Subject
Fw: bravura passage has Nabokov speaking very much in his own
voice ...
voice ...
From
Date
Body
----- Original Message -----
From: "Kenny, Glenn" <gkenny@hfmus.com>
To: "'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (208
lines) ------------------
> That's a real "huh?" moment for sure. The fact that such nonsense saw
print
> is further evidence that the arts editors over at the Times are all on
> crack.
>
> > ----------
> > From: D. Barton Johnson
> > Reply To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
> > Sent: Thursday, January 8, 2004 10:19 PM
> > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> > Subject: Fw: bravura passage has Nabokov speaking very much in his
> > own voice ...
> >
> > EDNOTE: AMong the stranger uses VN's work has been put to is the
following
> > review intro.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Sandy P. Klein
> >
> > The New York Times On The Web
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/books/review/04WHEATCT.html
> >
> > The New York Times
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > January 4, 2004
> >
> >
> > 'Reds': Point of Order
> >
> > By GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Ted Morgan, the author of "Reds."
> >
> > REDS
> > McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America.
> > By Ted Morgan.
> > 685 pp. New York: Random House. $35.
> >
> > He was ''a so-called Pink,'' Kinbote says of a campus colleague, 'who
> > believed in what so-called Pinks believe in (Progressive Education, the
> > Integrity of anyone spying for Russia, Fallouts occasioned solely by
> > U.S.-made bombs, the existence in the near past of a McCarthy Era,
Soviet
> > achievements including 'Dr. Zhivago' and so forth).'' Although ''Pale
> > Fire'' is part satire, that bravura passage has Nabokov speaking very
much
> > in his own voice; little did he guess that, 40 years later, the McCarthy
> > era would still haunt America.
> >
> > From Richard Rovere's admirable 1959 ''Senator Joe McCarthy'' onward,
very
> > many books about the era and its protagonist have appeared. In the
latest,
> > the long, detailed, interesting but puzzling ''Reds,'' Ted Morgan, a
> > biographer of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Somerset
> > Maugham, covers the ground with some fresh material and, as he hopes,
with
> > a new angle. The result is really more than one book, and they don't
quite
> > hang together: McCarthy enters (stage right) only after more than 320
> > pages, or well over halfway through, and no more than 4 out of 15
chapters
> > are devoted to him.
> >
> > His story remains fascinating, and hair-raising. Born in Wisconsin, Joe
> > McCarthy displayed application and ability at school and college. He
also
> > displayed from a young age a tendency to embroider the record. As Morgan
> > says, McCarthy learned early that ''he could lie and get away with it.''
> > In 1939, partly by means of mendacious attacks on his opponent, he
became
> > the youngest circuit judge ever elected in Wisconsin. Soon he was
> > propelled into national politics, by way of war service in the Pacific
and
> > by way of more fabulizing. McCarthy allowed the people of Wisconsin to
> > believe that he had been wounded in action (or, still more inventively,
> > ''while helping to remove a pregnant woman from off a submarine''), when
> > actually he had injured himself in a prank during the traditional
> > festivities crossing the Equator.
> >
> > He was an obscure figure when he reached Washington in December 1946,
and
> > not much better known in 1950 when he jumped on the anti-Communist
> > bandwagon with his explosive ''I have in my hand'' speech at Wheeling,
> > W.Va., claiming that the State Department was a nest of Communists. Thus
> > began the McCarthy era, although Morgan rightly stresses that
> > anti-Communist purges and Communist espionage both predated McCarthy's
own
> > demagogic career.
> >
> > However often told, the story never palls: the increasingly wild
charges,
> > the atmosphere of suspicion and dread, the attack on Gen. George C.
> > Marshall and then the whole United States Army, the televised hearings,
> > the breaking of a malign spell over American political life with Joseph
> > Welch's superbly theatrical riposte -- ''Little did I dream you could be
> > so reckless and so cruel. . . . Have you no sense of decency, sir, at
long
> > last?'' -- and McCarthy's censure by the Senate in 1954. Less than three
> > years later he was dead.
