Between Dracula & Bovary
Garvey, John
the preconciliar Catholic subculture. Yet I discovered that or feelings about his sexuality or the state of his soul. Ile was works by hitter ex-Catholics and New Leftists that claimed...
...but what we tional self-determination...
...He was an arrogant, board Dooley as gay martyr in order to promote his own im- supremely self-confident, and in many ways profoundly comportant cause, but there is no evidence that Dooley would have pelling individual who believed he was destined to perform a been in any way interested in serving as a symbol of oppres- special errand in God's wilderness...
...of Nazi genocide, therefore any hesitan- century, and was predicated on the notion A long time ago it occurred to me that cy on the part of the European or U. S. that each specific language group or cul- romanticism is the emotional continuum governments can be compared to Neville ture deserved its own specific nation-state...
...Elie Wie- zations, which normally-and appropri- grounds, but are actually quite sensible: sel, at the dedication of the new Holocaust ately -complain of facile comparisons of we can'tjust drop some bombs and, if that Commonweal 21 May 1993: 7 The identification of a society with the state is a modern invention...
...By the time this column appears some deciBETWEEN DRACULA & BOVARY sion will almost certainly have been taken...
...Nationalism as we know it is Macedonia...
...8: 21 Mav 1993 Commonweal...
...Similarly, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman em- Yugoslavia is closer to the Dracula end the comparison to Vietnam fails: it may pires-and was complicated by the of that spectrum...
...There Evil (one of their spies was more upset by Dooley's ignorance are also those who assert that he was indeed tormented by his of Navy terminology than by his sexual behavior...
...all clear that the government of Serbia can ple, burned by Vietnam, argue that we must Many commentators speak of the an- control what it has unleashed, nor can the understand the probability of escalation, cient hatreds and entrenched national loy- Croats, nor can the Bosnians...
...In this respect he is Dooley's story is extraordinary, maddeningly complex, as I perhaps the first postmodern saint, continually shifting in his have learned in the course of research for a biography I am cur- appearance as we seek to discover some deeper reality...
...What we can't Albanians in Macedonia and Romania, der not how long it will take for healing hope for here, after any sort of involve- Serbs in Albanian territory, Croatians and to come, but whether it is possible at all...
...Nationwhat could become a full-scale military for Serbs and Croats and Bosnian Muslims alism was originally invoked to strengthinvolvement...
...He totally ignored Navy sion...
...Shilts appears content to present a card- Tony Dooley was nobody's martyr...
...Albanians in Serbian territory, and so forth...
...Yet it was possible to the point of near-total atrophy...
...performing acts of kindness and obe- Corps...
...Nationalism is a prod- it is not clear that the horror can be conethnic cleansing reminds us, as it should, uct of romanticism, born in the nineteenth tained by political, or military, means...
...There are Hungarians in Romania, their rapists and torturers make you wontherefore unthinkable...
...In fact several Dooley wanted out of the Navy and enjoyed enraging the top of Dooley's gay friends insist he was convinced that God had brass with his antics, since they had fallen for the largely fabmade him homosexual and that, since he was considered high- ricated version of recent history he presented in Deliver Us from ly attractive, his sexuality was offered as a gift to others...
...always this way, but it was not...
...this would bring in Albania, legitimately be made, we can therefore not an ancient memory, thinly layered and then, perhaps, Turkey and Greece...
...Tom Dooley sexual orientation and that he dealt with it by acting as though may not have been a saint, but he was no patsy either...
...YUGOSLAVIA'S ROMANTIC NATIONALISM In the event that the Owen-Vance plan is not followed by its signatories, the use of air strikes against strategic targets and lifting the arms embargo to allow Bosnians it s everyone now knows, Museum in Washington, used the occasion to receive weapons is likely to occur...
...But it is also a mis- But this nationalist magma needs to be ror from spilling over into Kosovo and take to say that because a comparison can understood...
...have taken out newspaper ads suggesting that here a real comparison can be made...
...The identification of a nation (that is, a language-group and culture) with the larger society itself is also relatively modern...
...Anthony Messenger in 1958...
...Shilts's discussion is, in its way, as church without revealing much of his personal situation...
...It is a mistake to say that by the Croats, and nationalist feeling was justifying hatred, and a built-in incapacity the Holocaust was so unique that any tapped to strengthen specific political for resolution and fulfillment...
...Anyone hoping to understand Tom Dooley is no more justified than the ill-fated campaign for his canon- must first concede that we can only see him through the inization...
...but I must also lament Dooley's continuing man's character multiply exponentially even as we seek some misuse by those less interested in understanding than enlisting definitive conclusions in his compelling, tragic journey to him in personal crusades, however legitimate they may he...
