paper...
...two describe the cur- Lippmann, Stanley Walker, Dorothy and New York Newsday, and president of the ing of olives...
...British journalist to date, the pickings have been slim so Winchester spent three years and far, with a few major disappointments traveled 100,000 miles to visit the re- FRANK BURCH BROWN is a composer and and a lot of minor ones...
...Gray tries to ried out a, systematic study of Vietnam being as hard on himself as on Western balance the inherited negative image of coverage, focusing on the New York civilization, and if anything can make this ambitious, imperious, ultramontane Times andthe network news...
...Seth's verse can do almost any- Walter Kerr...
...First, there has 1329...
...This notice the struggle over Dreyfus should be attaekv4bp to servativesfor not providcannot substitute for the full-scale another antidote, if one were needed, for ing answers...
...His most recent books implications of dialectical theism will not Roman Catholic church and the Protes- are The Calabrian Abbot: Joachim of Fiore in be satisfactory for many in the camp of tant reforms was not primarily theologi- the History of Western Thought (Macmillan, professional theology, but in pointing to cal but perceptual...
...in situations that involve confrontation Faculty: Elizabeth Achtemeler, Paul with the Vatican are quickly becoming Achtemeler, Joseph Agius, Peter Ellis, obsolete...
...At least in fiction, the pire by Simon Winchester (Prentice Frank Burch Brown category in which I try hardest to keep up Hall, $17.95, 317 pp...
...tion, gives a thorough tour of the corpo- firm sentences - choice, spare, and This masterful story is an rate landscape that will please anyone open - that manage to sound ordinary...
...attention to the power of place and the military installation...
...RATES: 75¢ a word, one time...
...to abandon God completely or else jettihierarchical, or patriarchal than those son the past, have neglected the tradition formulated by theologians and liturgists...
...They still provide satisfaction, Wilfrid Harrington...
...As a stunning season, when the chill winds of patri- sake of ministries undertaken because of reassemblage of earlier work, " it shows archal authority are being felt in various their commitment as Sisters of Mercy...
...centrality, we are witnesses to a wave of unofficial (samizdat) poetry and Professor Hyman Minsky, of Wash- virtual renaissance of the art, the appear- art in the Soviet Union...
...Though the authors are not aware of the need for theological restraint in interpreting our rapidly changing cosmography, the work is a fascinating (but not always philosophically satisfying) contribution to discussions of the question of cosmic purpose: John F. Naught A different sort of scientific treatise on i cosmology, of even more significance for theology, is Louise Young's The Unfinished Universe (Simon and Schuster, JOHN F. HAUGHT is associate professor of theology at Georgetown University and the author of The Cosmic Adventure and most recently, What is God...
...ten in fourteen-line iambic tetrameter than the human inhabitants are by the The Glory of the Lord: A Theological stanzas...
...To read Trollope and appears this year (sixty-four years after (1883-1920) (Viking, $24.95...
...umes of The Glory of the Lord - is I...
...In scientific cosmology much is being made these days of the so-called "anthropic principle...
...A asar, Ignatius, $35.00, 524 pp...
...Every page fierce concern with the lot of the Irish the media was, on balance, supportive of U.S...
...But she had distinguised herself on the air There's been a spate of excellent new with an irreverent and offbeat sense of books by writers outside the field chalnews and humor...
...Indeed, we are told, "The crucial theology and the history of Christianity at the Macquarrie's constructive account of the distinction between the reforms of University of Chicago...
...third of seven vol- translation of original documents...
...The evidently teleological (purposeful) universe implied in the anthropic principle is given its most extensive treatment to date in a 700- page book by physicists, John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler ( The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford, $29.95, 706 pp...
...Polanyi's thought is of considerable DESIRE PRIESTHOOD...
...His collection of five well-written essays by eminent scholars and good readers introduces to the non-specialist the literary achievements of native Amencan oral texts...
...to dreary Gibraltar, (Random House, $17.95, 307 pp...
...This work, Lectures for 1983...
...Sandra M. Schneider's commitments by the norms of justice and Women and the Word: The Gender of mutuality...
...The Bible italism" ignore: On the other hand, The gets shelved with Dr...
...of the "strangeness", of its endthe eighties, and it includes a passionate The Paper: The Life and Death of the lessly varied styles and themes...
...MC VISA AMEX Church Charges can literature...
