Abstract

Mr. Dooley Looks at '56

There was a time, now unhappily beyond the memory of most Americans, when philosopher, iconoclast and political commentator, Martin Dooley's column was grist for hundreds of thousands of daily conversations, and high government officials sometimes deferred important policy decisions until they could read what Dooley had to say about the matter. Dooley has left behind, safely preserved between the covers of eight books and scattered prodigally through scores of old magazines and newspapers, a lifetime of philosophic utterances about the U.S.--her customs, her institutions and her people. Here then is a posthumous interview with Dooley, who half a century ago was a potent social force even though he existed only in the imagination, and who today, existing only in the memory, may have an equally vivid reality.