LETTER FROM HOME
211
which are the inevitable concomitant of the French adventure into
the
modern world. Provided only ... but that would take us very far.
There remains
W.
P.'s question. "How does it feel to be back?"
But I'm not really back yet, merely on my way. Perhaps when I've
absorbed enough radio, television, magazines, newspapers, this problem
of our language will become less obsessive. But where is our continuum?
Why is there so much loose talk, sloppy writing, bad grammar? Today,
some of our distinguished representatives are in grave discussion about
whether Mr. Dillon's economic program, upon which any American
foreign policy must rest, can be called a "giveaway" program or not.
What will become of our political strategies
if
they must constantly
be
"sold" to people in slogans and simplisms? At the other end of the
rhetorical scale, has anyone been listening to that strange murmur
which comes from
The Hudson Review?
And what can we make of
Mr. Fiedler when he tells us that adultery is "old hat" in the suburbs
nowadays, as if one used to commit it in the illusion that it was new?
Or that homosexuality is "the purest and truest protest of
the
latest
generation ?"
It's good to be on the way back,
W.
P., but I think I shall be a
long time coming. For the moment I keep wanting to tell people that
we still badly need France, not as a base for intermediate range missiles
but as a reminder,
inter alia,
that a country can survive anything if it
continues to respect its language. Just as a writer can survive anything,
even his innocence, if he is old hat enough to respect his own life.
As for the teacher I met in Texas, who told me that her students
were being taught to "get the gist" of selected pages of
The Saturdcry
Evening
Post,
since she herself "could not expect to know every word,"
I should like to report her to the Committee on Un-American Activities.
Informing is distasteful to me, but the country's security comes first.
Unfortunately the Committee, about which there was so much incoherent
talk
when I was last here, seems to have disappeared.
