Word: mee
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Charles L. Mee's story about his own reaction to Nixon's resignation is a tale from a member of that older generation born just before World War II, and there is much more to his reaction than a shrugging off of the events of that day in the summer of 1974. In fact, except for a couple of short fantasy episodes, Nixon is rarely mentioned. His betrayal of the country is taken as a given, and the book revolves around Mee's efforts to deal with what he calls the death of the Republic, and the people who killed...
...Mee's actual meeting with "the old malefactor" doesn't come until the end of A Visit To Haldeman and Other States of Mind. But the anticipation of the meeting carries the reader through an otherwise rambling book that includes tales from Mee's boyhood, the story of his fight with polio, his theories on the recent death and inevitable rebirth of the republic, and imagined conversations with Nixon and "Exxon"--an archetypal business executive who informs Mee that present governments are outmoded and that multinational corporations will inevitably rule the world. They will, Exxon says, be responsive only...
...Mee's narrative is a wild journey, frequently crossing from his personal consciousness into the national political consciousness and back again without warning. But then, that is perhaps the best way of dealing with a political phenomenon like Watergate that turned people inward, and turned many off to further political events...
...times, Mee seems self-indulgent, as when he describes at great length his battle with polio at age 14. But he inevitably goes on to link the personal with the political: his bout with polio serves both as an explanation of why he turned to writing--to apply his mind since his body wasn't working too well--and as an allegory for the condition of the country. Just as people recover from illness, Mee writes, so democratic republics will revive even if they lapse into oligarchy, as America has. The logical connection between one person's physical health...
...Mee's lively, mordant intelligence is at its best improvising on political ideas - quarreling with Spengler, hallucinating a Socratic dialogue with an Exxon executive. In the end, the author pays a visit of homage to the aging Arnold Toynbee - and plays his own complicated sense of disintegration and renewal against Toynbee's. Toynbee seems to listen with courtly regard as Mee excitedly spins out his vision of a new Renaissance based upon "a truly profound exploration led by neurophysicists and psychologists, structural linguists and anthropologists, into the structure of the mind." Mee demands to know what Toynbee thinks...