Author: James O. Tate (James O. Tate)

“‘Jour printer, by trade; do a little in patent medicines; theatre-actor—tragedy, you know; take a turn at mesmerism and phrenology when there’s a chance; teach singing—geography school for a change; sling a lecture, sometimes—oh, I do lots of things—most anything that comes in handy, so it ain’t work.  What’s your lay?’” —The Duke, Huckleberry Finn...

That imperial anthem, the hymn of the U.S. Marine Corps, is today somehow an obscure exercise.  The halls of Montezuma? The shores of Tripoli?  Our gum-popping, Gucci-schlepping youth can no more respond to its referential difficulties than could the Ivy League-credentialed savants of the War Party.  What’s more, the pseudopatriots would be shocked to know that...

The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan by Ben Macintyre New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 351 pp., $25.00 In recent memory, when we think of Afghanistan, we recall perhaps first the struggle of the CIA-backed mujahideen guerillas against the Soviet invaders.  The Soviets lost 50,000 men and eventually their power,...

Writing—literary creation in the fullness of the sense that we have known it in the previous century and even in the one before, from the French and Russian masters, the daft Irish, the mad Yankees, the haunted Southerners (and from elsewhere, of course)—sometimes seems to be on the way out.  Senses of language, of irony,...

William Butler Yeats was not talking about literally sailing to a literal Byzantium in his famous poem, and I know that Urbino is a mountain fastness, not a port.  Even so, sailing to Urbino is necessary, and it does not matter how you do it—only that you do.  One way to approach Urbino is through...

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” —Blanche DuBois, A Streetcar Named Desire Sometimes, enlightenment, like confusion, can come from an unexpected source.  Take the comedian, George Carlin, for example.  I think that his broadcasting of dirty words is a bit less than profound, as is his hostility toward most civilized conventions; some...

Dr. Clyde Wilson’s new gathering will be of particular interest to readers of this journal, as some parts of it have appeared in these pages and as he has for years maintained a special relationship with Chronicles.  Yet I hasten to add that the compelling quality of these essays speaks broadly to the most vital...

The sheer inanity of so much fiction today sends us necessarily to the past, and not always to Balzac and Trollope.  If we are looking for something readable and American and modern, then this gathering is just the thing.  Indeed, for sheer readability (if not for the finest quality), James M. Cain is hard to...

“Always do what you are afraid to do.” —Anonymous Fall 2000 already seems like a long time ago, and it actually is.  Perhaps I remember in a haze of nostalgia for that period, a brief entertainment of hope for the American polity, one which was soon snuffed in a blizzard of dimpled chads and a...

Since she died in 1964 at the age of 39, Flannery O’Connor has not receded from literary awareness nor from a larger consciousness we might call philosophical or spiritual or religious.  Her place in the literary canon is secure in part because her reputation rests on more than the mere acknowledgment of authorities, many of...

Now, before I have my say about David L. Ulin’s new compendium of writing on Los Angeles, there are just a few things that need to be said about my own “Hollywood years,” because I get tired of being asked about that episode by nosy people who are just plain confused about the facts.  So...

“It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.” —S.L. Clemens In California, two brothers ages 20 and 15, murdered their mother and then cut off her head and hands, after which they were seen trying to unload a package with a foot sticking out of it into...

For those who know it, the Huguenot-derived name “Pettigrew” immediately evokes the associated word, “Gettysburg.”  Brig. Gen. Johnston Pettigrew was prominent on the first day of that battle, as the commander of Pettigrew’s Brigade, and on the third day, as the commander of Heth’s Division, which included his brigade.  Pickett’s Charge might as well have...

There have been dozens of books and hundreds of articles written about Flannery O’Connor (1925-64) in America alone, and considerable attention from overseas as well.  Indeed, R. Neil Scott’s new Flannery O’Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism describes 3,297 books, articles, dissertations, and master’s theses by 2,474 different authors.  Though she died at age...

“All you need to make a film is a girl and a gun.” —Jean-Luc Godard In 1947, an executive director of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals deplored the “sizable doses of communist propaganda” in many films of the day.  Leaving aside the question of whether “American ideals” could be identified—much...

Years ago, when Parker Tyler memorably instructed us in the magic and myth of the movies, he indicated something about the archetypal power of film and the status of the stars as our own popular pantheon.  The godlike qualities of star power were made manifest when Errol Flynn personified them as the ultimate swashbuckling man...

The author of these various pieces can truly claim that he has lived “a writing life.”  George Garrett has been working—successfully—for decades as a novelist and short-story writer, as a poet, playwright, and essayist, and as an editor and satirist.  But there is even more to the writing life, which Garrett does not fail to...

For the fifth time, Señor Pérez-Reverte, the Spanish novelist and international journalist, has presented “a novel of suspense” that adheres to his formula, and this may be his best yet, or at least his longest.  The length of this ironic romance is significant; since the author works within a narrow scope and with a small...

The publication of Gone With the Wind in 1936 was a major event in publishing—if not literary—history, compounded by the overblown movie of 1939 and by worldwide sales that continue to this day. Margaret Mitchell was overwhelmed by the reaction, which was complex and multifold. The novel was read by people on both sides in...

