INTELLECTUAL
Meeting With SEDUCTION

Gorbachev

To meet the General Secretary
of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
The Ambassador of the Union
of Soviet Socialist Republics
Yuri V. Dubinin

requests the pleasure of the company of

Mrs. Joyce Carol Oates
at 4:30 - 6 p.m.

on Tuesday, December 9, 1987
at the Embassy

Not transferable
Please present this
card at door

1125 Sixteenth Street
N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20016

P.O. Box
R.S.V.P. 64-12

The invitation and place card.

By Joyce Carol Oates

A great man? All I see is
the actor creating his own
ideal image.

LISTENING TO MIKHAIL S. Gorbachev's impassioned address in the rococo white-and-gold ballroom of the Soviet Embassy on 16th Street in Washington, on the late afternoon of Dec. 8, in a heterogeneous gathering of some 50 fellow American "intellectuals" and "artists," I recalled these cryptic words of Nietzsche's; but wondered if my habitual skepticism, particularly regarding politics in its most public, theatrical mode, might be irrelevant here, unjustified. Simply because one of the world's most powerful men, in-

deed the world's supreme Communist leader, the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, was speaking to us in warmly seductive tones, employing words reminiscent of the social optimism of the 1960's — "interrelatedness, integral, global peace, democratization" — and assuring us of matters that sounded almost literally too good to be true, as if our deepest, most desperate wishes were being uttered in an exotically foreign language and translated into our own, did it mean that these matters could not be true? — or even probable? Though the grim lessons of history suggest otherwise, and idealism's trajectory usually falls off rapidly, man is, of all creatures, the hopeful animal; and it is a hard task to resist believing in the very things (above all, an end to the fanatic arms race of past decades) that we have been talking about for so long.

Shaking Mikhail Gorbachev's hand, looking the man in the eye — he is famed for making “eye contact” and is clearly happiest in such quasi-intimate public situations — one comes away with the visceral certitude that this is a person of surpassing integrity; a man of the utmost sincerity; somewhat larger than life, perhaps. And so brimming with energy! And a sense of his own historic worth! Yet one recalls too, more soberly, that the political enthusiasms of past eras (for Uncle Joe Stalin, for the bearded revolutionary Castro, for the ascetic Ayatollah Khomeini, among others) can look rather bleakly ironic in retrospect. History is the only true philosophy.

It was with the evident intention of circumnavigating, perhaps frustrating, conventional political and media channels, and speaking directly to a

presumed intelligentsia, with a presumed power of its own to shape public opinion, that Gorbachev chose to arrange a special meeting at the Soviet Embassy, on his own territory, so to speak, with American "intellectuals" and "artists" in the midst of his heroically crammed three-day schedule. Here, in an elegantly Old World setting, with enormous crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, and vases of white tulips on our tables, the heated air given an added incandescence by ubiquitous television cameras, Gorbachev spoke with disarming candor of domestic Soviet problems, economic and moral; of the political necessities that brought glasnost into being; of his many-times-reiterated hope for world disarmament and peace; of his sense of the world's nations as "contradictory" yet "integral."

Such words and noble concepts are hardly new, but their utterance, by a Soviet leader of proven shrewdness and prescience, is certainly new; even rather astonishing. From

Joyce Carol Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor at Princeton University. Her most recent novel is "You Must Remember This."

PAUL L. MERIDETH/CLICK/CHICAGO

fury? For one thing, Bloom isn't so mild-mannered himself. In his survey of the American scene, he finds much that is contemptible. Contemporary students are ignorant; they don't read books; they're corrupted in adolescence by primitive rock music. One of Bloom's most notorious images is of a hypothetical 13-year-old boy doing his math homework while listening to the "orgasmic rhythms" of a "drag-queen" (Mick Jagger) on his Walkman. "In short," declares Bloom, "life is made into a non-stop, commercially prepackaged masturbational fantasy." But it isn't just "the young" who besmirch America; the culture as a whole is mediocre, "a Disneyland version of the Weimar Republic for the whole family."

