l50
NORMAN MAILER
tion -in many a corner of America.
If
the war in Vietnam had forced
the Establishment to sever its connection with the Administration, there
was still Bobby Kennedy to serve as Pope of Avignon and an extra–
ordinary mixture of positions everywhere from just left of the ADA to
just right of Black Power there to be taken on every issue of the minute.
This Establishment once ogre-ish, fearful, arid, poisonous, proud, insular,
scholarly, slavish, tyrannical and cold, was now hip, slick, mercurial,
Camp, evasive, treacherous, Pop, militant, and chic - yet wonder of
wonders it was the same Establishment, same not because the people
were similar (so many had gone, so many were new) but because its
essential presentation of itself to the world was the same. The Establish–
ment had begun as a put-on, and it was continuing as a put-on.
Let us quote three times quickly from Jacob Brackman's articl« on
"The Put-On" in
The New Yorker,
June 24, 1967.
Irony is unsuccessful when misunderstood. But the put-on,
inherent–
ly,
cannot be understood.
Not holding any real position (the put-on) is itself invulnerable to
attack.
He (the put-on artist) doesn't deal in isolated little tricks; rather,
he has developed a pervasive style of relating to others that
perpetually casts what he says into doubt. The put-on is an
open-end
form. That is to say it is rarely climaxed by having the "truth" set
straight - when a truth, indeed, exists. "Straight" discussion, when
one of the participants is putting the others on, is soon subverted
and eventually sabotaged by uncertainty. His intentions, and his
opinions remain cloudy.
Who can fail to recognize what a superb description this is of the
Early Establishment and the Late. The love of ambiguity in the early
Establishment, the endless theses so intricately structured in the syntax
of their own jargon that parodies of the old
Partisan R eview
style used
to deliver insights, willy-nilly, as good as the original; indeed how better
than by the logic of the put-on to explain the extraordinary scholarly
apparatus of the old articles which produced theses so arcane and
intimately rubbed with sorcerer's garlic that no one can remember a
single one of the theses today. But they were not to be remembered–
the articles, the magazine, the Establishment itself existed as a way of
life which would generate a kind of power and position for itself with–
out necessity for a product which might be consumed and criticized.
The old
Partisan Review
used to sit on coffee tables like a magic object,
not to be examined, certainly not to be enjoyed, but to be received,
an emanation.
The new Establishment, neater, niftier, swift, puts working draw-
