Books, Arts & Manners: Enemy of the Arts

Leaving Town Alive: Confessions of an Arts Warrior, by John Frohnmayer (Houghton Mifflin, 360 pp., $22.95)

IN THE long history of how Washington calls to national service both wise men and fools, the accident of political circumstance leaving the Republic in the hands of sheer chance, rarely have we lost more at the toss of the political dice than in the spring of 1989, when, in the midst of a protracted crisis, John Frohnmayer took over as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He was the wrong man, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. Over the next two and a half years many Americans came to question whether this country should spend tax money on the arts at all. And Mr. Frohnmayer was the reason.

JN

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Jacob Neusner

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Leaving Town Alive: Confessions of an Arts Warrior, by John Frohnmayer (Houghton Mifflin, 360 pp., $22.95)

IN THE long history of how Washington calls to national service both wise men and fools, the accident of political circumstance leaving the Republic in the hands of sheer chance, rarely have we lost more at the toss of the political dice than in the spring of 1989, when, in the midst of a protracted crisis, John Frohnmayer took over as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He was the wrong man, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. Over the next two and a half years many Americans came to question whether this country should spend tax money on the arts at all. And Mr. Frohnmayer was the reason.