Abroad with Galbraith
ROGOW, ARNOLD A.
BOOKS Abroad with Galbraith by ARNOLD A. ROGOW October 8, 1969 Today a call from Madison, Wisconsin, home of my alma mater, which I last saw twenty-two years ago. It was the book editor of The...
...I had to think hard for a moment to recall that he had been sent there by President Kennedy...
...But I have the constant feeling that I am confronting the persona rather than the person of JKG, that the portrait presented is, so to speak, carefully drawn with some imaginary blemishes painted in and some real ones painted out...
...sharp observations, but also much tedium since one page reads much like another...
...Women aside, and also the suspiciously large number of persons referred to as "old," "personal," and "beloved" friends, JKG's reaction to people is characteristically ambivalent even if, like Stevenson and Bowles, they share his political outlook...
...That he finds beautiful women almost irresistible, and vice versa...
...It does emerge that JKG is constantly displeased with the State Department bureaucracy and especially the Secretary of State, but since we are seldom given solid reasons for this displeasure, some of the complaining has a slightly petulant quality...
...There is at least one witticism per page, many examples of his dry, rather acerbic humor—it is most effective when it is at his own expense—and a plenitude of Ambassador's Journal, by John Kenneth Galbraith...
...unfortunately, the fools do not always share this conviction...
...Edward R. Murrow: Victor and Victim Prime Time...
...I learn that JKG (I have adopted his practice of referring to some persons by their initials—JBK for Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, for example...
...Perhaps he was cautious because he had no intention of going the way of Adlai Stevenson and Chester Bowles...
...First, or rather second, because Galbraith is almost always an engaging writer, and second, or rather first, because this sort of thing—the long distance call, the pleasant female voice at the other end, the prospect of seeing my name in print—appeals to my vanity...
...Probably I should have declined, because I am terribly behind on work of all sorts...
...Although JKG was on or near the scene, there is no new information about the Kashmir dispute, the Goa controversy, the border clashes between China and India, Vietnam, or about any other matter of consequence...
...there he is a committed and generally enthusiastic Keynesian...
...656 pp...
...Incidentally, inasmuch as Rusk was disliked by practically everyone in Washington, including President Kennedy himself, how did he manage to stay in office so long...
...it does save time) is something of a gourmet and connoisseur of fine wines and other alcoholic beverages...
...If not, I am in for some dull evenings...
...In effect, he is convinced of his right to be suffered gladly by fools...
...An unkind reaction might insist that JKG as self-presented is a cold and basically withdrawn man despite all the socializing and mooning over pretty women...
...His "bold plunging into well-charted seas"—I have borrowed the expression from Kenneth Boulding —is reserved for economic policy questions...
...that he has frequent headaches,, bouts of exhaustion, and sometimes takes as many as four Seconal capsules to fall asleep...
...Considering the fact that few people make any great amount of money by writing, Johnson was either wrong, or there are a large number of fools about, among whom I include myself...
...In short, I am not greatly taken with JKG's Ambassador's Journal...
...on the whole, we are told nothing new or important —unless it is somehow important to know that one of the few photographs in Nehru's inner sanctum is of Jackie Kennedy...
...Little, Brown...
...515 pp...
...For that matter, the cool and unemotional treatment of Kennedy's death is a curious feature of the book...
...The point of the first book, as I recall, was that the character of our Foreign Service has immeasurably improved because the new breed of career officer spends his spare time picking apples in Virginia whereas his predecessor drank martinis...
...All this was by way of establishing that apple picking is an admirable way of learning about the real world, whereas martini drinking cuts you off from the peasants and workers...
...That he is a great lover, or could be if he wanted to be...
...Galbraith in India, like everything else in the Kennedy era, seems almost as long ago as my undergraduate years in and around Bascom Hall...
...That he agrees with Pushkin (I think it was Pushkin) that while one can't make love to all the attractive women in the world, one must nevertheless try...
...From them we learn, or rather, have confirmed, that he was cautiously opposed to the Bay of Pigs adventure, cautiously in favor of changing our China policy, and had "reservations" about our intervention in Vietnam...
...October 29, 1969 I have just turned the last of the 632 pages, and the impression remains strong that rarely have I read so much to learn so little...
...I think it was Samuel Johnson who said that a man was a fool to write for any reason other than money...