> >
> > Along with his bullying and braggadocio, there was a huge
self-destructive
> > streak in McCarthy's makeup. It showed in the easily demonstrable lies
he
> > told, it showed in the drinking that polished him off at only 48, it
> > showed in his patronage of the odious if preposterous Roy Cohn and his
> > boyfriend David Schine, whose cavorting around Europe made a
laughingstock
> > of America and much aided the Communist cause. But then so did the whole
> > McCarthy era.
> >
> > Those who come out of this story worst aren't so much McCarthy and his
> > acolytes as the politicians who recognized him for what he was but
lacked
> > the courage to stand up to him. ''Joe's just a loudmouthed drunk,''
Lyndon
> > Johnson told Bobby Baker. Other senators knew that, and in his last
years
> > they got up and left the dining room when he entered. But that was only
> > after his star had fallen. Until then, Democrats as well as Republicans
> > had lined up behind him, or at least refused to call his bluff.
> >
> > But telling the immediate story of the McCarthy era is only one part of
> > this book. Its subtitle is ''McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America,''
> > and it can't quite make up its mind what its theme is supposed to be.
> > Morgan begins with what he thinks is the provocative claim that ''the
cold
> > war began in 1917,'' but this is a truism. A. J. P. Taylor's history of
> > European international relations from 1848 to 1918, written 50 years
ago,
> > ended with the words that ''Europe was superseded'' after World War I by
> > the ''competition between Communism and liberal democracy.''
> >
> > In Morgan's account, the conflict had taken shape with American
> > involvement in the Russian Revolution, and the abortive military
> > intervention against the Bolsheviks. Following that episode, he plunges
> > headfirst into the murky world of espionage. From the arrival of the
first
> > Soviet trade mission in 1924, the Russians established a large spy
network
> > in America, in some ways connected with the official and open Communist
> > Party, but also with the larger sway that Communism held over cultural
and
> > intellectual life in the 1930's and 40's.
> >
> > The evidence of Venona, the transcripts of the Soviet secret signal
> > traffic intercepted and decrypted by American intelligence, is
conclusive
> > about the extent of that operation: with a strange irony, one could say
> > that McCarthy didn't know the half of it. All the same, to write, as
> > Morgan does, that if only Venona had been released at the time, ''the
> > swing of the pendulum to hysterical anti-Communism could perhaps have
been
> > avoided,'' is idle; of course the transcripts could not have been made
> > public then.
> >
> > Morgan devotes the last part of his book to a feverish gallop through
> > events since McCarthy: the F.B.I.'s ever more frantic pursuit of an ever
> > tinier Communist Party, the sex lives of John F. Kennedy and Martin
Luther
> > King Jr., the birth of the New Left, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-contra,
> > whatever. All this is designed somehow or other to illustrate the thesis
> > that ''just as McCarthyism began long before McCarthy, it endured long
> > after him.''
> >
> > Does this mean anything? ''McCarthyism'' could have a truly useful
> > definition: the calculated and unprincipled use of mendacious
allegations
> > for political purposes. But if it comes to be used (as it too often is)
to
> > mean any charge uncomfortably near the bone, or if alternatively it
covers
> > any kind of demagoguery, falsehood and trickery, then the very concept
is
> > rendered empty and meaningless.
> >
> > As to Morgan's peroration -- or concluding rant -- about George W. Bush,
> > 9/11, African uranium and the ''pattern of deceit'' behind the White
> > House's case for war with Iraq, one can (as it happens) share the
author's
> > inclination on these subjects while wondering whether ''McCarthyite
> > methods'' is in any sense a helpful way of describing the debate over
the
> > current war. It did not require McCarthy, after all, to teach
politicians
> > the uses of misrepresentation.
> >
> > All of which leaves ''Reds'' looking curiouser and curiouser. Despite
> > being quite unillusioned about Communism, Morgan misses the point.
