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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
One Column Alone Captures The Flag,
By Don Reed "Don" (Cliffside Park NJ) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Wild Flag (Hardcover)
Wild Flag, E.B. ["Andy"] White; Houghton Mifflin Company Boston (1943-46)
EBW's abstractions about the preferable founding principles of the United Nations originally appeared at various times in The New Yorker between 1943 & 1946. Even if he was repeating himself, given the reasonable intervals, his refusal on principle alone to yield to a pervasive & fashionable cynicism about the future post-war world must have been invigorating. But when these same editorials are condensed into a "clip book" - with one dry & theoretical discourse after another running together in concentrated form - by sheer repetition alone, they become unpalatable ("I've read this four times already - enough!"). Fortunately, there's more to Wild Flag than just the above. In November 1945, White's column detailed the still-violent & absurd world events occurring after the end of the war in September (in response to a letter written by Herbert Weintraub, an overseas soldier who had asked: "How's everything going?"): "In the Netherlands, the Indonesians and the Dutch are fighting, using poisoned darts and some borrowed American equipment... "The Times, commenting editorially, maintained that the world is not ready for a government. (There is one thing about the Times; it knows what the world is ready for. The world, Weintraub, is ready for tomorrow's Times.)... "People are shopping these days...they feel driven, people do...in Buffalo, a bank is installing a drive-in window so that you can make deposits, or even withdrawals, without getting out of your car... "Napoleon once said, `I feel driven toward an end that I do not know. As soon as I shall have reached it...an atom will suffice to shatter me. Till then, not all the forces of mankind can do anything against me.' "Napoleon, of course, failed to foresee that someday it would be possible for him to motor up alongside his bank & draw money without getting out of his car. There really is no vision, Weintraub." Wild Flag remains on the shelf while the pretenders continue to come up short & go. |
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The wild flag by E. B White (Hardcover - 1943)
Used & New from: $82.35
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