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PARTISAN REVIEW
Dwight was an elitist, but not of the lazy sort who content
themselves with basking in the highness of their brows as reflected in
a pier glass or the eyes of their peers. Rather, he was a hard-working
elitist, one who tried to share his appetite for the best with anyone
else in whom he could instill that holy hunger. Erich Heller told me
once about talking with Dwight at a party and being suddenly
accosted by a silly woman who proceeded to expound some
ridiculous notion. Heller, who is a patient man, nevertheless gave up
arguing , he said, fairly quickly. But there was the celebratedly
irascible Dwight Macdonald painstakingly laboring to enlighten the
woman, with a dedication Heller said he admired and envied.
An
elitist, then, who would eagerly help others join the club, who would
gladly have abandoned his badge of superiority for the sake of a
world full of coequal elitists.
So great, I repeat, was Dwight's dedication to critical truth
that, when he wrote an introduction to my first book, he did
something, I dare say, no introducer had ever done to a living author
(and seldom enough to a dead one): He proceeded, in midintro–
duction , to castigate me for my "weakness ... for stylistic bravura,
and especially for puns," though he then generously added , "I know
because I have the same weakness." And, again, in his last letter to
me, thanking me for an introduction I wrote for the reissue of his
book
On Movies,
he immediately proceeded to make a couple of
suggestions about how to improve that introduction. For example,
he wanted me to omit the word "juicily" from a description of his
style that included the phrase "juicily alive in its human presence."
As it happens, it was too late for such editorial changes , and the
offending adverb remained. Did Dwight consider "juicily" too
prodigal praise or too purple prose-or would he have merely
preferred some other term, say, "pungently" or "succulently"?
I never did find out, yet juicily alive is what the man and his
writing were , as when, for instance , he answered a reader' s letter
that deemed a Dwightian attack on Norman Cousins un–
constructive : "I've always specialized in negative criticism–
literary, political, cinematic, cultural-because I've found so few
contemporary products about which I could be 'constructive'
without hating myself in the morning." Uncozened by Cousinses
and Cozzenses alike , Dwight spoke up in critical reproof even when
introducing a protege , even in a thank-you note. For he understood,
instinctively as well as intellectually, that a critic, like a doctor, had
