Books in Review
Thursday, May 7, 1959 University Daily Kansan
Page 3
Colodny Views Trotsky
By Robert Colodny
Visiting Assistant Professor of History
TROTSKY'S DIARY IN EXILE, 1935. By Leon Trotsky, translated by Elena Rudnaya, Harvard University Press, $4.00.
STALIN'S FAILURE IN CHINA, 1924-1927. By Conrad Brandt. Harvard University Press, $4.75.
These two slender volumes carry echoes of the great revolutionary upheavals of the 20th century. Trotsky disputed with Stalin for Lenin's mantle. The flashy orator, the one-time leader of the Red Army, lost the battle whose high stakes included not only the leadership of the USSR, but also the directorship of the world revolutionary forces inspired by the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Reduced to the obscurity and impotence of exile, Trotsky came to live a life haunted by envy and fear of his opponent. The path of exile led through Turkey, France and Norway to Mexico City, where death at the hands of an assassin awaited him.
The casual jottings which make up the bulk of this diary reflect the desperate fury of the prophet scorned. Trotsky, the orthodox Marxist, came to the very un-Marxist conclusion that only he could reverse the fatal path of world history and avert the catastrophe of war and counter-revolution. Once the mobilizer of powerful armies, he gathered the has-beens of his Permanent World Revolution into the Fourth International and equipped them, not with artillery and machine guns, but with a highly personalized dialectic and a vocabulary of venomous vituperation.
One of the personalities singled out for Trotsky's scorn is Paul Henri Spaak, then a socialist politician, now the Secretary-General of NATO. History loves such little ironies!
Brandt's book deals with the failures of Trotsky's arch rival to direct the Chinese revolutionary movement along the path dictated by Marxist speculation and by the vision of China as perceived from the distant windows of the Kremlin. The author brings to his study an immense knowledge of obscure sources, a dispassionate consideration of the political and human forces engaged, and a fine narrative skill.
The canvas is vast: revolutionary Russia still convulsed by dogmatic dissensions; the Comintern still clinging to the vision of the international socialist revolution; the enormous Republic of China, shattered by the titanic impact of diverse revolutionary impulses; the efforts of sectarian and violently hostile Soviet factions to give concrete direction to the elemental forces emerging in China; in brief, the intersection of the Russian and Chinese Revolutions.
The resultant of these opposing social forces was tragedy on a vast scale, the death of millions, the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of dedicated reformers and destroyers in the boundless quicksands of an ancient realm which was struggling blindly for regeneration.
Stalin's failure? The author comes to doubt his own verdict. Would anyone else have done otherwise? Perhaps not. Trotsky himself at different times advocated the policy of his arch enemy. The moral to be derived by the skeptical historian is perhaps this: Revolution is the most experimental of all arts. The dividing line between the pragmatic opportunist and the "scientific" theoretician is vague indeed. The victor writes the history. Success is the final proof of correct theory.
You Won't Find It There!
You'll find that Super-Powered Milemaster Gasolene, at Regular Prices the Best "Go in Gas."
FRITZ CO.
Downtown — Near Everything
Phone VI 3-4321
Sex, Sin Keynote First Book; 'Silly Fabrication
By Gordon W. Bennett
FLASH AND FILIGREE, by Terry Southern, Coward-McCann,
$3.50.
This novel should be entitled "Flush and Fiddle-dee-dee." The dust-jacket said that Henry Green said, "...a dazzling performance." I looked inside and saw that Jean said, "Wash it down with juice, daddy, it's a gas." Finishing the book, I said, "What a waste of time!"
There is a seductively seductive seduction scene at a drive-in theater showing "Wuthering Heights," a lot of insight into the specifications of foreign-made sports cars, and a lot of clever, witty, but unimportant things. A brief and horrible parody called "What's my Disease" is properly restrained to a few paragraphs.
There is a bright-young-man flavor in the references to hashish, perversion, a cocktail dip made of Waring-blended peyote buds, and a novel use of pepper to rouse a souse. And there are many many precious passages of admittedly fine descriptions—too fine and inconsistent with the novel's apparent purpose.
On second thought, as a first novel in an age badly in need of the god-like view of a good comic novel, there are a few good things. The satire on red-tape, routine, and the caricature of the car-doting Dr. Eichner are memorable.
A Huxley would have used it in a novel, not in a skirty little shaggy-dog story. The lovers do have that one erotic love scene, but their other contacts seem only an an excuse for tender writing. Even though one cannot call this a "novel," I am more concerned that there is neither a sardonic tone nor a sense of significantly debased values sustained behind the series of pointless actions. It's a good thing the book is concise and crisp in style and manner. The author had little to say.
The comic novel, ultimately, is the most significantly "serious" literary style in a world of lost and dissolute values. It is a pity that praise is often given novels similar to this silly fabrication.
Burckhalter Gets $10,500 Grant Again
J. H. Burckhalter, professor of pharmacy, has received renewal of a U.S. Public Health Service $10,518 grant for research of hypotensive amines.
The researer is directed toward high blood pressure and atherosclerosis, a condition often found in overweight persons who may have eaten too much animal fat.
LAWRENCE OPTICAL CO.
1025 Mass., VI 3-2966
This dyeable, pliable fabric pump is the perfect answer to summer ensemble problems. Just pick out the color that will pick up your costume best* and we'll dye the shoe to a perfect match.
It's Foot Flairs' beloved glove-fit opera classic, the shoe style that goes with EVERYTHING!
- Bring us a swatch if possible
NEEDLE $10.95
Plus small tinting charge
High or Mid Heel AAAA to B to 10
Royal College Shops
837 Mass.
'J. B.' Wins MacLeish Third Pulitzer Prize
Archibald MacLeish has won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, his third, for his allegorical play, "J. B."
The play, a modern adaptation of the Book of Job, is written in verse. MacLeish's previous awards, in 1933 and 1953, were for poetry.
"The Travels of Jamie McPheeters," by Robert Lewis Taylor, was selected the best American novel of 1958.
About one-fourth of all the natural gas consumed in the U.S. is used in Texas.
KU Barber Shop
Flottop Specialty Open All Summer
Clarence Adamson Proprietor
Together... in love in matched rings
WEDDING RINGS Styled By Columbia
HIS ...$22.50
HERS.. 19.75