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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...novels and memoirs, in many ways, is Michael Herr's Dispatches (1977). Herr, who spent a year in Viet Nam covering the war for Esquire, writes prose that resembles some weapon the Pentagon developed especially for Viet Nam-hallucinatory, menacing, full of anxiety, death and a stunning, offhanded sort of accuracy. Herr is a writer with the talent of a smart bomb. Like James Webb in his fairly straightforward 1978 novel Fields of Fire, Herr is able to locate the thing inside the soldiers, and himself, that enjoys the appalling charm of war. Writes Herr: "But somewhere...
...soar as often either." At the National Association of Alternative Newsweeklies' annual convention last month at Boston's elegant Parker House, the nonstop chatter about special advertising sections and "upscale demographics" finally touched off a flurry of selfcriticism. "I get this vision of [readers as] some sort of sausage, into which you jam all the consumer goods you can," said Village Voice Columnist Alexander Cockburn. On the final afternoon of the three-day affair, the delegates rather selfconsciously voted to insert "alternative" into the association's name. IF. Stone, the archetype of maverick journalists, picked...
Many legislators have urged Carter to come up with just that sort of program all along, but now they seem ready to condemn him for doing so. Senators and Congressmen from New England, where home heating oil prices in some cases have jumped by 25% since last autumn, complain that decontrol will just make matters worse. Says Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy of Carter's program: "It's bad economic policy, it's bad energy policy, and it's bad for the country." Legislators from Texas, Oklahoma and other petrobelt states argue that Carter...
...writing this sort of book, Bloom begs to be compared to C.S. Lewis. The comparison does not flatter him in any way. Lewis could get away with gross reliance on unalloyed religious faith because he also possessed an H.G. Wellsian flair for description of other worlds. Lewis never lost sight of the individuality of his characters, nor the need to entertain his readers. Bloom misses both Lewis's faith and his skill...
Sadly, this sort of fine writing, which Barthelme once piled up in quantity in the vast golden junkyards that were his books, stands out all too starkly in Great Days. Barthelme has chosen to contract his appeal to a limited audience, and move toward obscurantism. The self-consciousness engendered by the huge welter of 20th-century literary criticism inhibits Barthelme, forces him to kill his prose with refinement. Where are the barbarians...