Word: sane
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Those whom the Gods have doomed to a life of literary criticism often look askance at Hannah and his black humor. They criticized him for his absurdity. They were convinced that the world in general, and literature in particular, was a fundamentally sane enterprise. Those who applaud Hannah, with nothing better to say, fell back on complimenting his irony. But irony is not what Hannah is up to. Irony is simply juxtapositioning opposites--a false stance adopted by too many poor writers. It is a higher form of advertising; one flashes on garbage and someone says, "Nice...
...more sensible and effective way to use American armed forces to keep the nation safely at peace--the only sane purpose for maintaining the military--would be to limit its budgets carefully while revising official views of what exactly, constitute America's "interests." Forcing the Joint Chiefs to live within modest means would both encourage the innovation and good management that characterize any effective military and would prevent the kind of overbearing arrogance that has led America into wars of aggression in the past and that may do so again. And revising American foreign policy to reflect the inevitability...
Where Carter has secured a windfall profits tax to finance development of alternative energy sources, Reagan blindly insists that we will simply "produce" more oil and that the free enterprise system, unencumbered by environmental guidelines that Carter has supported, will fill in the gaps. Where Carter has nominated sane, balanced people to guide the country's future in nuclear energy, Reagan would pull out all the stops. Where Carter has taken steps to curb industrial pollution, Reagan thinks pollution comes only from volcanoes and trees...
...hard to imagine Thoreau dumping dirt on his head, just as it is hard to imagine him trying to escape from little eyes. He was sane; he went by himself, as hermits must, with no spouse to hit with the tools. And he went for a day's walk from his home, in a hospitable environment where it never hit 50 below, so he could spend his time rowing around in a boat, picking berries, reading classics, keeping a journal, not buying stoves, and not trekking to town for gasoline. Isolation was a means of gaining solitude...
McPhee, of course, does manage to find a pattern. All his heroes share rationality and expertise, none are geniuses but all are talented. Steering clear of poets, not to mention saints, prostitutes and writers, he concentrates on the sane. His ideals are Jeffersonian-farmers wander in and out of his collections, and inventors rank only below professional canoeists in his pantheon. Meet Richard Eckert, a man given to "gray suits, gray socks, black shoes, white shirts and Paisley ties," who invents the wave-tossed nuke while he is "standing wet, naked and soapy in his shower." This, perhaps, is inspiration...