VIOLENCE IN THE EAST
BARDIN, JOHN FRANKLIN
Violence in the East A CORNER OF THE WORLD. By Robert Shaplen. Alfred A. Knopf. 246 pp. $2.75. Reviewed by JOHN FRANKLIN BARDIN AS YET NO ONE HAS WRITTEN\a novel about the second World War that...
...Should he have given way to William Z. Foster...
...They contribute to ihe violence—he does not—it exists without either of them...
...In attempting to support their beliefs against the chaos of Oriental corruption, they destroy themselves just as effectively through violence as an Indian philosopher might through COtt" temptation...
...The works of Norman Mailer, Alfred Hayes, John Home Burns, that won each of these authors his reputation, have been syntheses' of many disjointed incidents which have been collected within the boundaries of an arbitrary frame of reference—a particular campaign on an island in the South Pacific, an arcade in Naples...
...This violence lies repressed in the American personality and it is the wound of an earlier trauma in the European memory...
...In one story, a promising young man loses himself in the decadent sensuality of the European colony in Shanghai...
...But it is important to direct attention to the systematic publication of such guides to thinking...
...During the days or weeks that the reader partakes of this process, he is projecting himself imaginatively into a spacetime continuum different from his own stream of consciousness...
...as written, I rim forced to compare it with Horsey or Mailer...
...A Catholic View of the Great Books THE GREAT BOOKS: A Christian Appraisal...
...The purpose of this book is to give an account of the rise of American labor for the general reader, tracing it from vague colonial beginnings through the exciting days of the New Deal and the second World War...
...Montaigne...
...And, similarly, the expatriated docton in Macao knows how delusive his hope of American citizenship is, and how dangerous his humanitarian conscience is, but defies the island authorities by treating a strike leader nevertheless...
...Images, metaphors, brilliant tangents, the richness and ambiguity of the novel—these are the elements that are missing...
...but has allowed his publisher to refer to them as talcs and to himself as a story-teller...
...Thomas Aquinas...
...The articles are written simply and cleverly, with a uniformly high level of persuasiveness...
...The heroes of this book believe in the dignity of the individual, in the Occidental concept of selfishness...
...Whether U.S.A...
...He presents no facts to prove that any other type of labor movement was possible...
...Philip Taft is professor of economics at Brown University...
...4.50...
...Nor is it true that the "gains of the 1920s went primarily to the skilled workers and trade union members...
...A brief chapter deals with the strikes of 1877, the Molly Maguires and the Haymarket affair...
...It is probably not necessary to describe more fully an evaluation based on so clearly denned a philosophical position...
...Shaplen did not attempt to write a novel...
...Chapters are devoted t<$' the rise of the early workingmen's parties and to the efforts of the trade unions lo free themselves from the influence of cheap money men, trust busters and reformers...
...which I mention because of its influence on Burns...
...With so many students busily reading and discussing some of the classics of Western civilization, Father Gardiner and his colleagues are trying to insure that the students are taught what to think about the books they read...
...Reviewed by PHILIP TAFT LABOR IN AMERICA is a survey of the labor movement from colonial times to the present...
...Labor's Past Surveyed LABOR IN AMERICA...
...The characters and conflicts, soundly conceived, are incompletely represented...
...The locale changes: sometimes it is Shanghai or Manila, at other times Macao, Calcutta or Saigon...
...Although a number of the "great books" are listed in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum...
...But Mr...
...L. Lewis...
...The Devin-Adair Company...
...The structure of each is the same: an American encounters violence in his search for experience...
...He has not even called them stories, which again they also arc not...
...The chapter on the^Knights of Labor does little to show why it was incompatible with the growing tradeunionism...
...Although his accuracy and modesty are to be commended, what most interests me is whether, as a consequence, his fictional what-you-maycall-it grows naturally into a more than satisfactory artistic experience...
...Usually, there is an element of striving toward a vaguely seen ideal- Communism in the case of the young man in Shanghai...
...Despite its shortcomings the reader will, on the whole, And this volume interesting and informative...
...Ralph Gilbert Ross is Research Associate for the Division of General Education, and a member of the Philosophy Department, New York University...
...Bonaventure and St...
...Shakespeare, Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Karl Marx...
...Thomas...
...It is about time he did...
...In connection with the decline of unionism in the 1920's, the significance of the left wingers' attempt to reorganize the labor movement is left out of account...
...John Franklin Bardin is a frequent contributor to The New Leader Literary Section...
...The French intelligence officer who destroys his career in Saigon is fully aware of the illusory nature of the revolution, but he is compelled to shout puolicly his disgust at the murderous reaction of the colonial government...
...And there is also the counterpoint of the American and European experience against the Asian experience...
...hut it is less materialistic, more definite...
...U.S.A...
...2.00...
...There is an even more curious fact about the present spate of war novels: few of them are novels at all...
