Books: Suffering for Others

(2 of 2)

Matthiessen never puts these clues together into a satisfactory portrait. He reports that Robert Kennedy remarked, "What do you say to a guy who's on a fast?" when Chavez was coming to the end of a 25-day fast. Matthiessen shows the same mixture of awe and bewilderment. He is willing to sum up the fast simply as a "commitment to nonviolence everywhere," just as he accepts without examination Chavez's definition of the "ultimate act of manliness" as self-sacrifice. "To be a man," Chavez once said, "is to suffer for others."

To probe such mysteries and speculate on them is to run risks. One may fall into glib analysis. One may stumble across a mildly disenchanting insight. Matthiessen chooses not to run either risk. That rare happiness of biographers has befallen him—he has found a hero. Heroes are hard to come by these days, and he handles him like glass. Author's good luck is bad luck for the reader, and perhaps for Chavez. For Matthiessen preserves the hero at the expense of the man.