Not all American literary sylists liked Henry Adams

[jporter]

>Tucked in the pages of an old book, I came across a 1930 Nation magazine
>review of James Truslow Adams' (no relation) _The Adams Family_ under the
>byline of H. L. Menken.
>
>About Henry Adams's two important books Menken says:
>

                                                             (snip)

Yes, well he said many unsavory things, I'm sure, some of them even
memorable. But the Adamses were gentry, after all, and Mencken was not.
Therefore, as much as any of us might have been rooting for him in our
bourgeois hearts, Mencken lacked grandeur, or at least the authenticity of
a Henry Adams, who, rightfully- as in the rights of class and priviledge-
was able to express an authentic American fin de siecle. Speaking of which,
we could use an Adams at this point in our (ahem) history. I guess Pynchon
is about as good as we'll get, at this late date.

Several suggestions: Inspite of the historical date of V.E. Day, it seems
fairly clear that GR is telling us that The Real War had just begun, and
perhaps we are It's offspring...Hopefully it continues unabated, and not
only here. And, perhaps conceptually related: Random acts of kindness are
not better (or worse) than random acts of violence, if they are random:
Statistics don't lie, liars do.

jody