638
PARTISAN REVIEW
cntIc muggers; or elegant borzois dashing from one to yet another
trendy causerie; or, alas, handlicking spaniels adrool at every scrap
dropped from a table.
Atlas's method uses a 1957 perspective, Delmore Schwartz commit–
ted to Bellevue; that is, "mad." The people who can tell Atlas about
Schwartz are, on the whole, the established, the successful, the rational ,
the reliable; that is, the sane. Atlas constructs a methodological
Either/ Or:
mad Schwartz/ sane
everybody else (including Atlas). While
writing Delmore Schwartz's biography, Atlas becomes, in effect, the
guard dog of the sane, forever explaining, defending, exonerating
people like Harry Levin and Saul Bellow and Meyer Schapiro and
Hilton Kramer who, with Atlas for a defender, don't need an accuser.
Take the Schwartz-Levin relationship as an example of Atlas's
Either/ Or at work. Schwartz, like Levin, was at Harvard, but Schwartz,
unlike Levin, didn't get tenure. The two fell out. Atlas, as he does so
frequently throughout the book, turns to the Seven Deadly Sins for
explanation: "Delmore's jealousy was one direct cause of his break
with Levin." Well-O.K. Then Cornelia Walcolt's mattress catches
fire, she and Gertrude Buckman (Schwartz's first wife) drag it outside
into the snow where it leaves an indentation Levin "jovially" -so says
Atlas-refers to as "Delmore's grave." Now, Harry Levin and "jovi–
ally" aren't an inevitable connection (no more than , say, snow indenta–
tions and a "friend's" grave); thus we assume Levin is the source for
most of this episode. Atlas's scenario goes on: Levin's jovial quip so
upset Schwartz "he never spoke to Levin again, and began attacking
him in letters to Laughlin." Worse, Schwartz tri ed to get even with
Levin: "Fabricated stories about the rival were soon added to Delmore's
comic repertoire."
No perfectly honorable biographer's hedge such as "according to
Levin," or "Levin told me" appears; no underlining of a simple fact,
that this is a 1970s version of a 1942 event provided by an interested
party. Since Levin is sane and Schwartz was eventually "mad" the
Either/ Or states that Levin's story must not be qualified in any way.
Did Delmore Schwartz in 1942 categorize Harry Levin as "his rival"?
And is Atlas as a researcher able to authenticate that all of the stoires he
mentions were indeed "fabricated"? A scholar writing about even that
most mythic hysteric: the boy who cried "Wolf," would know his
subject deserved being believed on at least one occasion.
Of much greater magnitude than the falling-out with Levin was
Schwartz's final break with Saul Bellow, his closest friend. This
agonizing episode began when Elizabeth Pollelt, Schwartz's second
