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Missing the Point of a Great Book |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Jacob Neusner |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 12/1/1987 |
| Size: 2,948 Words, 17,034 Characters |
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FREEDOM
William Safire
Garden city: Doubleday, 1987
1,125 pp., $24.95
How would you feel if you wrote a book everyone called important, even great, but no one really understood? You'd feel like William Safire, who has written a masterpiece that reviewers praise for all the wrong reasons - or criticize for no interesting reason at all.
Safire delivers a stunning account of the decision making process in Washington, and he describes the operation of the American political process in an odd mixture of fiction and factual history, an account of how, lurching this side to that, stumbling, falling, oftentimes nearly failing altogether, Abraham Lincoln reached that fateful first day of January 1863 on which he freed (some) slaves (over whom he had no power anyhow).
Safire did not promise a work of mere history, and he did not pretend to write mere fiction. True, he engages with historical fact, proven by the now famous "underbook" of several hundred pages of discussion of sources, moot points, controverted issues, and his reasoning and judgment on them. And equally true, he makes up people and incidents, even bedding this one down with that one. These serve the purpose for which they are invented, as much as history, in suggesting that things really happened in one way rather than some other.
Safire wanted to inquire into how the American political process reaches decisions. He could not do it wholly through history, which yields no ideal type through which such a theory can be set forth. He also could not do it wholly trough fiction, which, happening wholly in his own head, serves no useful purpose in political discourse. He gained his goal by tak...
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...et us appreciate and celebrate, unimpeded by the carping of self-important critics.
Once in a while, it is right to praise famous men and women. So let us glory in the genius of this one yet among us. Here's to you, William Safire, and here's a salute to Freedom: Your work is worthy of its theme and you do full justice to the question you ask. More praise than that I cannot imagine.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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