...None of us wants to be haunted by the extravagance of Hell...
...We among us (they are legion) viewed their incredible array of forms from need to bear this in mind at this time in gifts as the source of a special ministry snowflakes to living organisms...
...triumphant in his savage debate against confess the "confessional" poets...
...In between came Walter NINA KING is the book editor of Newsday of bumper stickers...
...In this "Flagellation" is appropriately economquasi-autobiography, Ellerbee, like the ical, high-spirited, intelligent, a good Texas good-of-girl she professes to be, look at a painting which is itself a perspins one ain't-it-awful yarn-after spective concentration of powerful Reanother about a medium she clearly naissance mysteries: the presence of loves...
...Christian history is steadfastly proclaimed their allegiance to from narrowly Pietistic or exclusively coming to be seen less and less as the the church are read and treasured by a Lutheran identification, thereby claim- possession of any single privileged multitude...
...Red Smith, Homer Bigart, thing...
...5 December 1986: 665 was a pleasure and a provocation, even, Catholic, ppor> both in England and IrePeter Steinfels when every other page was dead wrong...
...in 1986, he was and he is instructing me still...
...In 1965, As a college teacher, John L. anti-Semitism, will go in the name of Moynihan was attacked by liberals for McKenzie had a tremendous im- realpolitik...
...to St...
...What such a munities are a necessary stage on a jour"healed imagination" has to offer is evi- ney to a "co-human" church...
...Family and Nation (Harcourt Brace to that of his better known contemporary, While Bierhorst's commentary is highly Jovanovitch, $12.95, 219 pp...
...specific issues, in much larger numbers cosmic phenomena...
...Books: CRITICS' CHRISTMAS CHOICES Nina King the beep.') John says, 'It's me./John...
...Prosch's lucid discus- We are witnessing a new day...
...gians in the previous volume...
...It He now teaches at SUNY-Binghamton...
...Eller- six) being invented...
...A beautifully ington University in St...
...If the numerical ratios, for example, of electron to proton masses had been only infinitesimally different at the beginning (and there is no physical reason why they might not have been ), then the expansion rate and the material content of the universe would never have allowed for the "cooking" process at the heart of stars which produced the heavy elements essential for the eventual evolution of life and consciousness...
...Classified payable company Archbishop Hunthausen to with order...
...that deficits, recommended by Keynes to tion: a bumper crop from the best of The kind of incantatory poetry that atovercome shortfalls in income, now ac- which we could, but won't, construct a tracted Khlebnikov appears this year in centuate them...
...AND THE critique by two radical economists of NEW wwEn both Marxism and liberalism on behalf of "Religion today is too often viewed as a a democratic economy says much that series of bizarre fairy tales with some RAILWAY glibber cases for "democratic capthin moral lesson attached...
...tour de force and triumphs of several presidents to the Vietnam war...
...to an John Cage...
...It is also a well written contribu- rather than merely bewildered by what the glories of California nature: "A mock- tion to the history of New York City, one sees...
...The reasons for their corpoextensive descriptions, 50 church syslife and mind (and at times the realm of rate silence might not be praiseworthy, tems, 150 vendors...
...philosophy and theology...
...yet wandering in good books brings us home...
...from that context is something we don't defect in Young's endearing book is that To the Editors: Thank you for your lead understand...
...She argues convinc- Having said this, I am grateful to Sister than we do now, if we had good lay ingly for the existence of formative prin- Anne Lonergan for the reminder that organizers...
...It British citizens all - have been cruelly (Mercer University), he is working on a book recalls the fiction of an earlier era in its displaced in the interests of an American in religious aesthetics...
...Farley the Deity and to restructure human rela- conducts her analysis in a lucid way that tionships in justice and mutuality...
...VIRGINIA SLOYAN it makes no reference to the now editorial, "An Archbishop Wronged," widely-known work of Ilya Prigogine [October 10...
...64¢, six times...
...Write: Sister Miriam Correspondence Ward...
...Knopf, $24.95, 806 pp...
...Commonweal welcomes letters on subjects will go to hell...
...The result is a veritable cottage industry of what might otherwise pass as undis- Exciting tinguished trade publications - journalism reviews and media newsletters - 111 as well as regular columns in newspapers Fulfilling and magazines that plot the fortunes of media stars and those who'd like to be...
