It's been so long since I last read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter that I'd forgotten the great book's even greater flaw -- it's just TOO didactic. Plunked in the middle of an otherwise lovely novel are at least half a dozen 2-3 page sermonettes on Marxism, detailed enough that there could have been discussion questions at the end of the chapters. Lest anyone think I mean this in a John Birchesque "Eisenhower is a Communist" way, this is a paragraph from one of them:
"We must remember the words of Karl Marx and see the truth according to his teachings. . . We must remember that we all make the things of this earth of value because of our labor. These main truths from Karl Marx we must keep in our hearts always and not forget."
Reading this in 2004, it seems preposterous that there was once a time when this was almost standard thinking for American intellectuals. It seems so quaint. Marxism has been so thoroughly discredited by experience it was as if the words should simply have faded from the page by now.
Reading it, I also had the same slightly giddy feeling I get walking by the Lenin statue downtown. It's a wholesome sense of "We Won." As America faces a new threat to her way of life, it was good to remember that we beat the Fascists and the Reds. And we'll do the same to the bin Ladens of the world.
Posted by Discoshaman at mars 23, 2004 02:26 AM | TrackBack