> > McCarthy did huge damage to American life, but a large part of the
damage
> > was done to the honorable anti-Communist cause -- and to honesty on the
> > left. Nearly 50 years ago, when the senator was still at large, the
> > journalist Dwight Macdonald pointed out that ''the liberals have never
> > honestly confronted their illusions in the 30's and 40's about Communism
> > but have instead merely counterposed a disingenuous defense, a blanket
> > denial to McCarthy's equally sweeping attack.''
> >
> > Before the McCarthy era began, and then after it ended, two politically
> > very different Englishmen said what needed to be said. George Orwell
> > almost certainly never heard of Joe McCarthy: the Wheeling speech came a
> > matter of weeks after his death. But not long before he died, Orwell had
> > specifically warned the Americans about the danger of fighting Communism
> > with the kinds of methods Communists themselves used.
> >
> > Then in 1960, William F. Buckley Jr. tried to persuade Evelyn Waugh to
> > contribute to National Review, and sent him ''McCarthy and His
Enemies,''
> > the apologia he had written with L. Brent Bozell. But Buckley got an
> > elegant flea in his ear. Most Englishmen regarded McCarthy as a
> > regrettable figure, Waugh replied, and the book ''will not go far to
clear
> > his reputation.'' Plainly there had been need for an investigation into
> > Soviet espionage, but it was just as clear that McCarthy was not a
> > suitable man to undertake it, Waugh said, and those who sympathized with
> > the anti-Communist cause ''must deplore his championship of it.''
Despite
> > all the bitterness of the McCarthy era and its residue, that remains
> > something like the last word.
> >
> > Geoffrey Wheatcroft's books include ''The Controversy of Zion'' and,
most
> > recently, ''Le Tour: A History of the Tour de France.''
> >
> >
> > The New York Times
> >
> > New York Times
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _____
> >
> > Take advantage of our limited-time introductory offer for dial-up
Internet
> > access.
> >
From: "Kenny, Glenn" <gkenny@hfmus.com>
To: "'Vladimir Nabokov Forum'" <NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU>
>
> ---------------- Message requiring your approval (208
lines) ------------------
> That's a real "huh?" moment for sure. The fact that such nonsense saw
> is further evidence that the arts editors over at the Times are all on
> crack.
>
> > ----------
> > From: D. Barton Johnson
> > Reply To: Vladimir Nabokov Forum
> > Sent: Thursday, January 8, 2004 10:19 PM
> > To: NABOKV-L@LISTSERV.UCSB.EDU
> > Subject: Fw: bravura passage has Nabokov speaking very much in his
> > own voice ...
> >
> > EDNOTE: AMong the stranger uses VN's work has been put to is the
following
> > review intro.
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Sandy P. Klein
> >
> > The New York Times On The Web
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/04/books/review/04WHEATCT.html
> >
> > The New York Times
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > January 4, 2004
> >
> >
> > 'Reds': Point of Order
> >
> > By GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Ted Morgan, the author of "Reds."
> >
> > REDS
> > McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America.
> > By Ted Morgan.
> > 685 pp. New York: Random House. $35.
> >
> > He was ''a so-called Pink,'' Kinbote says of a campus colleague, 'who
> > believed in what so-called Pinks believe in (Progressive Education, the
> > Integrity of anyone spying for Russia, Fallouts occasioned solely by
> > U.S.-made bombs, the existence in the near past of a McCarthy Era,
Soviet
> > achievements including 'Dr. Zhivago' and so forth).'' Although ''Pale
> > Fire'' is part satire, that bravura passage has Nabokov speaking very
much
> > in his own voice; little did he guess that, 40 years later, the McCarthy
> > era would still haunt America.
