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who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the
symbol do so at their peril." In Edward's brooding eyes, tired from his
continual restless movement about Europe, there is a sense of a battle
almost lost; while Mrs. Keppel, the last
maitresse-en-titre,
in the photo–
graph of her in Sir Philip's book, suggests the half-tamed sexual power
that emanates from a Klimt portrait. This final period of high bour–
geois living and art appears as an attempt, through the flimsy means of
decoration, to hold society together. Magnus has presented that surface,
and Schmutzler its artistic counterpart.
Peter Stansky
THE FIRE THIS TIME
THE SOUTHERN MYSTIQUE. By HowMd Zinno Alfred A. Knopf.
$4.95.
SNCC: THE NEW ABOLITIONISTS. By Howard Zinno Beacon Press.
$4.95.
•
«Now, boy,
you
go to writing and write
up
a new day."
- Mama Dollie, Lee County, Georgia
Radicalism is returning to American life. It owes its initial
rebirth to the civil rights movement, but men like Bayard Rustin and
others less well-known, are now moving beyond the race problem to
broad social criticism. These new radicals increasingly see racism as but
one symptom of our social malaise, a symptom which itself can never
disappear until a broader attack is launched against the value structure
which maintains it-against the preference for order, compromise and
cliche over justice, principle and rea lity, against all that has turned us
from a revolutionary outpost into a conservative bulwark.
The new radicals do not pretend to have any long-range strategy
or detailed ideology; they are undogmatic, unsentimental and unhysteri–
cal. Despite their anger and disgust at the banalities and evasions of
American life, their tone is one of quiet confidence. They are optimistic
not only about the country's potential, but-and this is perhaps basic to
any reform impulse-they are optimistir. also about the ability of in–
dividuals to ascertain and manipulate reality. In this sense, the new
movement marks a restoration of human confidence, the flowering of
post-Freudian homiletics: nei ther ollr individual nor our collective past
need determine our present ?;oals; neither hiology nor history is enough
