WILLIAM PHILLIPS
541
did he seem that I said we did not want a puff and that I hoped he
would be critical,
100.
He said yes, of course, and I forgot about it
until the piece came in. It turned out to be an essay, not a review,
and an assault, not a puff. The gist of Abel's piece was that she
was too hard on the Jews for collaborating in their own destruc–
tion, and not hard enough on the middle rung of fasclst execu–
tioners whose guilt was softened by reducing their crimes to
the level of banality.
My own feeling was that there was, aside from intellectual
differences and animosities, a semantic misunderstanding, perhaps
a semantic confusion on Hannah Arendt's part, for it seemed to me
what she meant was not that evil was banal, but that people like
Eichmann, of whom there are millions all over the world, are
little, banal people who, in extreme situations, where their
behavior has wide social approval, are drawn into the most bar–
baric acts. I also thought she exaggerated the possibilities of
resistance
to
the Nazis by the Jews in Germany and Eastern
Europe. In any case, the issue was what to do about Abel's piece. I
felt it was in many ways a put-down, though some of the things
he said were true and certainly fell into the area of legitimate
criticism. And there were also personal considerations since
both Arendt and Abel were friends . In situations like this, there
are no satisfactory solutions. All one can do is to look for some
nonexistent middle course that preserves friendship, intellectual
integrity, editorial ethics, and some undefined ideal of fairness,
and then muddle through the situation while wishing that it
had never happened, or that one had been more astute in fore–
seeing the mess that was bound to follow.
I showed the piece to Hannah, who was upset by it and
clearly felt it should not be pu blished. I asked Dwight Mac–
donald's opinion and he, too, thought
Partisan Review
should
not print it. This surprised me for Dwight had always stood for
free and open controversy, though I should add that Dwight was
a friend of Hannah's and no great admirer of Lionel. I tried to
get Abel to make the piece more balanced and less strident. But
all this time I was under enormous pressure from Philip Rahv,
who was still an editor of the magazine though not very active.
Rahv did not like Arendt or what he called her conservatism and
anti-Jewish bias. And he had on his side, as did Abel, the fact