...This sober and penetrataesthetics...
...Seuss...
...is to biology...
...Receive ecclesiastical permission of Bishop/Religious Superior, I'l Call Father Eugene Gosparovic III collect at 202-767-1485...
...Linked to other Russian artists sationalist press gossip over Skidelsky's JEROME ROTHENBERG's own books for 1986 and poets like Malevich and documentation of Keynes's homosexual are New Selected Poems 1970-1985 (New Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov created a new joustings with Lytton Strachey, et al., Directions) and a revised version of Shaking "beyond-sense" language (za-um) as a has distracted attention from his dig into the Pumpkin: Traditional Poetry of the Indian .radical attempt to transform language itKeynes's treatise on probability, his road North Americas (Van der Marck Editions...
...This is By contrast The Greek Magical visionary art and poetic narrative to be Papyri, the most extensive translation savored, a vivid record of one Catholic ANNE E. PATRICK...
...Tarcher, now, might think of "welcoming" and ers...
...1986 is no excep- in the most repressive of circumstances...
...The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth cial population...
...A sobering illus- race -,- seven to, the point of acknowledgtration of how far government and mili- ing the limits of the evidencee and the tary officials, not all of them warped by abse:nce,.o€ clear solutions...
...ciples that operate along with the laws of Catholicism is, at its best, a "both-and" Let me rephrase that: if the organizers physics and chemistry to bring about the religion rather than an "either-or...
...This book changes that, partly by changing us, for we are not innocent readers...
...But it is RQS,EMARy DEEN is Commonweal's poetry America's most accom- perhaps the best serious book about jour- editor...
...As such the tain conditions...
...Miles is given to /985), and the forthcoming Meister Eckhart: an important historical and contemporary occasional overstatement, her theoretical Teacher and Preacher (Paulist, 1986...
...is wtitten in an academic style...
...A where the "loathsome" native apes are Bach Among the Theologians, by Jaronovel about San Francisco yuppies writ- served better by British conservationists slav Pelikan, Fortress, $14.95, 158 pp...
...chic demeanor - has endured from anti-slavery stirrings that led to the and is today one of television's most apA spiritual Civil War through political corruption pealing center-stage stars...
...Limited edition of 250 copies, signed and slipeased: the absurdity, stupidity, and flashes of Once upon a time just the other day, a $50.00 (374-34797-2...
...Deploring the Dutch St., NYC 10038...
...Ruether does not advocate secfor curing idolatrous tendencies to wor- tarianism or ultimate separation, but recship maleness in the First and Second ognizes that such "exodus" comPersons of the Trinity...
...government...
...But it also tells a sometimes poi- imperialism and the sad state of Britain Buddhist art forbidding because gnant story about the perils of mating in today...
...Frank Tobin's Meister Ecking him for the whole church...
...Paulist...
...Yet Pelikan also rescues Bach given new attention...
...resembling our own of the author's paintings in the context of experimental poetry at its best...
...A believer today, sour, Elizabeth Morancy, and Arlene A contemporary version of the folk- distressed by Vatican action against Violet...
...is scholarly, clear, and easily read in Communities (Harper & Row, $16.95, an hour or two...
...It was the most thoughtful who has issued one of the most cogent explication of the human tragedy we are scientific challenges to old-fashioned re- witnessing in Seattle that I have seen...
...the $47 million corporate tures, by- Karl Kroeber, compiler and mistake called TV Cable Week...
...to me to fortify my armchair defenses with apparent obscurity to rest...
...Yet von Balth- Macquarrie's In Search of Deity: An Because of the inherent ambiguity and asar's erudition and his own penetrating Essay in Dialectical Theism (Crossroad, emotional accessibility of visual image- religious vision make Lay Styles a book $14.95, 274 pp...
...than three times...
...Not to mention more famil- Aesthetics-III: Studies in Theological Well, yes, as a matter of fact Seth does iar British territories such as the Falkland Style: Lay Styles, by Hans Urs von Balthjest a lot...
...Louis, the dean ance each year of experimental books of produced introduction to the latter, Rusof post-Keynesian economists, has pro- poetry that create new forms and struc- sian Samizdat Art [ed...
...Maps, detailed capLiquidly aviating through/A sky of founded one of the paper's two predeces- tions, and brief but lucid accounts of California blue...
Vol. 113 • December 1986 • No. 21
