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A VISIT TO HALDEMAN AND OTHER STATES OF MIND by

A VISIT TO HALDEMAN AND OTHER STATES OF MIND

By

Pub Date: March 18th, 1977
Publisher: Evans

Lumpy, half-digested thoughts on the political destiny of America are combined with personal reminiscences in this bouillabaisse of a book by an editor and historical writer who came of age in the 1960s. The personal stuff is more interesting and better written than the overheated, stupefying speculations on the fate of the Republic. Mee wrestles to some purpose with his Catholic boyhood in the Middle West, a bout with polio at fourteen, graduation from Harvard in 1960, two failed marriages, and a successful career (he was, for a time, editor of Horizon). He loved the 1960s, but whether the romantic vaporings of that decade were good for him is a question the reader will be tempted to ask. With an arbitrariness symptomatic of the book as a whole, the recall is framed by a visit Mee made to Haldeman in 1975 to discuss working together on a book that was never written. Why Mee, who loathed Nixon, was considered for that task is never made clear.