20
PARTISAN REVIEW
The trouble with Paul Goodman, the anarcho-Reichians, the
whole gang, is a failing of instinctive wisdom. They have their theory;
given that, it's as though nothing else were needed. Sex repression is
bad-so let's have freedom. No more "Sturm und Drang," no more
starved, embittered adolescence. Sexual freedom for children! But they
forget the value repression must have had in their own lives, the
intensity & eagerness it produced, the over-eva luation of knowledge–
political activity, recklessness-in a word, idealism. It is always so in
the adolescence of intellectuals. The best, the purest, the freest mo–
ments occur during the starvation-in-the-midst-of-plenty of the post–
pubertal period. Surely, as we look back on our "wasted youth," our
experience must tell us to be grateful. But no, the theory says otherwise.
And so they think only as the theory requires them to think. They have
no direct contact left with life, no regard for an experience
as
experi–
ence, no celebration of what has been lived &suffered-no understand–
ing. And despite the consequences-that so smooth a path might
entirely take away the need or opportunity for sublimation, for
eagerness, idealism, the over-evaluation of intellectual objects, with the
probable result of the sapping of the creative impulse, the death of all
art-& doesn't Paul say, in an ideal society there'd be no art - or is it no
need
for art? (but what's the difference?)-in spite of all that wisdom
must say
to
the contrary, they have their theory, & their theoretical
personalities, & that's all they care about. This damnation is salvation.
But the fault is already contained in their failure to respond to life,
directly, without premeditation; their loss of spontaneity through
having the virtue of spontaneity drilled into them. And a metaphysical
failure-their low regard for being. "Praised be the fathomless uni–
verse. . .. "
Well, the other way
is
a wish, of course. Many an adolescent is
broken by it. But granted energy, vitality, the risk must be taken.
Max Lerner has ceased being a person & has
b~come
a reflex. The
other night we were suffering through the stage presentation of
A II the
King's Men,
Maxie seated right in front of us. "How do you like it?" we
asked, not really thinking the cautious approach necessary; our expres–
sions, at least, showed what we thought of it-what so help me no one
could help thinking of that shit. "Oh," said M.L., "I think it's very
interesting as a dramatization of the American Myth."
The public reflex. Everything predicated on his being a public
figure, all of whose opinions are important to the conduct of life. Ask
