John Ralston Saul has developed a theory to explain
what ails the world: rationality run amuck. Language, in the hands
of bureaucrats or modern poets and novelists, is designed to
obscure, as in environmental impact statements, or is all style and
no substance. The ultimate rationalizers – Robert S. McNamara and
Henry Kissinger – destroy whatever they and their systems touch:
Vietnam, the U.S. economy, Iran, Third World development efforts.
Saul’s attempt to capture all of our problems in his tour de force,
Voltaire’s Bastards, has its drawbacks. But it is also helpful and
provocative, especially for those who deal with the strange fruits
of rationality and systematization produced by the U.S. Forest
Service and Bureau of Reclamation. And as if to prove his point
about language, Books in Print lists Saul’s book as Voltaire’s
Children. The custodians of propriety who publish the guide
apparently see no distinction between “bastards” and
“children.”
MacMillan Inc., 866 Third Ave., New
York, NY 10022. Cloth: $29.95. 656 pages.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline A grand intellectual critique.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