If you are looking for literary reflections or information about the intentions of the author of Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, and The Class Key, forget about it. There is precious little of that in Dasthell Hammett’s letters. If you are looking for insight into the character of the enigmatic Dasthell Hammett, you won’t find...

        “The pure products of America go crazy.” —William Carlos Williams The go-to-hell attitude, unique features, and deceptive talent by which we know Robert Mitchum (1917-1997) were the product of his heredity and experience. His father was a Scotch-Irish South Carolinian with some Amerindian blood—he died young in a railroad accident. His...

This second edition of Samuel Francis’s monograph on the political thought of James Burnham (1904-1987) is a fascinating exposition of a remarkable body of work. Francis focuses on the thought and not the man, on the books and columns—especially those printed in National Review—produced during Burnham’s most interesting period as a writer, which extended from...

Ever since the cinéaste Nino Frank first used the term in France in 1946 (he never said he invented it), there has been considerable controversy about the meaning of “film noir” and various attempts to define it, some more or less authoritative. The essential arguments have been usefully collected in Silver and Ursini’s Film Noir...

On July 25, 1997, Ben Hogan died in Fort Worth at the age of 85; his widow, Valerie, did not long survive him. In the season of 2000, Tiger Woods smashed scoring records in the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship, winning nine tournaments for the year, and setting the golfing world...

Symptoms: Health fine until reads Walker latest. Immediate somatic distress of all systems inch pulmonary; digestive crisis, upper, middle, and lower; cardiac irregularity; low and high blood pressure; skin rashes and lesions; emerging hyperallergenic reactions to paper, ink, reading process. Psychosomatic reactions: delusions of persecution, fears of apocalypse, entropic anxieties, all leading to reaction formation...

“[I]f I were not a Catholic, I would have no reason to write, no reason to see, no reason to feel horrified or even to enjoy anything . . . I feel myself that being a Catholic has saved me a couple of thousand years in learning to write.”         —Flannery O’Connor...

There are historical reasons—historical in more than one sense—why we should be glad to see this work back in print. Since I can so well remember owning the editions of 1959 and 1968 and absorbing their contents, the thought that these essays will reach new readers in the new millennium is a pleasant one. And...

[Lewis: Painter and Writer, by Paul Edwards (New Haven and London: Yale University Press) 584 pp. $75.00] Professor Edwards has set himself to a daunting task in taking on Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957). Lewis the painter is a difficult task for many reasons: first, because he attacked the British art establishment early on, trashing Roger Fry...

        “First grubs obscene, then wriggling worms, Then painted butterflies.”—Alexander Pope, Phryne Maybe I’m bewitched, but I’m not bothered and certainly I’m not bewildered by Sean Griffin’s too divinely unbelievable disquisition on one of everybody’s favorite topics, and I’m not going to waste space by saying what that is, because you just...

        “My views on Hammett expressed [above]. He was tops. Often wonder why he quit writing after The Thin Man. Met him only once, very nice looking tall quiet gray-haired fearful capacity for Scotch, seemed quite unspoiled to me. (Time out for ribbon adjustment.)” —Raymond Chandler, Letter to Alex Barris Why should...

Fame, even mere celebrity, creates a reality of its own. We are often curious about the reality behind the image, and if sometimes we are disappointed, we have to admit also that sometimes we are not. The story that Professor Ramage tells with authority cannot be thought of as disappointing in any way. In that...

Emeritus professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle, Robert B. Heilman has been publishing for over 60 years and has done distinguished work on drama and fiction. A good book of literary terms, for instance, refers to his Tragedy and Melodrama: Versions of Experience (1968) under the word “melodrama.” When you become...

Sideswiped by a car, Randall Jarrell died 34 years ago at the age of 51. That he has remained a presence as a writer and even as a man is vividly testified to by these books, which bring back a lot of memories, and different kinds of memories. Randall Jarrell was a force, even a...

        “How can tyrants safely govern home I Unless abroad they purchase great alliance?”—William Shakespeare There is something compelling in reading about spies and something compelling as well about spying, or we would not have so many spies to read about, fictional or not. Our century has been a century of spies:...

There are many good writers active these days, certainly more than enough to keep you busy—if you can identify them. That’s not so easy to do, because the ones who are promoted (make that “expensively touted”) are usually (a euphemism for “almost always”) not the ones to spend time with. As a rule of thumb,...

Professor Edmunds’ study is welcome for several reasons, not the least of which is that it is the revised edition of his The Silver Bullet: The Martini in American Civilization (1981). That noble and instructive volume was much too good to disappear into oblivion. The centrality of its topic and the originality of his treatment...

Anyone entertaining an unpleasant thought about the Clinton White House is almost certainly a victim of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” which Mrs. Clinton (formerly Ms. Rodham-Clinton) has blamed for her husband’s travails. For many years, the Clintons have used the word “children” as an odd euphemism for “government,” Joycelyn Elders and Marian Wright Edelman being...

Walking out of Maxim Vengerov’s recent recital at Avery Fisher Hall, I thought of the intermission more as a remission. At a bar in Penn Station a few minutes later, where I heard some Junior Wells on the sound system, the playing (if not the music) was better than anything that the violinist had given....