The culprit, in Bloom's view, is cultural relativism: the notion that all societies, all cultures, all values are equal. They're not, Bloom insists. Equality is "a democratic prejudice," an obstacle to the contemplation of higher things. "The real community of man," he concludes, "is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers, that is, in principle, of all men to the extent they desire to know." In truth, however, "this includes only a few..."

How does the university figure in Bloom's scheme of things? His book is subtitled, "How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students." Like E. D. Hirsch Jr., whose "Cultural Literacy" was another unlikely book high on the best-seller lists for months, Bloom deplores the low standards that prevail on American campuses. Who's to blame? College administrators, who've abdicated their civilizing role by acquiescing to the demand for "relevance." Black studies, Deconstructionism, the popu-

larization of German philosophy in the works of Herbert Marcuse and others: it's all a plot to discredit what are called around Chicago the Great Books.

This fierce polemic is hedged about with a lot of very heavy philosophizing. For Bloom, the corruption of the modern world can be variously traced to Locke, whose theory of rights prepared the way for liberalism; to Nietzsche, whose critique of bourgeois culture was appropriated by the American left; to

Heidegger, who gave philosophical credence to Nazism; and to many other intellectual villains, both witting and unwitting. But as I made my way through Bloom's irascible, brilliant book, it occurred to me that his disenchantment with contemporary American life had its origin in a more recent and less abstract development, one that imperiled his own way of life: the 60's. For all its

(Continued on Page 25)

Major influences on Bloom were David Grene, above, his graduate school tutor, and Saul Bellow, left, who encouraged him to expand a magazine article into "The Closing of the American Mind."

ENRICO FERORELLI/DOT

No one seemed sure how the ‘intellectuals’ and ‘artists’ list was compiled.

the reception had gone to American scientists, academicians, and men of the stature of Henry A. Kissinger, John Kenneth Galbraith, George F. Kennan and Cyrus R. Vance; the "artists" consisted of William Styron, Norman Mailer, Paul Newman, Sydney Pollack, John Denver, Yoko Ono, Bel Kaufman — whose "Up the Down Staircase" was enormously popular in the Soviet Union — one or two others, and me.) Amid the crowd, Paul Newman, slender, almost slight, with his eerily lapidary features, stood out dramatically; introduced, he had the guarded expression of a man who has been told too frequently that his eyes are blue. "Why are you here?" someone asked. "I was invited," he said.

And then there was a murmur of excitement, and the Gorbachevs were entering the room, and it was as if royalty had appeared in our midst; or media celebrities whose actual faces — youthful, high-colored, smiling, assured — were considerably more attractive than their reproductions. In newspaper photographs, Gorbachev has looked jowly, heavy-set, and stolid; in person, he fairly radiates energy and vigor, the warmth of a naturally charismatic leader who knows his worth and de-lights in its reflection in others' eyes. The first thing one sees about him is the cranberry-red birthmark, de-scending on the right side of his head, with a look of a hieratic (or demonic) sign out of Dostoyevsky.

To shake hands with Gorbachev — that is, to have one's hand shaken vigorously by Gorbachev — is to feel

The Rev. Billy Graham

John Denver

the grand conviction, no less powerful because it is absurd, that the man has hurried to you for this purpose alone; that, for a blurred moment, you are indeed the center of his universe. By way of his interpreter, the General Secretary seemed to be telling me that he was an admirer of my work — or was it, yet more unexpectedly, “I am a great admirer of your work, Mrs. Oates”? To this I could say only, “I am honored to meet you, Mr. Gorbachev,” or some such banality, for to my shame I had not read Gorbachev’s recently published “Perestroika,” and at this great moment the inappropriate thought had entered my mind that the real Mrs. Oates, my mother, was in upstate New York.