...the friction between them (occurring now in India between Muslims and Hindus) is not necessarily a resurgence of some ancient, atavistic feeling...
...JAWS T. FISHER so I don't do that anymore...
...ligious hagiographies: they contained little of value concern- Dooley constantly sought to restore the faith of others in the ing the real Tom Dooley...
...Welcome to hell...
...and we should not as- This is much more like the chaos that genocide of the Nazis fails is that they sume that strategic air strikes and arming led to World War I than it is like anything Nazis were in charge, as Stalin was durthe Bosnians will do anything substantial that has occurred since, with some added ing the murder of the kulaks...
...He is he were another person during his often anonymous sexual en- much too interesting and his work too important to play a cameo counters...
...were a problem...
...Many military peo- and more modern complications...
...The best arcomparison, ever, with any other event is agendas...
...It may be hard for us now to understand that it was not "We can't go on meeting like this...
...And ministration to do Lewis is chief among them) have called yet General Colin Powell has opposed it something about the for military intervention...
...What is going on in former be compared to Churchill, etc...
...The point is simply that we have James T. Fisher is an associate professor of Arneric•cm absolutely no documentary evidence of Dooley's own thoughts Studies (it Yale University...
...Jewish organi- on what may look to some like cold slaughter in former Yugoslavia...
...The nationalist any real politics, replacing it with roby historical comparisons, even apparently card was played first by the Serbs and then mantic longing, self-pity, anger, selfjustifiable ones...
...He seemed aware that his own life was less "everything good and everything evil that he did can be traced important than the impact he might have on others because of back to the shame he carried over his homosexuality" reduces his charisma and the powerful mystique of service generated Dooley to the sum of his sexuality for polemical reasons and by his work in Laos...
...One reading of the ONI report supports a theory that diently following the ideology of the church...
...Americans hate the be that a limited intervention will lead to Wilsonian endorsement of the right to na- thought that some problems have no soan escalation of involvement...
...that extends between Dracula and MaChamberlain, and any firm resistance can It was a reaction to empires-especially datne Borarv...
...ment or no involvement at all, is a sim- Bosnian Muslims in Serbian territory, You thought Northern Ireland and Israel ple peace...
...there has been pres- to plead with President Clinton for action...
...Having interviewed nearly two hundred of his understand why Randy Shilts needed to tell his limited version friends and associates...
...Shilts's claim that out belief in God...
...But make the comparison across the board: if over by modernism...
...Still another individual recalled making a sexual ad- role in a political melodrama he would probably have dismissed vance toward Dooley only to he told: 1 "in in a state of grace, as unworthy of his cosmic grandeur...
...gument for intervention is to keep this horalways inappropriate...
...It is in some ways the exploitation of a relatively modern phenomenon, the romantic identification of culture and language with the bogus need for a nation-state or for particular forms of political enfranchisement...
...Where one important comparison with doesn't work, stop...
...It is not at to bring peace closer...
...other misleading and mistaken as the most garish Dooley tributes in than to state that he did not know how anyone could live withThe Sign or St...
...OF SEVERAL MINDS John Garvey other atrocities to the Holocaust...
...celebrity and sainthood...
...I can attest that the contradictions in the of Dooley's story...
...The use of military intervention would sure on the Clinton ad- Normally dovish columnists (Anthony seem to he justified here, if anywhere...
...The interviews that might end up fighting here is very dif- where one culture often lives in the pock- tell of people who were friends, neighbors, ferent, and it can be argued that a long in- et of another, this was and is a recipe for and fellow workers who have now become volvement is not, simply because long, horror...
...This is a reand there must be the clear understanding alties, the long sense of grievance, that have gion where the state has been weakened and commitment of the general public to marked the Balkans...
...protocol and rarely did anything he did not want to do, perhaps, Shilts writes: "The Catholic church had said he could not see according to some of his gay friends, because he enjoyed the the face of God because of his sin, so he struggled to be the patronage of well-placed homosexuals in the Navy Medical best Catholic he could he...
...to live together for years, with many of en the politics of the nation-state, but is Quite beyond this concern there is the these allegedly deep-seated feelings very an unmoored passion that has devoured added problem that we can be deceived much on the back burner...
...finitely variegated perspectives of others...
...I can rently writing...
...It has been possible in some parts of the world for widely divergent religions and cultures to live side by side with relatively little friction...
...Ile was works by hitter ex-Catholics and New Leftists that claimed to at once hugely egocentric and unintrospective, at least in the expose Dooley's links to the CIA, or that held him responsible thousands of letters he wrote in haste from remote corners of for the Vietnam War, were only secular equivalents of the re- Asia...
...In the Balkans, lution, but this is one...
Vol. 120 • May 1993 • No. 10
