Volume 3, Number 2 · September 10, 1964
Citizen Field
By Stanley Kauffmann
Marshall Field III
by Stephen Becker
Simon & Schuster, 511 pp., $7.50
In later life Marshall Field said of his youth that it was the last period when being rich was pure, careless fun. His biography suggests, although this is not its intent, that his life was part of the last period—not yet ended—when being a liberal is pure, caring fun. One does not mock Field's sincerity, his many generous philanthropies, his immense help to many urgent causes, to point out that he gratified himself: not as Lord Bountiful but as a man whose life had been disintegrating and who reclaimed his soul with good deeds. Tolstoy's rich men and princes, when they felt self-disgust or emptiness, turned to the primitive emotion of the gypsies or to purgation through physical suffering. Field turned to liberalism.
Review, 1425 words
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