CORRESPONDENCE
With some of it I agree; some not.
But really, what has most of it to
do with my review of Mailer's
book? For in that review I did
not:
propose a total rejection of "any–
thing that looks 'hip''';
criticize Mailer for showing "sym·
pathy" for hipsters (clearly, for
Mailer, a great deal more than
sympathy
is involved) ;
deny that speculation is permis–
sible in the prologue, or any other
part, of a novel;
commit myself one way or an–
other on the astonishing range of
topics Mr. Polsky manages to cram
into his letter.
I was reviewing a book by
Norman Mailer, not discussing "hip
literature," a category of whose
existence, let alone relevance, I
have some doubts. These doubts are
not relieved by the casual way Mr.
Polsky tosses in the names of
Celine, Genet and Henry Miller,
none of whom, so far as I can tell,
is readily assimilable into "any–
thing that looks 'hip'."
True, I said nothing about the
work of Messrs. Trocchi, Rechy and
Gelber: p erhaps because I was
asked to write about the work of
someone else. But even if these
LIBERAL PRESS, INC.
printers of
PARTISAN REVIEW
•
80 FOURTH AVENUE
NEW YORK 3,
N. Y.
383
writers are as good as Mr. Polsky
claims, how would that affect either
my analysis or judgment of
Adver–
tisement of Myself?
A critic who
insists upon so fine a distinction as
that between a shovel and a spade
ought to be able to recognize the
difference between a review of
Norman Mailer and a disquisition
on several other people.
Irving Howe
NOTE: "Soviet Literature in the
Doldrums" by Max Hayward
in
our
Winter, 1960 issue is a slightly
expanded version of an article that
appeared originally in
Problems of
Communism.
THE RUSSIAN REVIEW
A Special L eo Tolstoy Issue
Tolstoy the Apostolic Crusader
Rene Fueloep-Miller
My Meetings with Tolstoy
Leonid Pasternak
Tolstoy and Gandhi
Janko Lavrin
Tolstoy as an Artist
George Adamovitch
Tolstoy and the
Russian Peasant
Alexandra Tolstoy
The Religious Tragedy
of Tolstoy
Fedor Stepun
Tolstoy in Soviet Criticism
Gleb Struve
Four Western Writers
on Tolstoy
Marc Slcmim
Price of this issue:
$2.00
yearly
$5.00;
foreign
$6.00
The Russian Review, Inc.
235
Baker Library
Hanover, N. H.
