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of the young lady he hoped to seducethat evening ..." iMore than two decadeslater, this sort of history seems slightlyout of place.
But the camera-eye technique maywell be the best one to record themuddled events that occurred in Parisbetween early August, when a de Gaullemessenger parachuted into a Paris sub-urb (with orders from Algiers to containany possible insurrection), and Aug. 26,when Luftwaffe bombs finally fell on theliberated city.
Power: Between those fateful days,the Communist-inspired insurrectionflared at barricades throughout the city,the Germans retaliated, de Gaulle flewinto France in a plane that barely madeit to the coast, an unknown FrenchResistance major, Roger Gallois, per-suaded the Allies to enter the city; GI'sand Second French Armored Divisionfighters crashed through, hip deep inwine and roses; and de Gaulle finallyentered the city with power in his grasp.
One of the most interesting figures inthe entire saga is the stolid Prussiangeneral to whom Hitler entrusted firstthe defense, then the destruction ofParis, Dietrich von Choltitz. This effi-cient demolisher of cities and villages onthe eastern front went about his busi-ness of reducing Paris to rubble withastonishing inefficiency. He cooperatedwith Swedish Consul General RaoulNordling and double-agent Emil "Bobby"Bender to save more than 2,000 FrenchResistance prisoners slated for execution.While General Eisenhower was mut-tering "Well, what the hell, Brad. Iguess we'll have to go in," Choltitz (hadhe too been seduced by the City ofLight?) was subverting the letter of Hit-ler's demolition order with un-Teutonicsubtlety.
While Collins and Lapierre bring allthe excitement of those days back with afury, their method smacks too much ofa television documentary script: "Now,through the folds of this tent, anotherman appeared. His hair was unkemptand his khaki shirt only partially jammedinto his trousers." The shaggy one turnsout to be General Patton. This tech-nique, after several chapters, begins tocloy. Still, the research involved in thewriting of the book is staggering. Almostas staggering as the amount of dramaticimagination that must have gone into it.
Faces of ChangeWHO SPEAKS FOR THE NE(;RO? By
Robert Penn Warren. 454 pages.Ranulon House. 85.95.
This is an important, touching anddisappointing book. Poet-novelist-criticRobert Penn \Varren traveled throughhis native South, as well as the North,armed with a tape recorder, his poet's
Newsweek, June,7, 1965
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sensitivity, his novelist's !\ .and his critic's sense of loic :..
The importance of the bro: '. ..its portrait gallery of leaders ._civil-rights movement. Here .rC' tir<careful, pragmatic, bourgeois :1(1m nis-trators like Roy \Vilkins of the NAACP,James Farmer of CORE, \Vhitne Y 'uiiJr. of the Urban League; the charismatic,inward-looking Martin Luther King Jr.andli his associates; veteran grass-rootscaptains like druggist Aaron Henry ofMississippi and lawyer Lolis Elie ofLouisiana; the master political helmsmanAdam Clayton Powell; the conceptuallyuncertain hut decisively active youn gradicals like Rolbert Moses and JamesForman of SNCC; and 4ie Savonarolaand Psalmist of civil-iig s cripture,
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\Varren: Lrohll)lea] p rogue.-.
James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison.But it is \Varren's own pervaisive
presence that makes the book bothtouching and disappointing. For thehook is, in good part, a plotting of W1'ar-ren's ovn inner progress from well-inten-tionedl, paternal Southern conservativeto his current position of t roubledI mod-er ate whose basic attitude is still pater-nalistic, but whose ideological childlienhave all grown up and left home. Allthe topsv-turvy pathos of the Souithein
m yth is in \Varren's memory of how, as aboy, when he first heard about a lynch-ing, "I knew, in same and inferiority,that I wouldn't ever be man enoughto (1o that."
But there is present pathos in thefeeling that \Varren is inspecting theNegro leaders for rectitude, soundnessand sincerity. Indeed, it is the moreconservative leaders that \Varren feelsmost comfortable with. Ie quotes, withtacit approval, Roy \Vilkins' comment onthe Negro: "I think he's a liberal onixon the race question. I mean, I thinkhe is a conservative econolnically."
Against this confident, middle-of-the-
Newsweek84B
road attitude, Warren sees the youngerNegro leaders as troubled, agonized, un-certain-even somewhat neurotic. Rob-ert Moses, who has an "aimless abstracthandshake," sounds like a new Hamlet:"The country has such tremendous prob-lems-I mean every time you try andget a breakthrough in, say, the Negroproblem, you run into a deeper, tremen-dous problem that the whole countryhas to face. Jobs ... education ... auto-mation ... armament. I get lost."
Ellison: Warren is sharp and keen onMalcolm X ("He is, like all men ofpower, a flirt; he flirts with destiny")and James Baldwin ("the choked cryof rage, of self-pity struggling ... to be-come pity"). But Ellison is his man,Ellison who sees the positive side ofthe Negro tragedy, who says, "Negroeshave achieved a very rich humanitydespite these restrictive conditions." Al-though' he is a poet, an artist, Warrenshies away from the apocalyptic view,even the tragic view, of the race crisis.
At one point Warren confesses to "acold flash of rage" at the "moral con-descension" to him of one of the Negroleaders. "The Negro Movement," he says,"is fueled by a sense of moral superi-ority." But he himself can say, withsome condescension, that "the Negroleadership has give the public littlereason to be appalled." Still, in the end,the importance of this investigation isits powerful, plodding documentation ofthe inevitability of profound change byone of the most discerning minds ofSouthern culture.
In many ways the most impressivefigure in his gallery is that of the Rev.Joe Carter of Louisiana, who looks like"a black Robert Frost," and who triedto register because he heard on tele-vision that "the gov'mint say for us tovote." Carter is turned back, balked,stripped, jailed. The cuffs close over onewrist, and "when I heard the handcufflock, 1 just laid the other one backthere." At that moment, Carter sym-bolizes present tragedy and future vic-tory, for he finally does register. Hebecomes the Negro, of whom Warrensays: "He is ... the 'existentialist' Ameri-can . .. His role is to dramatize the mostinward revelation of that culture."
Thinking God's ThoughtsTHE POSITIVE THINKERS. By Donal(Meyer. 3 58 pages. Doubleday. $4.95.
When Bruce Barton reintroducedJesus Christ to Christendom as the"Founder of Modern Business," it wasnot an isolated moment in the historyof American aberration. By the 1920s,there had long been a well-establishedtradition of linking piety with profit,pleasure and power. As Prof. DonaldMeyer makes clear in his engaging and
June 7, 1965
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