18
PARTISAN REVIEW
many men of that generation. Perhaps, not knowing what they've
missed, they must assure themselves they've missed nothing, must
create the attitude of "schmuck-fuck-oh yes, we've had it all!" The
sexual aspect of life is curiously socialized, made a common jesting
thing, a social attitude redolent of poker, &cigar smoke, obscene after
dinner hours-all to deprive it of personality, so it shall not be a thing
of which a man must give his own account. They free themselves of all
responsibility by throwing it to the dogs. Plus an original Puritanism,
& so many other guilts acquired on the way. I've never been able
to
associate sex with my parents, my family, our own culture.
It
began , so
to speak, with my own generation, with the boys & girls in grammar
school-& if it existed before that time it was only among the
goyim.
Levitas and Auden. "Who is this Alden?" "Auden. Perhaps the
greatest poet living in America." "Bring him around." " He wouldn't
care to come. Enough if he'd do a review for us." "Why shouldn't he
come? Let him come
to
lunch. 1 want people should think of the
New
Leader
not just as a paper, but as a movement, a house. " " He has his
own home. " " So what? Let him come." " He won 't, after all, he's
Auden." "So if he's Auden? We've had plenty of big names at our
dinners-Charles Angell , Simeon Strensky .... What are you laugh–
ing for?"
[A story told by William Phillips] Lionel and Harold R. were on
the outs for some time.
>II<
Finally they got together this summer at East
Hampton. Harold said, "We shouldn't quarrel , we should be friends .
We've known each other for such a long time. But do you know, in all
the seventeen years that we 've known each other we've never once
exchanged a personal remark. "
Said Lionel: "Do you want me to be personal?"
"Go ahead."
Then said Lionel, " I think you're wasting your time wnung
nonsense &marginal stuff. You've never yet written anything central or
important. And how can you stand Mae?
If
you ask me, 1 think you
should divorce her. "
"Why, you!" cried Harold & kicked him out of the house.
Oh, the exiles, self-deported from our mechanical business civili-
·Lionel Abel and Harold Rosenberg.
