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PARTISAN REVIEW
have been noted or responded
to
before. Mark mentions several
things the critical realists or the New York intellectuals had not
done. They did not develop a theory of criticism. Irving says the
theory of criticism did not interest him. He considered himself only
in some partial way a critic. And the other point that you made was
that New York intellectuals, or the realists, never organized for
power within the university.
IRVING HOWE: We felt that power was outside of the university!
WILLIAM PHILLIPS: Maybe we were wrong.
MORRIS DICKSTEIN: You felt that power was in
The New York Review
of Books,
or in
Partisan Review.
I don't mean that you cunningly
organized your career so that someday you'd be after a new Naipaul
book. The New York intellectuals considered themselves writers
rather than critics, they identified more with new art than they did
with new criticism; their concerns were more cosmopolitan, more
metropolitan; and they were in New York either physically or in
spirit. New York even then, thirty years ago, was a kind of communi–
cations capital of the country. Even when the
Times
book review
section was much more philistine and much more middle-brow than
it subsequently became, the New York intellectuals reviewed fre–
quently for it, because they were on the spot; they were intelligent,
and they wrote extremely well.
IRVING HOWE: After my 'review of Naipaul came out-and this is
perhaps the first time I've done it-I went to the publishers of his
book and asked whether the sales had increased.
It
made almost no
difference, and that's really depressing.
MORRIS DICKSTEIN: I think that sales are not the only thing. After that
review Naipaul certainly became more of a presence among people
who think about books and talk about books.
BARBARA ROSE: That's a very interesting distinc,tion between literary
and art criticism, because when Hilton writes a favorable review, and
I know this for a fact, sales zoom.
HILTON KRAMER: While it is often true, it is just as often not true that,
as you say, in writing these days for a prominent newspaper you have
the power to do or to call attention to something. I know for a fact
that many expositions that I've lavishly praised have gone their
three-week stint without selling anything, while others that I have
condemned to the lowest rung of hell have sold out over night.
BARBARA ROSE: But there is some correlation in the art world. I think
Hilton Kramer does very well in
The New York Times,
but that is an
extremely rare and privileged situation, and I presume that he has
'
