478
PARTISAN REVIEW
savings they abruptly quit to concentrate furiously upon what they
consider to be truly creative work. However, the bohemians who
"make good" in the accepted monetary sense are faced with a psy–
chological crisis. For
if,
symbolically speaking, tl1ey move from the
coldwater flat to the elevator apartment, they are risking surrender
to the world they condemn and divorce from the creative source
which has given their work substance. Rapid withering of talent, as
shown in slick formula novels or plays or "think-pieces" for periodi–
cals, has more often than not been the fate of the intellectual who
started out on the periphery and steadily moved toward the center of
social power. The career of Clifford Odets illustrates th.i.l; process.
There is constant pressure on the avant-gardist who has won recogni–
tion to apply his talents to the construction of easy affirmations and
plausible rationalizations of the cultural status quo. The evolution of
VanWyck Brooks is a pertinent example. For a study of the more po–
litically motivated type of backsliding avant-gardist we may refer
the reader to Mary McCarthy's probing analysis in "Portrait of
the Intellectual as a Yale Man."
The sense of in-groupness of the bohemian intellectual provides
a source of psychological security against the isolation which is the
fate of the alienated from the larger social structure. The vice of
this
group cohesion is the stereotyping of what is considered avant–
garde without reference to explicitly formulated criteria. The criteria
tend to become not a rationally composed set of standards guiding
individual expression but rather a merely negative response to the
rejected environment. Thus we have the emergence of modish cults
and the overestimation of mediocre talents. Psychological dependence
being pervasive in this group, there is the inclination to avoid trench–
ant criticism for fear of forcing the offenaed member to break away
from the group. These factors make for a weakening of discrimina–
tion.
As
a result, we see that a Henry Miller and a Kenneth Patchen
receive
t~e
adulation more becoming to seers and prophets than to
writers of as yet undetermined stature. The warping of judgment to
which the bohemian intellectual is subject is due to the distorted role
he is compelled to play in a culture which has no defined place for
him.
Publicists like Dwight Macdonald retreat into a world of fan–
tasy where it becomes easy to ignore the brutal onset of modern
power-combinations. This self-created world of infantile regression
prohibits an incisive cultural and political criticism informed by a
grasp of social realities.
In the early part of the century the French sociologist Durkheim