> >
> > From Richard Rovere's admirable 1959 ''Senator Joe McCarthy'' onward,
very
> > many books about the era and its protagonist have appeared. In the
latest,
> > the long, detailed, interesting but puzzling ''Reds,'' Ted Morgan, a
> > biographer of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Somerset
> > Maugham, covers the ground with some fresh material and, as he hopes,
with
> > a new angle. The result is really more than one book, and they don't
quite
> > hang together: McCarthy enters (stage right) only after more than 320
> > pages, or well over halfway through, and no more than 4 out of 15
chapters
> > are devoted to him.
> >
> > His story remains fascinating, and hair-raising. Born in Wisconsin, Joe
> > McCarthy displayed application and ability at school and college. He
also
> > displayed from a young age a tendency to embroider the record. As Morgan
> > says, McCarthy learned early that ''he could lie and get away with it.''
> > In 1939, partly by means of mendacious attacks on his opponent, he
became
> > the youngest circuit judge ever elected in Wisconsin. Soon he was
> > propelled into national politics, by way of war service in the Pacific
and
> > by way of more fabulizing. McCarthy allowed the people of Wisconsin to
> > believe that he had been wounded in action (or, still more inventively,
> > ''while helping to remove a pregnant woman from off a submarine''), when
> > actually he had injured himself in a prank during the traditional
> > festivities crossing the Equator.
> >
> > He was an obscure figure when he reached Washington in December 1946,
and
> > not much better known in 1950 when he jumped on the anti-Communist
> > bandwagon with his explosive ''I have in my hand'' speech at Wheeling,
> > W.Va., claiming that the State Department was a nest of Communists. Thus
> > began the McCarthy era, although Morgan rightly stresses that
> > anti-Communist purges and Communist espionage both predated McCarthy's
own
> > demagogic career.
> >
> > However often told, the story never palls: the increasingly wild
charges,
> > the atmosphere of suspicion and dread, the attack on Gen. George C.
> > Marshall and then the whole United States Army, the televised hearings,
> > the breaking of a malign spell over American political life with Joseph
> > Welch's superbly theatrical riposte -- ''Little did I dream you could be
> > so reckless and so cruel. . . . Have you no sense of decency, sir, at
long
> > last?'' -- and McCarthy's censure by the Senate in 1954. Less than three
> > years later he was dead.
> >
> > Along with his bullying and braggadocio, there was a huge
self-destructive
> > streak in McCarthy's makeup. It showed in the easily demonstrable lies
he
> > told, it showed in the drinking that polished him off at only 48, it
> > showed in his patronage of the odious if preposterous Roy Cohn and his
> > boyfriend David Schine, whose cavorting around Europe made a
laughingstock
> > of America and much aided the Communist cause. But then so did the whole
> > McCarthy era.
> >
> > Those who come out of this story worst aren't so much McCarthy and his
> > acolytes as the politicians who recognized him for what he was but
lacked
> > the courage to stand up to him. ''Joe's just a loudmouthed drunk,''
Lyndon
> > Johnson told Bobby Baker. Other senators knew that, and in his last
years
> > they got up and left the dining room when he entered. But that was only
> > after his star had fallen. Until then, Democrats as well as Republicans
> > had lined up behind him, or at least refused to call his bluff.
> >
> > But telling the immediate story of the McCarthy era is only one part of
> > this book. Its subtitle is ''McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America,''
> > and it can't quite make up its mind what its theme is supposed to be.
> > Morgan begins with what he thinks is the provocative claim that ''the
cold
> > war began in 1917,'' but this is a truism. A. J. P. Taylor's history of
> > European international relations from 1848 to 1918, written 50 years
ago,
> > ended with the words that ''Europe was superseded'' after World War I by
> > the ''competition between Communism and liberal democracy.''
> >
> > In Morgan's account, the conflict had taken shape with American
> > involvement in the Russian Revolution, and the abortive military
> > intervention against the Bolsheviks. Following that episode, he plunges
> > headfirst into the murky world of espionage. From the arrival of the
first
> > Soviet trade mission in 1924, the Russians established a large spy
network
> > in America, in some ways connected with the official and open Communist
> > Party, but also with the larger sway that Communism held over cultural
and
> > intellectual life in the 1930's and 40's.