Then I was shaking hands with Raisa Gorbachev, yet more warmly, and through the interpreter, we managed to talk, to a degree, for as it turned out (Continued on Page 35)

Carl Sagan

Henry A. Kissinger

William Styron and Bel Kaufman

Yoko Ono

Robert S. McNamara

Robert De Niro and a friend

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE / JANUARY 3, 1988 19

About Men

BY LOUIS J. SLOVINSKY

OUT OF DEPRESSION

CARY HENRIE

THOUGH I HAD PERENNIBLY FELT ANXIETY DURING MIDWINTER'S FAILING LIGHT, THE NADIR OF MY DEPRESSION CAME THE SPRING I CONTEMPLATED KILLING MYSELF. THAT WAS NEARLY TWO YEARS AGO. EXHAUSTED FROM INSOMNIA AND UNABLE TO FUNCTION, I LEFT MY JOB BEFORE NOON ONE DAY AND WENT HOME TO THE SUBURBS.

I GOT INTO BED AND DREW A BLANKET OVER MY HEAD. I COULD NOT FALL ASLEEP; MY BODY TWITCHED AND I SWEATED PROFUSELY. AFTER AN HOUR, I WENT TO THE GARAGE TO ASSESS WHETHER THE OVERHEAD DOOR RAILINGS COULD HOLD A 150-POUND BODY TETHERED BY A WIRE NOOSE. I CONCLUDED I WOULD PULL THE STRUCTURE DOWN AND SUCCEED ONLY IN EMPASSASSING MYSELF.

Today, I am certain it was my antidepressant medicine that drove me to the brink of death that afternoon. My psychiatrist had warned me of adverse effects. He told me that selecting the appropriate drug for my type of depression was still an inexact science.

Four months before my depression was diagnosed, I began feeling, without apparent cause, increasingly discouraged about my life. AS AN APOSTATE ROMAN Catholic with a dark streak of Polish romanticism, I had always felt guilty about something. BUT THE CORROSIVE SENSE OF WORTHLESSNESS AND PESSIMISM THAT WAS IMPLODING IN ME LIKE A NEUTRON STAR WAS A SHARPLY NOVEL EXPERIENCE. WHATEVER COMMAND I HAD OF MY ABILITIES AND EMOTIONS WANED, AND WITH IT, MY CONFIDENCE. I TOOK TO SECOND-GuessING MYSELF, NOT SO MUCH ON MAJOR DECISIONS AS ON TRIVIAL ONES: WAS I SUPPOSED TO MAKE A RIGHT TURN AT THE LIGHT, OR A LEFT?

My emotions rose so close to the surface that I felt skinless. A vagrant thought, a wistful tune or haunting image would release a stream of tears. I cried on hearing Mahler's Fifth Symphony, seeing Meryl Streep in "Sophie's Choice," or recalling impossible loves. I even sobbed once when the Mets lost a close one in the late innings. I used to run six miles a day with ease, but now I would struggle for half a mile, collapse to the roadside and cry. The son of a Carborundum-tough coal miner, I was becoming a quivering Leo Buscaglia, and I loathed myself for it.

I also became accident-prone: a cracked rib after a slip in the shower, abraded knees and hands after two headlong plunges down our icy driveway. I wrecked my sports car, taking out a stand of maples when I attempted a familiar 30-mile-an-hour curve at twice that speed.

TELL NO ONE AT WORK YOU'RE DEPRESSED, MY DOCTOR COUNSELED. EVEN THE OTHERWISE-ENLIGHTENED OFTEN FAIL TO UNDERSTAND; THEY WON'T TRUST YOU OR YOUR JUDGMENT.

SO I BECAME EVASIVE AND RETREATED INTO MYSELF. ANYWAY, WHO WOULD WANT TO HEAR ABOUT A BRAIN-CHEMISTRY DISORDER THAT TYPICALLY AFFLICTS MORE WOMEN THAN MEN? WHO, FOR THAT MATTER, WOULD BELIEVE I WAS DEPRESSED. PROFANE AND OFTEN ARROGANT WHEN I WAS "MYSELF," I HAD SACRIFICED ALL CLAIMS TO AUTHENTICITY WHEN SICK. THE STIGMA OF DEPRESSION, I FEARED, WOULD IMPERIL MY CAREER.

