Word: agnew
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...would cooperate in an effort to undermine the livelihood, the daily bread, of people who have fed her at her convenience for the last four years, simply because she is a "liberal economist." The anti-Crimson mood, and its representatives like Peter Keyes '78, reminds me of Spiro Agnew's diatribes against the left-wing bias of the "Eastern Establishment" press a couple of years ago. I hope the Crimson's commitment to critical reporting continues after the departure of this year's Editorial Board. Keep up the good work! Jon Jacobs...
Novelist Spiro Theodore Agnew did not have Watergate to kick around. Earlier, more mundane transgressions forced his retirement from the vice presidency. He was already busy building a new career as an international businessman when the lives of his former Government colleagues started to fall dramatically apart. The Canfield Decision is about the destruction of a promising political career in 1983, but basically it is an old cold war horse of a novel, reminiscent of the bestsellers of the '50s and early...
...Agnew's projection of the next seven years is a world not unlike the present. Detente still holds. The Middle East is still a bear pit of Arab-Israeli animosity and big-power intrigue. At home, President Walter Hurley is winding up a second term of "no sudden moves, no scandals, no tricky p.r. ploys, no jet-set diplomacy...
...scheme plays into the hands of various nationalist groups, militant Zionists, assorted terrorists and some people who are not what they seem to be. The novel's plot is complicated, although not intricate. Canfield's arrogance and pride cause moral blind spots that bring about his downfall. Agnew's characters are stiff in the joints but serviceable. The settings -Washington, Iran, the interior of Air Force Two-are described with cursory authority, while Agnew's descriptions of beautiful women are done with lingering attention to detail...
...reader's first impression might be that The Canfield Decision was acquired during a break-in at Allen Drury's apartment. But in fact Spiro Agnew writes better-if, as he insists, "I have unequivocally written all the novel myself." He has even offered $25,000 to New York Post Columnist Harriet Van Home if she can prove her suspicion that he did not write the book. In any event, the novel's action-which includes brutal multiple murders and an anticlimactic missile crisis-has less energy than the rancorous opinions that stream from the mouths...