MAKING IT
247
for exposition as Podhoretz reveals personal anxiety in his work not
through deterioration of style so much as through deterioration ot
intellectual connection. By the time the book is done, the hypothesis
of the "dirty little secret" and the dwindled novel have
dis~ngaged
from
one another, separated, we assume, by dread of invading the theme,
dread of exploring the intimate play of hero and Establishment.
It
is no
mean matter to put oneself in a real novel, but it is a nightmare to take
on a true Establishment, such a nightmare that we need not wonder
why Podhoretz deserted his possibilities as thoroughly as if Stendhal
had presented the family of Mademoiselle de la Mole as charming.
All right, then. Let us make a quick pass at the little mystery
of
why Establishments provoke such vitiating fear in writers as seasoned
and dedicated as Podhoretz.
4.
The clue is to be found in the reception of
Making It
when the
work was still in manuscript. The author's dread was not ill-founded.
Despite a $25,000 contract, the first publisher, Roger Straus, rejected
the book. Publishers do not reject books in such cases because they
dislike them, but because they find the long-term consequences dis–
agreeable; the verdict of just about everyone in the Establishment who
then read the manuscript was negative. Which is to say scandalized,
shocked, livid, revolted, appalled, disheartened, and enraged - an exces–
sive reaction for a book which is finally at worst a not altogether
compelling memoir. What could cause so intense a reaction , so intense
an overreaction?
Establishments are like banks - they release value only if it will
return with interest. Podhoretz was obviously giving something away. But
what was it? This is the question which remains unanswered, and has
in fact attached itself to the book so closely that the reviews which
followed publication were more a function of the Establishment's initial
antipathy than a pristine reaction to the book itself - indeed many
reviewers expecting a work where names would be named and reputa–
tions outraged were therefore splenetic with disappointment; others,
feeling the book had been killed before it saw print were solicitous
of its merits.
One could of course give the author credit for having unearthed
a thesis (that success had replaced sex as the dirty little secret), a thesis
sufficiently integral and explosive to dynamite buried Establishment
furies, but the thesis while meandering in and out of the book was
not organically attached to the work; rather it appeared now and again
like an added starter. One could dislike the thesis and still not mind the