> >
> > The evidence of Venona, the transcripts of the Soviet secret signal
> > traffic intercepted and decrypted by American intelligence, is
conclusive
> > about the extent of that operation: with a strange irony, one could say
> > that McCarthy didn't know the half of it. All the same, to write, as
> > Morgan does, that if only Venona had been released at the time, ''the
> > swing of the pendulum to hysterical anti-Communism could perhaps have
been
> > avoided,'' is idle; of course the transcripts could not have been made
> > public then.
> >
> > Morgan devotes the last part of his book to a feverish gallop through
> > events since McCarthy: the F.B.I.'s ever more frantic pursuit of an ever
> > tinier Communist Party, the sex lives of John F. Kennedy and Martin
Luther
> > King Jr., the birth of the New Left, Vietnam, Watergate, Iran-contra,
> > whatever. All this is designed somehow or other to illustrate the thesis
> > that ''just as McCarthyism began long before McCarthy, it endured long
> > after him.''
> >
> > Does this mean anything? ''McCarthyism'' could have a truly useful
> > definition: the calculated and unprincipled use of mendacious
allegations
> > for political purposes. But if it comes to be used (as it too often is)
to
> > mean any charge uncomfortably near the bone, or if alternatively it
covers
> > any kind of demagoguery, falsehood and trickery, then the very concept
is
> > rendered empty and meaningless.
> >
> > As to Morgan's peroration -- or concluding rant -- about George W. Bush,
> > 9/11, African uranium and the ''pattern of deceit'' behind the White
> > House's case for war with Iraq, one can (as it happens) share the
author's
> > inclination on these subjects while wondering whether ''McCarthyite
> > methods'' is in any sense a helpful way of describing the debate over
the
> > current war. It did not require McCarthy, after all, to teach
politicians
> > the uses of misrepresentation.
> >
> > All of which leaves ''Reds'' looking curiouser and curiouser. Despite
> > being quite unillusioned about Communism, Morgan misses the point.
> > McCarthy did huge damage to American life, but a large part of the
damage
> > was done to the honorable anti-Communist cause -- and to honesty on the
> > left. Nearly 50 years ago, when the senator was still at large, the
> > journalist Dwight Macdonald pointed out that ''the liberals have never
> > honestly confronted their illusions in the 30's and 40's about Communism
> > but have instead merely counterposed a disingenuous defense, a blanket
> > denial to McCarthy's equally sweeping attack.''
> >
> > Before the McCarthy era began, and then after it ended, two politically
> > very different Englishmen said what needed to be said. George Orwell
> > almost certainly never heard of Joe McCarthy: the Wheeling speech came a
> > matter of weeks after his death. But not long before he died, Orwell had
> > specifically warned the Americans about the danger of fighting Communism
> > with the kinds of methods Communists themselves used.
> >
> > Then in 1960, William F. Buckley Jr. tried to persuade Evelyn Waugh to
> > contribute to National Review, and sent him ''McCarthy and His
Enemies,''
> > the apologia he had written with L. Brent Bozell. But Buckley got an
> > elegant flea in his ear. Most Englishmen regarded McCarthy as a
> > regrettable figure, Waugh replied, and the book ''will not go far to
clear
> > his reputation.'' Plainly there had been need for an investigation into
> > Soviet espionage, but it was just as clear that McCarthy was not a
> > suitable man to undertake it, Waugh said, and those who sympathized with
> > the anti-Communist cause ''must deplore his championship of it.''
Despite
> > all the bitterness of the McCarthy era and its residue, that remains
> > something like the last word.
> >
> > Geoffrey Wheatcroft's books include ''The Controversy of Zion'' and,
most
> > recently, ''Le Tour: A History of the Tour de France.''
> >
> >
> > The New York Times
> >
> > New York Times
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _____
> >
> > Take advantage of our limited-time introductory offer for dial-up
Internet
> > access.
> >