Books, Arts & Manners: Simple, But Not Good

E. L. Doctorow has adapted his novel The Book of Danie/ into the movie Daniel, which Sidney Lumet has directed. Even mere skimming reveals the book to be superior to the movie, but 1 have trouble with both. Doctorow likes to mix fact and fiction, real people in imaginary situations and imaginary characters in situations derived from historic reality, a mode he further refined in his later fiction. This is not a new device; indeed, Ragtime is an updated retelling of Kleist’s novella, Michael Koh/haas, in which Martin Luther is one of the actors in a totally fictitious drama. But what works for, say, Kleist doesn’t seem to work for Doctorow. It may be just a matter of genius being able to get away with more than mere talent can; probably, however, it is also a question of how and in what proportions fact and fiction are blended. In Robert Graves’s Claudius novels, for example, the known facts are not contradicted; in Kohlhaas, Luther acts consistently with some of his known actions. But Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, we are told, are not to be taken for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, yet everything about the film (and novel) begs us so to take them.

The Isaacsons of the film are made to look either totally or very nearly innocent of treason, though recent research has proved otherwise, even if Ethel’s guilt certainly, and Julius’s probably, rated rather less than the death penalty. Although the proceedings of both the accusers and the defenders of the Rosenbergs were extremely shady, the film’s sentiments are substantially pro-Left, and though the Communist Party is by no means whitewashed, the various branches of government come out smelling considerably worse. The less than wary viewer of Daniel might easily gather that the Left, in general, stands for peace and fair play, whereas the U.S. establishment, at least as it was then, was profoundly evil. This is a bit simplistic, no matter how raw the deal the Isaacsons (or Rosenbergs) got. I am uneasy when Communist rallies in the Thirties, anti-Vietnam marches in the Sixties, and anti-nuclear demonstrations in the Eighties are all blithely accorded equal footing. Likewise, if I know that the Rosenbergs had two sons, I am bothered when one of them is made into a daughter, Susan, deeply involved in political activism, and bitterly reproachful of her brother Daniel’s abstention from it and immersion in graduate work and brooding.

JS

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John Simon

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E. L. Doctorow has adapted his novel The Book of Danie/ into the movie Daniel, which Sidney Lumet has directed. Even mere skimming reveals the book to be superior to the movie, but 1 have trouble with both. Doctorow likes to mix fact and fiction, real people in imaginary situations and imaginary characters in situations derived from historic reality, a mode he further refined in his later fiction. This is not a new device; indeed, Ragtime is an updated retelling of Kleist’s novella, Michael Koh/haas, in which Martin Luther is one of the actors in a totally fictitious drama. But what works for, say, Kleist doesn’t seem to work for Doctorow. It may be just a matter of genius being able to get away with more than mere talent can; probably, however, it is also a question of how and in what proportions fact and fiction are blended. In Robert Graves’s Claudius novels, for example, the known facts are not contradicted; in Kohlhaas, Luther acts consistently with some of his known actions. But Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, we are told, are not to be taken for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, yet everything about the film (and novel) begs us so to take them.

The Isaacsons of the film are made to look either totally or very nearly innocent of treason, though recent research has proved otherwise, even if Ethel’s guilt certainly, and Julius’s probably, rated rather less than the death penalty. Although the proceedings of both the accusers and the defenders of the Rosenbergs were extremely shady, the film’s sentiments are substantially pro-Left, and though the Communist Party is by no means whitewashed, the various branches of government come out smelling considerably worse. The less than wary viewer of Daniel might easily gather that the Left, in general, stands for peace and fair play, whereas the U.S. establishment, at least as it was then, was profoundly evil. This is a bit simplistic, no matter how raw the deal the Isaacsons (or Rosenbergs) got. I am uneasy when Communist rallies in the Thirties, anti-Vietnam marches in the Sixties, and anti-nuclear demonstrations in the Eighties are all blithely accorded equal footing. Likewise, if I know that the Rosenbergs had two sons, I am bothered when one of them is made into a daughter, Susan, deeply involved in political activism, and bitterly reproachful of her brother Daniel’s abstention from it and immersion in graduate work and brooding.