I did, of course, discuss my illness with my wife, who astutely recognized in me the symptoms of a clinical depression and urged me to seek help instead of toughing it out. I also confided often in my eldest son, a resident in pathology, and a handful of close friends, most of them male. I shunned uninformed sympathy, believing that only someone who had lived through a depression himself could truly comfort me.

And, surprise, I discovered that at least three male friends had survived (almost everyone does) serious episodes of depression. Almost as an aside, I confided in a jogging companion who, it turned out, had come through a depression a year earlier. When nondepressives tried to reassure me that my pain would in time pass, their words rang hollow. But when my fellow jogger recounted his own bout with melancholy, I began to be persuaded that a remission was possible. OVER THE MONTHS, HE LED ME IN A HOPEFUL JOG-TALK THERAPY, FOR WHICH I WILL BE FOREVER GRATEFUL.

JUST AS I NEARED BOTTOM AND THOUGHT I MIGHT BE HEADING FOR HOSPITALIZATION (THUS PUBLICLY EXPOSING MY VULNERABILITY), MY DOCTOR SHIFTED ME TO ANOTHER ANTidepressant. ultimately, the new chemical either "cured" my depression or relieved its symptoms. FOR MY GLOOMY AGITATION DID MELIORATE QUICKLY, THOUGH MY ATTENTION SPAN AND INTEREST IN FAMILY, AFFECTION, FOOD, WORK, PAINTING AND ALL THE OTHER THINGS THAT MADE MY LIFE WORTH LIVING WERE SLOW IN RETURNING. THE PROCESS WAS SO GRADUAL, I AM NOT SURE PRECISELY WHEN THE HEALING STARTED.

Early intimations glimmered during a summer vacation in the Dordogne. THERE I rediscovered the pleasure of good food and, amazingly, I read a book cover-to-cover for the first time in more than a year. THE BOOK WAS KURT VONNEGUT'S "Galápagos." MEETING VONNEGUT MONTHS LATER IN A MOST IMPOSSIBLE SETTING, A FUND-RAISER IN THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE BOARD ROOM, I WANTED TO EMBRACE HIM FOR WRITING THE NOVEL. I DIDN'T, AND I REGRET IT.

Early last year, my doctor started tapering off my medication after I had undergone cognitive therapy with a psychologist. Cognitive therapy aims to help depressives and others recognize and overcome illogical and negative thinking. REFRESHINGLY FREE OF SHRINK-SPEAK, THE TREATMENT WAS SHORT-TERM AND USEFUL.

IN THE SPRING, THE DOCTORS TOOK A NEUROMETRIC electroencephalographic recording of my brain waves, and the computer-generated data indicated the disorder had subsided.

THE COMPANY I WORKED FOR HAD, I DIScovered, survived my illness famously. I found myself delegating responsibilities better, able to make the usual decisions with the usual results. Still, I wasn't convinced I was O.K. I Felt my emotions still needed to be tested.

IMPULSIVELY, I JOINED AN OUTWARD BOUND alpine mountaineering course in the High Sierras. AT AGE 50, THE OLDEST IN THE GROUP, I LEARNED THAT BEING ROPED TO MY COMPANIONS ON A GRANITE DOME ALLOWED FOR NO PERSONAL DITHERING. MY POWER OF CONCENTRATION HAD SURELY RETURNED. MUCH TOUGHER EMOTIONAL TESTS CAME WHEN MY TWO OLDEST FRIENDS, MEN I LOVED AND RESPECTED, DIED SUDDENLY.

I shall miss them. I recognize that they are emblems of my own mortality and that I will always remain vulnerable. BUT NOW I know I can endure.

SO BE IT. Oddly, I shall miss my melancholy. AFTER ALL, IT IS THE ONE MAJOR EXPERIENCE I HAVE IN COMMON WITH DOSTOYEVSKY, POE, HAWTHORNE, DARWIN, Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, THOMAS EAGLETON and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin Jr. ■

Louis J. Slovinsky is a corporate executive who works in New York.

