I've seen a lot of patriots", Hemingway wrote in a letter, "...and their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry."

Facing the bookshop shelves in America these days, one sees some patriots and what is going on with prose in this country. Read My Country, a collection edited by Hugh Downs of short writings by famous people, including Alan Alda and Barbara Walters. The foreword states, amon