A Time to Die, by Tom Wicker

A Time to Die By Tom Wicker Quadrangle, 342 pp., $10 This book is not so much about Attica as about Tom Wicker at Attica. Wicker writes about himself in the third person, like Norman Mailer and Julius Caesar, though more self-effacingly than they. His modesty is largely misplaced, because it is applied to Wicker the protagonist rather than Wicker the narrator. Despite the latter’s condescension to the former, they are too much the same man.

Wicker happened to be at Attica because the inmates wanted him, along with William Kunstler, Bobby Seale, and others, as an “observer.” He was thus a walking symbol of capitulation. Yet this seems not to occur to him, and he is consequently puzzled by the bitterness of the guards and soldiers toward him, shocked by the hatred of the townspeople of Attica. The rebelling inmates were, however, glad to see him, and he contrasts their geniality with the hostility of the others. But both sides evidently understood the meaning of his presence better than either Wicker the protagonist or Wicker the narrator.

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Joseph Sobran

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A Time to Die By Tom Wicker Quadrangle, 342 pp., $10 This book is not so much about Attica as about Tom Wicker at Attica. Wicker writes about himself in the third person, like Norman Mailer and Julius Caesar, though more self-effacingly than they. His modesty is largely misplaced, because it is applied to Wicker the protagonist rather than Wicker the narrator. Despite the latter’s condescension to the former, they are too much the same man.

Wicker happened to be at Attica because the inmates wanted him, along with William Kunstler, Bobby Seale, and others, as an “observer.” He was thus a walking symbol of capitulation. Yet this seems not to occur to him, and he is consequently puzzled by the bitterness of the guards and soldiers toward him, shocked by the hatred of the townspeople of Attica. The rebelling inmates were, however, glad to see him, and he contrasts their geniality with the hostility of the others. But both sides evidently understood the meaning of his presence better than either Wicker the protagonist or Wicker the narrator.