DAILY RECORD

WOOSTER, OH
DAILY 26,060

THURSDAY

APR 28 1988

BURRELLE'S

364

RK

# Campaign Hits New Level Of Mediocrity

WASHINGTON — My, how these amazing American presidential campaign days seem filled with rabbits being pulled from hats!

Former White House press secretary Larry Speakes tells us that what a president says is not what he says — and that we will never know what the president really thinks in this Peter Pan campaign world.

The presidential primaries remind us, with all those wonderful 30-second TV campaign "messages," that if Abraham Lincoln were alive today all he would get in would be, "Four score and seven years ago, our —."

We in the press complain about no substance in the campaign, but we wouldn't go near real substance with a 50-foot pole. So we Americans end up awash in kicks, and yet remain a supremely unamused people.

MEANWHILE, in the middle of it all seems to be a new "political class," if you will, made up of certain modish politicians and certain ambitious media types. Both of these live by the sword of the 30-second adversarial clash, and I hope someday they will die by it.

But on both ends, unless I am mistaken, two groups strive for and grapple with the need for meaning and serious answers to real questions. These groups are the great majority of the sensible American people, plus the serious thinkers about America, about the American "mission" and about where

America is going in the world.

The nonsense that goes on on the surface of this 1988 campaign is enough to bore the serious voter into a state of hypersomnia. In other theaters of public thought, discussion centers around one question of staggering importance that never comes up in the campaign: What is the role of a declining America to be in the future multipolar, post-"American Century" world?

THE BRILLIANT and non-evaluable Singaporean Prime Minister

Georgie Anne Geyer

Universal Press Syndicate

Lee Kuan Yew was talking about the new American position with a small group of us when he visited Washington recently. "It is no longer 1945," he said soberly, but not without hope. "You'll make breakthroughs here and there, but you'll no longer have that overwhelming superiority in science and technology."

"The adjustment is not to that of reduced states but to relatively undominating states, which are very different. It is really a test of your maturity, no longer as com-

mander in chief but as commander of the biggest force."

It has gradually dawned on many of us these last few years that the United States has lost considerable economic power to countries such as Japan and Germany, and the formerly unthinkable thought that the United States and Russia no longer are the superpowers is rapidly becoming commonplace.

BUT WHAT does that mean in terms of the real power we still do have — and how we should wisely apply it?

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former White House national security director, for instance, sees our future in terms "not of states coordinated by policemen but of airplanes cooperating with the air controller ... consensual leadership instead of direct leadership ... an emerging greater amount of pluralism in decision-making."

And former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in recent talks before the prestigious Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said: "The question we have to face is, 'Is America's mission to reform the rest of the world, or are we really heading into a different world in which our relative power is declining?'"

"We are increasing our claims while decreasing our ability. There will be more power centers in the world. The American role is to be the balancer of the worldwide global equilibrium similar to Great Britain in the 17th to 19th centu-

ries."

THIS SEEMS to be the growing consensus among our best thinkers: that still-powerful but no longer all-powerful America will have to act as the center in a seesaw, chiding here, correcting here, ameliorating there.

That is not an easy power. It is an ambivalent power, a temperate power, a relative power. It is particularly hard for us Americans, used to total power and open frontiers, to play this ambiguous and relatively closed new game.

In the old days, we used to complain that our politicians lied to us about their relatives on the payroll, about which alleys they would really clean up and about which of their secretaries couldn't type and why. How simple it all was!

Today — not even out of malice but only out of their need for hype — our candidates are lying to us about the single most important change in our history as a nation: the threat of our decline. They are lying by not telling us the truth while there is still time to do what is necessary. The enormously hopeful thing, on the other hand, is that the American people, by consistently voting through this infantile campaign for serious and dignified candidates such as Bush and Dickakis, are showing that they are quite capable of deciding for themselves and leaving this "political class" behind in the dust.