- To the Editor:
-
- George F. Will writes: "Bush's terseness is Ernest
Hemingway seasoned with John Wesley." ("Old Fashioned Values
Return Since Sept. 11," Op Ed, March 12)
-
- Well, one is hardly familiar with John Wesley's sermons,
but I do know that to put George W. Bush's prose next to Hemingway is equal
to saying that Jackie Susann is right up there with Jane Austen.
-
- Did a sense of shame ever reside in our Republican
toadies?
You can't stop people who are never embarrassed by themselves. Will's
readiness to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse can be cited as world class
sycophancy.
-
- Here's a passage from "A Farewell to Arms."
It has more going for it than "terseness."
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- "I was embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious,
and sacrifice... I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were
glorious
had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if
nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words
you could not stand to hear... Abstract words such as glory, honor,
courage,
or hallow were obscene beside the concrete names of villages, the names
of roads, the names of rivers, the numbers of regiments and the
dates."
-
- It is worth reminding ourselves that the life of a
democracy
may also depend on the good and honorable use of language and not on the
scurvy manipulation of such words as "evil" and "love"
by intellectual striplings of the caliber of our president.
-
- Norman Mailer
- Provincetown
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