The Ivory Tower

E. Merrill Root’s Odyssey In Liberal Wastelands

Professor E. Merrill Root of Earlham College in Indiana is a man generous and kind beyond description. He is also sensitive and independent. One won- ders, under the circumstances, why he should have left the world of philoso- phy and poetry, to which he is devoted, and about which he has written with beauty and penetration. But he did- and in order to peel off layer after layer of dialectic and shibboleth and studied bonhomie from the Liberal image of itself to have a look at an underworld of cynics and schemers and nihilists and planners who are busy not only taking the meaning out of life, but also the grace and the joy. The first offense provoked the philosopher in Root: the second, the poet. Now Mr. Root has written a book for Devin- Adair on Collectivism on the Ca.mp-us.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

E. Merrill Root’s Odyssey In Liberal Wastelands

Professor E. Merrill Root of Earlham College in Indiana is a man generous and kind beyond description. He is also sensitive and independent. One won- ders, under the circumstances, why he should have left the world of philoso- phy and poetry, to which he is devoted, and about which he has written with beauty and penetration. But he did- and in order to peel off layer after layer of dialectic and shibboleth and studied bonhomie from the Liberal image of itself to have a look at an underworld of cynics and schemers and nihilists and planners who are busy not only taking the meaning out of life, but also the grace and the joy. The first offense provoked the philosopher in Root: the second, the poet. Now Mr. Root has written a book for Devin- Adair on Collectivism on the Ca.mp-us.