ARGUMENTS
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as defined and required by Baldwin, is at such a rare premium anywhere
that we must ask where he locates it positively in the areas of life that
concern him. It isn't necessary to defend psychoanalytic observations on
child development, or the observations of generations of artists, to say that
hates and loves, variable and unique, mixtures of both, are in all of us. We
all struggle to achieve that elusive "identity" which often defies the most
dedicated descriptions. Yes, love is the remedy, but how cheaply and
above all, how easily, some prescribe it these days. And Mr. Baldwin,
who has exposed the tawdry in us and helped, more than most, to make
us question our facile slogans, should know this.
And so, we have come, at long last perhaps, to the rather self-evi–
dent truth that the problems of racism, white, black, or any kind, are
not fairly treated in this injunctive or sentimental fashion. Indeed one
of the chief lessons we can learn is how enticing some of the irrational
snares of racist polemic can become. As I was debating in my mind
whether I would sit down to write, in some clarification for myself, just
what Mr. Baldwin said, and meant to say, I came upon the following
comments from. my senior senator, Mr. Russell of Georgia, expressing his
reaction to a rather modest civil rights legislative program sent to the
Congress by the late President Kennedy; "People of good will can
Ceorg
Lukacs
"Not only is he the mentor of
new intellectual stirrings in East–
ern Europe and Russia ; outside
of Marxist circles as well, Lukacs
has counted for a long time . . .
REALISM IN OUR TIME reviews
the alternatives for literature to–
day and rejects both modernism
and 'socialist realism' in favor of
what he calls 'critical realism'–
essentially the tradition of the
19th century novel."-SusAN
SONTAG,
Book Week
REALISM
IN OUR TIME
literature and the Class Struggle
A new volume in Harper's
WORLD PERSPECTIVES, planned
and edited by Ruth Nanda
Anshen.
At all bookstores
$3.95
Harper
&
Row, N.Y. 10016
.. can
it
work for
• civil rights?
• political freedom?
• economic equality?
The
wh;y, how
and history of nonviolence,
with a.Christian appraisal. "Enlightening,"
says REINHOLD NIEBUHR. "Excellent back–
ground reading for anyone who wants to
know the basis and meaning of the current
nonviolent Negro revolution." - JAMES
FARMER.
lfnt pub/ished-$6.95
at stores.
AS.SOCIATION PRESS
I
N. V. C.
