GRAFTON'S HOLLOW ANGER
Coleman, Mcalister
Grafton's Hollow Anger AN AMERICAN DIARY, by Samuel Grafton. Doubleday, Doran. $2.50. Reviewed by McAlister Coleman THIS IS THE RECORD of the reactions of the columnist for the New York Post to...
...Said G.B.S., "The artist who accounts for my disparagement by alleging personal animosity on my part is quite right: when people do less than their beat, and do that less at once badly and self-com-placently, I hate them, loathe them, detest them, long to tear them limb from limb and strew them in gobbets about the stage or platform...
...Reviewed by McAlister Coleman THIS IS THE RECORD of the reactions of the columnist for the New York Post to world events from July, 1939, to May, 1943...
...The columnist writes forcefully and readably...
...Angry at anyone who didn't want to hustle us into the war before Pearl Harbor, angry at those "ex-isolationists" who went along after Pearl Harbor, though with some doubts as to what all the shooting was for, angry, in short, at anyone who does not accept the solution of total war as a cure for all our discontents, social, political, economic...
...And he is usually that...
...I suggest that Mr...
...Mr...
...Grafton presumably rationalizes his reticence about the steady swing to the right, the shifty maneu-verings, the shoddy appeasements of the Fat Boys by the Administration on the ground that it would be comforting the reactionaries to tell the truth about the home front shenanigans conducted by his own crowd...
...in the war—these are the tragic faults which make this book's reviewer angry and disheartened, inasmuch as Grafton's viewpoint is the one now held by a large cross section of liberalism in America today...
...Grafton as being "angry...
...The readiness with which the totalitarian liberals accept the second best, their child-like faith that it is necessary to toady up to Big Business in order to keep B.B...
...Like the rest of the totalitarian liberals, Mr...
...Grafton gets angry at the comparatively obscure performances of those whom he still calls "isolationists," but refuses to be riled when his crowd is doing less than their best, "badly and self-complacently...
...Grafton's "little people" are pretty well fed up by the flight of the self-styled liberals from the realities of the home front debacle...
...The sad thing is that, finding liberalism of An American Diary sort unwilling to clean its own nest, the little people may go for the next drumbeater who shows up with a back-to-the-good-old-days summons...
...He has a quick intelligence, a real feel for democracy, but he lacks "the passion for perfection" which Shaw said was the basis for genuine criticism...
...The jacket writer describes Mr...
...And whether the drumbeater is a full fledged dictator, a homespun demagogue, or just an old line candidate of the National Association of Manufacturers, one reason for his arrival may well be the fact that our liberal spokesmen have sadly let down the very people for whom they profess such concern...
...Grafton ponder the comments of George Bernard Shaw on when a critic should get angry...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 44
