'Love' Underground

...She was abandoned by Abbie — to handle his case, to raise money, to bring up their child — and in the course of her letters one can see her depression bloom into anger and finally explode into the kind of activity that indicates she has taken control of her life...

...Abbie discovered the women's movement late, but when he did, he frantically began restructuring his relationship with his new "wife," and making amends to Anita — in words, at least — for the times in the past when he treated her shabbily...

...Anita's are naive, passionate, intense, and, at first, largely a response to his...

...In later letters, Abbie's attitude toward Anita subtly changes, when his sexual needs are fulfilled by a new "wife" and when he comes to respect her new-found intellectual curiosity and self-motivation...

...Anita, however, puts her emotions, particularly bitterness and frustration, up front...

...These Government games are dropped into the letters so routinely that their full impact is nearly lost among more fascinating details...

...He even goes so far as to map out the kind of life they could have together in the underground...

...More preoccupied with books about famous freaks than political and social realities, he has traded in his de facto pacifism for blind glorification of Weather Underground elitism and the mindless violence of some revolutionary groups...

...Muste Memorial Institute...

...Though the letters cover traditional topics — sexual frustration, lack of money, loneliness, political commentary — they also bear the unique imprint of the 1970s...

...Anita and Abbie Hoffman's letters in To America with Love were written just after Abbie jumped bail and went underground...

...There are minimal facts about Abbie's case, probably because other people involved still face trials...

...She has written for Win and other publications...

...The Hoffman love letters are nothing if not modern...

...Abbie's heavy demands on Anita — for work on his case and an unpublished book, Care packages, a furtive meeting— are countered by reckless suggestions that she abandon their son, america, to an orphanage so she could be free...

...They are a microcosm of our discoveries and doubts, and a subtle warning that the war against the Left is still alive...

...The Hoffmans believed that the Government had fabricated so much evidence that they would probably be unable to refute it all in court...

...But fortunately, the Government leaves most of us alone, to work in peace and to reflect on the written words of our martyred comrades...

...It is refreshing to watch Anita grow and learn to hold up even more than half the sky over the pair...

...Other than agonizing over the spiraling cost of hair dye, and the split ends caused by its use, he minimizes the problems of his new life...

...One does, however, get the drift of the FBI's tactics: telling Anita that Abbie has a Swiss girl in the hope that in a fit of anger she would divulge his whereabouts, bugging Abbie's mother-in-law's phone, trailing Anita on a picnic...

...The letters deal with body awareness, sexual responses and freedom, life as a statement of the absurd, sophisticated electronic surveillance...

...In the space of a sentence, Abbie's much-admired sense of the ridiculous can be perverted into disagreeable selfishness...

...Each generation of radicals had theirs — Goldman/Berkman, the Rosenbergs, ad infinitum — and now we have ours...

...She writes that at last she has "a trip of her own," and is proud to recount how she held her own in a confrontation with a seemingly contentious woman whose in-sensitivity was matched only by her arrogance...

...That her lack of money was what first led Anita to understand the plight of the poor is an embarrassing comment on her class bias, but that it led her immediately to begin organizing welfare mothers is evidence Abbie's presence had undermined her independence for years...

...Abbie's are arrogant, witty, flip...

...The events that led to publication of these letters are barely mentioned...

...Stuff like offering to take kids...

...Then, in the next paragraph, Abbie writes that someday he'll "write a list of suggestions for ex-husbands to make wives feel guilty...

...If Abbie Hoffman has strong feelings about the life the Government forced him into, they remain hidden...

...If the Feds are as interested in stamping out radicalism as they are in winning media brownie points and bouquets from the VFW and the DAR, they would give up hunting left-wing "stars" and concentrate on the low-key activists who are successfully moving Middle America...

...WENDY SCHWARTZ Abbie Hoffman was the court jester of the peace movement...

...His absurd 1973 arrest for allegedly selling cocaine proves only that the Government has no sense of humor...

...In response to Anita's complaints about the limitations their son placed on her, such as limiting the time she had to spend with adults and increasing an already large financial burden, Abbie offers to take the boy...

...It would have been easy for Abbie to dominate the letters, just as his presence dominated the movement for so long...

...His yearning for his wife is expressed at first as pure macho desire, a continuation of the treatment that stifled her womanhood for eight years and that characterized the way most movement heroes of the 1960s dealt with their lovers...

...Though political action had been an integral part of Abbie's life for some twenty years, his letters show he is still hungering for the kind of basic analysis that people who take politics seriously develop early...

...Wendy Schwartz has long been active in pacifist organizations and is now head of the A.J...

...Not surprisingly, the Hoffman love letters are just like the Hoffmans...