PARTISAN REVIEW
207
power that they can have over us and have over our children, our
students, the so-called intellectual community and its offspring. It's
really quite an elementary thing that I was talking about, and if one
is going
to
suggest, which is the clear implication of the remark, that
before one can raise one's voice in opposition
to
ideas that are clearly
destructive of our lives one has to be in possession of perfect wisdom,
then not only is New York intellectual life over but all intellectual
life is over. So I think that your remark is purely a rhetorical one
based on nothing serious.
HOWE:
Well, but I think after all there is a difference between being
provocative and being provoking, Hilton. You see, when you offer
names like Garry Wills and Gore Vidal as examples of New York
intellectual error or New York intellectual opinion ...
KRAMER:
That wasn't exactly what I did. I said that these were the
names we were allowing to represent us out there in the national
culture.
HOWE:
Anybody who thinks that Garry Wills or Gore Vidal represents
anything that I think, believe, or even secretly hope for is clearly
mistaken ....They don't represent anything that I or a good many
other New York intellectuals believe. I mean, I believe in guilt by
association in a certain way because my experience is this: when you
have association, you have guilt. evertheless, I think that one
shouldn't push it too hard and too far.. ..We were talking about a
certain group of people; maybe it was a mistake
to
talk about them.
When I was asked I didn't want to come on the platform and talk
about these people because I knew we'd be attacked for talking about
them, not for what we said but just for talking about these people,
because they wanted to talk about other things like the gurus in
California, etc. But if we're going to talk about them, Gore Vidal and
Garry Wills, they're in left field.
KRAMER :
Well, they're on the left, surely, but whether they 're in left
field is debatable because the point that I was trying to establish-if I
may complete the point-is that most of the best minds of the New
York intellectuals are deceased. A certain kind of cultural apparatus
was created by that generation, and there are certain writers who
have filled those roles in the minds of the national culture out there.
And if you don 't recognize it, then you're closing your mind to
something that's going on that's very important in this culture.
HOWE:
I grant you that most of the best minds in the New York
intellectuals world are deceased. But I don't know that you can hold
the rest of us to blame for that or for surviving them. And wait a little
longer and even that will be remedied. It's true that some very great
