COMMENT
OUR COUNTRY AND OUR CULTURE.
The title of a rather well
known and influential symposium,
Our Country and Our Culture,
that
was published in 1952 in
Partisan Review,
was appropriated by a
neoconservative symposium last year at the Plaza.
It
was a weighty
ideological affair, keynoted by Hilton Kramer.
Unfortunately, the line laid down by Kramer twisted the
meaning of the original symposium to fit his new ideology , which,
among other false claims and misstatements, assumes that all roads
lead to neoconservatism. Kramer's tone is also quite abusive. This is
not surprising, as Kramer has become known for his low polemical
tactics, featuring ugly personal attacks, so reminiscent of Stalinist
arguments, which threaten to destroy civilized intellectual exchange
in this country. So dedicated has Kramer become to the task of an–
nihilating everyone an inch to the left of him, that he has almost suc–
ceeded in making neoconservatism implausible and unrespectable .
Kramer's argument defies summarizing, for it is an ensemble
of cliches, contradictions , and pompous cultural exhortations. He
insists that the original statement did not go far enough in the direc–
tion of neoconservatism, and that whatever was of value in it, which
he construes as a manifesto to end critical non-conformism in
American culture, is being violated by our delinquent writers today.
According to Kramer, both the 1952 editorial statement and the
comments on it by a number of literary figures failed to celebrate
the growth of culture and the arts in this country. Kramer recites the
typical litany of praise by the boosters of the cultural marketplace,
that elevates quantity over quality, by reminding us that book sales
are up , museums are packed, the ballet is thriving, grants by gov–
ernment and private foundations are swelling, and so on. At the
same time, Kramer takes his stand, somewhat pompously and
shrilly, for high critical standards and discriminations, which would
seem to contradict his satisfaction with the popular spread of culture.
With the help of his new ideology, however, he solves the contradic–
tion by claiming it is the left that is responsible for the lowering of
standards .
Ideology also invents its own history. Thus Kramer misrepre–
sents the 1952 statement - written by Delmore Schwartz and myself
- and ignores the political situation giving the symposium its
significance at the time. From the thirties to the fifties Marxism
