On
PR,
Kafka and the Habits of
Critics:
A
Communication
Sirs,
A
s soMEONE to whom the existence of PR is an unqualified blessing,
may I comment on a couple of bad habits that seem to crop up
continually in the best work of your best critics?
As I see it, your function is twofold-to present and elucidate works
of art, and to promote a state of mind that has a genuine use for art
in the modern world. The refinement of the notion of partisanship,
therefore, is bound to be the history of your magazine. In the field of
literary and intellectual criticism (as if the two could be separate& in
fact!) your partialities have broadened and deepened consistently-you
have achieved higher and more inclusive levels of disaffection. In an
almost miraculous way you have kept yourself free of sectarian bigotry
in your editorial policy. The most disgruntled would-be contributor
must admit that he is balked by the fallibilities of literary judgment
rather than by any lack of good will.
How much this sense of freedom and radical temper in PR has
meant to me cannot be overstated, and I consider it a solemn occasion
to be able to say as much. As we go into what promises to be at any
rate a grim if not catastrophic period, the preservation of an American
intellectual community is the highest goal, perhaps, that a magazine
can set itself. I don't see how community can be preserved on any
level lower than that set by PR. Our universities are not intellectual
communities in any real sense. They are groups of virtuosi gathered
together largely for self-protection, giving their relatively meaningless
solo performances according to certain comfortable conventions. We
have had many brilliant analyses of the "Academy" in PR, so it is
hardly necessary for me to say more on the subject. Our small college
Reviews
occasionally run PR a close second, but one wonders what
might happen if they lacked the example of radical independent
Reviews.
The pretense of editorial impartiality is no more successful on the
level of the
Reviews
than on the
Time-Life
level. The Luce papers
are partial to all kinds of nationalist arrogance, moral stupidity, and
pea-green sophomoric wit; PR is partial to vitality, elegance, honesty,
etc., etc.,-there's the difference, and there is no conceivable compro–
mise. No art or craft can afford a democracy of standards-only a
democracy of technical means. Perhaps this is all gross platitude, but
it is something I wanted to say.
