Word: criterion
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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After dinner J.D.R. Jr. and his guests often gather around a baby-grand piano while Mrs. Rockefeller plays Mendelssohn or Chopin, or the J.D.R. Jr.s might drive downtown to the Criterion in Bar Harbor to a movie, e.g., The King and I. Every now and then, J.D.R. Jr. darts out on a sudden foray: one day he remarked to a visitor that he had just been out to buy 22 Bibles, "one for each of my grandchildren...
...Socialist lines." Workers in nationalized mines find no greater joy or increased incentive in the knowledge that the mines are theoretically "theirs." Even the fundamental doctrine that Socialism is more efficient than capitalism and hence productive of higher living standards was abandoned. "If increased production is to be the criterion," asked Twentieth Century Socialism, "can we really prove that Socialist policies will be more effective than the capitalist policies which set the pace in the U.S. today?" The Gaitskellites were prepared to accept the theory of a mixed economy with public and private ownership...
Revelation of Hope. And what of the intellectual in a land where privilege has passed to the crowd? The intellectual's true vocation, says Philosopher Sidney Hook, "is critical independence. The intellectual betrays his vocation when he becomes a poet laureate of the status quo. The criterion is neither assent nor conformity . . . My experience has been that most so-called intellectuals are just as conformist to tradition in their immediate circle as the nonintellectuals. Many intellectuals would rather 'die' than agree with the majority, even on the rare occasions when the majority is right." Certainly, says Barzun...
...TRAIN WAS ON TIME, by Heinrich Böll (142 pp.; Criterion; $3), carries its Eastern-front German soldier-hero to his death while he is still on furlough in the Ukraine, which is about as ironically far as the you-can't-win theme has ever been taken by a war novelist. The soldier, Andreas, is a kind of displaced poet in uniform. From the moment his leave-train begins puffing towards Przemysl one autumn day in 1943, Andreas is haunted by the irrational idea that he is a bridegroom of death being rushed into one of destiny...
...misused for such purposes, and often is. Since when has this danger ever kept American writers from saying what they think, and since when has it kept intelligent American readers from judging such books on their merits? Any day that we have to judge American books ay this one criterion-whether they will be read with "great glee by anti-Americans"-will be a sad day for American books, and for America...