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PARTISAN REVIEW
Mary McCarthy, Diana Trilling, Glazer, and Lipset. Diana Trilling
argued that wavering should have stopped long ago, though in these
times when so many intellectuals keep changing their positions, I
would be inclined not to keep score of their past mistakes.
Sontag's own statement had the force of authentic indignation
and honesty. But she gave apologists for Soviet behavior a weapon
by describing communism as "fascism with a human face."
It
might
have served her purpose just as well simply to say that both fascism
and communism were the totalitarian evils of our time. But sophis–
ticated intellectuals know what she meant: that communism uses
fascist means but dresses them up in the progressive rhetoric of
Marxism and socialism. She is, after all, one of our more
distinguished and .original writers, and one might assume that she's
just as aware of the pitfalls of oversimplification as we are.
Leon Wieseltier's comment in this issue of
Partisan Review
goes
more fully into the sophistical arguments of Sontag's critics. But I
cannot agree with what he says about Sontag. She was not pro–
pounding a new theory about the nature of fascism and com–
munism. All she was doing was to dramatize the revulsion at events
in Poland.
II
The Truants
by William Barrett is a work about some of the
people and events in the history of
Partisan Review
which deserves
serious attention. The book is engagingly written, and is to be
commended for its cool tone and its many shrewd observations. And
I cannot complain about most of his references to me, which show
considerable affection and respect, as I always had for him. Still, the
entire portrait does not seem right.
There is something about the book, not simple to pin down,
that is somehow distorting of the total picture, though it is quite
accurate and perceptive in its specific observations. I have written at
length about the literature and politics and the role of the leading
figures of the time in my own yet unpublished memoir. But it may
be of interest at this point to compare briefly my own experience
with Barrett's report.
William Barrett was an associate ed itor of
Partisan Review
from
1945 through 1955.
It
was a time of many changes, some noisy, some
quiet. McCarthy was scalping communists in public, Vietnam was
building up, intellectual radicalism was on the wane, the media were
