Negro (but not by the white to any–
thing like the same degree) in a segre–
gated environment? At any rate, we
have it on the authority of the Negro
sociologist E. Franklin Frazier that the
"Black Bourgeoisie" (a term he himself
coined, I believe) is far more bourgeois
in the way Mr. Jones uses the word
than the white middle class of the
'50's.
On the issue of "vivid emotional
states" raised by Mr. Fitelson in con–
nection with sex and drugs, I would
say only that anyone who needs the
H-bomb to justify sex as an end in
itself and who needs drugs to achieve
sensual satisfaction deserves pity, not
disciples. Where is the "affirmation of
life" in all this? Where is the spon–
taneity and vitality? It sounds more
like an affirmation of death to me (and
I think Coleridge and De Quincey
would have agreed).
A final word about the question of
~Preuves
publie, sous la direction de
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numero de
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Albert Camus
"La communaute algerienne"
Eugene Mannoni
"Les jours d'Alger en fievre"
Herbert LUthy
"La demiere illusion"
Manes Sperber
"L'Heritage promis"
(Notes de voyages en Israel)
Julian Gorkin
"L'Amerique latine 1958"
Louis de Villefosse
"Sur la tradition des libertes
anglo-saxonnes"
Ignazio Silone
"Thomas Mann et la politique"
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479
civilization
vs.
instinct. I certainly
don't go along with Norman Mailer's
oversimplified idea that our civiliza–
tion has been built on an opposition
to "instinct and being and the ;ecrets
of human energy" (nobody knows
what those "secrets" are, Mr. Fitelson,
except maybe the followers of Reich),
and I don't see the hipster as the her–
ald of a revolution to liberate our im–
prisoned energies--quite the contrary.
Our civilization is defective and af–
flicted with rot, and I have no doubt
whatever that we pay too high a price
in repression and "discontent" for the
benefits we get, but it seems to me a
piece of sheer lunacy to suggest that
the remedy lies in condoning those
forces which, far from tending toward
greater creativity and spiritual health,
represent a vicious assault on the only
protections we have against political
and cultural barbarism.
Norman Podhoretz
LIBERAL PRESS,
INC.
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of
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