200
PARTISAN REVIEW
reading from the history of American criticism in this century.
If
you
are going to revise that central antagonism between high-brow
criticism based either on some form of Marxist alliance, Marxist
commitment, or a commitment to modernism and, in the earlier days
of
Partisan Review,
some synthesis or provisional alliance or as–
sumed alliance between the two-if you're going to revise that out of
existence, then we're dealing with fictional history.
IRVING HOWE: I don't want to revise it out of existence. I agree that the
alliance between modernism and Marxism which was envisaged in
the early days of
Partisan Review
was very problematical, certainly
turned out to be very different from what we expected, and doesn 't
exist anymore. I don't consider myself a Marxist, certainly not in an y
orthodox way, except insofar as having lived in a particular moment
it has left its imprint upon me. And the modernist thing is exhausted
too, but it seems
to
me there are still plenty of grounds for the battle
against philistinism. There are plenty of people in the culture in the
past' hundred and fifty years, here and in Europe, who fought against
philistinism without being either Marxist or necessarily ideological
partisans of modernism. I think we're in a kind of trough, a
social/cultural dead moment. That doesn 't mean there isn 't good
writing. My guess would be that there is just as much good writing
done today as there was thirty or forty years ago. What you don 't
have is the sense of a coherent intellectual cultural atmosphere with
some leading idea behind it which gives people energy. There is a
job to be done. But we can't do it as a gang.
UNIDENTIFIED PARTICIPANT: I've been sitting here for two days wonder–
ing why I don 't feel this pessimism, why I don't feel that I live in a
trough of culture and that nothing is happening. And I realize that
to
me, as a feminist, exactly the kind of criticism that Irving Howe
proposes
is
being done. I feel that same kind of excitement in reading
feminist writers and small feminist magazines that you people felt in
the political developments of the thirties and sixties.
MARK 'SHECHNER: Feminism is the only political movement to come
out -of the sixties that maintains something of the force and the
momentum of what politics had in the sixties, which in all other
areas has totally dispersed.
LARRY NEAL:· That's not true. The other movement that came out of
the sixties that still is vital and literate is the black arts movement.
The theater movement is vibrant; there is a lot going on in black
·Larry Neal died while this issue of
Partisan R eview
was going
to
press.
