Page 6-Sunday, December 3, 1978-The Michigdn Daily BOOKS Do you believe in presidents? By Dennis Sabo Make-Believe Presidents By Nicholas von Hoffman Pantheon Books 260 pp. $8.95 IT IS NOT uncommon for Americans to love, and at the same time, hate their president. This perplexing love- hate relationship has lasted since George Washington galloped to the presidency in 1789 on a white stallion and probably will continue as long as America calls itself a democracy. Jimmy Carter, a president who juggled more unshelled promises than his bulging jean pockets could hold, was elected to the Oval Office by Americans who held a renewed lust of hope in their hearts as he tiptoed down Pennsylvania Avenue after his inauguration. Many of those same people, who were so Dennis Sabo is a Daily night editor. confident in their new leader, now wish he would quickly go back the way he came. In Make-Believe Presidents, political observer and critic Nicholas von Hoffman strips away the veneer that shields the executive office and shows the office of the presidency as what it has been and will continue to be; an individual who does little ruling and holds diminishing power to fulfill the endless campaign promises of change. The promises have been wrung out, drip-dried, and repeatedly used over and over again at election time. Von Hoffman draws his bleak blueprint of presidential power from a large cast of characters who have sometimes abused the high office to gain more brokerage. Theodore Roosevelt's use of the Secret Service to See PRESIDENT, Page 8 Daily Exiled critic still loyal to So Sontag: Tnumph from disorder ' By Laura Roop I, etcetera By Susan Sontag Farrar Straus Giroux 246 pp. $8.95 E XISTENTIAL philosopher, critic, filmmaker, novelist, feminist, mother, photographer, teacher, scholar -Susan Sontag has successfully donned the cap of each of these occupations in her lifetime, becoming almost a legend in the process. Her latest work, a collection of short stories entitled I, etcetera, serves as a testimonial to the fact that creative stagnation does not logically follow the onset of fame. Sontag refuses to lead the reader by the hand down a well-worn path of action. Instead, she asks that one follow her through a maze of crystallizing thoughts, each a self-contained story at the finish. Her style hasn't frozen a single, polished pattern for success; she is willing to experiment freely. In "Project for a Trip to China," Sontag attempts to force a bewildering mass of facts and thoughts into a semblance of order-using categorical lists, word charts, and repetition as viable tools of the author. "Debriefing" is the story of a woman's struggle to reorganize her life after a: friend commits suicide. She tries to separate and arrange her Laura Roop is an Honors Eng-. fish major. feelings into things that help and things that upset. From the list of helpful things: 'Sometimes it helps to be par- noid. Conspiracies have the merit of making sense. It's a relief to discover your enemies, even if first you have to invent them.' In "American Spirits," she endeavors to add the allegory to her repertoire of literary genre. This is, perhaps, the least successful piece in the collection, because its embittered, sarcastic tone becomes tiresome when stretched over a lengthy narrative. Critics have accused Susan Sontag of emotional detachment from her language. She literally separates one character from his body by creating a mechanical replacement in "The Dummy," the earliest story included in the book. It is fascinating to note how the concrete has apparently been filtered to metaphor through time; a literal plot seems to have tempered her tone in later works. Summing up a human desire for uniqueness, another character in "Old Complaints Revisited," says: . ,. .I was fascinated by the. idea of being different. Dozing off in the grade school civics class, I longed to have been born a Jew; I fancied myself See SONTAG, Page 8 -J - - - w - - tt Sontag ... she asks that one follow her through a maze of crys- tallizing thoughts, each a self-contained story at the finish. Z HORES MEDVEDEV believes in the Soviet Union. The prominent geneticist has faith in a system which has given him ample cause to reject everything for which it stands. First there was his father, who perished in one of Stalin's many forced labor camps during the '30s. Later, he himself was committed to a mental hospital for criticizing the government. Finally, while visiting England five years ago, Medvedev was stripped of his Soviet citizenship, forever barring him from returning to his homeland. Nonetheless, he is an optimist about Russian society and its capacity to change. Unlike most of the Soviet dissidents about whom so much is heard in this country, Medvedev believes his country's political system can be reformed from within. During a two-day visit to campus last month, Medvedev took time out to explain his views on Soviet society and how it can be changed. The ruddy-cheeked biologist, wandering gray hair brushed back from his forehead, gave his lengthy, thoughtful explanations in excellent English. Medvedev, 51, spoke with undisguised nostalgia of life in Moscow prior to his 1973 banishment. Social life, particularly, is much more informal in the Russian capital than in London, where he now makes his home. "You can drop in on friends - you don't need an appointment to do this," he commented. "I would open my door and there would be the head of my institute," he continued. Soon, a bottle of vodka would appear and his apartment would fill with happy talk or debate. Not so in Britain. "In London, when you want to visit someone, you've got to make an appointment," he lamented. Despite a lower standard of living, Medvedev enjoyed higher social status as a researcher in the Soviet Union. "Scientists belong to the more-or-less privileged class in Russia," only surpassed by high Communist Party officials and top athletes, he said. But with the privileges come political restrictions, designed to ensure that scientists toe an orthodox political line, he said. "To be a senior researcher, a person must be confirmed by the academic council and by party officials. If a person is not considered as absolutely loyal - has some political deviations' - he does not expect to be confirmed," Medvedev explained. "To be an academician, for a dissident, is impossible." Medvedev learned this lesson personally after he began to speak out publicly about political restrictions on Soviet science in the late 1960s. His activities cost him his job at the Obninsk Institute of Medical Radiology. He also wrote a book about the life of Soviet biologist T. D. Lysenko, whose crackpot genetic David Goodman is co-editor of the Daily. By David Goodman theories held sway under Stalin and stunted the development of Russian biology for decades. The Rise and Fall of T.D. Lysenko, suppressed in the U.S.S.R., was published in the West ,in 1969, raising the ire of Soviet authorities. In June, 1970, he was forcibly committed to a mental institution for 19 days. He turned this experience into another book, collaborating with his twin brother Roi, a philosopher-historian and fellow dissident. The book was published in the West under the title A Question of Madness. Soviet officials took their ultimate retaliation against Medvedev in 1973. After unexpectedly granting him permission to travel to England for scientific purposes, the government revoked his " 'My father was arrested in '38. I, my mother, and my brother were evicted from our flat in winter. I knew what it was to fear. I did not fear under Khruschev.'' .:......~. ..;.y:,y:{t.i}}-::. .*..* . .........:.:;:n ..::... ..:}......