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PARTISAN REVIEW
what we would today call an "activist." She was also somewhat ec–
centric in more then one way ("My mother took two slices of brown
toast, as she always did. She chewed on them until they were soft
and mushy; then she took them out of her mouth and laid them on
the sill. The birds gobbled them up.")
The evolution of the young Straight's political attitudes was not
unrelated to what we would today call "identity problems." Thus he
notes the sadness of his youth and "what I deeply longed for: a sense
of belonging to some brotherhood." Political involvements in college,
in turn, helped him "to gain some identity in my new surroundings."
Moving around also added to such susceptibilities .
"If
I had been
English by birth or American by upbringing, I would have been held
in place by the traditional loyalties. But these loyalties were no but–
tress for me ... I lacked a sense of self."
These recollections are enriched by the author's knowledge of
or acquaintance with many major figures of our times, spanning the
worlds of money, politics, arts, fellow traveling, and espionage . They
included President and Mrs. F. D. Roosevelt, Thomas E . Dewey,
Henry Wallace, Maurice Dobb, John Maynard Keynes, Roger
Baldwin, Julian Huxley, Felix Frankfurter, Alger Hiss, and all those
writing for
The New Republic
(which, incidentally, was founded and
owned for a long time by the Straight family). The political blind
spots of many Western intellectuals are also captured in some of the
anecdotes. Thus, for instance, in 1949, when the author made "some
bitter comment about the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia ...
Hobsbawm (the well-known British historian) said with a knowing
smile, 'There are more political prisoners in the United States today
than there are in Czechoslovakia.''' Likewise it is morbidly fasci–
nating to read about Straight's lunchtime conversation in 1950 with
G. D. H. Cole (the famous British economist) in which the latter
averred not only that the Soviet Union was a true socialist country,
but also that in a future war he would be on its side against Britain
and other Western countries because, as he put it, "I'd rather live in
a socialist world than a capitalist world."
While
After Long Silence
is not the last word in the contemporary
debate about the links between personality and politics, it is a candid
and revealing case study of the relationship between wealth,
idealism, and the appeal of left-wing politics.
PAUL HOLLANDER
