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love for freedom and democracy is also dubious. As the author puts it:
"Few in the West would agree with their goals. Some seem intolerant,
others overly traditional, even regressive."
If
so, why support them in
the first place? Because in Mr. Shadid's view the alternative, meaning the
status quo, is even worse.
It
is difficult to muster enthusiasm for the present regime in Egypt (let
alone Saudi Arabia). But can Mr. Shadid, can anyone, claim with any
degree of conviction that the political alternatives in these countries will
be less repressive, less corrupt?
It
mayor may not be more effective but
it will certainly not be more democratic in any meaningful sense. This is
a depressing outlook but it may well be the only realistic one, all the
promises to the contrary as merely what is known in colloquial Arabic
as
ka/am fadi-empty
talk. There must be forces of democratic reform
in the Middle East, and for all one knows they will prevail one day. But
this day seems not to be near.
Walter Laqueur
Dawn Powell as Correspondent
SELECTED LETTERS OF DAWN POWELL,
1913-1965 .
By
Tim
Page. Henry
Holt
&
Company.
$3°.00.
ANY
EDITOR WORTH HIS SALT should have a feel for what his audience
wants-or what his audience ought to want.
It
was the tragedy of Dawn
Powell's life that her editors didn't. In Tim Page's view, and mine (as a
friend of Powell's from
1951
on), she was poorly served by her pub–
lishers, whose insensitive editors, including the legendary Max Perkins,
and lumpen marketing personnel appear not to have had a clue how
to
get a handle on the acidic essence of her novels or how
to
promote them
to
the appropriate audience.
Nor did her agents. Consider this sad note
to
Carl Brandt, head of
Brandt
&
Brandt:
Dear Carl:
Can we get a Hollywood divorce and still be frightfully, frightfully
good friends? I mean, hold hands in nightclubs and gaze deep into
each other's pocketbooks for the photographers?
