LETTERS
Kudos for Abel Editor: Thank you for Lionel Abel. On an exacting day, when fire and brimstone rained down from heaven, rigorist judgment had stipulated for ten. But I believe the...
...Zickerman's facile summation of the film's ending ("Fate simply catches up with them"), that hardly negates —or even affects—the tone of the preceding two hours, a celebration of style as a self-sufficientmode of life...
...By implication, Toback has accused director Penn of serving as a factotum for some underground Ministry of Culture...
...Howe displays little understanding of New Left sentiment...
...Antiformalism's...
...Bonnie and Clyde don't go out in style any more than Belmondo did in Breathless...
...Kudos for Abel Editor: Thank you for Lionel Abel...
...Feldman care...
...In his article Mr...
...Toback may think it a "simple-minded" conceit to equate Clyde's sexual impotence with his homicidal behavior . . . but the trouble with platitudes is that most of them are true . . . D. F. ZICKERMAN JAMES TOBACK replies: I was not aware that I was laying out any "line...
...Fate simply catches up with them...
...Yet one does not expect an intellectual like Mr...
...Second, even if one accepts Mr...
...In this article, and I quote in part, Mr...
...Zickerman did not read the piece carefully...
...I have no argument with Toback's thesis that America, and particularly its parvenu "radicals," are preoccupied with style...
...On the contrary, SDS obstructs in order to make explicit the proposition that communities of people are justified in resisting those organizations and institutions engaged in anti-libertarian, antihumane activities...
...Howe, means that the powerful can continue to bomb villages, napalm human flesh, manufacture deadly weapons, and draft young bodies, while the powerless must feel compelled to stand idlely by and tolerate such activities, in the name of "human liberty...
...1968) sums up the movie: "More than simply providing slick entertainment, Bonnie and Clyde...
...That when Marxists were sentenced to jail under various Criminal Syndicalism laws it was always on the ground that they were free to "say" anything they wished but could not act, i.e., advocate or prepare insurrection...
...but only the powerful are allowed to act...
...Student activists are not against civil liberties...
...I should like to take issue with two particular areas of Mr...
...Bonnie and Clyde does not celebrate anarchism la mode...
...he will allow Dow Chemical to speak but not act...
...Or does Mr...
...In 1968, however, the New Left lacks this power...
...and the Dow Chemical recruiter would likely be ignored when he appeared on most campuses...
...The powerless are permitted to speak, to write, and to shout...
...Feldman's remarkable letter deserves a more detailed reply than it will here get...
...Howe to oppose, on libertarian-humanitarian LETTERS grounds, the attempts of SDS chapters to sym bolically resist organizations like the Marines, the Air Force, Lockheed, and Dow, reflects on Mr...
...But it's not invariably true that "content" or "morality" are sacrificed on the altar of style...
...But "style" doesn't triumph here...
...That when Clark Kerr at Berkeley banned "outside recruiters" he used precisely Mr...
...Feldman's rationale: Civil Right opinions could be expressed on campus but SNCC and CORE could not engage in actions on campus...
...Toback takes the view that Clyde is such a successful antihero precisely because he commits every larceny with debonair nonchalance, every atrocity with an engaging finesse...
...Was Hemingway guilty of pandering to his bohemia...
...which make weapons) it would do so...
...Feldman's displeasure: "Mind, the issue is not whether SDS holds demonstrations against Dow Chemical, since no one can in principle be opposed to that...
...What activists do assert, however, is that in situations where preservation of the libertarian form leads to toleration by the powerless of the antilibertarian, anti-humane acts of those exercising power, "preservation of the libertarian form" is undesirable...
...Feldman to "blow up" any factory...
...Because student activists feel that "making napalm for an unjust, immoral war" is an anti-libertarian, anti-humane activity, SDS asserts that resistance to Dow Chemical Company by communities of people is both justified and democratic—even if 51 per cent of the community believes otherwise...
...only resistant-type actions by the people themselves can effectively end the suffering...
...The issue is whether SDS will forcibly try to prevent recruiters from saying their wretched little piece, even though the majority of students favor allowing them to...
