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Finish As If He Were Polishing Steel CURRENT BOOKS finish as if he were polishing steel"), Con- volt; the 1947 UN partition of Palestine rad Aiken (whose candor "evolved into a into Jewish and Arab states, the ensuing system of aesthetics and literary ethics civil war, and the creation of Israel in that unified his work"). John DOSPassos' 1948; the 1956 Suez Crisis; the 1967 Six- fictional trilogy U.S.A. (1930-36) was Day War; the 1973 Yom Kippur War. both a somber history of America during Sachar has added a brief epilogue carry- the first 30 years of this century and, by ing Israel's story from 1976 (when his means of such impressionistic devices as book was first published) to 1978. Here the "Camera Eye" passages, a reflection his treatment of Israeli domestic politics of the author's own feelings. Despite the is less detached. He interprets Prime Min- passing from fashion of young DOSPassos' ister Menachem Begin's May 1977 elec- radical views, U.S.A. "holds together," tion as a repudiation of the Labor gov- writes Cowley, "like a great ship freighted ernment's "flaccidity and corruption" with the dead and dying." after almost 30 years in power and blames the old Labor government's regu- HISTORY OF ISRAEL: From the Rise of latory zeal for Israel's declining economic Zionism to Our Time. By Howard M. growth. Sachar. Knopf, rev. ed., 1979. 954 pp. $9.95 THE SHOUT AND OTHER STORIES. By Robert Graves. Penguin reprint, 1979. The idea of a Jewish homeland had its 300 pp. $2.95 roots in early 19th-century European Jewish nationalism. In Serbia, Rabbi Robert Graves, 84, perhaps best known as Judah Alkalai was one of the first to trans- a British traditionalist poet, is also an late biblical prophecy into a more con- essayist, literary critic and theorist, temporary framework. In an introduction classical scholar, novelist, and short story to an 1839 textbook, the rabbi alluded to writer. All of his talents and interests the need for establishing Jewish colonies come to bear in these 30 stories, written in the Holy Land as a prelude to religious between 1924 and 1962. The earliest, redemption. The grandson of one of the "The Shout," is an eerie, subtly erotic tale rabbi's disciples was Theodor Herzl of a lunatic who has learned to utter (or (1860-1904), a Hungarian Jewish jour- thinks he has) a demonic shout that can nalist. In 1903, Herzl secured from Brit- drive people mad and even kill them. In ain's Prime Minister Balfour an offer of "Epics Are Out of Fashion," Graves dem- territory for a Jewish state in East Africa; onstrates his taste for the fanciful when the proposal severely divided Zionists, he resuscitates an aspiring poet of Roman and it was eventually withdrawn by Lon- times who thinks his epic will stay in don. In 1917, Balfour, then secretary of fashion because "'I make my warriors use state for foreign affairs, tried again. He modern weapons; I rule out an absurd issued his famed declaration supporting a personal intervention of the gods; and I national home for Jews in British- enliven the narrative with gruesome occupied Palestine, with the proviso that anecdotes, breath-taking metaphors, and the civil and religious rights of Moslem every rhetorical trope in the bag.''' and Christian communities in that area Graves has lived on Majorca since 1929, would not be prejudiced. Sachar, a his- and the 11 stories set on that Mediterra- tory professor at George Washington nean island are colorful-tales of bicycle University, provides balanced accounts of thieves, young lovers, low-level bureau- the sequels-the 1936 Palestine Arab re- crats, superstition. The Wihon QuarterlyIAutumn 1979 161 .
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