130
PARTISAN REVIEW
would have absorbed or concealed the slight culture-shock we felt at
the spectacle; we might even have reproached ourselves for having had
a momentarily unreconstructed response to it. The writer's reaction is
better because she will not regard her own conditioned response in
favor of order as somehow more ignoble than this new cult of ordure.
To remain obstinately liberal and yet never to be afraid of
appearing uptight was and is a difficult posture to hold, and the labor
required to hold it is sometimes lOO clearly manifested in the prose.
And yet-though dignity usually prevents her from saying so-time
has very often justified that labor. The Timothy Leary essay may have
seemed, ten years ago, a bit bigoted, a trifle self-important; but now it is
obvious that Mrs. Trilling was quite right not to be ready for anything,
and quile right to make her account of that weird and fraudulent
evening as long as it is.
If
you are a stubborn believer in patient and
rational discourse, patient and rational discourse is the on ly means you
have to prove it.
These essays give us more or less exactly what the aUlhor, with due
and stubborn consideration, said at the time.
It
seems characteristic
that she reprints, without substantial change, her replies to a
Commen–
tary
questionnaire about anti-Communism, wriuen in 1967, and
pursues her disagreement with Lillian Hellman in a vast parenthesis
and a series of very long footnotes to the answers. This row blew up a
whole decade later, was heavily publicized, and may be one of the
reasons why many people want to read the book. There may therefore
be some exasperation about having it all consigned
lO
a straggle of
small print. Yet the point is clear enough:a difference of opinion with
Miss Hellman about historical fact is not unimportant, but it is less
important than the clear exposition of a liberal anti-anti-anti–
Communist position, which is the business of the original article.
This is a complex but intelligible position. Mrs. Trilling believes
that an accusation by such a body as McCarthy'S HUAC, however
distasteful the body or its individual members, does not create a
presumption of the innocence of the person accused. She opposed both
McCarthyism and Communism.
In
this convoluted piece she tries
to
take account of all the
facts,
from the pumpkin to the Fairfield
Foundation and the conversion of Mr. Garry Wills to the anti-anti–
Communist cause; the chips of opinion and excessive libertarian
sentiment must fall where they may.
I believe, myself, that people had better cause
to
detest McCarthy
and the CIA than Mrs. Tri lling is willing
to
admit. She relies too
much, I think, on the argument that it is dishonest to make much of