...Peretz says in mentioning the war in Vietnam that ADA is "now belatedly against the war...
...Feldman makes much of the distinction between "speech" and "act...
...One expects university administrators to define the issue of military, para-military, and Dow Chemical recruitment in terms of the abstract "right" of the individual to see the recruiter and the theoretical "injustice" of a "minority imposing its will on the majority...
...It is thus obliged to limit itself to symbolically resisting Dow Chemical at the place where it can act with the greatest possible impunity, the campus, by obstructing Dow's campus recruiting process...
...Feldman, and it will be we of the Left, you and 1, who will get burned...
...For the information of your readers, as far back as the May 1961 national convention of ADA, the organization warned against the dangers of military involvement in Vietnam...
...Or are only right-thinking folk allowed to participate in 'participatory democracy...
...Does he suppose that this hypothetical Bircher would be any less sincere, any less convinced of his moral righteousness, in blowing up SDS than Mr...
...A bureaucrat's task is to administer according to a given set of universal rules, not to examine the moral consequences of specific applications of these rules...
...We know there's no way out for Bonnie and Clyde but we sympathize with Bonnie's yearning for tranquility after what they (and we) have been through, not with Clyde's unalterable collision course with death...
...On many campuses the obstruction of recruiters has isolated many SDS chapters from liberal students and faculty members...
...On an exacting day, when fire and brimstone rained down from heaven, rigorist judgment had stipulated for ten...
...1) He says that "if the New Left possessed the power to blow up with impunity all Dow Chemical plants making napalm (along with the plants of Lockheed, Boeing, etc...
...If he supports his opinion through a Castroite or Maoist ideology, then let him, please, not invoke civil liberties and democratic values...
...The American power structure in 1968 is screwing the lives of many Vietnamese people, and many young men who do not wish to serve as conscripted killers...
...and, if anything, style becomes irrelevant to both the bullet-riddled corpses and the audience—unless, of course, the latter happens to be unwilling to suspend its biases either for or against "style" in the abstract...
...The sole criticism I made of Penn (whom I regard as one of the two or three best directors in America or anywhere) concerns the obviousness, not the validity, of his use of the pistolphallus metaphor...
...Why the apprehensive titter from the audience when Clyde misconstrues Bonnie's hints that they settle down...
...Leon Shull National Director ADA LETTERS On Bonnie and Clyde Editor: Reviewer James Toback ("Bonnie and Clyde: Style as Morality," DISSENT, Jan.–Feb...
...has repeatedly been used against radicals by repressive authorities...
...2) Mr...
...ADA and the War Editor: It is regrettable when so responsible a magazine as DISSENT permits the publication of a statement in an article so obviously misleading as that which occurred in the piece written by Martin Peretz in your March–April 1968 issue...
...I do not believe in censorship, but I do believe that editors have some responsibility to check factual statements so easily ascertained...
...And, if a margin of saving grace is desired, one can adduce a few sentences from the letter by Michael Walzer...
...Howe's part an insensitivity to human suffering and an inability to empathize with committed leftists of a different generation...
...That right now Spock & Coffin will be tried on a quite similar charge...
...Howe is content to let organizations and institutions which inflict human suffering operate freely, so long as he can verbally protest against injustice...
...He will not allow a trivial majority to interfere with his decision to obstruct Dow Chemical recruiters...
...3) Mr...
...BOB FELDMAN Columbia Chapter of SDS IRVING HowE replies: Mr...
...If a tiny minority, New Left old Left or whatever, assumes the right to "blow up" Dow Chemical, on what ground can he object to some Birchites deciding to "blow up" SDS headquarters and perhaps Mr...
...serve[s] the cultural function of presenting heroes who express the current infatuation with style—style as a value in itself, a replacement of values...
...Formalism's...
...Is he aware that this is precisely the kind of distinction which in the U.S...
...SDS, on the other hand, is seeking to persuade people that verbal protest alone will not end the suffering inflicted by America's power structure, because the American men of power are basically unresponsive to appeals to their moral consciences...
