BOOKS BRIEFLY
Books Briefly Expert Testimony THE EXPERTS SPEAK by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky Pantheon. 392 pp. $18.95 cloth, $9.95 paper. Who said it when and about what? 1. "The most insipid,...
...will die out in time...
...1. "The most insipid, ridiculous play I ever saw in my life...
...He warmed to Presidents Truman and Kennedy and felt deep scorn for Richard Nixon...
...It has been unjustly ignored here since its publication last fall...
...Unable to complete his book and restless in the secluded north country where he retreated with his wife and son, the narrator goes off to visit his roustabout mystery-writer friend Quinn...
...205 pp...
...In Straight Stuff, he reminisces about the changes he witnessed in Presidents, press secretaries, reporters, and news coverage...
...Inside the Press STRAIGHT STUFF: THE REPORTERS, THE WHITE HOUSE, AND THE TRUTH by James Deakin William Morrow and Co...
...Altogether it is a touching account of the developing sensitivities of this feminist socialist poet who visited Pablo Ner-uda in Chile, translated his poems into Swedish, and wrote a book {Terror in Chile) whose proceeds she gave to Chilean victims...
...Louis Post-Dispatch...
...8.95 paperback...
...Contrasting insouciant dreams with hard realities, she describes her early years in which she witnessed her mother's wasting illness...
...A Poet's Childhood A DREAMED LIFE by Sun Axelsson Ohio University Press...
...Answers: 1. Samuel Pepys in 1662 about Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream...
...Memories win out, and the narrator goes back to Vietnam to find that it is not just the factual details of war that count but abstract concepts such as honor and courage...
...This dichotomy is suggested by a quotation from Rebecca West about idiot women "intent on their private lives" and lunatic men "obsessed by public affairs...
...4. "Nobody can overthrow me...
...15.95...
...2. Henry Kissinger in 1973 about Richard Nixon and Watergate...
...He contrasts the press secretaries of seven Presidents and concludes that President Eisenhower's aide, Jim Hagerty, was the best...
...This lyrical, candid sketch of her childhood by Swedish poet and novelist Sun Axelsson was named Book of the Year in Sweden a few years ago...
...He estimates that the cost of a summit meeting these days is upward of $10 million...
...2. "I have no question that the President will insist on the full disclosure of the facts...
...What this revelation means is not quite clear, but presumably it enables the narrator to complete his war book and Just to complete this one...
...5. "It would be hard on little, concentrated countries like England...
...The neglect she felt as the youngest of four children was often compensated by fitful attentions of her preoccupied parents, older siblings, and a loving aunt...
...Christopher Cerf, a former contributing editor of National Lampoon, and Victor S. Navasky, the editor of The Nation, have compiled a stunning indictment of experts and expertise...
...3. "The radio craze...
...The book is an introduction to this talented woman's eventful life...
...5. Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, in 1950 about atomic war...
...From Aristotle, who held that the heart is the seat of human intelligence and the brain "an organ of minor importance," to Ronald Reagan, who asserts that "approximately 80 per cent of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation," we've been bamboozled, hornswoggled, and just plain lied to by those who claim to be authorities...
...Obsessed by War THE AMERICAN BLUES by Ward Just The Viking Press...
...201 pp...
...353 pp...
...Just is also writing about the "war" between men and women, or at least about their different perceptions of life...
...For twenty-five years, from 1955 to 1980, James Deakin was White House correspondent for the St...
...You'll never trust the authorities again— and you shouldn't...
...16.95 hardcover...
...3. Thomas Alva Edison in 1922 about wireless broadcasting...
...Absorbed into Quinn's hard-drinking, people-filled life, the narrator is provided with a charming young woman, a liaison Quinn sees as a test of cultures: fresh youth versus memory-laden middle age...
...The Experts Speak, documented and detailed, contains thousands of examples...
...17.95...
...In the United States we have lots of space...
...After minute details on the machinery of press coverage, he comes to the nub of the matter: "There is no word more important to a journalist than 'access.' " A trenchant, if somewhat narrow, perspective on one journalist's experience...
...4. The Shah in 1978 about his grip on power in Iran...
...I have the support of 700,000 troops, all of the workers, and most of the people...
...Irreverent himself, Deakin ranges from detailed descriptions of press briefings to serious commentary on lying as official policy and national security ("what the Government says it is at any moment") to wisecracking anecdotes...
...Ostensibly, Ward Just's new novel is about the quest of the narrator (a writer much like the author) for a way to end his latest book about Vietnam, a war he had reported and is still obsessed by...
...He is convinced that irreverence is vital to a Washington reporter but that cynicism "is paralytic...
Vol. 48 • October 1984 • No. 10
