Vol. 39 No. 3 1972 - page 447

PARTISAN REVIEW
447
riers between forms. Or so it may seem to an aesthetic radical who
is unaware of even earlier forms to which his "breakthroughs" are ac–
tually returns. The line between the memoir and the novel need not
be as rigid as a mere few centuries of critical custom would indicate.
Similarly, the oscillations between melody and harmony in music, and
between realism and romanticism in the theater, suggest that historical
perspective tends to deflate revolutionary rhetoric. However, it might
be argued also that the conception of cultural history as cyclical rather
than progressive is itself a manifestation of the very conservatism to
which the
PR
Statement is addressed. For myself, I would say only
that the Theory of Progress is dead, aesthetically as well as ecologically.
Nonetheless, I reject boredom as an expression of the disconnected and
disorganized fragments of our experience. As a critic, I still hold the
artist to the task of creating order out of chaos rather than chaos out
of chaos. Hence, I remain classically skeptical of holes in the ground
and silences on the stage; that is, until I can tell the stylistic differ–
ence between one hole and another, and between one silence and an–
other, again a function of specialization.
2. The
PR
Statement seems to address itself less to art or even to
criticism than to the policies of various publications. What did Norman
say to Jason and what did Jason say to Norman vis-a.-vis
Commentary
and
The New York Review of Books?
(Norman and Jason were both
classmates of mine at Columbia, and I don't have the foggiest memory
of either one of them, nor they of me, I am sure. The point, I suppose,
is that we all leave smaller tracks in the dust of time than we imagine.)
Then there is the rupture between
Partisan Review
and
Modern Oc–
casions,
and the changing of the guard at
Harper's.
There is obviously
some kind of war going on, but it is extremely difficult to keep track
of all the combatants, most of whom are also at war with themselves.
Then again the so-called counterculture has so escalated its rhetoric
that the most radical sensibility must embrace a conservative aesthetic
to retain its sanity. Never before has there been so much guerrilla
journalism in our culture, nor so many unauthorized thrusts for power.
Consequently, there seem to be too many chiefs and not enough In–
dians, too many writers (or what Capote would call typists) and not
enough readers, too many big mouths and too many deaf ears. In
these troubled times, publications and their partisans lose their tempers
in public and confess all their dirty secrets. Hence, what seems like a
drift to the right is often merely an honest confrontation of the con–
tradictions of bloated, elitist leftism. Also, the Nixon administration is
demonstrating that the Intellectual Establishment (and even the entire
Northeast Coast) can be completely written off as an influence. What
else is there for concerned intellectuals to do then but rediscover their
mutuality with the other settlers of the American subcontinent? Hello
there, Archie Bunker, and all you sweet, disturbed nigger-hating Wal–
lace voters.
3. As a film historian and working film critic, I find most con–
temporary articles on film to be reactionary and philistinish not so
much because of ideological influences, but rather because of the lack
of sympathetic insight and dedicated scholarship. When I read a piece
on any subject, and especially on film, I do not ask myself if the writer
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