never launched his great attack on the
Christian impoverishment of the hu–
man psyche." (A real non-conformist
dearly loves a settled question.)
"The achievements of Joyce, Proust,
Schoenberg, Bartok, Picasso, Matisse, to
mention only the obvious figures
[could we hope to hear Professor
Howe mentioning any of the less ob–
vious figures?
1
signified one of the ma–
jor turnings in the cultural history of
the West.
"
industrialism grants large
quantities of leisure time without any
creative sense of how to employ it. ..."
"Jefferson's writing has, however, the
virtue of integrity; everything about
it is true to the man who wrote it;
and at times he can rise to the very
greatest eloquence."
This last passage is quoted, not from
Professor Howe's article in
Partisan
Review,
but from a book review by
him in the
New Republic.
Other ex–
amples of the iridescence of non-con–
formist thought could be found else–
where in Professor Howe's writings; I
recommend especially a glance at the
current issue of
Dissent,
the new trade
journal of non-conformism.
Is it for the propagation of such ac–
cepted and pedestrian ideas as these
that Professor Howe has fought his
battle against the "impish
Zeitgeist:'
against the "terrible weight of our
time"?
New York, N. Y.
Robert Warshow
SIRS:
For Mr. Warshow to describe my
article as "a compendious aspersion on
the chastity of practically everybody" is
to confess that he hasn't the foggiest
notion of what I was saying. Chastity
is a condition I neither admire nor
care to measure. In reducing the prob–
lem to such petty terms Mr. Warshow
shows that he can't distinguish between
a personal attack (though he is cap–
able of making one ) and an effort to
chart a social trend, or describe a po–
litical-intellectual impulse, in which the
writings of various people are cited as
examples. To criticize Arthur Schles–
inger Jr. for certain references to Kier-
kegaard is to say nothing whatever
about his "chastity"-I'm sure he has
it well in hand. To debate with Lionel
Trilling about the present state of
American culture is in no way to im–
pugn his "chastity"- my interest ex–
tends no further than his opinions.
And if Mr. Warshow can't grope his
way to this simple distinction he would
do well to refrain from intellectual con–
troversy.
It is hard to come to grips with
Mr. Warshow because his letter is long
on picque and short on opinion. The
letter adequately represents, however,
the
fe elings
of those intellectuals who
in the past fifteen years have steadily
drifted away from political and cul–
tural radicalism, who have abandoned
the values of opposition and dissent,
and have accepted, more or less, the
basic drift of a society that is shaped
by war economy. Thus, in
Commen–
tary
one can read that America is
capitalist, but Good; or a mixed econ–
omy, but Good ; or even socialist, and
'therefore certainly Good; or a sort of
great big Small Town, but damned
Good. Yet the people who write and
sponsor such things feel outraged when
told that they are conforming to the
social and cultural drift of American
society. They want to do it, all right;
but not to hear about
it.
A splinter
of the past seems to prick their con–
science, so that nothing infuriates them
so much as attack from the left.
For what, precisely, is Mr. Warshow's
complaint? That I hold familiar "re–
ceived ideas" (a fate I happily share
with all mankind) or that my ideas
are outrageously eccentric? That my
descriptions are true but my evaluations
false or that my descriptions are false
and consequently my evaluations irrele–
vant? That the drift toward conform–
ism exists but is in the main desirable
or that there is no such drift and I
have been unjust to some (still) criti–
cal intellects? Nowhere does he express
an opinion on this, or any other, ques–
tion : he is too busy trying to pelt me
with his paper bullets. He writes from
no clearly stated point of view: he is
merely nervous. His elaborate sarcasm,
begun as a tactic, ends as a tic. That
is why he thinks it so conclusive to list
