268
DAVID
T.
BAZELON
that the book, being mass produced, cannot have the "value" that a
painting has, becomes an anomaly. The solution might be to issue each
book in a single copy only, written out in long-hand by the author, to be
bought by collectors of private realities and by museums and boo}Q
galleries where the public will wait on line to sample it for a half–
hour or so. Another solution would be to stop printing books altogether,
and make their contents known orally, in book concerts, during which
the author would read for two hours from his works; that way, one
would only have to listen, and catch what one can, thus obviating the
arduous task of solitary reading with all its hazards of putting the ,book
down and falling asleep. A third solution would be to have such books
read only by critics, who would then submit the author's findings and
technical innovations to other authors and to the public. Then we
would at least know where the army of art was advancing, on what
obscure hill or over what remote atoll it was waging a fierce and costly
battle. We would be relieved to know, if we are writers ourselves, that
that battle need not be fought again.
Susan Sontag
THE IMPORTANCE OF DOUBLE-THINK
ON THE PREVENTION OF WAR. By John Strechey. St. Mertin's Press.
$5.95.
It is often forgotten that many of us will die
before
the nuclear
holocaust occurs. Ordinary death has not really been transcended by
the brilliant death-thinking of the new breed of rational Doomsters.
I suspect they not only forget this, but that the opportunity to forget
it in their work accounts for much of their enthusiasm. On religious
matters, I have never trusted scientists. Either they are pure dualists,
and thus sterile; or naive synthesizers, and thus too dynamic for the
public good. One way or another, scientists suffer, along with the rest
of us, from the virtues of science, but never so clearly as
in
their new,
heady effort to conceive death rationally in global, supra-historical terms.
They even play games with it. The essence of the game, apart from the
pure joy of it, seems to be to discover whether in the reaction to an
action occasioned by an imagined provocation implied in a) an ac–
cidental and b) a necessary event (the games are quite complicated,
