DIANA TRILLING
805
DT:
Well , at what point did you become conscious of the middle–
class world not representing your moral
po~ition
in society?
DM:
I told you, when I met all those big captains of industry. I did
all of those industry stories : U .S . Steel and Republic Steel and the
great A&P . All that stuff.
DT:
What I'm trying to find out is, were you always a rebel or did
you become-
DM:
Yes , I was always a rebel.
DT:
How did it show itself?
DM:
Okay. At Exeter it showed itself by the fact that we founded a
club of three members called the Hedonists and we used to go out
walking with canes and we wore batik neckties. It was called the
Genius Club, of course, by the hoi polloi . And at Yale- What I
really finally got fired for from Yale was when I wrote an editorial
for the
Record
calling on William Lyon Phelps not to teach Shake–
speare on the grounds that if he really thought it over he wasn't
competent to do it. I was very reasonable about it. I said, you
know, you really just don't show much competence. He was the
god of all those athletes and so on. The Dean called me in and
said, "Did you write this?" I said, "You certainly aren't going to
suppress that, are you? It's free speech," and so on, and he said,
"Of course I'm not going to suppress it but if you print it, you
leave Yale ."
DT:
What happened?
DM:
You know what happened .
DT:
You graduated.
DM:
As usual I made the compromise sensible decision. Everybody
thinks I'm a wild man, but I'm always in the middle .
DT:
You don't see yourself as being absolutely, finally, the sturdiest,
most principled, unimpeachable character going?
DM:
No. I'm not of the stuff of martyrs. It would never have oc–
curred to
me
to go to Spain in 1939, the way it occurred to Orwell
and all those others. I'm absolutely squarely in the middle. The
Arab-Israeli issue, for instance . My one son is a violent Zionist,
the other son is a violent Arabist. But I'm always in this middle
position, it seems to me. Israel should have been a biracial state.
And also they should have let back the refugees. They shouldn't
have stolen their vineyards and so on. I was called an anti-Semite
by my old pals, William Phillips and Clement Greenberg and
Philip Rahv and so on , because I said, "Why the hell don't you
Jews do something about this? You shouldn't give all your money
to J ewish relief. Give some to those Arabs ."
