A Book to Burn

It’s a reference work by Oxford scholars, whose views on East-West politics have so aroused Mr. Schlamm that he welcomes a suit

Gentility spreads over this prosperous land like a shroud, everybody likes Ike, and I haven’t burnt a book in years. The only one who’s lately behaved like a man is Mrs. Jean McCarthy who, bless her, rejected Madame President’s invitation to tea. Otherwise, this country may any day now suffocate in a mushroom cloud of sweetness, and a person susceptible to indignation had better hide this unpleasant trait. It’s like B.O., and the social penalties are terrible. A young man I know is in trouble with the Republican Club to which he belongs because he has been heard making irreverent remarks about Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt; and I shall no doubt lose my franchise as an intellectual because I am about to use my critical faculties on a book. In this age of gentility, intellectuals who take ideas or books or words seriously must turn in their license. So here goes mine.

WS

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William S. Schlamm

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It’s a reference work by Oxford scholars, whose views on East-West politics have so aroused Mr. Schlamm that he welcomes a suit

Gentility spreads over this prosperous land like a shroud, everybody likes Ike, and I haven’t burnt a book in years. The only one who’s lately behaved like a man is Mrs. Jean McCarthy who, bless her, rejected Madame President’s invitation to tea. Otherwise, this country may any day now suffocate in a mushroom cloud of sweetness, and a person susceptible to indignation had better hide this unpleasant trait. It’s like B.O., and the social penalties are terrible. A young man I know is in trouble with the Republican Club to which he belongs because he has been heard making irreverent remarks about Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt; and I shall no doubt lose my franchise as an intellectual because I am about to use my critical faculties on a book. In this age of gentility, intellectuals who take ideas or books or words seriously must turn in their license. So here goes mine.