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PARTISAN
REVIEW
situation is more complicated today. Would one also oppose the gov–
ernment and the national interest of Russia, which Chomsky refers to,
or China, or North Vietnam?
If
not, then obviously one is siding with
the "national interests" of these countries in the conflict with America.
fhis strikes me as a genuine problem for radicals, though perhaps it is
only one aspect of the general dilemma today.
Morgf'uti}au, on the other hand, believes there is a genuine na–
tional interest, not purely economic and not limited to big business, that
because of stupidity is not being served in Vietnam. What he doesn't
spell out, though he seems to imply it, is that it is in the national interest
to oppose the spread of communism, but not in Vietnam.
If
this
IS
so, one would like to know when the national interest has been correctly
pursued recently, when, that is, communism has been properly opposed.
If
never, we would have to define America as a country so powerful
it could ignore its national interest.
Edmund
Wilson. In a world of growing academicism and special–
ization, and general hostility to wide-ranging criticism, Edmund Wilson
was one of the few men of letters. He had the sensibility of an explorer.
This meant, of course, that he combined the virtues and the faults of
the writer who made a profession of being an amateur in all fields.
We never became friends, and I hadn't seen him for a number
of years. But my memories of Edmund Wilson go back to the thirties,
when he generously went out of his way to praise some things I had
written. I remember, too, long walks in the rain around Union Square,
where
PR's
office was, while he kept plying me with questions about
Marxist theory, particularly in relation to art. .1 was especially moved
by the unassuming manner of the older, famous man in wanting to know
what younger people were writing and thinking.
W.P.
