BOOKS
MARXISM OF THE WILL
VENCEREMOS! THE SPEECHES AND WRITINGS OF CHE GUEVARA.
Edited with an introduction by John Gerassi. Macmillan. $7.95.
REMINISCENCES OF THE CUBAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR. By Che
Guevara. MR Press. $6.95.
THE COMPLETE BOLIVIAN DIARIES OF CHE GUEVARA. Edited and
with an introduction by Dani.el James. Stein and Day. $6.95.
MY FRIEND CHE. By Ricardo Raja. Dial Press. $4.95.
REVOLUTION IN THE REVOLUTION. By Regis Debray.
Grove
Press. 95;.
THE COMMUNISTS AND PEACE. By Jean-Paul Sartre. Brllziller. $6.95.
Of these books the two most important are Gerassi's collection
of Che Guevara's writings and Rojo's brilliant biography. Guevara's
own reminiscences of the Cuban revolutionary war are interesting,
but the reader needs to be well-informed already to make much use of
them. Debray's theorizing is perhaps only interesting for the contrast
between the Debray version of Che and ehe as he was, and the Sartre
is worth noticing in this context because it helps us to judge how much
of Debray is Paris academicism. Finally I notice the American version
of Che's diaries merely to note that it differs in important ways from
the Cuban version. The publishers on their dust jacket say their edition
"was authentica ted not by Cubans or Bolivians but by Americans"
j
here's news for you, Stein and Day - I still do not trust it. James
accuses Che of "personal pique"
j
his publishers join with him in enter–
taining the suggestion that Castro was jealous of Che, deliberately
denied the help he could have given and so betrayed him. This obscene
suggestion does not come well from Americans, who ought at least to
realise that the death of Guevara may well cost them as much as his
life did.
