Dear Editor
Dear Editor Cuba Roger Fontaine's invocation of the Monroe Doctrine in defense of the United States' right to demand withdrawal of the Soviet troops in Cuba is ill-founded and self-serving...
...He says that "Unlike Anthony Powell or Kingsley Amis . . . Waugh puts his heart on his hero's sleeve...
...Dear Editor Cuba Roger Fontaine's invocation of the Monroe Doctrine in defense of the United States' right to demand withdrawal of the Soviet troops in Cuba is ill-founded and self-serving ("Playing Down the Cuba Crisis," NL, October 22...
...But he was also different from them: better...
...As brilliant as Vile Bodies was, for example, all told I think Sword of Honour represents a far greater achievement...
...The early Waugh took note of things, so to speak...
...In truth...
...And the staggering size of the oil companies' recently reported third quarter profits is likely to spur passage of Carter's windfall-profits tax proposal...
...As for Carter's energy "joke," Congress seems Finally to be coming around...
...His later works were a major factor in this...
...Second, Fontaine has chopped the actual meaning of the Doctrine in half to suit his own purpose...
...I don't think so...
...Since Democrats control the White House and the Congress, they must bear the ire of the voters who—unable to reapportion the Congress next year-will have only the Presidential race in which to throw the bumblers out...
...First, to set the record straight, Fontaine has appealed to a phantom...
...he speaks to the reader through unironic and unhumorous utterances"-according to Pritchard, a falling-off from Waugh's previous style, and a literary liability...
...Chicago Eugene Bourne Waugh In his essay on Evelyn Waugh ("Waugh Revisited," NL, September 24), William Pritchard seems to be singling out the very thing that made Waugh the best among the novelists of his particular time, place and style, and calling it a fault...
...Waugh was of course in many ways similar to those other writers, and is often properly compared to them...
...Indeed, reports indicate a rise in the GNP, and experts are now saying the recession will be milder than anticipated...
...Pritchard expresses uncertainty as to how to read the later Waugh: He feels it unlikely, for instance, lhat, after the earlier comic novels, Brideshead's attempt to be serious "can be taken at face value...
...The Monroe Doctrine is not a United States treaty ratified by Congress, or a legally binding doctrine recognized by the international community...
...New York City Patricia Mc.-Cormack...
...Inflation has ballooned, recession has arrived and the national energy policy is a joke," Mollison declares...
...The economic picture, too, is not quite so bleak as Carter critics have been painting it...
...President James Monroe's message to Congress (December 2, 1823) set forth an international contract: The United States warned the European Holy Alliance not to intervene in or attempt to colonize, Latin America...
...the mature Waugh faced up to and came to grips with them...
...It has no official status...
...would refrain from intervention in European affairs...
...Seriousness becomes part of the picture...
...New York City Daniel Moss Presidential Politics Andrew Mollison suggests that the next President may well be a Republican because the present Democratic Administration has made such a mess of things ("12 Republicans in Search of a Nomination," NL, October 22...
...This seems to me a limited view...
...For its part, the U.S...
...He notes, in Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy, a style "soberly appropriate" in its seriousness and thus "more like conventional fiction, and less like art" than the works of pure irony and satire that came before...
...To borrow the terminology of Robert Graves' White Goddess, it was Waugh, in the final summing up, who was the poet, and the undeviating satirists and humorists-good as they might be-merely the gleemen-entertainers...
...The Carter Administration has, in fact, won its share of victories?the Camp David accords, diplomatic recognition of China, the Panama treaties, airline deregulation?and I think the voters will become approvingly aware of the President's accomplishments as we approach the primaries...
...Fontaine conveniently forgot to mention the second aspect of the pronouncement...
...And no wonder: If Monroe's precepts were fairly applied to the present world situation, the Soviets could justifiably ask us to withdraw from nato...
...On October 24, the House approved a bill that would give the Administration authority to draw up a stand-by gasoline rationing plan-the first phase of the President's program...
Vol. 62 • November 1979 • No. 21
