The Week Academy

Innocents of the West: Travels through the Sixties, by Joan Colebrook (Basic Books, 454 pp., $15). “Our age is a nuclear age, in which—war being too expensive— the natural tool of deceit comes into its own, and subversion becomes a ‘growth industry.’ It is an age of total power, in which the democracies lose their confidence and the individual voice has little resonance.” If there is a theme to this book, it is that of the international Communist conspiracy, and the consequent destruction of the West, both from without, through worldwide terrorism, and from within, through intellectual naïveté. In sum, the sequel to this book could be called Slaughter of the Innocents. The Big Issue is the war in Vietnam. Proceeding from this essential point, Miss Colebrook discusses Communists, the domino theory, the tactics of barbarism and carnage encouraged by Communist terrorist training (it seems, to this day, that we are all too cavalier about that), and the lessons of history. Especially the lessons as taught by liberal pedagogues, who love to hate America the guilty, America the evil. Here are the innocents of the title—although to call them that, one must assume that ignorance and wrong-headedness are a type of innocence. The author has observed, and taken to the mat, the intellectuals whose palmistry sanctioned or at best ignored the real danger of Communism, and the liberals who saw Utopia in China, or Russia, or Cuba. They are here in all their glory and lunacy, observed first-hand and at close range. Innocents of the West is heavy going. The diary or journal form has never really worked except for the best of writers. Perhaps the fault here is the book’s almost unrelenting Russian greyness. The reader is warned early on: “In packing suitcases and books, it is impossible to avoid packing as well a certain amount of depressing intellectual baggage.” Never have the Sixties seemed so somber, so dull, or so bleak. This narrative, or rather diary, could depress a Swede.

JOE MYSAK

Featured Tags

Innocents of the West: Travels through the Sixties, by Joan Colebrook (Basic Books, 454 pp., $15). “Our age is a nuclear age, in which—war being too expensive— the natural tool of deceit comes into its own, and subversion becomes a ‘growth industry.’ It is an age of total power, in which the democracies lose their confidence and the individual voice has little resonance.” If there is a theme to this book, it is that of the international Communist conspiracy, and the consequent destruction of the West, both from without, through worldwide terrorism, and from within, through intellectual naïveté. In sum, the sequel to this book could be called Slaughter of the Innocents. The Big Issue is the war in Vietnam. Proceeding from this essential point, Miss Colebrook discusses Communists, the domino theory, the tactics of barbarism and carnage encouraged by Communist terrorist training (it seems, to this day, that we are all too cavalier about that), and the lessons of history. Especially the lessons as taught by liberal pedagogues, who love to hate America the guilty, America the evil. Here are the innocents of the title—although to call them that, one must assume that ignorance and wrong-headedness are a type of innocence. The author has observed, and taken to the mat, the intellectuals whose palmistry sanctioned or at best ignored the real danger of Communism, and the liberals who saw Utopia in China, or Russia, or Cuba. They are here in all their glory and lunacy, observed first-hand and at close range. Innocents of the West is heavy going. The diary or journal form has never really worked except for the best of writers. Perhaps the fault here is the book’s almost unrelenting Russian greyness. The reader is warned early on: “In packing suitcases and books, it is impossible to avoid packing as well a certain amount of depressing intellectual baggage.” Never have the Sixties seemed so somber, so dull, or so bleak. This narrative, or rather diary, could depress a Swede.

JOE MYSAK