The people's voice., 1959-07-24

Here are some of the quotations
from Fiedler's writings for which Mr..
Neils would have Mr.. Fielder dis
charged from his teaching post:
(1) "Being right is, thank God,
optional for the writer" Mr.. Neils
Cor Bowen) has torn this second half
of a sentence out of it's context on
page 126 of AN End To Innocence
and made it seem that Mr.. Fielder
says writer has no moral obligation
to be right on political subjects. The
original means nothing like that; in
it's context it clearly means that
whereas Russian writer's are COM
PEELED to follow party line, in Amer
lea, thank God, being right, that is,
following some organizational or gov
ernmental or party line is optional for
the writer. This distortion must come
from either ill-will or perception
blinded by passion.
(2) SIN the world of pseudo pa
ternity and popular culture, politics
is almost as meaningless as marriage
This quotation is surely designed to
suggest that Mr.. Fielder has little
respect for politics and even less for
marriage. If one will look at this
sentence in it's original context in
THE REPORTER, Dec. 13, 1856, on
page As he will see that Mr.. Fielder
was reviewing five or six current
novels for which he had little respect
and he makes this remark about the
attitude toward politics and marriage
in those novels. He has profound re-
spect for politics and marriage.
(3) eff there is blackness in Nc
Carthy, it is not the reactionary
blackness of the oil interests or of
the Catholic Church - This surely
is calculated to arouse the Catholic
reader against Mr.. Fielder. But if
the reader will turn to page rs of
the same essay in The End To Inno
cence' in which this partial sentence
occurs on page 81, he will see that
on these two pages, rs and 81, Mr..
Fielder is speaking not his own ideas
about the oil interests and the Cath
olic Church but about the ideas and
charges mistakenly INDUCED by GER
tain 'baffled witnesses appearing be-
fore investigating committees.
az "But the phrase Gods Coun-
try (for America) has long since lost
the innocent confusion of the dream
with the state of the same name; it
is the hackneyed boast of the insular
and idolatrous at home, the sign of
the man to whom the gurgles of the
flush toilet under him is the running
over of his cup before the Lord"
This quotation is meant by Mr.. Neils
to suggest that Mr.. Fielder has little
but scorn for our feelings for our
beloved country.
THE TRUTH CAN BE FOUND
What is the truth that is so mis-
here by Mr.. Neils Cor
Bowen, who could be hanged high if
one read his books only for bad words
and vulgar expressions in them)?
In 1854 Jacques Barzun. distin-
guished scholar at Columbia Univer-
sity, wrote a book entitled Gods
Country. Mr.. Fielder reviewed the
book in the New Republic April IA,
1854. I have not read the book but
it is clear from the review that Mr..
Barzun thinks this is Gods country
in certain fine sense and so does
Mr.. Fielder. Let me quote two other
sentences from the same review from
which Mr.. Neils (or Bowen) fetched I
1is misleading sentence: &c. there is
4 real sense in which we are as no ]
,ther country Gods Country. After ,
Ill, we are the only modern state !
whose name is also the name of !
lream; and it is for this reason that 8
,ur failings seem and are so much !
more terrible than those of countries Y
,ased only on cynicism or the acci- 8
Tents of power; but it is also for a
his that our achievements are so v
and glorious" j
Mr.. Neils knows that Mr.. Fielder n
5 gossiped about as a Communist, h
nd he himself is helping that impress "
ion. What did his conscience say q
yhen he completely ignored the last
that Mr.. Fielder wrote in v
hat same review of Barzun's book, r.
rom which he lifted the prejudicing /.
entence he quoted in his pamphlet? .
Ir. FiedIer's last word was this: 7