Now THAT Would Be A Get

A few weeks back, I read a short book review in National Review that caught my attention:

Why do conservatives seek, as the famous phrase has it, to stand athwart history yelling Stop? Because they are horrified by the sight of society coming undone. They have witnessed the breakdown of the family, the withering of liberal-arts education, the constriction of economic freedom, the corrosion of aesthetic standards, soaring crime rates, drug addiction...the list is as familiar as it is dismaying.

Ralph de Toledano, a key figure in the founding generation of this magazine, was there to see it all. In Cry Havoc: The Great American Bring-Down and How It Happened (Anthem, 254 pp., $18), he lays out a chilling history of Western decline. In his capable hands, the story is dramatic: With the sympathy and support of an international Communist infrastructure, neo-Marxist intellectuals working within the West's own academic institutions produced and injected the intellectual poison that would slowly atrophy the vital organs of Western civilization. Tradition, religion, morality, and the family--all of these were cast as obstacles to progress, bulwarks of an old order that had to be crushed and cleared away.

Toledano traces the rise of the Frankfurt School from its Soviet-inspired roots in Germany through its migration to Columbia University, and from there its projection of the noxious "critical theory" into the mainstream of Anglophone academe. The intellectuals who led this movement lived by the Marxian principle that the aim of the academic is not merely to study the world, but to change it. Toledano shows just how terribly successful they have been.

Cry Havoc illustrates that, while political and military matters dominated the headlines of the Cold War, an equally important battle was being fought for control of the intellectual high ground. The fight began with a surprise attack, and, years later, the casualties are still coming in.

Now that would be a great topic for a radio show, I thought. This week, I finally got around to Googling the author to see if he would be interested in appearing on the Northern Alliance Radio Network.

Sadly, I discovered that he will not be available:

Ralph de Toledano, a prolific author and journalist and a passionate partisan for the cause of conservatism, died Feb. 3 of cancer at Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md. He was 90 and a longtime resident of Washington, D.C.

Mr. de Toledano was a former editor for Newsweek and National Review. His political views migrated steadily rightward through the decades, a political path trodden by a number of leftist intellectuals from the 1930s and 1940s. Ardent anti-communism was the impetus, Mr. de Toledano said in books, articles and interviews.

Ralph de Toledano R.I.P.

As if learning that the author you wanted to book as a guest had died wasn't bad enough, it appears that getting a hold of a copy of "Cry Havoc" won't be an easy task either:

We've been getting some inquiries about Ralph de Toledano's book, Cry Havoc. We have been informed that it's not available through Amazon, but can be purchased directly from the publisher, Anthem Books, Suite 1010, 500 23rd Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20037. (Unfortunately, Anthem has no website or phone number.)

UPDATE: The last word on Ralph de Toledano belongs to William F. Buckley from this obit in National Review (sub req):

Ralph de Toledano was the saddest man I ever knew. One only hopes that his death on February 3, at 90, ended that sadness, though it requires a very dogmatic belief in God to be confident of it.

I heard from Toledano ("not de Toledano," he instructed me years ago) at regular intervals. There are perhaps 150 letters from him in my files and, without exception, they complain. That he is friendless in Washington, that he cannot find a publisher for his books, that the world no longer has any interest in his accomplishments.

Much of this was correct, though the fault was not always that of others. Toledano, although he had published more than 20 books, was not good at self-promotion, by which here is meant writing copy that has a fair chance of catching the eye of editors because it will serve their purposes. The only purpose Toledano ended up serving by his prolonged absences from the public stage was the care and feeding of his muse.

No one can ever have expressed Weltschmerz more fully, more evocatively, more eloquently. "Do you know anyone ready to buy an oil lamp, long in my family, which goes back to Cervantes' time?" He was speaking of his imminent poverty. And "For all my efforts, I find myself unwept, unhonored, and badly sung--contemplating two books that I cannot get published and wandering about my apartment talking to Eunice [his late wife], whom I mourn every day."

He had had a great deal to write about. He was an editor at Newsweek during the great Chambers-Hiss trial. It was during this trial that he became a close, apostolic friend of Chambers (Regnery published a volume of their letters in 1997, titled Notes from the Underground). During the trial Toledano became, also, a friend of Richard Nixon, and it was widely assumed that if Nixon reached the White House, Toledano would be appointed his press secretary.

Another betrayal?

Toledano wrote on, but the market for his material diminished to virtually zero. "A case could be made [for publishing his then-current book] with ISI, AEI, or Cato. But I know no one at any of these organizations." Question, why? "In fact I have discovered that I know no one anywhere these days. Can you suggest someone at the above to whom I might make an approach?"

One of his projected books teemed with politically licentious material. He tried it out on Regnery's Marji Ross. "With Friends like Dick Nixon would not have been a bio but a tell-all account of a long 'friendship,' with anecdotal material never before published, with now-it-can-be-told inside disclosures of what went on behind the scenes during various brouhahas, [Nixon's] relations with J. Edgar, Ike, Pat [Nixon], the why of his double-cross of Herb Klein [press secretary] and attempted ditto of Rose Woods [Nixon's longtime personal secretary] and how Pat blocked it, how he used me and then cut my throat--that's a book, a kind of Deep Throat, that would sell, but Marji Ross says there are too many bios of RN...But enough of this. It's bad enough being a has-been without inflicting it on you."

It can't be predicted that this poet of melancholy will live on, other than in the archives. But it won't be said that he passed on without the affectionate notice of devoted admirers. He was a truly learned friend of the West, a superb literary technician, who despite his sadness gladdened the lives of those who knew him.