LEI'TERS
125
ical positions" which Thomas Mann
"is
constantly taking", and the "polit–
ical doctrines of the most dubious
kind"
to
which he is "lending his
prestige"?
By answering these questions you
would oblige very much
yours faithfully,
JAMES H. MEISEL,
Secretary
We think that Harold Rosenberg's
article, printed elsewhere .in
thi~
issue,
answen in general the pomts rru.sed by
Mr. Meisel, but there are a few specific
points we should like to make, quite
briefly. We do not doubt that Thomas
Mann "has no liking for war and
warfare," nor did we intend to imply,
in
our editorial, that he had. Almost
no
one likes war or wants it-until it
comes. Nor do
.:Ve
doubt Mr. Mann's
patriotism-quite the contrary, indeed!
As
for Mr. Meisel's concluding ques–
tions,
we would reply to the first that
10
be against laissez-faire capitalism and
for "economic democracy" hardly
means that he is not, as we said, "for
the
status quo
in certain capitalist na–
tions."
Our own New Deal, which is
in
power and is a capitalist govern–
ment, has much the same position as
hu
Mr. Mann. To Mr. Meisel's sec–
ond
question, we can only say that our
editorial itself indicated in some detail
the "extreme and reckless political po–
sitions"
Mr. Mann has adopted in the
put. His
carte blanche
to German im–
perialism in the last war and to the
Weimar
Republic afterward (a shift
which
involved him, for example, in
sharp
polemics with Spengler, whose
position he himself had held not so
long
before), his faith in pacifism in
1933
and his equally sweeping faith in
an ared
crusade for democracy today–
these seem to us to justify the adjec–
tha
we used.-The Editors.
Alen Tate on "The Fathers"
Ullivenity of North Carolina,
Greensboro, N. C.
lomnber 22,
1938.
Dear
Mr. Rahv:
I have read with great
interes~
the
Cllrrent issue of the Partisan: it is a
wry
fine number, the best issue of an
American periodical that I 've seen in
~time.
Trilling's review of my novel, al–
though I don't agree with his analysis
of the subject, or "fable", is the ablest
and most interesting that I have seen.
Trilling's approach to the book proves
conclusively that it is possible for a
critic to examine a work whose author
holds fundamentally opposite views,
and yet convince that author, by
m?~eration and intelligence, that the cntlc
is disinterested.
If
the Partisan Review
can maintain that attitude, it will win
the respect of all parties without yield–
ing the essentially Marxian
P?sit~on
that it has assumed. My obJeCtion
hitherto to Marxian critics has been
that they are, with few exceptions, both
ignorant and unintelligent.-l've been
trying to see why Trilling thinks my
fable an indictment of the Old South ;
I think it may as easily be seen as a
justification of it, quite apart from
the style. It is an indictment only in
the sense that it is an indictment of
the necessary limitations of human na–
ture. Any highly organized society,
Marxian or any other sort, could de–
velop the tensions that giye_ the dy–
namic force to my fable. Tnlhng seems
to assume that that is not true, and
with that assumption I part company
with him; for he seems to me
to
com–
mit himself to a kind of absolute that
he is a little puzzled in not finding in
me-that is belief in a social and
political
abs~lute.
He is the first critic
I've had who seems actually to have
read what I've written about the South,
and he knows that
I
have an aware–
ness of the South's defects past and
present; but he cannot
u~derstand
m,y
interest in the subject, smce
I
don t
find a political absolute. In making
an historical comparison of the South
with the other sections of the country,
I've always felt that the ante-bellum
values had a good deal to offer us,
not in terms of an ideally perfect so–
ciety, but rather i.n terms of wh:'"t we
are likely to get
m
fact. That 1s the
gist of my attitude about the South.
I've always felt that the American
Marxists approach the question not on
the basis of what actually was, or is
likely to be, but from the viewpoint. of
what they want ; and I've felt that With
critics holding that advantage I could
not compete.- So- to conclude a too
