An Intellectual's Guide to Public Service

On the morning after the 2010 midterm elections, The Washington Post published a column by Steven Pearlstein that congratulated the winners while offering a "reading list" to those who will be new members of the 112th Congress that convenes in January, 2011. The "reading list," it turns out, consisted of a single book: a collection of the letters of the late New York Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, edited by Steven R. Weisman.

The 720-page volume of letters has been getting rave reviews. One of the most entertaining of which is Hendrik Hertzberg's "Politics and Prose," in the October 25, 2010, issue of The New Yorker. Moynihan was a larger than life character, to be sure. George F. Will couldn't resist pointing out that Moynihan had written wrote more books than most Senators had read. On the other hand, the droll Eric Severaid once complained that the trouble with Senator Moynihan was that he threatened to make it respectable to be a sociologist.

Once, long ago in a galaxy far away, I wrote a review of Moynihan's book about the United Nations, where he had served as U.S. Ambassador. His book was called A Dangerous Place. I thought it would be clever to submit a review entitled "A Dangerous Man," the point of which was that Ambassador Moynihan might have enough rhetorical power all by himself to pose a threat to the mendacity from which the U.N., and particularly the General Assembly, suffered in those days.

My editor had different ideas. He replaced my title with one of his own, which made my reference in the body of the review to Moynihan as "a dangerous man" seem very odd indeed. I was not happy when the review appeared in print, but I didn't expect any real fallout from it.

But I was wrong. Late in the summer of 1979, I received the following letter on the stationery of the United States Senate:

Pindars Corners, N.Y.
August 31, 1979

Dear Dr. Kolson,

Help me. My friends say yours was the most hostile review A Dangerous Place has received. I thought it friendly. Am I bonkers? Please write, as I need to know!

Best,

DPM

Not being all that accustomed to receiving letters from United States Senators asking me whether I considered them "bonkers," I sat down at once to compose something reassuring. I think I managed to explain the confusion over the title convincingly enough, but in the process I'm sure I demonstrated that as a correspondent I had very little entertainment value. Senator Moynihan's framed letter occupies a prominent place on the wall of my den at home. But he never wrote back.