BOOKS

END AS A MAN, Calder Willingham, Avon, thirty-five cents.

History will note our time for its inability to distinguish between the word "objectivity" and a wildly unrelated one, "indifference." It is not in vogue to have an opinion and it is in very poor taste indeed to have a strong one. Every conversation is decorated with the expression, "Objectively speaking-" and we strive mightily to see "both or all sides of a question.' When this dubiously laudable end is attained among the assiduously intellectual, we find a cruel indifference regarding the problems of others, exquisitely rationalized inactivity, and books such as "END AS A MAN".

By now we expect the covers of pocket reprints to misrepresent the contents to the point of picturing Jane Austen heroines sprawled on beds smoking long cigarettes at a glowering officer stripped to the waist. But in the case of Mr. Willingham, even the blurb on the cover inside goes berserk in describing the author as writing a thundering protest: "Iron discipline (in a Southern military academy) denies the youths all normal emotional outlets and forces them into unnatural practices that make the very core of their being vicious and corrupt. Lying, cheating, brutality and perversion become the accepted ways of life among the cadets." As one who takes strong exception to lumping the last (and using that word) with the rest, I suggest that Mr. Willingham is protesting against nothing. In fact, he seems to enjoy the whole sordid functioning of his academy and even takes his title from the superbly drawn but ghastly figure of an old general addressing his uniformed charges.

Because all of his other characters are written with weakness as their only laudable characteristic, we assume that the writer agrees with the old general's final speech and did not select the title in irony. Far from protest, this is promotion.

The speech reads in part: "No youth can pass through four years of the Academy and not end as a man. We expel the failure; I present our diploma only to a man. Think of that word; listen to it. Man. A simple monosyllable, but it has great force. Nothing is stronger than this word, for without the qualities it signifies, the life of the race, and your own, is rendered utterly futile. Let adversity fall upon you. Fools insult you. Illness strike. Your head will be unbowed and your courage as sure as the turning of the globe if you are a man."

page 17