Word: hitlerism
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Martinez was not blind to Koernke's faults. He confirms that Koernke made casual racist remarks and was enthusiastic in extolling the economy and technology of Hitler's Third Reich. Koernke, says Martinez, was a literal interpreter of the Bible's Book of Revelation, with a literal expectation of Armageddon. Occasionally, as Koernke went on and on about some grim fantasy, Martinez feared he "might have some sort of chemical imbalance." But the two stayed friends. Martinez was Koernke's best man when he married Nancy Wise, a home-economics student he had met while peddling chocolate-chip cookies...
Reunited in their 40s, they are a lively bunch. But Conroy, who has thrived by writing in the first-person portentous, burdens his already preoccupied characters with the bloody 20th century. Attempts to relate the madness of Vietnam to Hitler's evil are loopy. So is some of Conroy's rhetoric. "Through no preference or selection of our own," begins one chapter, "the graduating class of 1966, in high schools all over America, found ourselves cast like dice across the velvet-covered gambling tables of history ... the best we could do was cover our eyes and ears and genitalia like...
...same is true of the Second World War: when Hitler was getting ready to invade Czechoslovakia, and in so doing finally expose the lack of courage on the part of the western democracies, your President wrote a letter to the Czechoslovak President imploring him to come to some agreement with Hitler. Had he not deceived himself and the whole world into believing that an agreement could be made with this madman, had he instead shown a few teeth, perhaps the Second World War need not have happened and tens of thousands of young Americans need not have died fighting...
...televisionand the computer--can be turned against us andused to our detriment. How much easier it is todaythan it was during the First World War to destroyan entire metropolis in a single air-raid. And howmuch easier would it be today, in the era oftelevision, for a madman like Hitler or Stalin topervert the spirit of a whole nation. When havepeople ever had the power we now possess to alterthe climate of the planet or deplete its mineralresources or the wealth of its fauna and flora inthe space of a few short decades? And how muchmore destructive potential do terrorists...
...your attention," says TIME critic R.Z. Sheppard. "It's friendly but still has teeth." The author populates "Beach Music" (Doubleday; 628 pages; $27.50) with memorable characters, but unfortunately burdens them with the entire bloody history of the 20th century. "Attempts to relate the madness of Vietnam to Hitler's evil are loopy," says Sheppard, and so is some of Conroy's rhetoric. The Pat Conroy who wrote "The Water Is Wide" and "The Great Santini" is conspicuously absent here, leaving "Beach Music" as nothing more than what is certain to be this summer's best-selling snack.Previous TIME DailyCampaign...