THE RIGHT BOOKS

William J. Murray’s Nicaragua: Portrait of a Tragedy (Mainroads Productions Inc., 310 Judson Street, Unit 14, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M8Z 1V3; $6.95) would have been a better book, even a unique one, if the author—an American evangelist and the founder of Freedom’s Friends, an organization which provides relief to anti-Communist insurgencies around the world—had focused it primarily on his personal witness of the civil war in Nicaragua, where he has been on patrol with units of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, slept on hand grenade boxes at night “so the scorpions couldn’t get to us,” spoken with captives from the Sandinista army as well as with victims of Sandinista torturers, examined captured Soviet-made arms, and preached a sermon in base camp to guerrilla fighters who had gathered before dawn to hear the “gringo preacher” speak at ten o’clock in the morning. Instead, he has chosen to write a kind of summary statement in condemnation of the regime in Managua and in support of their opponents in the hills, that is also an appeal to his American readers to support the Reagan Administration’s stand on behalf of the Contras. Murray’s skills as a writer are rudimentary at best; his style conforms to the breathless unsophistication of most modern American evangelists, and he has an inclination toward the cliché: “godless Communism,” “rears its ugly head,” and so forth. Nevertheless, his book is effective, and does largely accomplish its author’s goal. As a book, it leaves much to be desired. As a document, it has real interest and importance.

There is, to start with, the fact of Mr. Murray’s background: he is a son of the professional atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, of whom he always writes in the past tense and who he claims has always thought of herself as a Marxist—rather than an atheist—“leader.”

CW

About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

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William J. Murray’s Nicaragua: Portrait of a Tragedy (Mainroads Productions Inc., 310 Judson Street, Unit 14, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M8Z 1V3; $6.95) would have been a better book, even a unique one, if the author—an American evangelist and the founder of Freedom’s Friends, an organization which provides relief to anti-Communist insurgencies around the world—had focused it primarily on his personal witness of the civil war in Nicaragua, where he has been on patrol with units of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force, slept on hand grenade boxes at night “so the scorpions couldn’t get to us,” spoken with captives from the Sandinista army as well as with victims of Sandinista torturers, examined captured Soviet-made arms, and preached a sermon in base camp to guerrilla fighters who had gathered before dawn to hear the “gringo preacher” speak at ten o’clock in the morning. Instead, he has chosen to write a kind of summary statement in condemnation of the regime in Managua and in support of their opponents in the hills, that is also an appeal to his American readers to support the Reagan Administration’s stand on behalf of the Contras. Murray’s skills as a writer are rudimentary at best; his style conforms to the breathless unsophistication of most modern American evangelists, and he has an inclination toward the cliché: “godless Communism,” “rears its ugly head,” and so forth. Nevertheless, his book is effective, and does largely accomplish its author’s goal. As a book, it leaves much to be desired. As a document, it has real interest and importance.

There is, to start with, the fact of Mr. Murray’s background: he is a son of the professional atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair, of whom he always writes in the past tense and who he claims has always thought of herself as a Marxist—rather than an atheist—“leader.”