DIANA TRILLING
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feel guilty. I don't want to make people feel guilty. I'm serious.
(Laughter .) I'm moral.
DT:
Let's just go on free-associating, Dwight. What about Fred
Dupee? He came later than the rest of you, didn't he?
DM:
No, he didn't. He was the link between Rahv and Phillips and
me and George Morris. Fred was my best friend, of course, prac–
tically all of our lives. We had terrible rows and long_ periods,
sometimes lasting years, in which we practically didn't speak to
each other. Yet even then we had some sort of communication.
DT:
He was a very lovable person. And always appropriate to him–
self. He never violated his own style.
DM:
No. He was completely honest and also extremely intelligent.
One of the few people I've known in my life that I really consid–
ered absolutely my- I could talk to him about anything and he
would get it, you know.
DT:
I remember when I was about to make my first speech in public
and I told Fred how nervous I was. He asked me if I had my
speech written and when I said I had, he told me to come and
read it to him . He rehearsed me for more than an hour, made me
stand up straight, speak slowly.
DM:
He was a sweetie.
DT:
What about Mary McCarthy? At what point did she come into
the picture?
DM:
Mary came in pretty much at the beginning, I think. She used
to do drama for us . And she wrote those stories:
The Company She
Keeps.
She wasn't on the magazine very long for the simple reason
that she ran off with Edmund Wilson.
It
was a crushing blow to
Rahv. I remember Rahv saying, my God, why did I ever intro–
duce her to that guy? Of course Wilson was a very eminent guy,
and so on. Also she might have had an instinct that she needed
him as a kind of, you know, a guide .
DT:
As the years went on, the magazine became just Rahv and
Phillips, and a rather fierce tug-of-war developed between them,
didn't it?
DM:
Oh boy, I'll say. I made a good crack about that period when
they were together on
Partisan Review
and yet fighting like hell. I
said, they're staying together for the sake of the child, which was
actually true. Rahv was a big bear, you know, and a pretty brutal
guy in many ways. For some reason or other, women loved him.
My wife thought he was adorable. He was quite a womanizer but
also quite avuncular with women. But boy, with his equals and