...It "puts the sting back in death" to quote Pauline Kael...
...Feldman too...
...Who knows, maybe I've been brainwashed by someone...
...At which point, if any, will our "participatory democrat" bow to the wishes of the majority of his fellow students...
...Such an obstructionist tactic, especially if a campus majority favors open recruiting, is, it is held, "authoritarian," "elitist," and "antidemocratic" in essence...
...Students for a Democratic Society, it is argued, is violating the "liberty" of the recruiter and the individual when it prevents the process of recruitment from occuring...
...Yet for a self-styled "democratic socialist" like Mr...
...Who precisely (leaving aside his lack of power) has authorized Mr...
...Dow Chemical Company is obstructed, not because the men who control th-t company think differently than New Leftists or utter words with which we disagree, but because it acts: it makes napalm for an unjust, immoral, anti-libertarian war...
...It seems to me that a certain segment of America's coed population affected the "style" of Brett when The Sun Also Rises was published...
...To quibble over the New Left's alleged "authoritarianism" and "elitism" when thousands are being murdered and hundreds are being drafted, jailed, or exiled against their will, reflects an extremely distorted value system...
...Nevertheless, Toback insists that Clyde's fatalism expresses "a replacement of values...
...Many liberal students andfaculty members, although sympathetic to New Left goals, reject, for reasons similar to Mr...
...If not, then let him think a little about what he is saying...
...How can any sort of democratic society be maintained if minorities, no matter how right or moral their convictions, assume the right to use such methods...
...OSCAR GASS Civil Liberties on the Campus Editor: In "A Word About 'Bourgeois Civil Liberties"' (Jan.–Feb...
...It seemed to me, however, that the movie was profoundly antiviolence...
...Mr...
...which make weapons) it would do so . . . Why "with impunity...
...The disingenuousness of Bonnie and Clyde stems from the screenplay, not the direction...
...If it is necessary to do what he says, then it must be done, with or without impunity...
...I wonder whose it is...
...Howe, who considers himself a democrat and a socialist, to define the issue of recruitment in such narrow terms...
...DISSENT'S...
...Campus obstruction of recruitment can, of course, be opposed on tactical grounds...
...But I believe the March–April issue of DISSENT can be saved by just this one...
...Toback's review, on the other hand, is "slick entertainment," period, if slickness is the measure of how much of "the line" one can cram into the space of two pages devoted to something only peripherally related to politics...
...Zickerman's misunderstanding, the first of which is his attack on my supposed "accusation" that Arthur Penn is a self-appointed "factotum for some underground Ministry of Culture...
...1968) Irving Howe, the self-styled "defender of liberty," echoes the arguments used by liberal university administrators to justify punishment of New Left activists who obstruct military, para-military, and Dow Chemical recruiting...
...In 1968, "preservation of the libertarian form," as defined by Mr...
...How such an "implication" was inferred, I can explain only by assuming that Mr...
...for politically free men such liberties are necessary and in a truly democratic society such liberties are desirable...
...Peretz should know that ADA has vigorously and without question opposed the war in Vietnam from its very inception and has indeed taken a leadership role in the opposition to the war ever since the military escalation began...
...If the New Left possessed the power to blow up with impunity all Dow Chemical plants making napalm (along with the plants of Lockheed, Boeing, etc...
...Concerning which let me quote a few lines from my article which aroused Mr...
...Howe's, the means which chapter members have democratically chosen to utilize...
...So what if America's hippies dash out to the nearest boutique and array themselves as Bonnies and Clydes...
...And if so, will SDS reconcile that stand with `participatory democracy...
...For he is playing with fire—play with it long enough, Mr...
...When SDS obstructs military, para-military, and Dow Chemical recruitment it does so not because it wishes to deprive all men of their liberties...
...But suppose what is the reality: that the majority of Columbia students voting to allow those recruiters to appear on campus is actually a good deal larger...
...Feldman is very cavalier about "51 per cent of the [Columbia] community...
...Feldman would in blowing up Dow Chemical...
Vol. 15 • May 1968 • No. 3
