Volume 6, Number 4 · March 17, 1966
The Magician
By Ronald Steel
The Three Lives of Charles de Gaulle
by David Schoenbrun
Atheneum, 365 pp., $6.95
A great leader must possess 'something which others cannot altogether fathom, which puzzles them, stirs them and rivets their attention.' So wrote Charles de Gaulle some thirty years ago, and so has he been practising ever since. Playing the role of mystery man, he drops sybilline statements the way lesser stylists drop clichés, sows uncertainty for pleasure, and continually reverses himself in mid-field without so much as changing similes. Here is a man who in the past three decades has gone through virtually every role in the book—from conventional staff officer, to rebel, to party chief, to political exile, and now to Président-Soleil—and has made them all seem equally legitimate. De Gaulle so cleverly defines his position that any interpretation is possible, all options are open, and any course of action—however improbable before the act—seems inevitable upon execution.
Review, 2680 words
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