Overdrive (28 page)

BISHOP: God and Father of all, we praise you for your infinite love in calling us to be a holy people in the kingdom of your Son Jesus our Lord, who is the image of your eternal and invisible glory, the firstborn among many brethren, and the head of the Church. We thank you that by his death he has overcome death, and, having ascended into heaven, has poured his gifts abundantly upon your people, making some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry and the building up of his body.

[The bishop lays hands upon the head of the ordinand . . . the priests who are present also laying on their hand.]

BISHOP: Therefore, Father, through Jesus Christ your Son, give your Holy Spirit to GERHART; fill him with grace and power, and make him a priest in your Church.

The notion of the subordination of the mind to God continues for me to beg for recognition as the final wonder of the world. In
The Constitution of Liberty
, F. A. Hayek cites the Jesuit oath of St. Ignatius Loyola as the most extreme form of intellectual self-mortification, utterly inconsistent with the very idea of liberty; but of course he begs the point, which is that it is only through the ultimate exercise of the free will that one abandons it, with the faith that that act will bring on a special harmony, such as the life of Gerhart—scholar, father, husband, musician, moralist—has incarnated. I thank Dick for sending me the news of the fiftieth anniversary of the Niemeyers' wedding, and congratulate him on his new professional association.

It is dark, but although the road narrows and there are three turns to remember to make, I don't think to tell Jerry how to go because his memory of anywhere he has ever been before is indelible. James and Marcia Burnham have lived deep in the woods, three miles from the village of Kent, since forever, as far as I know, and it was here that as a supplicant I came in 1955, to ask him if he would join the editorial staff of
National Review
. Although by manner retiring—shy even; withdrawn and a little formal— he was an intimidating figure. Valedictorian of his class at Princeton, professor at New York University at age twenty-four, author of texts in philosophy, Trotskyite, a contributor to
Partisan Review
, celebrated author of
The Managerial Revolution
, a born-again conservative, premature anti-Communist, and then those three seminal strategy books on the struggle for the world—the strategic confrontation—ending with
Suicide of the West
(1964). For twenty-three years he had come in to New York every week for two days to serve
National Review
as senior editor, strategist, adviser, a mentor to all who experienced him. And then, returning on the airplane from the debate with Reagan on the Panama Canal, in a matter of hours he lost eighty percent of the vision of one eye, and ninety percent of the vision of the second—"macula degeneration," they call it, and there isn't anything you can do about it. This brought his resignation from
National Review
, but not the end of his afflictions: a year later a stroke, from which it was assumed he would not recover.

He did, but imperfectly. An evening spent with him yields no intimation that he is hindered. An evening which, however, the next day he will not predictably be able to remember. I turned the twenty-fifth-anniversary dinner of
National Review
, at which everyone was present
except
Reagan, into an impromptu (brief—I spoke about him for only three or four minutes) testimonial to Jim who, seated between Henry Kissinger and Clare Luce, rose—silver-white hair, glasses, shy appreciative smile, a wonderfully distinguished scholar and patriot—and acknowledged a standing ovation; and the next day he did not know that the affair had taken place. Although the
following
day it might re-enter his memory. Yet in conversation one does not notice anything awry. He became fifty-eight years old on the day John Kennedy was killed, and today he is seventy-six, and Marcia is celebrating the birthday in their Pavilion as they call it, an attractive stone one-story structure, separated from the New England rabbit warren where they live and suitable for parties and grandchildren; and there are a dozen old friends, including Priscilla, and champagne.

The conversation is animated, and Jim accepts gracefully all the little presents, and fusses about a bit to make certain everyone is happy and comfortable; and I notice that everyone who addresses him does so at the outset with deliberation, until satisfied that the speed of the conversation doesn't in the least distract him. The dinner is served buffet style, and we chat away, and Marcia—still blond and Scandinavian and trim—makes a toast to her husband in her characteristic reserved public style
("Nobody was ever loved the way I was loved by Jim,"
she wept over the telephone the day after the stroke, when she thought Jim would not survive) and Priscilla, always shy on her feet, gives a marvelously eloquent, brief, aphoristic tribute to the man who shared her office at
National Review
for almost twenty-five years. Others are heard from, but it is important in such situations to guard against valedictory inflections. Soon after dinner I tell Marcia that Priscilla and I simply must go, because we must travel two hours to New York. In two cars, because Pitts needs her own in the city. I say goodbye, and make my way down the flagstones to Jerry. The night is very dark, but the occasion was very happy, Pitts and I agreed in whispers.

We are only eight miles from the house I grew up in, in Sharon, but the route does not take us by, and in any event I'll see it next week, because although it is substantially gutted, we are meeting there for Thanksgiving, preserving the family tradition. Gutted because five condominiums will exist where once a single family (to be sure, of ten children) was housed. Priscilla and (sister) Jane will each have one, and the large Spanish patio is intact, the colonial facade untouched. I wonder whether I will have to fight sleep, but the briefcase is full and I go back to it.

Sam McCracken is assistant to the prickly and brilliant president of Boston University. When Sam was a professor of Literature and Humanities at Reed College we corresponded, and en route to his new assignment several years ago he stopped by, a tall imposing blond man, married to a beautiful oriental. The evening was slightly distracted by Sam's having just then gone off a regimen to which he had stuck for something like eighty days—no food, no wine. Objective: forty pounds. This was the night to celebrate, and accordingly he drank innocently huge glasses of Jack Daniels which my wife kept bringing him, and which he consumed as casually as if they were Dr Pepper. I looked with progressive astonishment at this Rabelaisian prodigy, who spoke, although there is a slight stutter, in such lucid and rhythmic language, and wondered how it was all biologically possible.

