Although not a great novel, Allen Drury’s Advise and Consent, which producer-director Otto Preminger has converted into a movie, was a readable and memorable novel. What made it memorable was that Drury honestly portrayed the most important conflict in American politics. That conflict is not between pro-Americans and proCommunists. It is between men who are determined to preserve and champion the American tradition, at the risk of war if necessary, and men who, without disclaiming the superiority of the American tradition, cannot bring themselves to be beastly to the Communists in protecting and encouraging it.
This country has never lacked for native critics—e.g., Emerson, Thoreau and Mark Twain in the last century, Jack London, H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis in this one. But what always distinguished such critics, many of whom lived to be honored, enriched, and even revered by the country they chastised, was the open and defiant nature of their displeasure with American society.
Comments