Our most enigmatic songwriter has become so thoroughly documented that one book won't hold him anymore
He made sex obsolete—at least as a weapon of political war
The bullets flew, Robert Kennedy fell, and to many the ballots didn’t seem to mean that much anymore. Mr. Sheed, whose novels include OFFICE POLITICS,hankered for experience in the real thing this year, and signed on as an “out-of-shape dilettante” with Eugene McCarthy’s irregulars in California. He was with McCarthy on the night of Kennedy’s murder.
For months before publication, the new autobiographical book by Norman Podhoretz, editor of COMMENTARYmagazine, was the subject of tense speculation, heated gossip, and wouldn’t-touchit-wilh-a-bangalore-torpedo disclaimers in New York’s books-and-brains circles. Now Mr. Podhoretz’s MAKING ITis out, and the public is allowed to consider what all the sollo voce shouting was about. The author of this critique is a New York-based critic and novelist whose latest book was, appropriately enough, OFFICE POLITICS.
A lot happens in James Jones’s new book in many places,including numerous beds,but the healthiest things happen underwater. So derided Mr. Sheed in reading the latest novel of the author of FROM HEBE TO ETERNITYand relating it to the rest of Jones’s work. Mr. Sheed. London-horn and Oxfordeducated. is both a critic and author of several novels,the latest of which is OFFICE POLITICS.He lives in New Jersey.