PARTISAN REVIEW
407
will emerge, and the old men will take their places beside their dead
predecessors.
We have been exploited, Uncle Willie. I want to teIl you:
every
major white writer in this country, including Jewish writers, have
used us. In an effort to get a wider reading public, the foIlowing writ–
ers exploited the black revolution - -all of them exploited the new rise
of black language, which devoured their pitiful inheritance from Henry
James: Saul BeIlow, Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Bernard Malamud. As Mr.
McLuhan puts it:
"It
is part of the age-old habit of using new means
for old purposes instead of discovering what are the new goals con–
tained in the new means." This is the book formula for best sellers
and, not surprisingly, the formula for the latest Hollywood film. And
I shaIl show, dear Uncle Willie, that the origin of the new Fascist
tendency in Hollywood which Miss Pauline Kael is always warning
us about is none other than the failure of such intellectuals as Mr.
Saul Bellow, who, specializing in his own profession, as most mass-men
do, from elevator operator to book editor, refuses to acknowledge the
influence of other media on literature, thereby sanctioning the ir–
responsibility of his literary cousins in Hollywood. Like one of Poe's
dead women, Hollywood
(Straw Dogs, Dirty Harry,
etc.) comes back
to haunt the white intellectuals for not doing their job, for not laying
her to rest once and for all. Hollywood learned the method from
"best sellers" like William Styron's
Confessions of Nat Turner.
The
formula is
to
write about something black but to try to relate it to
the tradition of literature. It is very much like putting new black
energy into old forms.
It
is still going on very strong in Hollywood
now, and there is little reason to .believe that it will stop. In Holly–
wood, black actors and writers are controlled by white promoters. I
know because I was there for two years, Uncle WiIIie, and I got
names and addresses. I got stories that will make you tremble, and
every time I hear the words "black power" now I want to throw up.
I ask myself, why do black people-allow themselves to be treated like
that? After the black revolution we have white people exploiting not
only the black man in the ghetto, but also the black man in Holly–
wood, which, to be sure, is not much more than a slum! Why would
not any black man see that the black revolution existed solely for
the benefit of white people (who were promised by black,white, and
rad:cal intellectuals more orgasms) and for white promoters (who
saw it corning and took it for all it was worth and are still doing it).
But, Uncle Willie, I'm getting too serious. It is not my style. Let me
read you my essay!
The black revolution was a cover for the white boy to see if he
