_______________REPRESSED MEMORY SYNDROME BY DAVID HOROWITZ (08/31/98)
	As a former New Left radical who has since become a mainstream journalist, I feel sorry for David Horowitz. Too bad he can't recognize the strengths and weaknesses of our younger years without wallowing in self-hatred, which he then must project on everyone else. Yes, those of us who fought for civil rights and against the war in Vietnam made mistakes. But we did much that was right and just and, I'd argue, helped reform the very system some among us had hoped, in our misguided exuberance, to destroy. Seems to me that Horowitz needs to come to terms with himself as much as our collective history. -- Philip J. Trounstine Political Editor San Jose Mercury News
_______________DAYS OF RAGE (CONT.) BY STEPHEN TALBOT (09/01/98)
	Stephen Talbot has written a worthy response to David Horowitz's latest screed against those of us who made the -- in his view -- horrifying error of opposing the war against Vietnam. However, Talbot neglected to correct one particularly glaring error Horowitz made. Like other anti-war activists of the period, I used to suffer twinges of regret regarding our unwillingness to support Hubert Humphrey in his 1968 loss to Richard Nixon. The day of the election SDS posters went up in Berkeley depicting a hand throwing dice accompanied by the slogan, "The elections are crap. The people always lose." Having taken a closer look at that pivotal election, I now realize that our opposition to the Democratic nominee was far from the deciding factor. In reality Humphrey's loss is clearly attributable to the defection of millions of conservative and Southern Democrats who backed George Wallace. Wallace took far more votes from Humphrey than the then-still-small, and largely unpopular, anti-war movement could possible have influenced. So when Horowitz says we are unwilling to take credit for Humphrey's loss, the fact is we deserve neither credit nor blame. But what of the position that Humphrey and the Democratic establishment deserved to be abandoned by progressives in 1968? At the time we felt betrayed by the liberal leadership because of its prosecution of that dreadful war. Recently released tapes of conversations between Lyndon Johnson and Sen. Richard Russell revealed for the first time that neither of them actually believed the war could be won. In spite of its futility, they continued the killing because they were convinced that, were they to end it, the Republicans would savage them mercilessly. I don't doubt Johnson and Russell were right to fear the Republicans; Joe McCarthy's ghost was still very much alive in those days, and the "Who lost China?" crowd persisted in their benighted witch hunts. Nonetheless, the failure of the Democratic leadership to do the right thing was based on fear of political opponents. They were simply unwilling to enter a fight for principle that they thought might drive them from the seats of power. As a result they covered themselves in infamy. Humphrey was probably one of the more decent of the lot, yet he failed to disassociate himself from the evil that was then government policy. While Nixon was a nightmare, Humphrey deserved to lose. Such are the conundrums of real politics. Horowitz's remarkable embrace of Dana Rohrbacher indicates how far David has gone. If politics make strange bedfellows, there really are times when the only choice is to get up and leave. -- Michael Malcolm
_______________UNZIPPED BY COURTNEY WEAVER (09/02/98)
	So, those who are unattractive have no business asking anyone attractive out on a date? If Ms. Weaver's friend is real, I would like to request that Ms. Weaver tell her for me that she is a heartless bitch who will get the emotionally and/or physically abusive Alpha-Male Asshole that she so richly deserves. As for Ms. Weaver herself, she should really watch it, or at least stay in the Bay Area. In other parts of the world (such as a seaside village in Brazil I've read about that has a rather bizarre social order in which each man and woman must have exactly the same gender-based physical characteristics or else be ostracized, regardless of how attractive they would be to anyone outside their village), her looks would leave her utterly dateless and in the rather unfortunate position of having no one to sleep with, share with, talk to, care about or otherwise enliven her existence. Then she'd have to -- heaven forbid!! -- ask someone out. And we know what happens then, don't we? -- Robert Anderson Apparently Courtney Weaver and her friends are uncomfortable with the simple, inescapable truth that, generally speaking, men have to be willing to lean over the abyss of rejection and hope that a woman will choose them. So yes, men try to engage women in conversation and, if all goes well, they might toss out the trusty "Would you like to get coffee sometime?" Most men would love it if more women were willing to similarly express an interest, but inescapable truth No. 2 is that most women don't. Yes, a woman should be able to expect that she can be friendly without it being misinterpreted. But the fact remains that if the man is interested he will probably try to take it to the next level because he has been conditioned to believe that the woman, even if interested, will not. I'll concede that there are plenty of apes out there with all the subtlety of a sousaphone who are too persistent and ignore women's clearest signals. But there are also plenty of date-worthy men, even the geeky ones, who are just trying to meet someone. And most are big boys who get it when a woman isn't interested. It's true that there is an awkward gap in the ways men and women try to express their romantic interests. But hostility and outrage will only widen the gap. -- Paul Sarkis Arlington, Va. I've recently begun reading your online magazine, and I must join the chorus of readers in proclaiming it one of the best. The writing is generally excellent, the topics always relevant and original and the design has a very attractive yet bandwidth-friendly simplicity. However, I have to complain about Courtney Weaver. She's one of the most useless columnists I've ever read. It may come as a surprise to her that she's not the only person who has interesting friends; in fact, I'd argue that most people do. So why would anyone care to read about hers, particularly when the surrounding commentary is poisoned with her jaded, cynical, usually misguided generalizations? And here's a broader rant: Why can't a single "hip" journal of opinion have a sex columnist who can find good material without having to drag out the extreme, the odd, the sordid or the truly sad? Not that there's anything wrong with these realms of intimacy -- hey, they obviously make for popular reading -- but a little more naiveté and a little less shrink-wrap might bring a new honesty, humanity and interest to this otherwise sour feature of Salon Magazine. -- Jay Kasberger
_______________LASHED BY LISH BY DAVID BOWMAN (09/01/98)
	I don't know that I can properly be called a "Gordon Lish writer" at all. I have never attended one of his classes and have never even spoken to him face to face. On the other hand, I have for the past 10 years been corresponding with him and sending him poems. By the time the Quarterly suspended publication a few years ago, about 70 of those poems had appeared in the magazine, and another 25 or so were left stranded in its files. Those figures matter, not as a way of establishing my "credentials" as a writer, but rather as an indication that my engagement with Lish has been ongoing and productive. Alongside the poems he published, I can lay probably twice as many, if not more, that he thought best destroyed. Lish and I went back and forth with revisions on many of these poems, and his criticisms generally zeroed in on the flaws in the poems and helped teach me, first, how to correct those flaws and, second, how to learn to spot the flaws for myself. In his editing, Lish was teaching me to become the most important kind of editor a writer can be -- a self-editor. Lish has been one of a handful of people who have had a profound impact on the way my writing operates. I read David Bowman's "Lashed by Lish" with interest. I agreed with some of his assessments, disagreed with others. But most baffling to me is Bowman's bald statement that Lish's books are "godawful." I wonder by which means of criticism he reached this judgment. When I first encountered Lish's writing, I was, I freely admit, mostly confounded by it. I had no idea what it was supposed to be doing or what I was supposed to be taking away from the reading of it. But I persisted, both because Lish had been so remarkably supportive of my poetry and because my most astute literary friends were bowled over by his wit and skill. And as I persisted, I began to understand how Lish's writing operates, to appreciate the deft humor underlying so much of it, and to see the incredible fine-tuning of, yes, his sentences. To those who find Lish's writing unapproachable, I suggest that you take a tip from the conceit that structures "My Romance": Treat his works as scripts for a one-man show. Imagine him standing on a stage speaking the words aloud, gesturing, moving restlessly back and forth. It may be that Lish's fictions, both short and long, are among the most accomplished acts of performance art in the English language -- even if none of them has yet been staged. -- Cooper Esteban San Antonio, Texas SALON | Sept. 4, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| REPRESSED MEMORY SYNDROME BY DAVID HOROWITZ

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