436
JOHN HENRY RALEIGH
poetry. Further, as
Patriotic Gore
demonstrates, the traditions
were
real too; Sherman himself said that the Southern "knight" was not a
myth: "they are the most dangerous set of men that this war
has
turned loose upon the world. They are splendid riders, first-rate shots,
and utterly reckless."
So far as I know, there is nothing else in American literature quite
like
Patriotic Gore.
Whatever its inconsistencies or irrascibilities or
impossibilities, it stands, in all its fine prose and wide range, as
an
eloquent rebuke to the poor writing
and ~the
narrow specialization of so
much current literary and historical studies. This complaint about
specialization and poor writing has been made so often in recent yean
that it has now become fashionable, a veritable "cliche complaint" in
our fast-moving age when today's insight is tomorrow's platitude and
when the sociologists' reports are hardly off the drawing boards before
they have to be up-dated and revised. But as everybody says it, piously
and fashionably, Mr. Wilson is in the unique position of having actual–
ly done something about it. What a relief to read a book that is
beautifully written, that you can argue with all the way through, and
that poses some national ideals. As for a world of "impossibilists" and
"jobbists," this is worth a try too.
