ISAAC ROSENFELD
17
makes him act so, or the leader's vanity; in any event there is no honesty
in him.
If
he does not, it may be, as I think, insanity. A paranoia which
enables him
to
judge the objective situation for what it is worth-but
when it comes
to
himself makes him the great leader. The great,
suffering, insatiable, nymphomaniac leader.
The Village story. A climactic scene: A seder, which soon degener–
ates into a cocktail party. The Haggadah is burlesqued, no one can
read, no one understand. The host
(I?),
who has made an effort to
reform, to fly right, live straight, also had thought by the celebration of
Passover to celebrate his own passing over into the light, the warmth,
the truth of his native tradition of Judaism, also succumbs
to
the
degeneration. They light up tea; a fight (Calder?); he makes a play for
the chick, leaves with her when the guests leave. Comes home very late.
His wife is up. Dreads an explanation, but there is none. She says very
calmly she is going to leave him the next day. No tears. The children
are still up. They are amused by everything. They hear their mother
talking but do not understand. They go about happily emptying the
ash trays.
Levitas." He objected to the title of Mary McCarthy's review
("Tyranny of the Orgasm") on the ground that "orgasm" wasn't the
right kind of word to appear in the
New Leader.#
"It's like a man
should stand with his
schmuck
out &piss in the middle of the street."
It
offended him & it made his good wife blush. He opened the paper on
Sat. morning-& there it was-hal And not only his wife, but Sidney
Hook's-(hear, hear!). And James Burnham's! Etc. But orgasm is a
central, a scientific term ... what do you think it means? "Orgasm–
der kleiner Yankele stellt sich auf."
Is that nice for the paper? A man
with an erection?
Why the curious identification of orgasm exclusively with erec–
tion? Diminishing potency? And observe that the only way Levitas can
mention sex is
to
drag it down to the men 's smoker level of dirty
words-schmuck, putz
(I don't think there is a "decent" word for penis
in Yiddish). The men 's smoker-where all is forgiven, the attitude of so
·Saul Levitas, then editor of the
New Leader.
#Mary McCarthy's review of Modern Woman , The Lost Sex, in the
New
Leader,
April 1947.