...Since then civilisation has been disintegrating and later authors can be viewed as specimens of this disintegration, just as earlier ones can be understood as faulty precursors (an adaptation of the Augustinian theory of history) The Declaration of Independence rests on the Thomistic doctrine of natural rights, not on the Lockean version which is faulty (the difference can be seen by comparing the incorrect notion that man is "born free and equal " with the correct notion that he is "created equal" >. American democracy thus rests on Catholic belief and the direction it should take is far better discovered by paying attention to the writings of Hamilton rather than those of Jefferson...
...Edited by Harold C. Gardiner, S.J...
...Reviewed by JOHN FRANKLIN BARDIN AS YET NO ONE HAS WRITTEN\a novel about the second World War that transcends the level of jou/nalism...
...black market profits in the case of the colonel in the Philippines...
...The scarcely original charge that Gompers' luck of vision was greatly to limit to role of the American Federation of Labor in advancing the cause of labor as a whole needs more evidence than the author supplies...
...This docs not mean that the novel is a form that must be closed-olf and separate...
...The chapters dealing with the period since 1033, are too general and although they cover many important facta, they leave out too many necessary ones for an adequate understanding...
...It is too brief and the influence of radicalism is inadequately treated, a criticism which might be made of several of the earlier chapters...
...In those tales where a European is the protagonist and an American the observer, this striving remains...
...The arbitrary frame of reference which he uses to enclose his tales is his own itinerary in Asia when he was a war correspondent...
...Both feel guilt and moral responsibility, while lacking the Oriental ability to escape through the destruction of self-consciousness...
...Consequently, it is an exigency of the novel that it continue, that it stand for the whole of its protagonists' lives and not for merely relevant incidents that occui in -these lives...
...Thomas Y. Crowcll...
...Hayes and Mailer—followed his many characters through their entire lives and imposed upon them a sociological construction...
...NEITHER AMERICAN NOR EUROPEAN can let the violence they see simply exist around them...
...MR...
...His observation that Gompers was "never one to give way before younger, more progressive leadership as time went on and he grew older" while true, is of no significance...
...402 pp...
...Who were these progressive leaders...
...Unlike other art forms, with the exception of the editorial sonata of the nineteenth century, the novel endures...
...all the books read during the first year of the course are discussed in this volume, and each succeeding volume will deal with the books constituting another year's work through the four years of the course...
...in another, an American colonel can neither continue nor break off from his Army wife, although the liaison disrupts his civilian marriage...
...Thucydides, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Plutarch...
...Good novels have been written in which every part balances every other part, and the reader, on finishing such a novel, not only feels an equilibrium, but is aware of a creative responsibility to connect the microcosm he has recently experienced with the macrocosm he is still experiencing On the other hand, good novels hav • been written which are formally loose and inexact, which give a sense ol the assymefry and disorder of life War and Peace and Studs Lomyan are two example- Any novel, however, whether its structure is rigid or flexible, must treat*of its suhiect to a (joint that approaches exhaustion Even John Ilos Passos in his trilogy...
...It should be a matter of great interest to discovci what in general is the attitude of the contributors to these books, who include: The authors of the Declaration of Independence, Plato...
...Machiavelli...
...The exposition, complete workingout and dramatic recapitulation of a single theme or of a group of related themes comprise the artistic process which we know as the novel...
...Reviewed by RALPH G. ROSS THE RAPID GROWTH of the classes under the aegis of the Great Books Foundation of Chicago—already, according to the publisher, in "churches, clubs, libraries, and schools"—has inspired publication of four volumes, of which this is the first...
...is properly a novel is a moot point, and a tangential one: but its author recognized the i equipments of the form...
...The prose is simple, competent and flat...
...The significant thing is whether the protagonist, American or not, throws himself into the violence or flies from it— which way he escapes...
...THE MODUS VIVENDI in each instance is a sexual affair...
...Ideas arc not dealt with adequately and while such treatment makes for easy description, it fails to bring out adequately the conflicting elements that sought dominance over the labor movement...
...The gains were widely distributed and there were too few organized and skilled to affect the index drastically...
...SHAPLEN HAS NOT WRITTEN a hovel and—what is remarkable!— he has not called his collection of thematieally connected incidents by this name...
...By Foster Rhea Dulles...
...Augustine...
...They must participate, try to stop it or assist it...
...The author's examination of the causes for the decline of the Knights as well as the rise of the American Federation of Labor seems questionable...
...What they should think fonsti tutes a Christian, more specifically a Roman Catholic, appraisal...
...Mr Shaplen has two themes which are really one double-edged sword: escape from and into violence...
...The violence is there—before the American comes on the scene—and the reader is given to understand that it will continue after he has left...
...The chapters dealing with the earlier periods in general follow traditional lines...
...The high point of Western civilization was reached by St...
...As conceived, this book makes mn want to compare it to Malraux or Sender...
...Or perhaps to John...
Vol. 32 • June 1949 • No. 24
