Volume 23, Number 13 · August 5, 1976
True Patriots
By Diane Johnson
Friendly Fire
by C.D.B. Bryan
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 380 pp., $10.95
It appears that the most heroic tale for the Bicentennial, the one with the greatest power to animate feelings of national pride, is of the struggle of the American against his government. Costumed Redcoats, fascists, communists, and other traditional enemies cannot generate in us the same dread and indignation with which many of us have come to regard our leaders and guardians, from whom we had expected better if only because they had the advantages of an American unbringing. Disillusion is a powerful emotion, which explains, in part, the force of this account of the disenchantment of a pair of decent middle Americans, whose experience must awaken in each reader, in his own way, his own sense of loss.
Review, 4405 words
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