Word: barzun
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...COUNTRY AND MINE (344 pp.)-Jacques Barzun-Atlantic-Little, Brown...
When a certified intellectual leads a long cheer for the U.S.-and moreover invites the jeers of his fellows by calling his book God's Country and Mine-it amounts to a conscious act of courage. French-born Jacques Barzun, 46, professor of history at Columbia University, has some reservations about his adopted country. The subtitle of his book is "A Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words." But even after his grudging left hand has taken away some of what his generous right has dished out. God's Country still comes as a welcome antidote...
Historian Barzun has a lively mind, many interests. He has written highly praised books on such widely different subjects as Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Teacher in America, Berlioz and the Romantic Century. He has, moreover, the advantages of common sense and a chatty style...
...Remedy. The cure for all this, says Barzun, is self-denial. "As many of us as possible must work out of our system, first, all the vogue words that almost always mean nothing but temporary vacancy of mind-such words as 'basic;5 'major,' 'over-all,' 'personal,' 'values,' 'exciting' (everything from a new handbag to a new baby) ; then . . . all the tribal adornments which, being cast off, may disclose the plain man we would like to be: no frames of reference, field theories, or apperception protocols; no texture, prior...
Unfortunately, adds Barzun. the people who could do most to help-the teachers and professors-are often the worst offenders. "Suppose the teacher of a course on family life has just been reading Social Casework and his mind is irradiated with this: 'Familial societality is already a settled question biologically, structured in our inherited bodies and physiology, but the answer to those other questions are not yet safely and irrevocably anatomized.' Unless this is immediately thrown up like the nux vomica it is, it will contaminate everybody it touches, from pupil to public-in fact the whole blooming...