PARTISAN REVIEW
15
on all the rest. At the end of the Congress an overwhelming majority
voted to support the formation of a writers' union. The Congress
also took a stand on many political issues, only a few of them- book–
burning, censorship, the first amendment-directly impinging on
writers as writers . It left unsettled the question of how those who had
been reduced to cogs of the culture industry or dispensable toys
would go about saving the world . There was something infectious
about the sentiment of solidarity that seized many incorrigible indi–
vidualists in the course of the proceedings . But it's hard to visualize
how these elevating impulses will be translated into action.
Action was what the cohorts of the Weather Underground were
presumably committed to, but did any still have the illusion that
their hit-and-run tactics , their paltry numbers, and their wanton
brutality still contributed to saving the world, or to any other
unselfish goal? Whatever the attempts of organizers to mobilize the
Congress towards prepared positions, whatever the woolly, politi–
cized language of some of the panelists, the Writers Congress - with
a thousand fringe groups clammering for attention-was as open
and disorganized as the cadres of crazed militants were clannish and
conspiratorial. Instead of advancing the cause of justice and human
dignity, the Brinks murderers have only swollen the arsenal of the
right. The spectre of a terrorist network will long outlive the network
itself.
As always, writers in America are in an isolated position . Inso–
far as they aim to defend their own interests they are on solid
ground. But writers are no more unified on political issues than most
professionals ; as an organized pressure group they are likely to
remain where they began: on the fringe. But that's no reason for
them to stop trying.
M.D.
