One sentence to East Bay people only: I'm reading from
Saying No To Power at 7 tonight (Thursday) at the
Niebyl-Proctor Library, 6501 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley (just
north of Alcatraz; west side of avenue, street level
entrance.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last Sunday's SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE carried this
review:
SAYING NO TO POWER:
Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and
Thinker
by William
Mandel
Reviewed by Jack
Foley
[The review is uncut and unchanged. I have put a few of its
phrases in caps for those who wish only to scan. W.M.]
In 1960, summoned to appear before the House Un-American
Activities Committee, author and Soviet affairs expert
William Mandel said, "If you think I will cooperate in any
way with this collection of Judases, of men who sit there in
violation of the United States Constitution, if you think I
will cooperate with you in any manner whatsoever, you are
insane."
A red-diaper baby born in 1917 who narrowly escaped
being named Karl Marx Mandel -- he is William Marx Mandel --
Mandel was both an activist in and an observer of the
revolution that began the year he was born. "Between my
father's interest in social change and my mother's in
culture," he writes, "I chose to follow my father."
Following his father meant not only following the path
of revolutionary activity but also suppressing "creative
imagination...in favor of logic and disciplined thought."
The author's activism manifested itself early, and THE
CHAPTERS ON "KID POWER" ARE SOME OF THE MOST INTERESTING IN
HIS BOOK "Saying No To Power: Autobiography of a 20th
Century Activist and Thinker." Even more important, from
1931 ro 1932 the Mandel family was in Russia, where the
young William could learn Russian and observe the Soviet
experiment from close up. It was a rich, determining priod
in his life, and it placed him in a unique position.
Following the logic of his father's convictions, Mandel
joined the Communist Party in 1935, but he also honored his
mother's awareness of culture. "Saying No To Power" is FULL
OF WONDERFUL DESCRIPTIONS OF GROWING UP IN AMERICA. If you
don't know what "stickball" and "belly-whopping" are, this
book can tell you. We also find discussions of Benny
Leonard, "Legs" Diamond, Red Skelton, Father Coughlin and
other more or less forgotten figures.
Later, Mandel gives us a tremendous description of a
demonstration following the execution of Julius and Ethel
Rosenberg, a SET PIECE REMINISCENT OF SOME OF THE GREAT
MOMENTS IN JOHN DOS PASSOS "USA". The author's keen
intelligence and powers of observation stand him in good
stead throughout "Saying No To Power," and the material
dealing with his career as a writer and his 37 years as a
radio commentator on Berkeley station KPFA is fascinating.
(In the interest of full disclosure, it should be mentioned
that both Mandel and this reviewer have contributed
regularly, and without pay, to that beleaguered radio
station. Such contributions are certainly no guarantee of
collegiality, though, as followers of the station's recent
history can attest.)
His central story is that of the loss of faith in what
he calls a kind of "religion": communism. Like many who have
lost their faith, Mandel has nothing to replace it with.
Now, he writes, "there is no longer a Utopian ideal I
believe in." Mandel would not, however, endorse Gary
Snyder's "May Day Toast" description of "actually existing
socialism" as "a blight on the century almost equal to that
of Nazism." Though often critical of the USSR, he is at
pains to point out the genuine accomplishments of the Soviet
regime, which is the burden of HIS DELIGHTFUL RADIO PIECE
"IF I WERE GORBACHEV...," INCLUDED HERE.
There are undoubtedly reasons to fault "Saying No To
Power"; it is too long and has too many commendatory letters
in it. Though Mandel is often brilliant in analyzing the
world around him, and is scrupulously honest in doing so, he
is less successful in turning the lens upon himself. He can
be sentimental, arrogant, insensitive, extravagantly
self-promoting and utterly blind to his own motivations. (At
one point, in a fury, he beat his daughter's head against
the floor. One of his sons reminded him of this incident,
which had slipped his mind!)
The material in the book could be scrutinized from a
psychological point of view, and a very different portrait
would emerge. Indeed, "Saying No To Power" suggests at times
that the author's consciousness was awash in what he calls
"towering rage," from which he would find "relief" in the
terrors of reckless driving.
All that said, no one can deny Mandel his magnificent
social passion and sheer aliveness of mind. "Saying No To
Power" is not only A MOVING AUTOBIOGRAPHY, but also A
FIRSTHAND TESTIMONY TO MANY OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT EVENTS
OF THE 20TH CENTURY , what Kenneth Rexroth called "this
century of horror." "Don't oversimplify," Mandel writes:
"Life, and politics, and individual human beings are
extremely complicated and internally contradictory."
At various moments, Mandel offended everybody, communist
and capitalist. He was expelled from the Communist Party in
1952, though he was not informed of this, and went on for
the next four years trying to pay his dues and attend
meetings. "No one would accept the money and no one would
tell me where the meetings would occur."
He officially quit the party in 1957. Though he
published many books, no publisher would touch him for the
15 years following 1946. He was fired from KPFA in 1995.
Even in the worst periods, he managed to get his message
out. The times he lived in perhaps made an unlikely hero of
him, but HIS INSIGHTS FOCUSED THE TIMES IN SUCH A WAY THAT
MANY UNDERSTAND THEM FAR BETTER THAN WE OTHERWISE WOULD
HAVE.
"Saying No to Power" beautifully articulates one of the
deep myths of America. Mandel acted with courage,
intelligency and flamboyance at a time when all three were
precisely what the Establishment was trying to eliminate. He
may be an apostate, but he remains at the end of his book
what he has been throughout his long and fruitful career: an
optimist, a believer that even amid the wrecks ot the 20th
century, something will come.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Other aspects of the book's content are described in my
website, www.BillMandel.net, particularly reviews reprinted
from The Black Scholar and the on-line Greenwich Village
Gazette. Two chapters of the book are on the website in
full.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : 09/29/00 EDT