...Early in the book Galbraith says of one of his speeches that it lacked elegance and had some of the "Eisenhower touch...
...This is a mystery I hope someone will clear up...
...JKG reports allegations by anti-American sources that the CIA is active in New Dehli and elsewhere, but this, as the newspapers like to say, he will neither confirm nor deny (the CIA is not listed in the index...
...Since so much of the book is given over to social life, one could be forgiven for thinking that the functions of the American ambassador in India 1961-1963 were almost entirely ceremonial, ranging from meeting the planes of Very Important People to being seen in the Right Places on National Holidays (theirs and ours...
...Even more unpleasant is my imagining what she would do...
...By halfway to Los Angeles, I was deeply in love," JKG reports, and he tries unsuccessfully to get Angie to go on to Honolulu...
...Anyhow, I agreed...
...A kind way of viewing such treatment would be to describe it as stoical and even heroic...
...No doubt, but I can only hope that Galbraith is in the older tradition...
...So why did I commit myself...
...I can easily imagine what my wife would say were I to go off with my sister-in-law...
...In most of the letters to JFK, the tone is that of a professor lecturing a promising but not exceedingly bright student—the sort of student who won't graduate summa cum laude but might conceivably make the honor roll if he listens carefully to what the professor has to say...
...It is so when one is weary...
...Reviewed by...
...Thus, no great regret is expressed about the harsh treatment of Stevenson by the Kennedyites and the downgrading of Bowles...
...October 13, 1969 After more than 300 pages I have the impression that I am learning little about American policy and problems in India, even less about our foreign policy in general, and not even much about Galbraith himself...
...8.95...
...Perhaps this is his tone with everyone...
...I see his point, but it seems to me he vastly underestimated the narcissistic rewards of publishing...
...I recall Freud's practice of going on walking trips with his unmarried sister-in-law for six days at a time...
...It is clear that JKG is extremely unhappy when his advice is not taken...
...And the readers, made equally weary, are the last...
...On the other hand, perhaps we have a right to expect from him a chronicle that goes beyond a record of Right Thinking, witticisms, anecdotes about the Beautiful People, the perils of food and travel in India, and the attractions of Angie Dickinson...
...I suppose we are not to take this sort of thing seriously, but exactly what is it he wants to communicate...
...that he has an eye for pretty women and is, in his own words, "by love both possessed and protected," and that he is a man of taste and discretion in almost all things...
...It occurs to me that this is the second Foreign Service-related book I have reviewed for The Progressive...
...The Life of Edward R. Murrow, by Alexander Kendrick...
...October 31, 1969 The most interesting parts of the book, in my view, are the letters to President Kennedy...
...that his dislikes include Dean Rusk, Krishna Menon, Bourke Hickenlooper, and a good many others...
...We hear something about Nehru and other leading Indian figures, but we hear mainly about their personal mannerisms and moods...
...It was the book editor of The Progressive, asking me to review Galbraith's account of his ambassadorship in New Delhi...
...Take, for example, the episode with the actress Angie Dickinson, with whom he travels from Washington to Los Angeles...
...In the Nixon-Agnew era, it is increasingly difficult not to look back on the Kennedy years as a golden era during which giants walked the land, and if one succumbs to this temptation, certainly it is easy to accept JKG as a giant in more senses than the merely physical...
...October 9,1969 Ambassador's Journal is on the way air parcel post, special delivery, which means there is a fair chance the New York post office will deliver it not long after the review is due in Madison...
...Whatever his intent, I am reminded again that the wives of geniuses apparently are prepared to put up with a good deal more than the wives of ordinary men...
...While it is one of his faults that he is occasionally clever at the expense of important truths, it is an important virtue that he is never taken in by the cliches and platitudes that pass for the higher wisdom in Government officialdom...
...Houghton Mifflin...
...Whatever his real character, JKG comes through in Ambassador's Journal as an intensely bright, witty, and somewhat detached individual who is not afflicted with false or any other kind of modesty...
...The sentences are the first to suffer...
...Regarding himself as Kennedy's eyes and ears in India, and also determined to have a channel to the President that could not be blocked off by Rusk, JKG wrote a number of letters that reflect his best thinking, if not always his best style, on a variety of subjects...
Vol. 34 • January 1970 • No. 1