I had, before dinner, bathed one of our dogs, whose collar was now lying on Pat's beloved black slate coffee table, and Sam, punctuating a point about the irresponsibility of those who drive without attaching their safety belts, snuffed out his cigar conclusively—inside the dog collar, rubbing the cigar zestfully into the slate. Just for old times' sake, I sneaked a look at Pat (Mrs. McCracken was out of the room), whose first instinct was to scream; whose second instinct was to rise and go fetch a large ashtray; but who with habitual speed recognized that to place an ashtray alongside the dog collar would betray the hallucination, and embarrass Sam. A couple of days later, he wrote that he had had a strange sensation upon breaking his diet—that his wife told him he had had too much to drink, but that he felt just fine. I have felt fine about him for years, and read with admiration his frequent essays, mostly in
Commentary
, but occasionally in
National Review
.

Sam writes, "The author of the devastating send-up of Kennan in the current
New Yorker
is
aut WFB aut diabolus
. Marvelous! Your hand has not lost its cunning. If you publish it in your next collection, please take care to spell the name K+nn+n. Juries are likely to come down hard on rich men they think have abridged the rights of simple retired diplomats."

I read George Kennan's piece, and I must admit Sam has a point. "I have never been an advocate of unilateral disarmament," Mr. Kennan writes, "and I see no necessity for anything of that sort today." But having said that, K goes on to say that the mere
existence
of nuclear weapons is the important datum, more significant by far than the question of who has dominion over such weapons. We should do away with ours. "I would feel the future of my children and grandchildren to be far safer than I do at this moment;

for if there is any incentive for the Russians to use such weapons against us, it surely comes in overwhelming degree—probably, in fact, entirely—from our own enormous deployment of them."

Uh-huh. And the use of bacteriological and chemical weapons by the Russians against Cambodians and Afghans came because of the enormous deployment by Cambodians and Afghans of bacteriological and chemical weapons; built with chopsticks. Oh dear, and George Kennan is such an intelligent man, and such a nice man. Well, let's hope he's right, that the Soviet Union will never use its weapons. "I suppose we can only pray that he is correct," I write Sam, "and giggle, just a little—as you authorize us to do—at his pretty little simplifications." An odd word to use to describe Kennan, but what's the right one in the circumstances?

I acknowledge with thanks lawyer Del Fuller's update on the appeals motion against the idiot commission in California that, overturning its own examiner, has ruled that the Bohemian Club in its summer encampment has to hire women. To the end of establishing that the non-hiring of women during the two-week encampment has nothing to do with sexual bias, I and (former) Governor Pat Brown were asked to go to San Francisco to serve as witnesses, and we were subsequently pleased by the thoughtful verdict of the examiner, handed down in due course, that men's highly private clubs can, without committing unlawful sexual discrimination, employ only men where the sex of the employee is relevant, as clearly it is in situations where, among other things, men wander about six hundred acres without much attention to dress. I congratulate Del on his brief, though frankly it has gotten so technical (like so much of the law) that it has become difficult for mere laymen even to follow the arguments.

I have it down to thank Professor Tom Sowell for his extraordinary performance on "Firing Line," defending the principal discoveries of his book,
Ethnic America
. Harriet Pilpel, so marvelously talented, riding the crest of so distinguished a career, is a love, and bright as a whip, but so frozen by liberal ideology that sometimes she simply ceases to
think!
As when, examining Sowell, she said: "Are you telling us that labor unions impede the progress of blacks and that you are therefore
against
labor unions?" To which he answered coolly that he had
not
been asked whether he was in
favor
of labor unions, he had been asked what were
some
of the impediments to
black
upward mobility. Sowell (himself black) radiates the most naturally aristocratic hauteur of anyone I've had on "Firing Line" since Giscard d'Estaing, ten years ago. Sowell suffers socially from his apparent apostasy from the black movement, as does the black economist Walter Williams, who having analyzed the minimum wage laws pronounces them an important factor in black teenage unemployment. The slightly underground crack these days is that Tom Sowell and Walter Williams have a private covenant, never both to ride in the same airplane.

Will I write a plug for Espygrams? "You are probably wondering what an Espygram is." Well, yes. "An Espygram is a verse or limerick written by Mr. Espy." Now if only the lady from Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., Publisher, had left it at that, the meaning of Espygram would be instantly communicable. But she goes on. "The reader figures out the missing words by using the context of the verse, the rhymes, and the number of letters in the words as clues. Espygrams are entertaining and challenging, and we've found that once people get the hang of doing them they can't stop."

I looked, and had no trouble whatever in stopping. One of them did, however, catch the eye, to wit:

In sleep, salacious Incubus

And Succubus make _______________with us.

Now I suggest they wouldn't bother

If in our __________they ____'__ each other.

Perhaps they're mutually _________.

Or, odder still, have never mated.

Your job would be to come up with respective fillers, all using the same letters:
dates; stead; teas'd; sated
.

A first-year student at the graduate school of business in Cornell has thought deeply about a career in business—and wants out. He wishes to become a journalist. There are so very many of these who come to us. And our responses are always so dismayingly discouraging.
National Review
is a
tiny
editorial operation, and its actors are technicians of highly developed skills. Besides, young people coming to
NR
get very little experience in writing, because the stuff that's published is, almost all of it, written either by the resident pros, or by outside pros. There are of course exceptions, Brookhiser the most recent. For a while I thought we were running a finishing school for apostates (Garry Wills, John Leonard, Arlene Croce); but somehow the impression persists that all magazines have a half-dozen post-college-age positions available to anyone with a little talent. The same old story.