LIONEL TRILLING
513
ing made at the lnst. between the patients who pay and those who
don't. He will soon have a private room to write in. He speaks of
himself as being "dulled" by the psychiatric therapy, not actually
helped. An analysis is planned for him. He thinks much in terms of
sanitoriums- the Hartford Retreat, one in the South, near Wash–
ington, preferring that because it is warm. My sense of fatigue and
indifference-the absence of some grain, some resistant element.
Like a different
kind
of humanity . This always there- and perhaps
all the sad history has been the search for that. -Strange that I never
took notes on all the process of law and psych. that I went through
after his arrest, and of his own account of what had been going on
with him. But perhaps just as well. The events will form of themselves.
-We spoke ofKerouac's book. I predicted that it would not be good
&
insisted. But later I saw with what bitterness I had made the pre–
diction- not wanting K's book to be good because if the book of an
accessory to a murder is good, how can one of mine be? -The con–
tinuing sense that wickedness- or is it my notion of courage- is
essential for creation.
(1951?)
If
one defends the bourgeois, philistine virtues, one does not defend
them merely from the demonism or bohemianism of the artist but
from the present bourgeoisie itself, which is exactly no longer a bour–
geoisie itself,- not
burgerlich,
having no sense of "business" and "af–
fairs," no feeling for "hard practicality," but rather a highly politi–
cized group, extravagantly sensitive to trends, tendencies, demands,
ideals-which it does not have the mental equipment to deal with. I
speak here from experience of the university- the administrators
have no bottom, no sense of fact, far less than the intellectuals on the
faculty. They are bewildered and confused, they are excessively con–
cerned with their own status, not in a simple obvious way but in the
sense of wanting to be in accord with a certain "spirit," a certain
rightness which they cannot define. They have no tradition, no sense
of themselves as achieved personalities- they look to the future to
realize themselves. -The old 19th century hard-headed type has
been destroyed. In politics we have mainly the demagogue (ideals
again) and the conscious idealist. -After meeting Del Paine and
being impressed by his quality of mind I said to Diana that it was
strange that a person whose mind was so humanistically flexible, so
literarily comprehensive, should have gone into journalism and ad–
ministration to become managing editor of
Fortune,
rather than into
