502
PARTISAN REVIEW
attitudes to traditional ones-on many of the issues that divide us today.
Though literary people tend to stress ambiguities rather than sharp distinc–
tions, and though the atmosphere was only occasionally polemical,
mud~
of
the discussion reflected three under.lying positions. Several of the partici–
pants leaned toward a traditional view of standards in art and education;
some took a quasi-Marxist, Marcusean position, suggesting that all our
academic reforms-and the very spirit of moderation and compromise we
brought to the problems of the humanities-served only
to
perpetuate the
very things we were questioning; others had what they felt was a more
open-ended, more concrete, less ideological approach in trying to relate
teaching and writing to current moods and needs.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the conference was its non–
ideological character. If there was a dominant note, it was an impatience
both with the fashionable movements and ideologies of liberation and .the
equally fashionable anti-liberation movements and ideologies. As I read it,
the general feeling was that there was no simple cure for the intellectual
chaos of the period, no ready substitute for intelligent criticism, which at
the moment seems to be in short supply, and is constantly confused with
the latest intellectual fads. In fact, it seems to me one of the achievements
of the conference was its avoidance of ready-made answers, at a time when
people are so busy giving the answers that they have forgotten the ques–
tions.
W.P.
